Should he have been fired?

For years I've hoped for a mass extinction event to occur; it's really the only hope this planet, then later this solar system, then later this galaxy, then later this universe, then later perhaps the entire multiverse, has for survival. The best news in my entire life was the space program being put on hiatus; once we can travel from this planet on a regular basis, we will quite literally spread like a plague, destroying everything in our wake like the horrible virus that we are, and delaying that until after we are wiped out is about the only way to divert this inevitability. Hopefully something comes along that kills all of us off before we resume it, but I won't hold my breath; horrible events have a ton of "plot armor", and there can't be anything worse than the destruction of all of creation.

The universe is completely apathetic to our "destruction" of it. The only ones suffering from it are ourselves so a complete wiping of the human race wouldn't exactly solve the problem. You can't save the human race from destruction by destroying it.