Space Colonization is Ecologically Ignorant

What the post-capitalist goals of the rich reveal about America

The richest person in America, Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, is now valued at $196 billion. In 2019, The Atlantic published an article about him in which Franklin Foer remarks, “Jeff Bezos has won capitalism.” The concision of the statement is striking. It sounds like the beginning of a Greek myth. Daedalus overcame the obstacle of flight.

Don’t worry this isn’t another article about Jeff Bezos. It’s not really about capitalism either. I begin with Bezos ‘winning’ capitalism because it raises a number of salient questions about what I will call “post-capitalist goals.” Once the dangling carrot of wealth has been achieved for an individual or group, what goals become priorities? How do these post-capitalist goals reflect our worldview?

For Bezos, what comes after winning capitalism is his pet project, Blue Origin, a space exploration company with a $1 billion annual budget. The company motto is: “Earth, in all its beauty, is just our starting place.”

That another prominent billionaire, Elon Musk, has funneled his wealth into a space technology venture called SpaceX should prompt the reader’s eyebrows to raise. A pattern is emerging from what these rich powerful men choose to do with their money. The pattern reveals a telling post-capitalist goal: the ambition to go beyond Earth — to explore and colonize space. This ambition seems founded entirely on the presumption that Earth’s habitat (and economy) can be recreated elsewhere; only funding, engineering, and technology will be required to achieve success.

This essay will examine the ecological ignorance of space exploration. First, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the profound irony that Bezos’ company is named after the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of Earth.

Ecological literacy is defined as the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible. Of course, the obverse is ecological illiteracy, an ignorance or misunderstanding of natural systems. The concept is of crucial importance because it directs decision-making in our society at every level. To discuss ecological illiteracy, however, is to risk coming across as another ‘holier-than-thou’ environmentalist. So, I had been searching for an accessible way to write about it for a long time. When I came across the astounding hubris of billionaire-funded space exploration enterprises, I knew I’d found my entry point. Nothing epitomizes ecological illiteracy and its accompanying waste of human resources like space exploration.

I hesitate to call these ambitions grand because unlike the early NASA missions, which focused primarily on better understanding Earth and our solar system, these billionaire-funded ventures seem aimed at satisfying egos without any explicit public benefit — some are even branded to suggest that space technology will ultimately allow humanity to escape Earth. These space ambitions are not grand, they are grandiose.

When Elon Musk’s venture, SpaceX, launched in May 2020, the announcer proclaimed, “So rises the new era of American space flight.” Something about those words in a time of social and environmental crises rang very false to my ears. I cannot help but wonder what good can come of such a misguided era. It seems our collective memory has already forgotten that the “pale blue dot” — Carl Sagan’s famous description of Earth seen from the Voyager 1 exactly 30 years prior — was supposed to usher in a new human consciousness to “preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.”

In 2020, NASA requested a $25.2 billion budget from Congress for 2021. This money would likely benefit major companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet Rocketdyne, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada Corp. For context, the EPA’s 2019 budget was less than $9 billion and the National Park System requested $2.4 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, defense and international security received $697 billion.

How a billion dollars might otherwise be spent to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known is worthy of its own essay, so I’ll refrain from listing more than a few ecological solutions — reforestation, wetland restoration, better regulation of chemical use, rematriation of indigenous land, etc. What does a billion dollars buy for space exploration other than rocket fuel? I find that my first thought is a scene from The Martian, in which Matt Damon grows potatoes on Mars. The scene revels in human ingenuity, with Damon’s character explaining a complex chemical process in a tone of voice so confident that it’s easy to forget he is stuck in a desperate survival situation. Yet I have found myself in discussions with tech-savvy friends who cite this scene — as well as articles about farming on Mars — as an example of the potential for space colonization. From an ecological standpoint, growing potatoes on Mars is a perfect example of a sort of Rube-Goldberg machine scenario wherein a simple task is performed in an indirect and overly complicated way.

