Astrobiology is the science of life in the universe. It's an attempt to scientifically deal with the question of whether or not we're alone in the universe, looking at the past of life, the present of life, and the future of life. It's an interdisciplinary study incorporating astronomy, biology, and the Earth sciences.

Our most valuable resources - creativity, communication, invention, and reinvention - are, in fact, unlimited.

Astrobiology is a great point of contact for science outreach. The public is naturally interested in extra-terrestrial life. Astrobiology provides an accessible point of access that leads to deeper questions.

The hallmark of the human species is great adaptability.

There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.'

Even cynical, selfish people will realize, one way or the other, that it's not in their self-interest to act in self-destructive ways.

The reason you see so many volcanoes on Venus is partly due to the fact that there's virtually no erosion there. So on Venus, you're seeing features, some of which are hundreds of millions of years old on the surface. On Earth, we do not see any surface features nearly that old - you only see much more recent features.

I intend to apply the perspective of astrobiology, which is a deep-time way of looking at life on Earth, towards the question of the Anthropocene. What does the human phenomenon on Earth look like viewed from an interplanetary perspective?

There's no question to my mind that saving our civilization and many other species is more important than our ability to do ground-based astronomy for a few decades.