Hawking says humans must go into space

[jd]

I don't know how soon we will really need to worry about it - I'm a
little skeptical of Al Gore's ten year date of expiration claim.  It
seems that at any given point in history people have been able to give
very good evidence of why the world will end the next day or year, and
that the only consistant thing linking all those claims is that, well,
we're still here.

Regardless, I think that we're too busy with other things that are
short-sighted and misguided to be bothered with being able to fund a
project that could honestly focus on real solutions for living on
another planet.  If we got our ass in gear, right now, today - well, I
think that if Gore does turn out to be more than an alarmist, we'd
still be too late in all likelihood, best case scenario at least too
late for 99% of the population.