Unlike The Martian’s protagonist, humanity is not stranded on a hostile planet. Earth is, relatively speaking, quite hospitable. To grow a potato here, you bury a portion of a potato in the soil and it will grow with a little rain. It might cost 25 cents to buy a potato; whereas to perform the same task in space might actually cost a billion dollars. How is that progress?

The story of Sisyphus, a fallen king doomed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity, has some relevance to the kind of perpetual costs space colonization might be signing up for. Without ecosystem services providing clean air, fresh water, ideal climatic conditions, rich microbial soil, an extended web of self-regulating pests, and even a host of immune system benefits — the list goes on — a space colony would be pushing numerous boulders uphill every day just to meet basic needs. Presumably, the energy to accomplish all this would be powered by solar energy or fossil fuels, each bringing its own additional layer of complexity in maintenance and supply.

The thought process underlying space colonization ambition is similar to early colonial attempts to bring European farming methods to North America, where they have struggled for over a century due to vastly different soil compositions, weather patterns, and pests. Even today agriculture in much of the U.S. relies heavily on fossil fuels and federal subsidies. Bringing agriculture to space would repeat the folly a hundredfold.

Bezos is a smart guy, no doubt. So perhaps the ecological illiteracy of his space ambitions is rooted in estrangement from natural systems. Living a life disconnected from the origins of our food and the raw materials that constitute our clothes and shelter often results in a skewed valuation of natural systems. Reductionist thinking leads one to believe that soil is merely carbon mixed with minerals, that water is just oxygen and hydrogen — locate or transport these to another planet and viola! To the ecologically literate, however, soil is an ongoing, living process between millions of organisms whose interrelationships are still poorly understood by modern science. Turn the faucet and water pours into your glass, obscuring the fact that every single drop of water is part of ancient planet-wide hydrological system.

For years, I thought the solution to our environmental crises was technology. After learning that, for the most part, the technological solutions already exist, I was able to see that public choice and political will stand in the way of significant change. The environmental crisis is a result of choices. Not just the choices of consumers deciding whether to recycle or purchase eco products, but predominantly the choices of businesses, politicians, farmers, supply-chain managers, etc. Yes, market forces influence decision-making. But at the same time, there’s no doubt that a majority of humans on this planet want to do the right thing. However, our choices must be guided by not just an awareness of environmental crises, but an understanding of our place within the natural systems that make life possible on Earth. Some scholars have called this awareness of humanity’s “embeddedness in nature” ecological citizenship. The term highlights the obligation between the personal sphere and public sphere. We exist as part of something greater.

It’s a pity that billionaires like Bezos seem to have lost all sense of embeddedness in both nature and ordinary society. Their estrangement from natural systems appears to be equaled only by their alienation — space pun intended — from the average citizen. Instead, their personal obligation to the public sphere has taken on a sort of savior complex which assumes Earth is a lost cause and technology is our only hope. These psychological elements in space ambitions run deep: they indicate a mindset that desires to innovate so badly, to break away from tradition, to assert its independence through a charade of dominance, that the only remaining challenge must of course be to survive without the support of Earth, of mother. Indeed, Bezos was raised by a single, overbearing mother. Icarus was just a teenager bent on defying his father.

Our relationship to mother nature defines our choices. In turn, our choices define us. Are we really a species that has evolved from primates into space travelers? Yes, I think so, but the important question is why we choose to go to space? Is it to better understand Earth and thus ourselves? Or is it the same reason that Icarus stole Daedalus’ wings to fly toward the sun? Humility or ego?

A central psychological underpinning of ecological literacy is the humble recognition of life’s mystery. In the words of philosopher, Paul Feather, “We are trained that our rational, objective, calculating intellect sufficiently enables us to manage all sorts of complex systems, which we may therefore shape to our reasoned purpose. This assumption is the basis for all human intervention in ecological systems. However, our rational management is more aptly described as blind interference, because we do not have complete information about the system, and so nearly all of our interventions result in iatrogenic harm — harm originating from the action of the healer.”

