Prince William Tells Billionaires: Forget Space Race and Focus on Saving Earth

I wonder how much money the Royal Family could spend on saving the Earth.

I can only half-agree with him, because our work in space is pretty important, too. A more moderate option would be to not be so enamoured with space that we continue to neglect Earth. It's a long time off, and pretty unlikely, that Earth will ever become less inhabitable than Mars. So even if we colonize Mars, it isn't really a planetary replacement for "the rest of us."

It's not a either/or situation. We can work on both, Space and Saving the Earth in fact are likely deeply tied together IMO. Space exploration has so many important technologies needed that I can't imagine it not being a massive step in the right direction.

That's sort of analogous to telling a firefighter "Don't worry about water supply, just focus on putting the fire out." It's basically an oxymoron. Space is a key element of improving conditions here on Earth. Both in indirect terms (technological advancements that percolate down), and fairly direct terms (satellites that are used for communication, remote sensing of scientific data, etc).

Considering that in the long term many polluting industries can move into space, that focus on space is for saving Earth.