Also; If we need to accelerate and accelerate in order to move forward, would'nt stagnation or shrinkage spell Doom?

Fabs

Don't you think that we would argue that, in stead of using those resources on an already damaged planet, we would be better-off using them on our newfound home instead?

I think we humans would find many reasons *not* to step up to this effort.

the idea would be that by living on other planets or in space, we aren’t consuming the resources of earth at the same rate

Space travel seems like a resource-intensive undertaking, how would that fix our problems on earth? 

science

What possible future (technological) breakthrough might be a grave mistake?

My favorite line on this topic came from a recent discussion i had with Geoffrey West.

he said something to the effect of “it is possible to have open-ended growth, but the price we pay is that the pace of life gets faster and faster”.

the high level idea was that if we want to keep improving our standard of living, we need to continue innovating (things like space travel for example) at a faster and faster rate.

what if leaving earth to travel into space is the way to fix earth?