Environments must be protected everywhere that humans go,
whether on Earth, our moon, or Mars.
The nonfaith-based study of Buddhist ethics can help.
Mars and its moons
All site photos courtesy of NASA unless otherwise specified
Already we have an orbiting junkyard above our heads from all of the spent rocket stages, satellites, and other pieces of hardware that we have launched and then just left at the end of their useful lives. As this site explains more, this space debris offers environmental threats that we need to address. In addition, current NASA plans include having hardware and humans on our moon by the year 2024 to enable commercial mining as a part of Project Artemis. This mining is not science fiction, but science fact, since some companies already have invested large sums of money in planning and hardware development so that they can commence mining on the moon and various asteroids as soon as possible. Another proximate environmental issue that this site will explain in more detail concerns plans by NASA, Russia, China, the ESA, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos to put humans on Mars no later than the year 2040. Where humans go, so do potential environmental problems, including to Mars.
Almost everyone is going to space these days and this engenders stresses for extraterrestrial environments.
Yet at present we have no environmental plans for any of these space scenarios or for several others. Since moral thinking by a community takes time, we need to be pondering issues like these as soon as we can. Because of these environmental issues as well as other scenarios, we must make sure to be sustainable in space, too, in addition to caring for our ailing Earth.
In conjunction with the book Buddhist Ecological Protection of Space: A Guide for Sustainable Off-Earth Travel, this web site investigates academic Buddhism-inspired approaches to extraterrestrial sustainability. The approach here is nonfaith-based and critical as it seeks not to promote Buddhism itself but to contribute rational, scientific ethics to the study and practice of space environmental efforts. The Resources section of this web site includes scholarship that critically highlights both the the weak points and the strong points of various environmental ethical schools of thought, thereby indicating that this web site is not about advancing religion but about creating better, more rigorous secular space ethics. Nonetheless, the site has been designed to be accessible to and enjoyable for nonacademic folks along with scholars from a variety of fields.
To understand more fully possible wholesome Buddhist ethical contributions to space environmentalism, this web site features quantitative ethnographic data collected among both Buddhists and a non-Buddhist control group in the United States that inform more qualitative material from the Buddhist scriptures. With a data set from 121 American Buddhists and a control set from 78 members of the general American public, I discover Buddhist environmental perspectives that can be helpful in creating increased space environmental responsibility. Most of this quantitative data that appears on this site resides on individual Issues pages.
As I explain more on the Issues page, here are some environmental ethical issues in space exploration with relevance to Buddhists:
1. the problem of space debris
2. near-future mining of our moon
3. searching for microbial extraterrestrial life
4. plans to change the ecology of Mars planet-wide
5. establishing nature reserves in important places to keep them pristine as well as to better understand human environmental impacts outside of the reserves
Apollo footprint
In terms of ecological care, on Earth we mostly have been environmentally reactive to problems in our ecology, rather than being proactive, and the results of this orientation harm our environment. Alternatively, space environmentalism allows us to be more proactive and forward-looking, thus forestalling environmental difficulties before they start.
Being environmentally proactive about space brings many benefits. Places like our moon and Mars remain largely untouched, and if we act before many humans arrive, we can maintain the characters of these places. We also can save meaningful things like the first human footprint on the moon, an important piece of history, from commercial desires or overzealous explorers. Finally, it is easy and inexpensive to protect space environments for now, and such positive environmental action can give humanity hope and confidence.
Ridges and rivers on Saturn’s moon Titan as imaged by the Huygens probe.
On this site, the Issues page discusses six space environmental issues of relevance to Buddhists.
The Sustainable Buddhism page explores some fundamental Buddhist environmental ethical principles.
The Resources page offers a growing list of textual resources relevant to our understanding of Buddhism and space exploration.
The About page provides contact and brief background information regarding this site.
This site is a winner of a Multidisciplinary Innovation Research Award.
Please take your time in perusing it.