Terraforming Mars - Homo Reductio

Homo Reductio

Eco-Nihilism and Human Colonization of Other Worlds by Kelly Smith

I have started a new book that I feel compelled to share some comments on. Today, we will be looking at an article in the very interesting, Terraforming Mars: Astrobiology Perspectives on Life of the Universe series. The first few articles were more focused on the practical aspects of what an engineering project to the Red Planet would look like. There were some ethical considerations put forward, but the majority were focused on more practical aspects of how to get people there, how to breathe, things like that. All reasonable concerns for our poor fleshy test cases willing to settle the first planet, in what I can only assume, will be the rise of a space-born species.

I have always wondered about that. Humans seem uniquely unsuited for life on Earth. We have to wear clothes and have special food and worry a lot about temperature and humidity and all kinds of things that other animals do not seem to care about. We are always in various forms of being uncomfortable or unhealthy, which seems strange for a species that should be comfortable on its home planet. But humans never really seem to fit. We take up huge amounts of resources to poison ourselves and others for a standard of comfort that seems a little ridiculous in a world we are supposed to be adapted to. Always strikes me as weird.

We actually seem much better suited to be mechanical hybrids, space-farers. Our obsession with machines and created artificial environments to suit whims of genetic drift seems much more consistent with the idea that we, as a species, don’t really have a home. As long as some basic gravitational, oxygen, and cosmic radiation numbers are met, we can kind of go wherever.

This opinion is in lead-up to the discussion of today’s article, “Homo Reductio: Eco-Nihilism and Human Colonization of Other Worlds,” and designed to shamelessly bias you, dear reader, into my perspective. As long as you are warned, I feel my ethical responsibilities have been met.

Let us continue.

A major argument for why humans should reach out to the stars for long-term settlements on other planets is the idea of ‘bet hedging.’ This assumes that some major catastrophe will befall Earth and result in the total destruction of the species unless we are clever enough to diversify with many other homes. It seems that many scholars believe that this kind of manifest destiny to space is the only way to guarantee survival, but that in so doing, we are essentially spreading human bad-choices throughout the galaxy and that our very survival would be unethical if we choose this path.

This is an interesting argument to me.

And why would it be so bad for humans to spread to other worlds? The main thrust of the ethical argument seems to be something called eco-nihilism by the author. There are three assumptions of the eco-nihilist. 1. There is no reasonable chance that humans can avoid destroying themselves – wherever they end up. Humans do not make good choices, are generally crude, irresponsible animals and will not create anything capable of true long-term survivability. Our very nature guarantees our own destruction, regardless of where we live. 2. Every inhabitant of Earth is equally valuable. Every life is sacred, to borrow a Monty Python punchline. 3. All humans are morally on the hook for the behavior of all other humans. We are all in this together and the poor choices of some will result in the moral penalty for all.

A thought process among eco-nihilists says that “until humans can demonstrate an ability to live in harmony with our environment, we deserve extinction.” The author puts this mentality up to “pessimism and guilt” and attempts to refute this scholastic argument, but I find it interesting that she focuses on the emotional and cultural aspects instead of the physical aspects. In other words, her arguments are based primarily on social movements and arguments, not any physical realities. But let’s take a look.

The first condition of an eco-nihilist is that we (humans) will destroy ourselves. The author boils this argument to a view of pessimists and optimists, saying that since we don’t all agree that human extinction is truly inevitable, there will be pessimists and optimists. She points out that progress happens, albeit slowly and with great effort, but that society is essentially infinitely adaptable. She goes on to say that people tend to focus on details and miss trends, that we lose the forest for the trees, to borrow a colloquialism, and then claims that we have made enormous progress on the environmental front in the last 100 years.

This is interesting to me. She doesn’t actually examine any physical scenarios like nuclear war, asteroid impact, pandemics, wide-scale chemical or biological attacks/contamination or go through any of the very likely risk assessments that we have to very reasonably quantify the likelihood of us (species) dying out. Dr. Eric Pianka, for example, Noam Chomsky, and other scholars have spent a lot of time detailing the likelihood of our own demise and it’s not looking good for the home team. The statistical likelihood of infinite survival is basically zero. Long-term survival is not looking terribly promising, especially at our current population and resource utilization rate, but the point is that the idea that survivability is just a matter of ‘feeling’ positive or negative about the human race is not accurate or fully representative of the facts. We are literally creating a sixth extinction event that may rival the other five in geological history and there is strong evidence to think that we will be like the poor stromatolites 3.5 billion years ago who created atmospheric oxygen – and poisoned themselves to death.

I also take exception to her claim that we have made enormous progress on the environmental front in the last 100 years. We’ve actually created more pollution, more poison, more toxic chemicals, more trash, more death in the last 100 years than in all of human history combined. Granted, publicity about how bad these things are is certainly better than 100 years ago, but literally everything in our homes, on our bodies, in our bodies is made with something toxic now. We use more fossil fuels than ever before. We have polluted literally 98% of all surface waters in the United States to sub-drinking water standards in the last 50 years. We are dumping more metals, pharmaceuticals, and ‘forever chemicals’ (PFAS/PFOA anyone?) that were synthetically created for the express purpose of being highly reactive and non-degradable into all of our water. Yes, that’s right, we got bored with all the natural toxins and now have created our own. The industrial revolution destroyed the air – our smog, nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxides, PCBs, are much, much higher now than they were 100 years ago. And we’re even created new chemicals that will be released into the air as waste products that will be brand new toxins with no natural equivalent on earth (refrigerants, hi-ex incinerated foam products, etc.). So, no. The author doesn’t provide any evidence on how we are getting better and from an engineering/scientific perspective we are actually getting worse, which supports the idea that humans cannot live without making some of these poor choices. Just because chemicals are cheap, or make your hair shiny, or make your coat waterproof does not mean that they should be mass-produced and dumped into rivers when not sold. Bad choices.

She does go on to say that “there is some evidence that environmentalists in particular tend to overplay their hand when predicting dire consequences.” She describes a story where an environmentalist and an economist bet on whether climate change and resource limitations would cause prices to rise or fall. The environmentalist said that they would rise because we wouldn’t have anything left, the economist said they would fall because of societal attitudes and changing technology. Now, putting aside the fact that this isn’t actual evidence – no description of environmental catastrophe was actually presented, no ‘overplayed hand’ was offered, and no quantification of actual events or real costs was reviewed, the economist won (somehow – she didn’t say how). But there is real evidence that environmental degradation, exacerbated by capitalist social structures, falls heaviest on poor and marginalized people. Just because prices drop doesn’t mean that resources haven’t been exhausted or that people are not suffering. China can provide tremendous amounts of cheap goods, however, their fields have liquid mercury flowing in some near factories, they regularly use child and slave labor to produce goods like viscous fabric which is extremely toxic to the workers with little health concern or protective equipment. The viscous fabric is made from chemical digestion of bamboo and plastic polymers because cotton is becoming too expensive/water intensive to grow. So here is an example of technology providing a solution, but at the cost of people. Humans have to stir it in a series of highly toxic, highly corrosive acid baths that expose them to carcinogens, horrible working conditions, fluoric acid air that can rot their skin and erode lung tissue and when they are too broken or sick to work are fired. They die. But we have cheap, accessible clothing made from ‘sustainable’ water-light use clothing. The acid then gets dumped into rivers to pollute nearby farmland, village drinking water/wash water sources, and migrate to the ocean where it contributes to acidification and evaporative air contamination that will spread around the world.

Or for an example closer to home, let’s look at ‘Cancer Alley’ near New Orleans. Oil companies bought up properties for cheap along the river, since it’s in the flood plain, and started processing fossil fuels in neighborhoods. Spokesmen for these companies said that if the poor (mostly black) people didn’t want to live next to a refinery, they should just move. But who will buy a house next to a petroleum refinery? The byproducts from chemical products can be dumped into the river, since the oil lobby has created ‘special protections’ and promised to self-monitor for any discharge non-compliance. This has resulted in chemical byproducts being directly discharged to the surrounding rivers and ocean. Cancer is 100 times more common here than in nearby populations. Diabetes, breathing disorders, skin disorders, birth defects, all 1000 times higher than in corresponding populations. People can’t just move. The refinery got special approval and exercised eminent domain to set up shop in neighborhoods known to be poor and without defenses. They did it on purpose and they knew what they were going to do to the people that lived there.

So no, I don’t see a lot of justification in the idea that we are somehow going to become wise, responsible people not driven by capitalist short-term gains and that we have made tremendous progress, environmentally speaking, these past 100 years.

The author states “If you are very pessimistic about humanity’s long-term ability to come to grips with our environmental irresponsibility, then it’s reasonable to think colonizing other planets might not be a good idea. But if you think this is a challenge we have a good chance to eventually overcome, and you believe colonizing other planets is a good way to insure humanity’s long-term survival, then we should probably try. Maybe the pessimists are right, but there is certainly no a priori reason to think so and the evidence is inconclusive. Given the clear and massive moral costs of the complete destruction of humanity, the eco-nihilists must at the very least shoulder a heavy burden of proof before we take their claims seriously.”

Now, for an a priori reason, I would like to submit that humans have an established precedent for literally all of human history of causing extinctions, resource shortages, and death. The fall of the Mayans, Aztecs, Rome, Persians have all been attributed to burning out resources, establishing corrupt governments where the few profited off the whole-sale abuse of many, and abused the natural world until their cultures physically could no longer sustain them. In my own hometown of Tucson, Arizona, the Hohokam people were famous for building tremendous canals and water resources structures that failed during a great drought and caused massive migrations to other cultures, causing tremendous strife, wars, and death. I am not arguing that humanity should not migrate to new worlds, but let’s see that migration in historical context. Cultures burn through resources, try to take other peoples’ resources, destroy both, reach an uneasy equilibrium, lather, rinse, repeat. Why would our tendencies change now, just because we are reaching for alien worlds instead of alien shores. Precedent is an excellent method to present a priori evidence in this case.

