> People concerned about global warming might be misled and support allocating capital to space exploration rather than to overhauling transportation and power grids here on Earth.
Assuming jjk166's position that space industry's environmental impact is akin to a rounding error overall: it's hardly competing with "overhauling transportation and power grids here on Earth" because these 2 activities are limited by different bottlenecks.
For both, government funding is an important factor. But the space industry is limited by long development/testing cycles (spacecraft & their engines, designing & building satellites, etc). Or simply commercial demand for satellite-related services.
Whereas the energy transition is largely depending on permitting issues (for new power cables, land for solar or wind parks), production capacity of specialized companies, shortage of qualified workers, price vs. market tipping points, geopolitics & more.
Apart from governments' limited role here, cutting back one doesn't speed up the other.
The bigger issue is presenting [moving to space] as a fix for problems back on Earth. That's just ridiculous. Building & putting anything in space is waaayy more difficult & expensive (read: more resource-consuming) than doing the same on Earth. Not even a tiny fraction of Earth's population can be moved to space in the forseeable future. Surviving in space (long-term) is harder still than surviving on the open ocean, in a desert, or on Antarctica.
So humankind is stuck on Earth for the time being. To survive as a species we MUST make things work on this planet.
Space industry should focus on complementing that: science / exploration, telecom, Earth observation, maybe some niche manufacturing that's small-mass but enabled by 0-G, etc. Building datacenters in space? Send up mirrors to aid the energy crisis? Anyone saying such things with a straight face has lost their marbles and/or is BSing you.
But for believers: okay! Research what's needed, do the math & see how that works out. Maybe surprise us all.