[We] the Human race should leave the Earth as soon it becomes possible (fiscally and technologicaly)

Thanks for the definitions. Your points sometimes become a bit blurry, but I'll try to refute them the bet I can. \\\Earth is our home; Because Earth is the home of all humans, and has been, it can be assumed that Earth is effectively the lab rat for humans. Anything done to the planet or for the planet would make Earth the first planet to witness the effects of such actions. All problems dealt to Earth as a result of human intervention would therefore be the first, and solutions to such problems may not yet exist (ie feeding people in times of famine, sustaining agriculture in drought, reversing global warming, sustaining biodiversity, and so on)./// yes it is true that Earth is our home. But that does not mean that it is safe. I will bring this up in my arguments but basically, Earth is dodging bullets all the time. We should not keep all the eggs in one basket, because if one disaster happens, an asteroid, etc. we're ALL dead. If we had left earth and settled other planets. We wouldn't be in the insanely dangerous place we call home. \\\Finding another Earth; We would need to achieve a system to support life and travel the 9,454,254,955,488 km at close to the speed of light for more than 19.5 years. As it is stated in the resolution, the technology will be available; however, it does not state when this will be so. Given that there is no bright-line, we would need to sustain the Earth indefinitely to achieve this goal./// As stated in the resolution, technology and money are not problems in this debate. Although, on your point, the technology would have to be created in the next 4-5 billion years, as after that, the sun will die. And we will die with it. This point is irrelevant none the less. \\\The extinction rate of today may be 1,000 to 10,000 times the biological normal, or background, extinction rate of 1-10 species extinctions per year....species extinction, like global warming, has a time lag, and the loss of forest species due to forest clearing in the past may not be apparent" (Mongabay.com [6]). Therefore, should extinction not yet pose a problem for us today, or when we are capable of leaving this planet, it is not moral for the planet to suffer the effects when we have left. Given that it is immoral to leave, we must remain on this planet to attempt to halt further problems and solve pre-existing ones; moreover, because the impacts of the loss of biodiversity is hard to quantify, we ought to remain on the planet Earth indefinitely./// I realize it may be hard mentally to leave these species behind once we leave earth, but we will have to be strong, maybe even (maybe) we could take a few with us. But if we don't we have to care about ourselves--NOT the dying planet, NOT the dying sun. I know this is selfish but under the shopping, the telvision, the SUV's, the human race is programmed like a computer with ONE single rule that cannot be broken, ensure th continuity of the species. If we stay on our dying planet for a few species, we are breaking this one important rule. Anyway these species will die anyway once the sun dies. So what's the point, let nature take care of them. The Earth can heal itself, and once we left, global warming will fade and fade until non-existent. \\\Contention 2 (running out of characters, look above)/// We are NOT going to be developing technology indefinitely because the sun will die eventually. So we have two choices, stay here and die, or leave and live. It is a hard choice, but the human race will feel the same as a family moving to a new part of the world. But eventually that family will remember their old house as a memory, then the memory will fade to a reference point. Eventually the family will be adapted to the new house and will not even mourn the loss of their old house. ========================================================================= Arguments: 1. The sun is dying "The Sun will not live forever. It has enough fuel left, if our current understanding is correct, for another 5 billion years, at which point it will die. But could it be possible for the Sun to die much sooner, within the next 100 years even? From a scientific perspective, it should be said that this is very unlikely. But, it is also true that there is a lot about the universe that we do not understand." 2. The earth will die eventually WWF has now confirmed : Earth Is Dying It is now suspected that pollution in the Earth's atmosphere, caused by industrialization and natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, may have significantly reduced that amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface. It is estimated that this could have led to a cooling effect of over 1 degree overt he last 40 years, which would go some way to offsetting the effect of global warming. Global warming is caused primarily by increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that prevent heat being radiated back out into space from the Earth's surface. The phenomenon of global dimming may therefore have saved us, so far, from the worst affects of climate change, although it has been noticed that as pollution levels have been reduced, particularly in Western Europe, the affects of global dimming seem to be reducing, leading to an accelerating temperature rise once again. We may therefore be in the paradoxical situation that reducing pollution might INCREASE the effects of global warming, leading us ever more quickly towards catastrophe. 3. The human race must expand. Asteroids, magnetic storm, radiation, the list goes on of what can end life on this planet. Let's compare the Human race to eggs in a basket, which is Earth. If you threw a live hand grenade in that basket, all the eggs would be shattered. But what if you could put some of the eggs in another basket. The grenade blows up the empty basket, and the eggs survive. We must expand, it is not safe to be all in one small area where we can all be wiped out at once. http://www.howstuffworks.com... http://www.popularscience.co.uk... http://www.popularscience.co.uk... http://en.wikipedia.org...