A recent article in Cosmos discussed the greening of mars. If we are looking for something of great value and magnitude that would get the world excited again about space it is just such a project. If we can green a planet perhaps we can learn enough to save and recover our own. For a world focused on 'industrialized consumptive destruction' this project, as a master project of a world wide Space Program, could turn the tide in thinking about priorities. Today we seem to think that it is a zero sum game. We either industrialize or we go green. (Or we pay lip service to going green!). I think it is not an either or proposition. We need a new capitalism and outlook that is not a competition between these two camps(business and Environmentalists) but rather a new and higher performing value centered approach that is a win/ win. A project like the greening of Mars should be promoted as it may represent to us(the world) today what the pyramids meant to the Egyptian civilization. It is something big enough and grand enough to fit what the human civilization is capable of achieving.
