[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
If Europa has life, we should not open it to private corporations.
It should be protected, as we protect Yosemite here.
I was wondering when the Cosmic Sierra Club would weigh in. One of the most
aggravating, and compelling characters in all of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red
Mars trilogy was the ecologist, who fights a losing battle to preserve Mar's
sterile character for all time.
My question for the writer: HOW do you intend to enforce the Europan
Preserve? What will be done in the event of hostile claimstaking?
Presume you set Europa aside, along with all its lifeforms... and, presume
that the life has the added interest of being extremely energy efficient...
(ergo, as some have suggested, a draw to corporate interests). How are you
going to keep the Europan Preserve pristine from human interaction, for all
time? Are you willing to shoot a poacher out of the sky? Somehow, I think
that if a poaching corporation is willing to go through all the effort to GET
to Europa, a mere censure will not be sufficient.
For laughs, let's suppose that the UN sets up some sort of enforcement body.
Will they be more efficient than the blue helmets were in Somalia,
Yugoslavia, and elsewhere? Would the fact that it is a 'Preserve' (with a
capital P) be any more effective than the sanctity of the Arctic National
Wildlife Reserve has been (now under pressure to be opened for Big Oil
interests)? Oh, and who / how are you going to pay for someone to be posted
to guard off-world preserves? Taxes?
Science fiction, anyone?
-- John Harlow Byrne
