It's Time to Protect Extraterrestrial Locations that Might Support Life

 In 1972, Christopher Stone, a legal scholar at the University of Southern California, wrote a paper titled “Should Trees Have Legal Standing?” Although it took a few decades for the idea to catch on, it marked the beginning of the Rights of Nature movement. The United Nations has recently referred to it as the fastest-growing legal movement of the 21st Century.

Previously, a person or a group had to prove harm from some other person or company disturbing the environment before any legal action was taken. The Rights of Nature charter allows a person or a group to directly represent some aspect of nature that has rights of its own. It is similar to the legal cases in which parties, like children, can’t represent themselves, yet need legal protection. Some countries have put such protections in local and national laws, and some even in their constitutions.

Now, three scientists from the United Kingdom, an astrobiologist, an earth scientist, and a legal scholar, published a space policy paper saying such protections should extend to any extraterrestrial life we may discover and the environments in which they exist or may have existed.

We currently have probes on the surface of Mars seeking conditions, past or present, which might support life, as well as any living things that might currently exist there. Some moons, notably Europa, which orbits Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, have organic materials that may well indicate the presence of living microbes there. Even a few asteroids exhibit some of the conditions that might be explained by extinct microbial life forms.

Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is venting water and organic molecules.

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, possesses a 100-mile-deep ocean with organic molecules.

On our planet, despite this movement, we too often destroy natural environments, leading to a loss of habitat for species living there. This is one of the major causes of the extinction of flora and fauna on Earth. These scientists are advocating that we not do the same to extraterrestrial locations where life, however simple, might, or may in the future, exist.

In their Space Policy paper, the three chronicle many of the successes of the Rights of Nature movement. They say we need to extend this “circle of Rights beyond Earth” and suggest that environmental groups join forces with organizations that govern space activities, such as the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

We don’t always have a great track record of protecting species on Earth. This paper urges that we do not create the same sorts of environmental destruction in extraterrestrial locations that currently support or once may have supported any form of life.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. After it is published there, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted with permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.