Earth’s environment must be preserved long before humans think about colonizing Mars, which will never be so habitable, stressed Barack Obama, the chief guest at a conference on the energy transition in Paris on Wednesday, AFP reported.

The former US president referred to the “tycoons of Silicon Valley, many of whom are building spaceships (…) I love space exploration and I can’t wait until we get to Mars and beyond (…) But when I hear some say that the plan is to colonize mars because the environment on earth might deteriorate, become uninhabitable… But what do you say?’

“Even after a nuclear war, which I’m not downplaying, Earth will be more habitable than Mars! Even if we did nothing about climate change, it would still have oxygen, and as far as we know, Mars doesn’t,” he explained to an audience of renewable energy professionals gathered at the CNIT amphitheater in Paris-La Défense. .

“I would prefer that we invest in taking care of this planet. The reason we go into space is to discover it, to learn about it, not because we are going to create a better situation there. We were designed for this place and it would be good if we could preserve it so that it remains livable,” he said.

For an hour, the former head of state spoke on stage about his work in the White House on climate, environmental transition (standards for industry, support for renewable energy sources in the midst of the 2008-2009 crisis), conservation of natural spaces, etc.

However, he did not mention his successor, Donald Trump, who in 2017 withdrew his country from the Paris climate agreement signed by Obama two years earlier. “The facts speak for themselves,” he said.

Barack Obama opened this evening a meeting called the Power Earth Summit, organized by two entrepreneurs in the field of renewable energy sources, which brings together French figures in this field on Thursday and Friday.