Would polluting other planets be unethical?

[Nightside]

Leaving aside the question of the Earth, is it ethical to pollute or otherwise destroy the natural features of other planets in the process of seeking and extracting resources? 

[Bill Phil]

If those resources go to supporting life, then yeah. At least as long as there isn't life already there.

[Spaceception]

If it doesn't have any forms of life, it may as well be free real estate. I mean, we've all heard of very far future projects like Dyson swarms, which require many planets of resources to construct; so unless you have a very stringent civilization that values having everything the way it is - for the most part anyway - that's going to be thrown out the window, burned to a crisp, and stomped on sooner or later.

EDIT (I essentially had this mostly written, but the forums dumped on it and I had to redo it ): I was thinking about this a bit more while reheating food on the stove, and I can think of two main reasons for something to be distinguished as unethical (There's probably more though, and I know about the telescope complications in Hawaii, so there's exceptions and such, but this was the equivalent of shower thoughts ). And that is, if the thing in question has a cultural/societal value to the populace, or if there's a pragmatic reason for it being there (Or both). This was a quick and dirty analogy by the way.
A rock at the base of a mountain doesn't view the mountain as culturally significant to itself, and its existence doesn't benefit it in some way, so it doesn't matter if we strip mine it or not. And we certainly don't hold value to it.
Meanwhile, a forest or major ecosystem helps the biosphere, and in turn, us survive; so there's a pragmatic reason to keep it. And small tribes and such may place it in high regard. And, for example, the Himalayas hold a lot of cultural value to people believing in four major religions in the area (Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Animist), so defacing, and mining them is something we can't do.

And if we colonize Mars, and decide we like its mountains, and some people start placing cultural significance to it? Well, then we should try and respect that.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Spaceception

[Scotius]

I'd say we should preserve natural monuments. Like unique rock formations, scientifically valuable places and so on. But if there happens to be a vein of useful ore or frozen underground lake in the middle of a nondescript area... then by all means - let's mine that stuff! Trash, junk and refuse though... no. Let's recycle as much as possible, while destroying or at least compacting the rest somewhere isolated.

[mikegarrison]

When we run out of national parks to strip mine here on Earth, I say we head to the next planet and do it there.

[CrashyMcCrashFace]

Simply for profit, yes. In an attempt to preserve once's own species, no.

[Lisias]

Polluting our own planet it's already unethical. And yet, very few people cares.

I don't see why it would be different on another planets. :-(

[kerbiloid]

Almost any mineral resource is more available just here on Earth, than delivered from another planet.
So, only rare resources would be ever mined there, at very local places of the planet. (Unless they discover a planet covered with thick layer of rhodium and cesium).
Thus, another question would be asked first: how/why could we pollute another planet?

P.S.
Though I believe that most bodies in Solar System are themselves useless (including Mars) and should be utilized.
Self-replicators should gather its carbon dioxide, waterand chlorine and convert into bricks of polyvynilchloride stored across the planet. Just to keep them and later use on demand.
The same with Phobos - it should be consumed and converted into construction metals, as delta-V is very low for both Phobos and its planet.

[StrandedonEarth]

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

Unique places or features should be left alone, such as Ceres or Olympus Mons (basically a national park in Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson)

Edited June 1, 2018 by StrandedonEarth

[StarStreak2109]

IMHO, if mankind ever colonized another planet and/or moon, we should try to minimize pollution, trying to avoid the mistakes that we made on Earth.

Sensible use of natural resources should be the prime directive.

 

[p1t1o]

Too little data to say.

If its a lifeless rock, of course, go for it.

If it is the only other habitable planet within 1000 light years, then it would be totally unethical to do short-sighted things like dump waste or destroy features which might permanently affect the environment for all future generations.

If we find thousands of habitable planets within our local volume, then yeah, its probably totally fine as long as there is no native life.

If theres native life, then...it depends...killing native life doesnt normally stop us, but you might hope that society at that point would have some interest in them. Again it probably depends on the relative abundance of life.

Anyway, by far the worst thing thing we could possibly do to a planet - is not to dump waste on it or mine it, but to move in.

[Wjolcz]

Ethical? The univrse doesn't care about what's ethical and what's not. Something being ethical is just a way of saying that the majority agrees about it being OK. That's why I really don't like this word. Everyone's ethics are never lined up in 100%.

