space colonization- apolitical ecology

8/7/2019 Space Colonization- Apolitical Ecology

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Space Colonization: An Introduction to Political Ecology

Proponents of space colonization ground their advocacy in a fewparticular, yet generalized claims about human-environment relations.First, human population growth is supposedly outstripping the

carrying capacity of the planet, placing undue stress on both thevital ecosystems on which life depends and the social institutionstrusted with preserving the favored distribution of ecological andeconomic wealth. Second, and related, the stocks of natural resourcesthat fuel the levels of production characteristic of an advancedindustrial civilization are dwindling, an inevitability that promiseseconomic malfunction and geopolitical conflict. Third, human activityhas slowly sowed the seeds of its own demise through less visibleprocesses that have altered the chemical make-up of the humanecosystem, exhausting genetic and biological diversity, priming theplanet for the outbreak of a rapidly mutating global epidemic, and

warming the atmosphere to such an extent that the species collectiveecological knowledge may now be obsolete. Lastly, space partisansadvance a precautionary argument suggesting that even if theidentified threats to human existence on Earth cannot be pinned downwith a sufficient degree of certainty, the aggregation of these threats,combined with the potential emergence of untold dangers lurking inthe cosmos, renders the possibilities of space exploration absolutelyinvaluable.

My recent article, The Trouble with Space, called into question thefeasibility of erecting an interstellar arrangement. In this installment,

however, I wish to interrogate the precepts that make the coordinated,technocratic march into outer space appear a reasonable, evennecessary, handling of these pressing terrestrial concerns. The modeof inquiry this article will pursue is best termed political ecology,which provides a framework for putting the ecological commitmentsintrinsic to the apology for space colonization in conversation with thebroader social and economic relations that actively construct theseenvironmental truths. A fundamental tenet motivating this criticism isthat these seemingly neutral, scientific statements are invested withvitality by the dominant order such that they can be deployed toguarantee certain political outcomes to the exclusion of others.

For the philosopher of science Bruno Latour, this project consists oftaking apart and reassembling the taken for granted black boxesthat litter conceptual reality. Black boxes are the products of anysystematic thought that succeed in coherently holding together anumber of diverse properties, uncertainties, and processes; theirestablishment settles certain controversies while providing material forothers (a black box can play a subordinate role in an even larger black


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box). In Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, GrahamHarman writes, By definition, a black box is low-maintenance. It issomething we rely on as a given in order to take further steps, neverworrying about how it came into being. The reason it can be either sorefreshing or so annoying to speak of ones work with outside

amateurs is that they lack awareness of the black boxes widelyrecognized in our respective professions.

I wish to assume the role of the amateur, asking questions that willappear nave from the perspective of the space colonizationprofessionals (if such a profession can be said to exist) todemonstrate that the black boxes that make space exploration a viablealternative to the status quo in fact only cohere to the extent that theyhave been sanctioned by apparatuses of power. Believing that theargument for space colonization succeeds or fails with the viability ofproto-Malthusian ecology, I would like to commence our discussion

from this highly contentious starting point.

The specter of overpopulation conjures up such images asdesertification, overgrazing, food insecurity, and social instability,making the quest to somehow expand or transcend carrying capacity aseemingly pre-political imperative. In his Essay on the Principle ofPopulation, Thomas Malthus inscribes human population numbers withecological efficacy, claiming that as population increasesgeometrically, it will inevitably outstrip available resources, whichmerely expand arithmetically. A society that fails to restrict populationgrowth will at some point experience a resource crunch that

necessitates a massive die-off to reset the fragile equilibrium. A crunchreacts back on society through any combination of food insecurity,economic catastrophe, disease outbreak, and war.

Malthuss argument has been repackaged in a variety of forms, somemore obviously morally dubious than others. Whether deployed indefense of the moral integrity of the Aryan race or to erode theauthority of religious opposition to family planning, overpopulation istaken as a black box, the tenets of Malthusian economics presumednatural. Geographer Paul Robbins reveals in the first chapter of hisPolitical Ecologythat the naturalization of ecoscarcity and limits to

growth arguments constitutes an ideological evasion of some of themost powerful objections to globalization and the capitalist fetish forproduction. Barry Commoners work on the environmental degradationconcomitant with the introduction of nitrogen fertilizer, the ascent ofcar culture, and the introduction of detergents into the Americanhousehold has led him to conclude that these technological changeshave had a disproportionately greater impact on ecosystems than thepopulation growth that took place during the same period. In the May


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1972 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Commoner respondsto neo-Malthusian and co-author ofThe Population Bomb Paul Ehrlichby isolating technology and affluence as the missing factors thatalways mediate between human numbers and the environment.

