Beyond Earth: Extending the Planetary Terrains
Space exploration, which began in the 20th century, put a significant marker on a history of humanity. As an effort of space agencies (NASA, ESA), the human convoy took off to the sky, launching orbital space stations or discovering the terrain of Mars. Preparing for humanity to become a space race, many entrepreneurs have accepted the challenge of such a unique competitive opportunity. Private companies contribute to the national space programs, and various initiatives take pride in investing their efforts towards interplanetary expansion. Formerly putting the primary focus on engineering, physics and astronautics, today we observe an increasing number of other disciplines engaging in debates about extraterrestrial built environments.
The other side of the pride in partaking in such visionary actions is the concern with the necessity of these events happening. The developments of the 21st century are rapidly revealing the fact that exploring space may not only be a matter of curiosity.
Extraterrestrial Terraforming and Cosmocentric Ethics
As the current trends rapidly accelerate, initiating debate about the practicalities of living outside of our planet is much needed. From an event of extending the operational terrain of human activity beyond Earth stem vast ramifications, for both the space outside of our planet and the Earthly surface.
From the point of view of a cosmocentric ethics, the argument is focused on balancing the needs for preservation of humankind against the intrinsic value of existing planetary ecologies [terraforming paper]. There are many pro and counter arguments, represented by some of the most powerful names in the contemporary tech industry. Whether humanity’s endeavors to build extraterrestrial settlements suitable for human life as an act of collective self-preservation is a moral obligation or an unnecessary intervention into other evolutionary systems, is difficult to assess from an objective standpoint.
This raises questions of environmental ethics related to the broader issue of extraterrestrial terraforming [1]. The discipline of environmental ethics, developed on Earth, emerged primarily as a result of Earthly environmental crises [2]. From application of large-scale technology to address Earth’s climate to questioning the intrinsic value placed upon space, planetary environments and organisms inhabiting them [3], we deal with extraordinarily large ethical problems. It implies human responsibility in maintaining equilibrium in regard to eventual exploitation of other worlds and not spoiling their own evolution [4], but also in relation to balancing the efforts put into enhancing the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial habitat, without one gaining advantage over the other.
According to McKay [5] systems of environmental ethics works around three normative axioms:
The principle of preservation / anti-humanism — the nature is not to be altered by humans
The principle of wise stewardship / utilitarianism — the measure of all things is utility to humans
The principle of intrinsic worth — objects have intrinsic worth regardless of their instrumental value to humans
Based on these, preservation and utilization of objects possessing value can be thus understood as the ethical basis for evaluation of the environmental action. In this regard, we come to the most burning argument, and that is the issue of humanity putting its own interest in jeopardy by knowingly allowing degradation of its life-sustaining systems keeping the human race alive.
To extrapolate this branch of ethics into outer space is not so straightforward, because the disciplinary relations apply to the Earthly systems of truth. The differentiation is based on possible variations of the truth, as the truth applying to ‘elsewhere‘ might be different from what applies to Earth. Here we are reaching a deeper level of conceptualization of life, nature and living than has been necessary on our planet.
On Earth there is no distinction between life and nature [6]. These terms are often used synonymously. When we voyage beyond the Earth, we find worlds presumably devoid of life. For the first time, we might need to start distinguishing between life and nature, as they might have taken on many different forms we are not yet familiar with. For example, the founding principle of ethics of egalitarian ecosystems [7] is defined as preservation of integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. On Earth, it is obvious what ‘biotic community‘ means, but it is not clear how this would be defined in an environment with no (according to Earthly standards recognizable) ecosystem. In this case we could: a) generalize the term and say a biotic community is the present state of the alien environment and that is what should be preserved and thus not interfered with; or b) apply the Earthly principles of habitability and determine that due to lack of the ecosystem there is nothing to preserve; or c) adjust the criteria for what constitutes ecosystem and formulate a new principle extending the range of possible environmental conditions also applicable to the extraterrestrial terrains.
In the context of interplanetary expansion, ethically it narrows down to these questions — are we eligible to conquer other worlds when we didn’t master our own? Should extraterrestrial expansion be a consequence of not having other options due to destroying our own habitat and making it unlivable? What should come first — Earthly sustainability or space dwellings? Is there a way of symbiotically connecting them?
