The question itself actually is “Should the search for life on planets like Mars be pursued, or should this quest begin only after solving issues such as hunger, poverty, and environmental pollution on Earth?” which I believe is a very unrealistic question since it is not on the space agencies to find solutions on poverty, hunger and pollution but rather that is the UN’s and the countries’ job to do. If this means lowering their space agency budget the agencies could theoretically still search for life even with a crippled capability. But, if we do find intelligent life on Mars and start trying to settle there, the previous topics should be solved first. The reason for that is to not make Mars have the same fate as Earth and also to not make us have the fate of the Mongol Empire, having ravaged and pillaged all planets we’ve been on and just continuing with the next one without fixing the ones we’ve been on. This can be explained really well in the picture below. But other than that, I wholeheartedly believe that we can both pursue our research to find life on Mars and continue the quest to find solutions to hunger, poverty and environmental pollution. Since it is only a matter of time until we find a definite answer whether if Mars has life or not, it is a time race if we finish colonizing and destroying whatever Mars has or find a powerful enough sustainable energy source.
