TERRAFORM THE GALAXY

SEVERAL INFLUENTIAL PHILOSOPHERS and environmentalist thinkers argue that terraforming Mars and other planets, making them suitable for humans and other Earth life, would be immoral. As we near a day when terraforming is actually possible, the arguments against it are worth reviewing and rebutting.

- RONALD BAILEY

“Trying to change whole planets to suit our ends is arrogant vandalism,” Monash University philosopher Robert Sparrow asserts in a 1999 essay, saying the desire to do so reflects aesthetic insensitivity and hubris.” Sparrow maintains that we must show that we are capable of looking after our current home before we could claim to have any place on another.”

In a special 2019 issue of the academic journal Futures, neuroscientist Lori Marino likewise claims that our species is not capable of living on any planet sustainably.” Another contributor to that issue of the journal, University of Texas anthropologist John Traphagan, agrees. We are not capable of enacting a successful colonization of another planet,” he writes. The fact that we have destroyed our home planet is prima facie evidence of this assertion.”

Saint Paul College philosopher Ian Stoner, who contributed a chapter to the 2021 book Terraforming Mars, argues that doing so would violate a duty to conserve objects of special scientific value, a duty to preserve special wilderness areas, and a duty not to display vices characteristic of past colonial endeavors on Earth.” He therefore concludes that terraforming Mars is probably morally wrong.”

What should we make of people who oppose terraforming? In his contribution to the Futures special issue, Clemson University philosopher Kelly Smith, a terraforming advocate, tartly notes that his opponents think humanity deserves” to perish until and unless humans can demonstrate an ability to live in harmony with our environment.” He describes that position as eco-nihilism.”