Germaine Greer urges people to think about Earth first before looking to Mars

INSTEAD of trying to find a way to live on Mars, humans should be trying to rejuvenate our planet, says Germaine Greer.

INSTEAD of trying to find a way to live on Mars, humans should be trying to rejuvenate our own planet, feminist Germaine Greer has told an Adelaide audience.

Professor Greer on Wednesday night presented a talk entitled Earth can survive without People; People cannot survive without Earth for the Hawke Research Institute at UniSA.

Greer, 76, told a sold out auditorium that humans “constantly underestimate the capacity of our fellow earthlings”.

“Acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking quite calmly argues that human beings will soon have rendered the earth uninhabitable — the result being that people will have no option but to colonise space,” she said.

“But what most of us forget is that the earth has the power to regenerate … we’ve survived both freezing and baking.

“There’s more of a chance we will be driven off the planet or destroyed by a pandemic than populating another planet.

“Like all the other earthlings we need to work out a way to stay here.

“Thousands of other beings have managed to evolve … earth still has the capacity to recover.”

Professor Greer encouraged the audience to think about ways they could help rebuild habitat.

“The fact we are earthlings means we care about the death of the planet,” she said.

“The hardest thing to do on earth is to do good.

“If we spent less money trying to breed animals in captivity and restored their habitat, they will take care of themselves.

“As soon as we start to rebuild habitat, animals will come back.”

Greer, who was born in Melbourne, was educated at Cambridge University.

Her first book, The Female Eunuch, took the world by storm and remains one of the most influential texts of the feminist movement.

Originally published as Germaine Greer urges people to think about Earth first before looking to Mars