What would happen to environmental concerns if interstellar travel became feasible?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s assume that interstellar travel is possible, and that humanity develops it within a hundred years or so. Yep, big leap, but stay with me. So, we’re in a world where we can travel to other star systems in a reasonable amount of time (let’s not dwell on details), and we’ve discovered that many of these planets have life or can be terraformed to sustain life. In other words, humans have enormous amounts of planets to choose from when it comes to where to live. With me so far?

Now, in this situation, what will happen to the environmental movement? Will people still care about recycling, taking care of their planet, stopping pollution and so on, when they can just move to another planet when one goes bad? Will anyone care about not exhausting natural supplies when there is an effectively infinite amount of other planets to go to?

Sure, there will always be people who care, especially for the multitudes of species that will go extinct due to pollution, but will these people have enough “disciples” for it to matter? Or will this world be a world where everything is thrown into the same garbage bag which is then thrown into a huge hole in the ground, smokestacks belch toxic gas day and night and waste is spewed straight into rivers and lakes?

2

I might add that I first thought of this while watching the Futurama episode where Bender is told not to pollute the planet and answers “Why not? It’s not like it’s the only one we’ve got!”.

3

You can always move to a new apartment (or house) but you still clean your rooms, right? Because it’s easier and/or cheaper to stay there and keep it clean than move to a new one every time it gets dirty. I think it’ll always be the same for planets no matter how cheap and easy interstellar travel is.

4

But many people today don’t care about the environment, preferring the laziest possible alternative. Polluting doesn’t accept them personally in a directly obvious manner, so they don’t care. Won’t there be exponentially more of them when you can just dump the planet?

5

I a lot of people enjoy and treasure National Parks, State Forests, walking along an unspoilt beach, camping in unpolluted bushlands, etc.

I would expect those people to still enjoy those things and still make the efforts they do now to keep those places beautiful.

6

I meant that cleaning up a planet will always be cheaper and easier than interstellar travel. You’ve got the choice of creating a clean living space for N people here on earth, and transporting N people to a different planet and creating a safe, clean living space for N people there. Do you think the latter can ever be cheaper than the former?

I’m sorry but this is a pet peeve of mine, when science fiction writers use the “earth is polluted, we need to find a new home” as a plot device. Red Planet was the worst example of this. Do they think terraforming Mars will be easier than re-terraforming Earth??

7

Good point, scr4, but let’s, for the purpose of this thread, assume that interstellar travel is cheap, easy and quick. We’ve harnessed wormholes. We can go anywhere we wish when we wish. Let’s also assume that there’s a bunch of Earthlike planets out there. Since the point of the thread is examining human psychology, the technical details or the likelihood thereof aren’t really interesting.

Let’s concentrate on what people would do. Given the above premises, ie there are effectively infinite Earthlike planets that we can go to at any time, would people really care about maintaining the environment of either of these planets?

8

Well, here’s one slightly more optimistic possibility. Given the relative easy of travel to other planets, a lot of heavy industry can be moved off world to planets with minimum life. There would be virtually no anti-pollution laws there, so operating costs could be slashed. Also, because the industry would take relatively little of the planet, the ecological impact on that planet wouldn’t be that huge.

So for now lets assume that pollution isn’t too much of an issue. On the inhabited planets, conservation presumably won’t be either - why dig up your own back yard when so many others will do? Other planets will almost certainly be looted of natural resources. In particular there will be a lot of competition to find ones with compatible biochemistry to turn into giant plant-sized fisheries and farms. (As you say interstellar travel is cheap, it’s probably cheaper to farm off-world where there are no land restrictions or pesky laws). A lot of native ecosytems will be severely screwed up or destroyed.

Similarily expect strip mining - probably of uninhabited worlds for metals, etc, but if you want coal, oil and other organics you’re going to need to find places with a fossil record, which means life. Probably there will be some eco-friendly companies to start, but the ones which don’t bother are likely to win out on price when there’s that much area to exploit.

Oh, did I say optimistic? I guess my inherent cynicism came through. :slight_smile: Still - the places we live will be nice and clean, so what’s the problem?

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From years and years of reading science fiction, this is what I think will happen:

We’ll get out there and find ALL these planets… they’ll get colonized. Each planet will have it’s own laws about whether it’s polluted or not, those laws of course being made by its inhabitants and/or owners.

Lots and lots of farmland planets, lots of resort planets, lots of ‘private housing planets’ will be ‘pollution free’. Why build a factory in the garden world, when there’s an entire FACTORY PLANET a couple parsecs away? SOME planets will be pristine gardens of eden…

…while OTHER planets will be barren wastelands where nobody would want to go if they didn’t work there. The mining planets, the aforementioned factory planets, etc etc. And of course the naturally occuring poison planets, like our sister Venus. Venus would be a great place for some types of industry, I’m sure. But not to live on.

And Earth? Well, folks, I’m afraid Earth will probably end up pretty much the way it is now. Half polluted cities, half pristine natural parks. And people fighting over their way. Humans never change.

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** Even though the boards are inexcusabley slow today and yesterday, I’ll try to post.

What you said up there Priceguy is very interesting. This is an examination in psychology. Human psyche is not exactly as barbaric as one may think. I’d be hard pressed to think we would pollute and give in to laziness if we found other planets to inhabit. Plus the very timeline for inhabiting other planets: securing them, developing them, colonizing them is going to take many hundreds of years. I do not think that in this time period people here would want to say "Forget it, I’m not recycling anymore. Or Why not pollute the planet we’re going to move anyway.
Well because our attachment to our planet is not just a physiological one, but a maternal, psychological one. every hear of Mother Earth ? That is for a reason. We are here as products of this planets evolution, not of our own manufacture therein. We’re attached to this planet in more ways than you think. I do not think you will get the multitudes to go with your idea to planet hope so easily either.

IMAGINE: A planet lush with 1000 foot trees, over sized everything because it has the mass of jupiter but the climate of earth. No intelligent life has formed besides large overgrown Cephalopods inhabiting the waters and lands.
We’d have to come up with a new form of calimari to feed ourselves…
Arthur C. Clarke was one of my idols growing up :wink: