5 Billion Years BC

"I'm Zakron Nkurg and this is Election Night Special.  Tonight we decide who will be the next president of Mars.  Will it be Eurok Mustadin of the Environmental Party, or Tonsul Ygork of the Enterprise Party.  Mr. Ygork, what do you think of Mr. Mustadin's proposal for a carbon tax?"
"I think it poses an incredible burden on working families.  Working families, who are already struggling to make ends meet, will pay twice as much tax as they do now.  How will they be able to eat?"
"Families will be able to eat.  They just won't be able to eat meat."
"Mr. Mustadin wants everybody to live on beans and vegetables."
"Tonsul, my family live on beans and vegetables.  They're all perfectly healthy and happy.   Why can't yours?  Do you know how much farm land on Mars is being turned into desert every year?  A century from now we won't have any left.  Then families really won't be able to eat."
"Mr. Mustadin has no evidence that global warming even exists.  Show me some evidence that temperatures are increasing.  Last winter was the coldest winter on Mars ever."
"Global warming is an outdated concept.  Today we talk about Climate Change.  The severity of last winter, with extreme disruption due to unprecendented snow and failed harvests in many areas, is proof of Climate Change.  The factories on Mars are belching out enormous quantities of smog.  You can't breathe in the cities.  It is destroying the atmosphere.  People must be taxed on what they spend."
"Just think what effect that will have on unemployment.  Eurok, half the factories on Mars will close."
"I will create millions or new jobs in hospitals and schools."
"The doctors will be taxed, the nurses will be taxed, the teachers will be taxed.  They'll be paying more tax than ever before.  Tax the aspirational.  Squeeze them until the juice comes out and the pips squeak."
"Tonsul, if I don't close down half of those factories, if I don't stop people having meat and fish with every meal, this planet will be destroyed.  We are consuming the resources of Mars as if there was no tomorrow."
"That's just the basic rate of tax.  If you actually do anything that directly produces carbon dioxide it goes up and up.  It's going to be impossible for anyone to travel."
"It won't be impossible to travel, Tonsul, just difficult to own a car.  My government will invest billions in a system of low energy tube trains."
"Let's have a look at the poles tonight," said Zakron Nkurg.  "27 polling stations have declared their results so far.  The Enterprise Party have 26 seats and the Environmental Party have 1 seat."

Ricardo Grenook was glad the Enterprise Party had won the election.  Now there would be plenty of customers for his space ship to Earth.  The first eighty seat commercial passenger space plane was already under construction.  The fare was one billion credits a ticket but there were plenty billionaires on Mars now that the Enterprise Party were in power.  Ricardo knew that the Environmental Party were right.  Mars would be a desert waste by the time his grandchildren were old.  He had the potential to make an absolute fortune by starting the first commercial space plane service to evacuate people to other worlds.  Planet Earth had just the right conditions to support Martian life.  Grenook Space Tourism had its enemies.  Science Now had come to the factory with television cameras to make a documentary about the space plane being constructed.  Ricardo thought they would be sympathetic.  They were not.  They asked difficult questions.  How would the space craft cope with flying through an atmosphere many times denser and a gravitational field so much stronger than on Mars?  If Martians went to a world with much stronger gravity wouldn't their bones break?  The company Marketing Director had had to issue a press statement saying that no one knew the answers to any of those questions but that it would not deter space exploration.  

Life on Earth began when a Martian space plane plunged into the primordial sea on Earth during the Pre-Cambrian period 5000 million years ago.  Once in Earth's atmosphere the craft did not last long.  The 80 Martian bodies were eaten by their own bacteria and evolution on Earth began.