2. Radical moral egalitarianism. Eco-nihilists (according to the other) view all living beings and some environmental or abiotic things as just as morally valuable as humans. She argues that anthropocentrism is moral because we have reason. She doesn’t really describe anything in this section or present any arguments, just a ‘common sense’ comment that “certainly, the average person finds it laughable to suggest that there is no moral distinction between humans and other animals, much less plants or microbes.” This has elements of the Judeo-Christian idea that God gave the earth to Man, to steward and watch over it for his purposes. There is the idea that because we think, we deserve to have all the things. That is just an opinion. In a physical sense, animals, plants, microbes, us all exist together. We physically cannot live without microbes, plants, animals and the interactions between them. The idea that one can separate out species evidences little understanding of deep ecology or of biology. Without microbes, we can’t digest food. Without microbes, oxygen would not be produced. Without plants, oxygen would not be purified and recycled. Without animals, plants would not exist. Anthropocentrism excludes all these interactions and focuses only on the tiny, short-term conditions of humans. It doesn’t see humans as part of the world, only as independent creatures. If we relied on our reason and machines to take the place of all the biological agents of the earth and give us our air, clean water, soil, food, etc. we would die. We do not have the mental capacity or capability to synthetically replicate all of those conditions. We tried – the Biosphere projects in Arizona (and I think there’s a new one in UK experimenting with artificial habitats) have clearly showed us how tied in and dependent we are on environmental, natural infrastructure. Including animals, plants, microbes. By killing others, we kill ourselves. It is not a “hoi polloi” argument from intellectual elites, but a practical argument based on biology to say that caring for our environment means caring for ourselves.

3. Collective Guilt. Here, the author introduces a phrase called “species guilt.” She doesn’t really define it and then claims that it is impossible to defend. She argues that in our society, many people are just clueless, not intentionally trying to damage or harm anything. She equates this ignorance to the idea that normal people are just trying to “feed their families” and says that it is immoral to condemn all members of a species for the bad behavior of a few. She even brings up Nazis with, “Would it have been moral to sterilize every German once we knew of the horrors of the holocaust?” She claims that making people feel guilty is difficult and inappropriate. “Certainly, people should be more informed about environmental issues and fight their tendency toward wishful thinking, etc. But that’s a far cry from claiming that a housewife in Missouri who doesn’t know much about environmentalism or have the time to participate in Earth Day rallies should abandon all hope for the future and stop procreating. There are legitimate moral disagreements here that need to be worked through carefully, but that task is only made harder when people take radical positions without proper support.”

So here, I would claim that the author is making a straw-man argument, implying that environmentalists are wealthy elites would expect everyone to feel motivated to change the sustainability/resource use status quo because they have the time and financial freedom to do so. That doesn’t actually support this position or provide any arguments for/against ‘species guilt.’ She’s just saying words here that are loosely related to the topic and provide little substance. If I were to change her argument slightly, I would offer that collective guilt spontaneously arises when scientists and engineers explain to people what’s really happening. When environmentalists show people that pesticides have killed most of our bee populations which means that we can no longer plant orchards or have blooming plants, a farmwife in Missouri might really care about that. After all, maybe she grows apples or her family grow squash, etc. The environmentalists don’t need ‘species guilt’ to change anything. The guilt happens when normal people look around and realize that they are dying of lymphoma, their farm has been taken by Monsanto and changed to GMO soybeans that they now have to pay for yearly and are going into bankruptcy because it’s illegal to seed-store/use no-till methods, or have strange skin diseases because an eraser plant opened up next door to their home, or their water now catches on fire because fracking was approved in their backyards. And all those things happened because we as a species decided that we liked our cheap fast food, our cars, our plastic toys more than our water, earth, and air. So, yes, if we feel guilty about that, maybe we can learn from our mistakes and begin to think long-term. Really long-term.

She concludes by saying, “I truly do not mean to trivialize environmentalism. It’s simply undeniable that we are currently living unsustainably and that this is certainly one of the biggest moral challenges facing humanity….The question at issue is this though: If there were no other way to perpetuate humanity, would it be morally justifiable to colonize other worlds, even if there were no guarantee that this would be done responsibly?”

She’s right. That is the question. So, while I disagree with almost all of her arguments and find her thread of reasoning to be very weak, based on nothing but shadows and poorly formulated, I do have to say, yes, it is morally justifiable to colonize other worlds. We will probably have to. But it won’t change our reckless misuse of public resources for private gain, or our insane treatment of our fellow humans, or our narcissistic tendencies to twist and warp everything we touch to support human life in the most wasteful and egregious ways. But we might live a little longer and it might give people a little hope for a new start or preserve what little morality we do manage to retain. And though we will probably destroy all native life wherever we go, maybe we don’t have to settle on a planet. Maybe we are dangerous enough that we can just live in artificial worlds, pure space stations where we can kill each other and whatever hapless biology we stick with us freely and not have to contaminate yet another series of planets.