Carpe Momentum: Escape Velocity or Earth First?

Why billionaires want to abandon the planet, and what it really means to seize the moment

From Bezos to Musk, the world’s richest men have been spinning a strange and seductive tale: Earth is just the beginning. The real frontier, the one worthy of their genius and our awe, is out there. On the Moon. On Mars. In orbit. They don’t talk about fixing the climate, restoring biodiversity, or reversing the poisoned rivers they helped fund into existence. That’s not sexy, nor scalable. That doesn’t IPO.

Instead, they promise that someday, maybe soon, we’ll live on other planets. In domes. On regolith. With breathable air imported in tanks and water wrung from rocks. The media eats it up. Techno-optimists cheer. Venture capitalists circle like vultures around a dying carcass, because that’s what the future is under capitalism: not a garden to tend, but a corpse to loot.