Rich men in spaceships have become a meme. For some, they symbolise technological mastery and the will to exploration; for others, they represent the kind of hubris and indifference to nature that have brought us to a futural crisis. The Anthropocene’s arrival is intensifying the ethical chasm between two incompatible ways of seeing the Earth and the place of humans on it. With climatic tipping points approaching, the possibility that the Earth will become uninhabitable for humans within the next century or so is stimulating some thinkers to consider what it would mean for humans (at least, a few of them) to settle elsewhere in the universe, leaving the Earth in ruins. It may be the most profound decision humans (at least, a few of them) will ever make—civilizational phoenix or cosmic grave.