I agree about the time-horizons. Dealing with climate change is an immediate and urgent priority, whereas the time-horizon for becoming multi-planetary and (eventually) multi-stellar are much longer.

That being said, it's all probabilistic, so it's not like there's a bright line when we need to be multi-planetary. A planet-killer could hit earth tomorrow, and the human race would be extinct. So, if we delay becoming a (self-sufficient) multi-planetary species by 200 years we increase the window of risk by that much time.

And there will always be current challenges that we face on earth that we could address before investing resources in becoming multi-planetary. And becoming multi-planetary itself will take a long time.

To me, climate change seems more existential than our other challenges. The reason we can use earth as a base for interplanetary exploration is because the environment is favorable to us. We are putting that at risk.

The only other problem that feels similarly serious is nuclear way.

Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way:

* Ban climate change research until hunger is under control

* Ban efforts to curb hunger until war is under control

* Ban efforts to stop war until disease is under control

Hunger and war and disease all have the potential to make furthering space exploration impossible. For example, we just had a pandemic that impacted a lot of people?

However, in general, all of those problems have existed for the entire span of human history. I am not concerned about any of them[1] damaging the earth's ability to be a base for launching humanity as an interstellar species.

Climate change is different. It's especially different because of our inability to face it so far. If we had done the sensible thing and reacted to projections in the 70s by ramping down fossil fuel use, I'd consider is less severe. But we have not.

[1] save nuclear way ofc