I need to raise $200,000, fast.

That's the going rate for a seat aboard Virgin Galactic's first commercial space-faring vessel, the aptly named VSS Enterprise. It's set to launch in 2011, shooting the rich and famous into sub-orbital flight, but if I wrangle a ticket, there will be a slight change in plans.

As in me, leaving on a jet plane and never coming back again. Stuff sub-orbital; I plan to blow right past Earth's gravitational pull and get away from this rock. Which, incidentally, is all that will be left when it dawns on people that arguing over the finer points of global warming/climate change/imminent apocalypse wasn't such a great strategy after all.

I refuse to take a side in the debate. I take as much umbridge with Al Gore and Company as I do with those who claim nothing's happening. Using scare tactics to make your case and referring to your opponents as "climate change deniers" (thus lowering them to the same level as those who pretend Hitler didn't murder 11 million people) aren't ways you convince me to join your cause.

Then again, to act as if it makes a difference whether or not global warming is caused by man helps no one, either. Except, perhaps, the industries that only need to reassure people that pumping carbon dioxide into the air so that business can continue as usual, without the need to reinvest in 21st century technology.

The Earth's temperature is changing, a fact that Iowans experienced first-hand last winter, during that endless, weeks-long spell of constant sub-zero frivolity. Then again, the Earth has had its share of warming and cooling periods over the millennia; we just haven't had to deal with one in the industrial age before.

But as I tried to stress in a column several months ago, whether or not our pollution is having any significant impact on our shifting climates is irrelevant. We have an obligation to take care of the Earth, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the only home we have. The moon may have water, but if our government continues to show the same dithering on sending manned missions into the Final Frontier as they have shown with pushing for strong emissions standards or adopting alternative forms of energy, then we really can't count on space colonization to get us off the hook for exploiting our resources.

If I manage to raise the $200,000 for a flight on the Enterprise, it won't be any of my concern anyway, though I think I'll want to think a little past the initial spacejacking. I need to make arrangements for the little things, you know, like food, oxygen and rocket fuel, because without those I'm bound to be stuck out there drifting in the black, starving and not breathing. But it's not like the alternative of staying here is going to be any different if the bickering doesn't stop.