>We spent $700 billion a year on the defense budget, and $7 trillion on wars, $1 billion on inspiring stunts like moon landings or mars landings once a generation, are not really a waste

That's because they are framed as a more immediate existential threat. Humans are present biased and don't like to spend lots of money on low-probability events until they are unavoidable (see: attitudes towards pandemic preparations in 2019).

Actually we don’t fix stuff as a species until people start dying. How long it takes is how much bad PR is involved. Avoiding that bad PR instead of solving the problem is an art that we have become better at than solving problems.

Yup. Paul Krugman once said something to the effect that the human race would benefit from an Alien Invasion, because the way things are going, we don't invest in the planet, we don't unify and put aside petty grievances and selfishness, until there's a unified enemy.

If an actual high probability ELE asteroid collision was detected, people would get their shit together real quick. Or maybe not, the COVID crisis has shattered my faith. I'm sure a bunch of people would claim the asteroid prediction is a NASA scam to install socialism or something.

I share your cynicism. I'm not sure that's a comfortable position though but it's better to live in fear than ignorance I suspect.