Changing the Ecology of Mars Planet-wide

Because humans may be on Mars within the lifetimes of people reading this page and because traveling to Mars requires some degree of colonization, both some scientists and some science fiction writers have proposed dramatically manipulating the ecology of the planet through a process commonly called “terraforming.” In the effort to make Mars more Earthlike for settlers, we should, it is proposed, release carbon dioxide gas to thicken the atmosphere of Mars. This atmospheric thickening will warm the planet, thereby releasing more carbon dioxide gas from ice for warming as well as melting some of Mars’ abundant water ice. With warmer temperatures and flowing water, future humans on Mars will feel more at home, or so it is proposed.

While such climate manipulation of Mars attracts many proponents, there are also many opponents. Commonly such planetwide manipulation is derided as arrogantly “playing God.” Some point to the irony of our desiring to change the ecology of an entire planet when we seem to be doing a poor job of managing our own ecology. Yet other opponents simply say that humans have no moral right to manipulate the ecology of an entire planet.

Buddhist scriptures do not present many obstacles to the planetwide manipulation of Mars like I have described, at least not unless and until life is perhaps found there. Of course, the scriptures don’t command us to release gas into the Martian atmosphere, either. But, if Buddhists were to decide to extend the value of nonharm to natural places where there is no life, then this value of nonharm can be used to protect Mars from possible ecologically irresponsible behavior.

In the field among Buddhists, such an extension of nonharm to the stones of Mars is precisely what we find. The table at right shows that American Buddhists generally disapprove of the planet-wide ecological manipulation of Mars. Only about one-fourth of Buddhists think that humans have the right to alter other planets in this way. In addition, only about a third of non-Buddhists in the control sample approve of the proposal.

In rejecting the moral right of humanity to change the ecology of Mars planet-wide, in the data American Buddhists exert an ethic that combines a sense of human interconnectedness with the ecology of Mars and an extension of nonharm to that sensibility of interconnection. As such, American Buddhists update the Buddhist environmental ethical system to include robust respect for abiotic locales like the stones of Mars. Given that environmental respect for nonliving places is a weak point of all environmental ethical systems, including that of Buddhism, this extension of ethical respect to the abiotic landscapes of Mars retains the potential to change environmental ethics both on Mars and on Earth. Besides creating a cogent ethic for the search for microbial life, this establishment of ethical respect for abiotic locations represents a central environmental ethics contribution of this project that provides value to the environmental humanities as a whole.