Neither mystery nor humility inspire one to feel comfortable or in control so there is a tendency to push such ideas away into a kind of mental closet, a subconscious dungeon which we might call the dark side of ecological literacy. Through this lens, escaping Earth via space technology enables avoidance of humanity’s longstanding issues. All our baggage, our ruins, our crimes, our culpability, and our fears remain buried beneath the surface of the planet while the empowered astronaut flies free in the transparent, uncharted arena of outer space. To be part of Earth is to be part of the cycle of life and death — our own and that which our culture inflicts on other species and the planet itself — and that’s terrifying to admit.

As Gary Snyder wrote in his essay Survival and Sacrament, “Everyone who ever lived took the lives of other animals, pulled plants, plucked fruit, ate. Primary people have had their own ways of trying to understand the precept of non-harming. They knew that taking life required gratitude and care. There is no death that is not somebody’s food, no life that is not somebody’s death. Some would take this as a sign that the universe is fundamentally flawed. This leads to disgust with self, with humanity, and with nature. Otherworldly philosophies end up doing more damage to the planet (and human psyches) than the pain and suffering that is in the existential conditions they seek to transcend.”

The transcendent tone of Blue Origin’s motto, “Earth, in all its beauty, is just our starting place,” implies a kind of linear progression from Earth outward into the cosmos, instead of a cyclical understanding that no matter how far we venture out, we must always return home. Knowing this, we might invest differently. On a societal level, our post-capitalist goals might be re-framed toward gratitude for what we already have — a “starting place” worth restoring — rather than struggling to achieve what we do not — the pie-in-the-sky of space colonies. For example, if the operations of a company called Amazon support rather than prevent the destruction of a globally vital rainforest by the same name, then perhaps it’s time to pause and examine whether the company’s operations are actually self-sabotage.

In 2020, Bezos committed $10 billion to address climate change, which he described as the biggest threat to our planet. Perhaps this investment exhibits a change of priorities for the billionaire. His recognition of climate change as a threat to our survival certainly displays ecological literacy. Apparently, even the fabulously wealthy are not insulated from such concerns. Could it be that all humanity shares the same post-capitalist goal? Rich or poor we all depend on natural systems. Preserving, restoring, and regenerating these systems ultimately has the best return on investment on Earth. Indigenous cultures have known this from time immemorial, ecologists for only about a century. Bezos just got the memo.

As fun as it is, the purpose of this essay isn’t to lampoon billionaires. I sincerely want to increase ecological literacy in our culture. Witnessing the continuation of self-sabotaging activities — from spraying herbicide in our own backyard to voting for politicians who de-fund environmental regulation and perpetuate environmental injustice — is painful. As Aldo Leopold wrote, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell or make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

I share the blame as much as anyone who lives in this society. As a person labeled white, I have benefited from the cultural and economic systems that have devastated the environment over the past centuries. Wendell Berry’s words speak better than my own when we writes, “The white man, preoccupied with the abstractions of the economic exploitation and ownership of the land, necessarily has lived on the country as a destructive force, an ecological catastrophe, because he assigned the hand labor, and in that the possibility of intimate knowledge of the land, to a people he considered racially inferior; in thus debasing labor, he destroyed the possibility of meaningful contact with the earth. He was literally blinded by his presuppositions and prejudices. Because he did not know the land, it was inevitable that he would squander its natural bounty, deplete its richness, corrupt and pollute it, or destroy it altogether.”

Bezos and I live under the same sky. Though he has more money than I will make in a thousand lifetimes, the capitalist system that he has “won” still enables me to buy bottled water with the same dollar. Given his recent shift in investing, perhaps we now both wonder when the time will come when the utmost achievement for anyone will be to, “win ecological living.”