Planetary sustainability: transitions of an idea

Abstract

Response to 'Is Transplanetary Sustainability a Good Idea?-An Answer from the Perspective of Conceptual Engineering' The effort to analyse the concept and idea of planetary sustainability (Losch, 2018; Beisbart, 2019) from the perspective of conceptual engineering is very worthwhile. In the following response to this discussion and to Beisbart's proposal to rename the concept 'transplanetary sustainability', the questions he raised will be answered by first recalling the roots of the concept of planetary sustainability. The idea of coining the expression 'planetary sustainability' was born through working on, and drawing on, the concept of planetary protection (Losch, 2016a). In accordance with the Outer Space Treaty (Article IX), planetary protection demands measures to sterilize spacecrafts passing through the vacuum of space, to avoid contamination of other celestial bodies with Earth life or vice versa. As Meltzer (2010, 1) puts it: '[i]f we irrevocably alter the nature of other celestial bodies, we compromise all future scientific experiments on these bodies and may also damage any extant life here. By inadvertently carrying exotic organisms back to Earth on our spaceships, we risk the release of biohazardous materials into our own ecology.' Planetary protection thus has a two-way orientation: it cares about forward contamination by spacecraft (such as Mars robots) touching other planets' 'bio'spheres, and about the potential backward contamination by those spacecraft returning to Earth (like the Apollo mission, Japan's Hayabusa probe, etc.). In this context, the original idea was to aim 'at extending the concept of sustainability into our solar system and safeguarding a sustainable development of life on earth and beyond, be it of human or of other origin' (Losch, 2016b, 1). The sustainable development of humankind should be reconsidered in the context of the Solar System (Losch, 2016b, 7). Given this orientation, it made sense to connect the project to the existing NASA initiative, also called 'planetary sustainability' (Losch, 2016a, 2018), which aims at including in our planet's sustainable development the 'resources of the Solar System' (NASA, 2014). At the same time, the need for planetary protection was to be retained; the inclusion of a discussion of potential extraterrestrial life (ETL) or extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETIL) was always on the horizon of the concept, as my previous project had dealt with the anthropological, philosophical and theological implications of the potential existence of life beyond our planet (Losch, 2016c, 2017). Contrary to the focus of the previous project, the 'extraterrestrial beings' (Beisbart, 2019, 1) currently being discussed, however, are more likely to be microbes than intelligent entities. Unfortunately, I do not agree with Beisbart that it is a 'new concept of sustainability' which I would want to introduce. It is not meant to replace the current earthbound notion of sustainability, as is stated by Beisbart in his article (Beisbart, 2019, 1). Rather, the i...

Do we need an ethics of planetary sustainability?

“…i To be sure, it is unlikely that we will soon have to deal with extra-terrestrial beings who can act rationally, etc. (Losch, 2019b). But even the epistemic possibility of such beings (i.e., the fact that our knowledge does not exclude their existence) or the potential of extra-terrestrial beings to become rational matters for ethics.…”

(Trans-)planetary sustainability once more – a reply to Losch

“…Reasons for and against replacing our previous notion of sustainability : Since Losch (2019) denies that he wants to replace the previous concept of sustainability, he does not comment on the reasons for and against this move, as explained in my paper. However, Losch usefully clarifies that his notion of trans-planetary sustainability is supposed to imply that possible extraterrestrial beings that are sufficiently similar to humans have a moral status.…”

“…However, the only sensible way to understand Losch is to hold that he does indeed propose a replacement of the previous notion of sustainability. First, Losch (2019) seems to agree that he wants to introduce a new concept of sustainability. Since it is implausible to think that the new concept is used at the same time as the old one, he must argue for the replacement of the old concept.…”

“…These questions are at the centre of a recent debate. Using the term ‘planetary sustainability’, which had previously been employed by NASA (2014), Andreas Losch (2019) has pleaded for what he calls ‘ethics of planetary sustainability’. This ethics is supposed to take into account issues that humans face in relation to outer space, e.g.…”

Planetary sustainability collection

“…'Planetary sustainability' as a term aims to keep this in mind. (For a critical review and discussion of the idea, see Beisbart, 2019aBeisbart, , 2019bBeisbart, , 2019cLosch, 2019b. )…”