Is it ethical for humanity to colonize other planets?

Question

I was wondering about the plan we've made about how we shall colonize Mars when we deprive Earth of it's resources. That all sounds really exciting, but what right do we have?

I mean, humanity has already proven it's disability to take care of it's own planet. It has spread and consumed almost all the livable area and resources on the planet, but it seems that is not enough for us.

It seems that humanity does, indeed, spread like a virus, a parasite sucking life from everything around it, egoistically regardless of others.

What right do we have, after s******g up one planet, we go s***w up another? I've heard plans to start dumping our trash to inner space and also to Mars. You have to look at the ethical side of these decisions.

If we DO colonize other planets, will we bring any other life forms with us? And I don't just mean the ones WE NEED for OUR OWN survival. All the species deserve to live and we are taking that right from them by destroying Earth, a planet that isn't only ours.

Answer 1

I can't see any ethical issue other than the tradeoffs dealing with the cost of the colonization.  I suspect that first several planets we colonize will not have any living organisms other than the ones we bring with us.  In fact, we may never find another planet with life.

Answer 2

Just watch the movie "Happening"...motherearth will eventually fawk us up lol

Answer 3

Practice makes perfect. It isn't very likely that we would utterly trash another planet after realizing what we've done to our most suitable planet, our home. It will also likely be the case that by the time we have technology to seriously consider colonizing another planet we'll have better energy efficiency and thus less pollution altogether -- progress in technology is directly related so far in history with increasing energy efficiency.

Increasing energy efficiency by definition lowers pollution in principle. Right now the technology we use for vehicles in non-hybrid cars is something below 30% efficient -- what a terrible waste!

I don't know why we would bother taking the time to dump trash on Mars. For instance, we could dump it orthogonally to the solar plane and it would leave the solar system and take bazillions of years to reach the Oort cloud, the only thing out there that it would ever even run into anywhere near Sol, our sun.

Anyway, I agree that we need to take care of our planet, but it's also necessary for long-term survival to prepare for the colonization of other planets. The universe is a big place, and that's an understatement. There are billions of stars in this galaxy alone, many of which have planets -- if we trash one planet before we learn how to be clean, that's not so bad statistically so long as we learn from it and clean up our act starting now!

Answer 4

Yes, in fact it's imperitive to do so. But a lot of things have to ironed out first. Imagine a group of people, say one hundred, living in a settlement on Mars. How would they be governed? Under what laws would they be governed? The country where they came from? I don't think so. You can imagine the tacky, tricky little problems that will crop up and weedle every colonist like a bad toothache. Some very finely tuned foresight must take place before we go.

Answer 5

This is an age old question. Was it ethical to colonise other lands we did so even they were inhabited. We will move in unless the natives happen to have bigger guns!

Answer 6

Of course.  Only if intelligent inhabitants were found would there even be a question.

Answer 7

No if we can't take care of earth why are we going to waste money on trying to colonize the moon or mars. We will s***w it up and ruin it.

Answer 8

It's not only ethical, it's essential for the survival of the species.  Someday something catastrophic will happen to the earth and lead to the destruction of life on earth.  We have to be ready to stay somewhere else until the earth is habitable again or find another planet we can live on permanently.  Hopefully, we've learned our lesson and we won't destroy the new planet.  

It wouldn't be possible to create a Noah's Ark and travel to another planet with every animal that deserves to be saved.  Some animals will be saved, but the vast majorityof them will perish along with the rest of us.

Answer 9

Is it unethical?

I don't see the ethical issue colonizing another planet.  But I dont think mars would be the first choice, considering how many earth-resources it would take to make it hospitable to human life.

It's a bit cinical to compare humans to parasites (or just a reference to the matrix); but indeed, at our worst, humans are like parasites, but at our best humans are just the opposite. We Can leave it better than we found it. Unfortunately, it seems like the former get a lot more publicity.

Answer 10

i agree. we should fix the screwups we made on this planet before we colonize on mars. because after mars is gone, what planet can we ruin next?

Answer 11

Mankind was given the intelligence to inhabit other places when needed. This gives us the right because if we were meant to stay on the planet we were put on, we would not have been given the capabilities to move outward. Unfortunately, we are rapidly stripping the Earth of what it has to offer, which maybe argues that we lack common sense. But we have a right to colonize other planets because we are continuing mankind, hoping that future humans can live in a world where they are not suffering from past mistakes.

Ethically, people will see this differently. Some people will think that we have a right to do what we want because we are the most intelligent lifeform that we know of. Others will argue that it is not because we have no right to spread our "virus", like you said. I personally think that we have a right to colonize other planets as long as we are doing so to change our ways and sort of start anew. We have a right to start over in a new place and change the way we live, even if we did make mistakes.

Answer 12

if the planet has no life whats the issue?

Answer 13

It's never going to happen Never. We will destroy ourselves long before...