The Lockean Proviso and Orbital Sustainability—An Anthropological View

Abstract

Over the last decades, we have witnessed the gradual commercialization of the Earth orbit. The exponential development of private space activities makes this distant natural field, with the overcoming of technological difficulties, more and more hospitable to free initiative and entrepreneurship. However, the orbital space is considered global commons. Through the imaginary case method, we intend to ponder on possible ways to legally regulate the exploitation of the orbital space, namely the application of Pigouvian taxes, on the sustainability of the orbital environment, through ethical considerations originating from the application of the Lockean proviso. Although they are designed to cover the damage caused by that particular polluting activity, which is difficult to estimate and, in our case, almost impossible to quantify in the long run, the Pigouvian taxes are the result of a proactive logic. The tension between civilization and nature turns the world outside the Earth into a wilderness destined for humanization, another area of exercise of the liberal self. Non-legal reasons for the sustainability of the orbital environment may arise from observing the Lockean principle of fair ownership. Between the prohibition of an unreasonable destruction of nature’s goods and the equitable access to extra-terrestrial resources, the human desire for appropriation updates the proviso destined for the colonization of America in the twenty-first century. Given that there are currently no plans to clean the technological waste in orbit, adopting the conservation of the orbital environment as an ethical principle could help to formulate a more environmentally responsible liberalism, as part of a long-term agenda of exploitation in the vicinity of our planet.