Reply #23: Why is it a divergence? [View All]

[Rabrrrrrr]

How is saying that Mars is okay to terraform any different than those who said that cutting down every tree in northern US was okay? Or that coal mining mountain top removal in West Virginia is okay? Or that lead in our paint was okay?

How do we know there wouldn't be some kind of disastrous effect from terraforming Mars?

And that question, of course, is a very human-centered question.

Going beyond human-centered, how do we know that terraforming Mars wouldn't be, in an ethical sense, an imposition from colonialists (like the English colonials who utterly fucked up India or Native Americans or Hawaiians or Aborigines in Australia) on a totally innocent being? Do we have the right to utterly and irrevocably change the natural state of Mars? Does Mars, in and of itself, have a right to remain as it is?