Now, IMO we should be thinking of consequences. Is polluting messing with something on that planet or moon? Can that planet/moon/asteroid tell us something about our Solar System or some other part of the universe? Have we just seeded life that will screw with the one that already exists there? If so then is it worth it? Does that life have some genetical information we can use to make some useful stuff/educate ourselves? Will the pollution change the chemical/biological composition of the planet to a point it won't be able to recover?

Robert Zubrin thinks that even if we find life on Mars we should terraform it killing the organisms in the process. I don't really agree. IMO if there's any life on Mars (I doubt there is though) then we should somehow make sure we preserve it in its entirety because it might have something useful for us. Be it the answer to the origin of life or a gene that allows organisms survive harsh conditions of Mars and space.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Wjolcz

[Shpaget]

When, in the history of human kind, did ethics stand in the way of profit?

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition no. 101:

Profit trumps emotion.

[NSEP]

Im pretty sure a space colony of some sort would re-cycle most of their waste materials, in space, everything is precious.

Organic matter, from feces to plastics will without a doubt be re-used. Waste chemicals from chemical plants would probably be stored for later recycling. And then we have waste gas, wich is either stored for later use, or released into the open to be stripped away by the sun. 

Even if people litter and leave stuff behind, there are no lifeforms that would care, expect the company owners that might be using that that surface for mining and resource extraction. If we drop plastic and waste chemicals in a mine or quarry, the material and minerals being extracted might contain impurities, wich is not what anyone wants. People won't drop chemicals into places with water, we use for consumption. The water is most likely in the form of ice, so it won't flow anywere else, wich is bassicly the main reason people pour chemicals in water on Earth, so it flows away. There is no good reason to do that in space, unless you want to mess up another colony's economy.

Remember, in space, people live in confined spaces instead of in one common space that is the Earth's atmosphre, wich is a good thing, because if Colony A on the North Pole accidentally releases toxic chemicals in their living space, all the other colonies are pretty safe, if this happend on Earth, then everyone is affected. Pollution is alot different in space than on Earth.

I do believe we should keep our hands of places like Europa, with possible subsurface oceans. Any place with safe (not the extremely salty stuff nothing can survive in) liquid water should not be used for resources. We need to keep the microbe rights activists (aka Planetary Protection Officers) happy, and preserve the microbes.

Edited June 1, 2018 by NSEP

[Wjolcz]

10 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

When, in the history of human kind, did ethics stand in the way of profit?

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition no. 101:

Profit trumps emotion.

Not only that but the meaning of "ethical" differs from culture to culture. Sacrificing children to gods was totally fine and acceptable in some. It's just a useless buzzword.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Wjolcz

[StarStreak2109]

Well, maybe the initial question should be reworded: "Is it okay to..."

And again, I'd say that in general it would be not okay. We are not grasshoppers, moving on, when a patch of grass has been devoured. It is bad enough, that here on Earth, we managed to kill off sufficient of our own biosphere that it slowly becomes a problem. Could we really justify doing that to another pristine world?

I truly hope that should we ever set foot on another Earth, we have learned something from our own mistakes...

As for "polluting" asteroids by means of mining etc, I am not sure if one even can pollute a lifeless piece of rock. But even then, as pointed out above, sensible resource use, probably some kind of closed loop industry would IMHO preferred.

[Wjolcz]

2 hours ago, StarStreak2109 said:

We are not grasshoppers, moving on, when a patch of grass has been devoured.

We kind of are though. And so were the first photosyntesising organisms that "polluted" the air with oxygen. Many species died because of that. That's what life simply does.

The difference here is we have brains so we should know better. I know this whole ecotalk of mine is just that but IMO there are long term benefits of keeping biodiversity, climate and ecosystem as unchanged as possible. Whether it's our own planet or some other world. If there's something we can learn and things to research then we should keep our stuff away from it.

That being said I believe life is like a pot of unstirred soup. It needs to be shaken, heated, cooled and mixed from time to time to get that biodiversity (Cell Lab: Evolution Sandbox is a great example of that). So maybe nudging some organisms and pushing their evolution isn't that bad. If we ever have the ability to introduce some bacteria/virus/chemical to an ecosystem to boost evolution of complex life on that world we probably should do it. Evolution takes so much time that it won't matter for us because we (as a species) will either be long dead, have some crazy technology or live in another part of the universe so it won't affect us that much.

