Some pepole consider that the use of public money on looking for life on other planets is important. We have various kinds of environmental issues thesedays. Some scientists say that people won’t be able to live on earth in the future, even if it is not the nearest future. In this point of view, it is crucial to search for life in universe as future shelter for human, and this can be a responsibility of governments.
On the other hand, others claim that spending public money on that is waste of money. As I mentioned above, we have tons of problems on earth. Therefore, people think we need to adress those issues before thinking about destroyed earth.
I understand that we cannot be so optimistic that we can handle all those problems, so we have to consider about moving to the outseide of erath someday. However, I do agree with the opinion that says we should face to the problems we have now first. In my opinion, spending a lot of money of looking for life on other planets means that we have already given up on earth. I believe we could try to adress some issues on earth with that money. For a instance, we could invest in renewable energy to pause using fossile fuel, which is one of the cause of global warming.
Finally, I would not say searching for possibility of life in the universe is completely waste of public money. Meanwhile, I assume that we definitely should focus on handling issues we are facing now first.