He's a poor communicator, and is wrong on his timespan for earth becoming non-viable.

We have about a billion (not million) years - give or take a billion - before the earth is uninhabitable for human life as we know it. Maybe much less if we keep doing stupid things to destroy our environment, but that's a different problem.

The goal is to remove humanity's dependency on this single planet for survival. Thing is - that's a 10,000+ year goal. It won't happen in our lifetimes and needs tons of technology not invented yet. Hell - we can't keep humans alive in an enclosed biosphere on earth for a year without cheating.

Mars is seen as a logical next step - we've landed robots there, and we've walked on the moon. But there's a ton of work between here and man-on-mars he's glossing over, like "long-term survival without supply from earth". A manned mars mission requires survival in an enclosed ecosystem for 3-5 years, minimum, and more like a decade with a safety factor. That's not a viable thing today.

We should be working on sustainability and not polluting our own ecosphere, and long-term orbital habitats if we seriously want to send people to mars without it being suicide. But slow and steady doesn't get much attention or funding.

Yes - mars isn't a place fit for human habitation, and probably never will be. But the technology we develop in that effort will reap all sorts of benefits for the real world. Science is worth doing.

My take? If we can get orbital self-sustained habitats really nailed down in the next few thousand years, then the whole solar system becomes our playground given enough time. Living in comfort and safety in an orbital and visiting mars is a lot better than being forced to live on the surface.