Modern technological development has provided humanity with anunprecedented capacity to influence ecological outcomes, sometimesbenignly but frequently at a heavy environmental tollthe ravages offossil fuel dependence and industrialized agriculture should stand assufficient proof. These particular expressions of human metabolismare contingent products of historical forces still at work today and arethus liable to questioning, reform, and even upheaval. Theenvironmental implications of overpopulation are hopelesslydependent on the systems of production and consumption in which thepopulation is enmeshed. Additionally, Ehrlich and his cronies dismissthe demographic transition that, at a fairly easily attainable level of

affluence, stabilizes fertility and mortality rates; Commoner classesdemographic transition as a basic, first-order phenomenon that issecondarily affected by fluctuations induced by a variety of social andeconomic factors. The demographic transition is as hotly contested asit is highly documented: in spite of the controversies related to theprecise mechanisms of population stabilization and the uncertain roleplayed by economic growth, these observations clearly demonstratethat population numbers only take on meaning within social andeconomic structures and with respect to the geopolitical whole.

Carl Zimmerer has demonstrated that the overpopulation hypothesis

breaks down at the most basic levels of analysis through observationscompiled over 20 years of fieldwork carried out in Bolivia. Observingthat for many collectives a growing population provided the labornecessary to irrigate fields and maintain soil fertility, Zimmererchallenged the unidirectional cause-and-effect relations taken forgranted by the population theorists, going so far as to posit that aburgeoning population could be an essential ingredient in preservingecological wealth under certain regimes of production. Moreover, suchvariation on the ground floor suggests that it may not be so easy tojustify universal laws that determine planetary fate.

The true result of any application of the ecoscarcity rationale is not anaugmented understanding of a particular societys relationship with itsenvironment, but an imagining of the peoples of less developednations as irresponsibleif not downright promiscuous. The West,which enjoys the fruit of its purported economic virtues and the self-proclaimed superiority of its governing institutions, portrays itself asthreatened by the excesses of the periphery; local problems such asjoblessness, famine, and land degradation are perceived as harbingers


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of political instability, extremism, and global environmental crisis,possibilities so terrifying that an escape plan to outer space is nowunder consideration. Even a cursory look at the historical developmentof globalization reveals a very different story, one that emphasizes theexploitative trade relations installed between the global North and

South, the transformation of neoliberal ideology into a worldwideproject in cultural imperialism, and the outrageous concentration ofwealth, power, and consumption among a small fraction of the worldpopulation. David Harvey writes:

Ideas about environment, population, and resources are not neutral.They are political in origin and have political effects. Once, forexample, connotations of absolute limits come to surround theconcepts of resource, scarcity, and subsistence, then an absolute limitis set on population. And the political implications of a term likeoverpopulation can be devastating. Somebody, somewhere, is

redundant and there is not enough to go round. Am I redundant? Ofcourse not. Are you redundant? Of course not. So who is redundant? Ofcourse! It must be them. And if there is not enough to go round, then itis only right and proper that they, who contribute so little to society,ought to bear the brunt of the burden. And if were told that there arecertain of us who, by virtue of our skills, abilities, and attainments, arecapable of conferring a signal benefit upon mankind then it is ourbounden duty to protect and preserve ourselves for the sake of allmankind, for the sake of civilization. (Harvey)

It is sad to think that so many in the United States would not take issue

with this basic conservative line of reasoning that Harvey so wittilycaricatures.

Appeals to inevitability are as powerful as they are specious. Theinevitable is that which has been decided once and for all, and itsconstitution calls for the arbitrary resolution of all the subordinatestruggles over truth that comprise its working parts. Thus to build aninevitability is to manufacture a black box that denies alternative linesof inquiry any right to peer inside, offer a competing diagnosis, or clearenough ideological debris that the suggestion of another course ofaction is treated as a misguided absurdity. The fundamental problem

with the argument for space colonization is its willingness to reducethe richness of political contest and the complexity of the world systemto a few trans-historical principles, as if history was written in advance.Armed with their neat little graphs depicting the laws of scarcity,handbooks for capitalist development, and a blind faith in technologicalprogress, the forward-thinking misanthropes responsible forperpetuating this militarization of ecological science clothe themselvesin the shoddiest of intellectual garments in pursuit of their ambition to


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preempt the entire social, political, and ecological future of the world.

space colonization- apolitical ecology

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