Future Prospects
The contrasts between these arguments are fully explored in the field of environmental ethics. Some researchers suggest that both paradigms need to mature into a more complex, cosmocentric ethic which incorporates the (unknown) value of extraterrestrial life with the values of humanity and all things in the universe. Debates often focus on how much time and effort should be expended on investigating the possibility of any microscopic life on a planet before deciding whether to terraform, and what level of sophistication or chances for future development alien life would deserve varying levels of commitment to non-interference. Such debates have been engaged in live, between Zubrin and McKay and others, at various conferences of the Mars Society, which has made written and video records of the debates available. For example, a written account of some of these debates is available in On to Mars: Colonizing a New World, as a joint article, "Do Indigenous Martian Bacteria have Precedence over Human Exploration?" (pp. 177–182)
Read more about this topic: Ethics Of Terraforming
Famous quotes containing the words future and/or prospects:
“I want the necessity of supplying my own wants. All this costly culture of yours is not necessary. Greatness does not need it. Yonder peasant, who sits neglected, carries a whole revolution of man and nature in his head, which shall be a sacred history to some future ages.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)