Should We Colonize Other Planets?

In September 2016, famous entrepreneur Elon Musk announced plans for the gradual colonization of Mars. As humans continue to degrade and destroy our planet’s resources, leading to predictions of total ecological collapse, some now suggest that a human colony elsewhere may be our species’ best hope for survival. 

In this sharply argued book philosopher Adam Morton examines these extra-terrestrial colonization plans with a critical eye. He makes a strong case for colonization, just not by human beings. Humans live relatively short lives, require large amounts of food and water, very specific climactic conditions and an oxygen-rich atmosphere to survive. Robots, on the other hand, suffer from none of these shortcomings. 

Reflecting compassionately on the nature of existence, Morton argues that we should treat the end of the human race in the same way that we treat our own deaths: as something sad but ultimately inevitable. The Earth will perish one day, and in the end, we should be more concerned with securing the future of intelligent beings than the preservation of our species, which represents but a nanosecond in the history of our solar system.