Gary Johnson says care for the environment now, but eventually 'we do have to inhabit other planets'

Gary Johnson
(Image credit: Bryan R. Smith/Getty Images)

Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson said intergalactic travel is part of the long-term plan of dealing with climate change while speaking with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

Stephanopoulos played a clip from several years ago in which Johnson argued, "the long-term view is that in billions of years the sun is going to actually grow and encompass the Earth, right? So global warming is in our future." Asked whether that means "we don't do anything about it now," Johnson said that line was a joke but then got serious, arguing his mention of the sun highlights "the fact that we do have to inhabit other planets. I mean, the future of the human race is space exploration."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.