Terraforming

There is an extensive literature of terraforming, which sounds like science fiction but has achieved scientific respectability.

Martyn J Fogg, is a widely acknowledged expert on the subject. He defines terraforming as a process of planetary engineering, specifically directed at enhancing the capacity of an extraterrestrial planetary environment to support life. The ultimate in terraforming would be to create an uncontained planetary biosphere emulating all the functions of the biosphere of the Earth - one that would be fully habitable for human beings.

Ecopoiesis has a less ambitious aim. It's the fabrication of an uncontained, anaerobic, biosphere on the surface of a sterile planet. As such, it can represent an end in itself, perhaps to enable biota already present on Mars to flourish better;  or it can be the initial stage in a more lengthy process of terraforming. (Of course, if encouraging dormant or potential martian life is your aim, you need to be alive to the risk that human intervention will have the opposite effect. Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ, planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory, raises the question: "What if there is no life on Mars or Titan or some other place we're going to go to, but all the ingredients are there, such that at some future time life could exist. The potentiality of life is there and, by terraforming it, we're aborting that possibility. Under what circumstances is that an ethical thing to do?")

For the scientific and technical aspects of terraforming, see The terraforming information pages, edited by Martyn J Fogg. You will not however see a lot about the ethics of terraforming here. The site has been in mothballs since January 2009, but Martyn Fogg says he tries to keep the bibliography reasonably up to date. 

The following links relate to the ethics of terraforming:-

> A partial bibliography on the ethics of terraforming

> Terraforming and life’s manifest destiny

> “Ethical Considerations for Terraforming Mars” by Robert D. Pinson, in Environmental Law Reporter, Washington, 2002 

> Wikipedia on the ethics of terraforming

> “The Ethical Dimensions Of Space Settlement” by Martyn J. Fogg.

In this paper Fogg examines the moral questions implicit in space settlement from the standpoints of various theories of environmental ethics. In the absence of extraterrestrial life, only one such theory, preservationism, concludes that space settlement would be immoral, even if it was seen to be to the benefit of terrestrial life.

Distinguishes intrinsic from instrumental grounds for valuing Mars (or the universe as a whole). Protection for martian life can be justified either on intrinsic or instrumental grounds, that is:-

Intrinsic:  martian life has its own value and therefore should be preserved

Instrumental: humans will benefit if martian life is preserved (benefits might be scientific, or even spiritual)

Fogg argues that a strict preservationist ethic is untenable as it assumes that human consciousness, creativity, culture and technology stand outside nature; whilst he thinks space settlement would not involve us acting “outside nature,” but legitimately “within our nature.”