The Ethics of Terraforming other Planets, Moons and Asteroids

The Ethics of Terraforming. From the writer of The Terraformers’ Toolkit.
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09X6739P...
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09X6739P...
Stakeholder rights.
The first set of arguments about whether to terraform a planet, like Mars, is about the rights of the various stakeholders.
1. Humans might want to terraform a planet for lots of reasons, adventure, exploration, gold fever, escape or national chauvinism.
If a new island appeared in mid Atlantic it wouldn’t be long before flags were planted and resources exploited. People live in some tremendously difficult places on Earth, such as Greenland and the Sahara.
2. Animals might be said to have rights, they don’t have a right to spend vast amounts of money terraforming planets. If they’re on the point of being made extinct on earth, and we could save them by moving to Mars, but would they have big enough bank accounts to afford this? We could also ask what about extinct animals. If it was as possible to de-extinct them, and introduce them to a new ecosystem on another planet, would this be ethical? Examples might be the mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.
3. Ecosystems. Even in the present day ecosystems do have some degree of rights, but it tends to be tied up with the people that live there, trying to preserve their forest, their water and food supply. However, as soon as we moved animals plants to Mars, they would start to evolve new forms because the environment is so different. The ecosystem that would exist on another planet 100 years after being planted would be considerably different from the source ecosystem back on earth.
If Mars hosts its own Martian indigenous life, then that life, that ecosystem would have a rights to a continued existence. However, there is a possibility that we won’t know for a long time after we start terraforming. It may be after considerable warming has taken place that we find evidence for it. This suggests that alien life will only reveal itself when temperatures have risen significantly, because in the present day, if it exists at all, it will be very deep beneath the surface. There is also a risk here that we could destroy it by introducing life from earth by mistake. If we found it, we could use it in our technology. So Martian bacteria may use low temperature enzymes which we could use to make food in space.
4. Rocks. This argument suggests we shouldn’t be doing any terraforming at all as other planets, moons and asteroids have a right to be left alone. However, even on earth we allocate rights to places because of their natural beauty. We would be considerably upset if the Grand Canyon were filled with trash. Similar arguments would apply to the Matterhorn, Table Mountain and Mount Everest. In space moons like Titan with its unique hydrocarbon lakes and seas and Saturn with its rings have great value, even though they do not contain any life forms.
Next we can analyse human reasons for terraforming:
A. Survival: Mars is not planet B, neither is it planet Z. It would be a lot easier to set up home in the Antarctic, or on top of Mount Everest. Mars could easily kill the colonists within an hour of their landing. It might allow humans to survive on its surface one day, but vast amounts of money and effort would need to be invested first.
B. Resources: it’s entirely possible that we could find valuable resources on the surface of Mars. It hasn’t been mined for the last 10,000 years as has earth. However, those resources are likely to be used on Mars, rather than being exported because of the great cost of launching them off the surface. It would be considerably cheaper to mine asteroids or moons because the transport costs away from their lower gravities would be less.
C. Scientific knowledge. This is, perhaps the only real human reason for terraforming a planet. However, if the interval between exploration and terraforming is long enough, there will be plenty of opportunity for scientific discovery. Discoveries could also be made during terraforming. Certainly future biologists would like to know what plants were able to survive in the tough conditions of a new planet.
D. Adventure. people might like to terraform a new planet for lots of reasons, because it’s there, because it’s new and different, and because it would allow them to live their lives without the interference of a country or government. But the cost is still huge.
E. Spiritual. Some people might like to move to a new planet so that they could practice their religion without interference. It may be a new religion or a disenfranchised religion, and if enough of them wanted to move, they might be able to find the money. Whether or not it’s enough for the enormous costs involved in terraforming is another matter.
Summary
Money, technology, time and power will determine if or when Mars is terraformed.

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