Deep Ecology
The notion of intrinsic worth as a principle of environmental ethics was firstly discussed by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972 [8]. In his paper he elaborates on what has become known as Deep Ecology — an environmentalist approach which believes that fundamental changes in the way human species conceive the relations to nature are necessary before searching the way out of an ecological crisis. It is a normative political philosophy put in contrast with shallow ecology assuming that minor procedural technical fixes will lead to a solution of our environmental problems. Deep Ecology considers thinking of nature as a resource as destructive. Instead, nature’s worth should be considered innate, regardless of its beneficiality to humans. The first two tenets of Deep Ecology are particularly relevant for the extraterrestrial terraforming [9], because they open up the possibility to adjust the criteria of limiting definitions of life. They are:
the well-being of non-human life has a value itself
diversity of life forms contribute to the intrinsic value and further the value itself
It implies that other planets, which are virtually dead, are still rich and diverse biologically [10]. Furthermore, if the other planet already has experienced its own separate genesis, the teaming of life forms would be the best possible option for both worlds.
Synthesis of Life Forms
The principles of Deep Ecology also provide insights into interrelatedness of all systems of life. This is a great challenge for the human state of consciousness, as it would require a pretty radical change, making human behavior less concerned with the ego and people’s immediate families and more with the whole ecosphere which includes all living and nonliving things on Earth. In a way, entering the interplanetary space is a testing ground for finding out how capable we are as a race, but not only in our outward endeavors, as colonizing other planets, but also inwards, as to what degree we are able self-reflect and act as an unified whole. Deep Ecology thus advises to shift from the anthropocentric to the ecocentric model for the planet to survive, but mainly refers to the need for collective human self-realization [11].
In 2006, botanist James Graham introduced a model of applying global engineering techniques to transform climates of other planets and make it habitable for terrestrial organisms [12]. He proposed ecosynthesis as a process of succession of ecosystems to a terraformed planet, in this case Mars. He compares the terrain of Mars to a very high terrestrial mountain and describes a way of ‘bringing Mars down the mountain‘ in stages of successive alterations of climate and the ecosystem. This provides a logical framework for understanding a sequential establishment of ecosystemic merging and pushes the limitations of both — the implanted terrestrial organisms and the alien landscape receiving them. This example works on a level of physiological properties, but the concept of synthesis is not exclusively tied to physicality.
The definition of synthesis is the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole [13]. In the context of interplanetary synthesis, it means to synthesize two different life forms in order to achieve a state of co-existence and co-evolution. But this implies a further perpetuation of a state of ‚two‘ life forms existing together. They might exist in symbiosis, but they are still differentiable.
In Transcendental Deduction, Kant characterizes synthesis as "the action of putting different representations together with each other and comprehending their manifoldness in one cognition" [14]. It is a process that “gathers the elements for cognition, and unites them to form a certain content”. The process involves the categories by means of which manifolds of our representations are synthesized, and also a faculty that yields synthesis. When the two aspects (life forms) create a ‘third content‘ — a synthesized life form containing a ‘human‘ and an ‘alien‘ component. It won’t be perceived neither as human, nor alien, while carrying characteristics of both.
Final Thoughts
Even though such topics sound more like science fiction to the general population, these are real developments actively pursuing permanent human presence on other planets (Mars). Discussing interplanetary ethics and policies might be a necessity within a few years of time. By the time the extraterrestrial settlements start physically emerging, the decisions have to be made [15], otherwise we are risking an imbalance in taking action, be it on Earth or in space.
References:
[1], [3], [5], [6], [10] Haqq-Misra, J. (2012). An Ecological Compass for Planetary Engineering, Astrobiology.
[2] McKay, C. P. (2008). Planetary Ecosynthesis on Mars: Restoration Ecology and Environmental Ethics, NASA Ames Research Center.
[4] Barsoum, C. (2014). The Thermodynamics of Planetary Engineering on the Planet Mars, Thesis, College of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and in The Burnett Honors College at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.
[7] Leopold, A. (1966). A Sand County Almanac, Ballantine Books, New York.
[8], [11] Naess, A. (1973). The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movements: a summary. Inquiry 16.
[9] McKay Ch.; Marinova, M. (2001). The Physics, Biology, and Environmental Ethics of Making Mars Habitable; Astrobiology Vol.1 Nr.1.
[12] Graham, J.M. (2006). Planetary Ecosynthesis as Ecological Succession; Gravitational and Space Biology 19(2) August 2006.
[13] Cambridge International Dictionary of English, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
[14] Kant, I. (2003). Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Marcus Weigelt, Penguin Classics.
[15] Winn, A., (2017). TerraGenesis App., volume 3.0, a smartphone application and dynamic model interface.