Interesting post but you are missing the entire point of settling Mars - making humanity a multi-planetary species, providing genuine new unlimited frontiers for expansion and experimentation in all sorts of new forms of governance and social organisation.

In a world grappling with climate change, energy crises, and resource scarcity

Indeed, with respect, your entire perspective embodied in these lines is wrong headed Malthusianism.

None of these things exist and there is no scarcity, especially if humanity expands out into the solar system.

The only resource is human ingenuity and there is no shortage of anything.

Was oil a resource 300 years ago; Uranium or Neodymium 100 years ago. No!

Settlement of Mars enables mining of the Main Asteroid Belt which has more accessible reserves of every valuable mineral than 1000 Earths.

The reasons for settling Mars are best set out in the Founding Declaration of the Mars Society. I was an endorsee of this declaration 26 years ago and they remain equally valid today.

Antartica does not properly fulfil oven one of the many reasons for going to Mars.

Settling Antarctica is building a cubby house in your garden, not a genuine frontier!