To spread life into desolate wastelands is a noble goal, but the potential for contamination is very real if there is already life where we go. Even the humblest microbes have much to teach us, they are the product of evolution adapting to difficult conditions over billions of years, it would be ill-considered to destroy them or pollute their environment by accident or ignorance, or worse, for short term gain.
The benefits of exploration may be worth the risk of our destroying their environment by mistake, but we must take steps to minimize that risk and it is criminal, even for purely practical reasons, to not do so.
My environmental views owe more to Gifford Pinchot than John Muir. Nature is worth preserving because it makes good sense, a practical scientific and business point of view as well as an esthetic or emotional or spiritual one.
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Save the fuzzy wuzzies.
The whole thread (33 posts)
- The meaning of life?
- "A life without god, knowing there's nothing after death, where uncertainty reigns...can be perfectly meaningful!"
- One more time...
- Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life.
- re: The meaning of life?
- re: The meaning of life?
- 42 (n/t)