If we ever get to that stage we should seed life IMO. As much as possible. A silent universe is a sad one.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Wjolcz

[kerbiloid]

We should take an example from Prometheus and Expanse.

Spoiler

 

It doesn't matter if the planet is habitable, if we can run an optimized life from scratch.

 

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, StarStreak2109 said:

Well, maybe the initial question should be reworded: "Is it okay to..."

And again, I'd say that in general it would be not okay. We are not grasshoppers, moving on, when a patch of grass has been devoured. It is bad enough, that here on Earth, we managed to kill off sufficient of our own biosphere that it slowly becomes a problem. Could we really justify doing that to another pristine world?

I truly hope that should we ever set foot on another Earth, we have learned something from our own mistakes...

As for "polluting" asteroids by means of mining etc, I am not sure if one even can pollute a lifeless piece of rock. But even then, as pointed out above, sensible resource use, probably some kind of closed loop industry would IMHO preferred.

This is the only known biosphere.

Can't really pollute something if it doesn't exist. 

If there's no life there now, it's perfectly fine to do whatever. Space is huge. And leaving things the way they are just isn't what humans really do. After all, we've changed our living environment. Once we've learned most of what we can about the celestial body in question, we can then mine it. And if we're talking about colonization then we're bringing life to (hopefully) lifeless rocks, which seems pretty ethical.

[Fraston]

We humans get ourselves into such conundrums with our laws, don’t we.

[Nuke]

i see no problem with doing that to dead worlds. say the moon for example. just keep a science team on hand in case industrialization unearths (unregoliths?) something interesting.

[Gargamel]

On 6/1/2018 at 4:55 AM, p1t1o said:

Too little data to say. 

This here is the key to the question.

Historically, most of the pollution started when people didn't know they were "polluting".    This looks like a wonderful place for a landfill, 50 years later, oops, there goes that wetland.  Then when we discover how a method is polluting the environment, getting others to stop in a timely fashion can become very difficult.    So, we might do something, now, that seems innocuous, but many yhears in the future turns out to be a bad idea. 

And also, are we talking about just pollution, or changing the area or environment? 

A couple replies have focused on mining and such.  The concept of mining, taking an ore from the ground, does not itself mean there will be pollution, just the terrain/environment will be different.    So maybe a uninteresting spot on the dark side of the moon is completely dug up and re-arranged by a for profit mining company.   I'm ok with that.  Leaving that area unusable, or requiring great effort by others, in the future I'm not OK with it.   And I don't mean some bulldozers pushing dirt around to fill in a hole, I mean requiring superfund esque cleanups. 

[kerbiloid]

10 hours ago, Gargamel said:

The concept of mining, taking an ore from the ground, does not itself mean there will be pollution, just the terrain/environment will be different.

Unless you use lakes of chemicals while mining. And you usually do.

Mining hydrocarbons you have to pour rivers of methanol solution and surfactants.

Mining ore you have to enrich it just in situ, and if possible make pellets. Because you don't want to move ballast to the metallurgical plant.

Edited June 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Bill Phil]

10 hours ago, Gargamel said:

This here is the key to the question.

Historically, most of the pollution started when people didn't know they were "polluting".    This looks like a wonderful place for a landfill, 50 years later, oops, there goes that wetland.  Then when we discover how a method is polluting the environment, getting others to stop in a timely fashion can become very difficult.    So, we might do something, now, that seems innocuous, but many yhears in the future turns out to be a bad idea. 

And also, are we talking about just pollution, or changing the area or environment? 

A couple replies have focused on mining and such.  The concept of mining, taking an ore from the ground, does not itself mean there will be pollution, just the terrain/environment will be different.    So maybe a uninteresting spot on the dark side of the moon is completely dug up and re-arranged by a for profit mining company.   I'm ok with that.  Leaving that area unusable, or requiring great effort by others, in the future I'm not OK with it.   And I don't mean some bulldozers pushing dirt around to fill in a hole, I mean requiring superfund esque cleanups. 

OP also mentioned destroying natural features.

[YNM]

On 6/1/2018 at 5:10 AM, Nightside said:

Leaving aside the question of the Earth

Well other planets might be other creature's "Earth" !

So depends on how they'd like it I say.

Edited June 3, 2018 by YNM