Space Ecology I: What do hippies know about space travel?

Photo of the earth taken on the Apollo 8 Mission

NASA SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY




Kirk Evans - University of Texas

Part 1.

“Maybe it is no accident that the first Earth Day so closely followed the first Moon landing… . We are already engaged in deep space exploration that frames not just the Earth as a single whole, but the entire solar system, or even larger wholes. Profound challenges to established ways of thinking—now including environmentalism itself—arise once again, as we begin to recognize ourselves not merely as Earthlings but as ‘Solarians,’ or maybe ‘plain cosmic citizens.’ For one thing, the vast horizons of space offer a sort of express trip beyond anthropocentrism—not so easy a voyage to get off, either physically or conceptually… We are also reminded that Earth’s ‘environment’ is not a closed system. It may turn out that we are only a local corner of a cosmic ecosystem. How would our systems of Earth-centered ethics, themselves only recently and so very laboriously won, look then? If, on the other hand, life is rare in the universe, maybe it is our very own task to spread it to the stars. Could we even imagine genetically engineered living forms, trees maybe, inhabited by myriads of still others, pushed by the vast “solar sails” already being tested—giant wooden sailing ships again going forth to unknown adventure? How will environmental philosophy, or its successors, rise to this challenge?”-Anthony Weston, The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher p. 20


The word “ecology” can be traced back to the Greek word for “home,” and it is thus unsurprising that most ecological thinking to date has focused on our home—the Earth. As far as we know, space seems ecologically barren… vast space-scapes empty of the thriving biological systems that tend to attract the attention of ecologists.

Furthermore, a strong anti-technological streak runs through much ecological thought. which is unsurprising given the vast damage wrought by technological modernity. By contrast, interest in space travel tends to correlate with a sort of techno-utopianism… a vision of humankind achieving prosperity and perhaps even immortality by journeying to the stars.

And yet it is not difficult to extrapolate some of the concerns driving Earth-bound ecological thought to the issue of space travel. The topic mandates space exploration and/or development. While preservation of more-than-human life motivates much work in current ecology, others are equally concerned with the “abiotic”—non-biological existence. For example, activists in West Virginia oppose forms of mining that blow off the tops of mountains. Even those not drawn to ecology might feel a paign of regret if the Grand Canyon were to be filled with trash. Might we have similar concerns about asteroid strip mining? What about terraforming of other planets?

And yet the interaction between space exploration and ecology is a two way street. On the one hand, ecology cautions us against turning the known galaxy into an industrial wasteland. On the other, an encounter with the vast diversity of existence beyond the Earth’s mesosphere offers a challenge to our human-centered prejudice. Anthropocentrism (“human-centrism”) seems more precarious as we leave behind the cocoon that shelters the delusions of hominid brain. As Nietzsche wrote in “On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense:

"In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of “world history”—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable, and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist, and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission, that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it float through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world."

We may or may not be alone in the universe. Either way, the notion that the universe was built for humanity may one day become as quaint as geocentric cosmology.

The next two post will mostly be written from a negative perspective. The first will review some of the Ecology Kritiks that have been common on previous topics, and discuss their potential relevance for the coming resolution. The third post will discuss in more detail theories of non-anthropocentric value and their potential implications for the desirability of space exploration and even human survival. In the fourth, I will explore the “affirmative” side of the topic… justifications for space travel that go beyond and even challenge anthropocentric hubris.