The simplest fact about the Earth is that it has finite resources.
The simplest truth about this era is that we are burning through those resources faster than we can replace them: both renewable and non-renewable. This is deliberate: we chose planned obsolescence, for example, to juice profits without a corresponding increase in standard of living. We chose to subsidize suburbs and exurbs, which sped the destruction of the ecosphere. We destroyed the old transit networks of streetcars so GM and Ford could sell more cars, etc, etc…
Back in the 70s a series of books came out, starting with the Third Industrial Revolution. They explained how to move industry and energy generation off Earth.
I read it at the time, and was impressed and I’m given to understand it’s very influential in China, today: part of the blueprint of their plans for space.
We knew by the 70s that we were in trouble, the famous “Limits to Growth” had come out, there were widespread concerns about overpopulation and study of issues like energy ratios (how much energy it takes to produce a unit of energy. The lower that number, the more prosperous a society can be.)
But after the moon landing, the space budget was gutted and later so was research and development of technologies like solar power. The powers that be, and the population of the US at the time wanted the world to be as it had been, to hang on to the petrochemical economy, the cars, the suburbs with white picket fences and so on. They opposed change and wanted unearned wealth from asset price increases rather than earned money from real growth.
But the only way to save the old technological world was to change it, and the only way to overcome limited resources and to reduce pollution was to get the resources from space, and move the pollution off Earth. (Note that we’re not talking colonization of space: no huge habitats full of people. We’re talking using space for resources.)
If you wanted to “save” the old world, you had to go into space, big. Public investment on a massive scale was needed, while we still had the resources and while serious consequences of climate change and ecological collapse were still decades in the future.
But, well, most of the people voting and making decisions in the 70s and 80s knew they’d be dead before those consequences hit. It was easier, and, in the short run of a few decades, more profitable to do nothing. So instead of going big, they went small and thus didn’t do the one thing that could save their civilization from the limits of growth.
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