In the 1953 film adaptation of War of the Worlds, the narrator introduces the invading Martians as such;
“The inhabitants of this dying planet looked across space with instruments and intelligence of which we have scarcely dreamed. Searching for another world which they could migrate to.”
That striking resemblance would be funny if it wasn’t for it’s undisputable relevance to current events.
NASA announcement:
After collaborating with Belgian scientists, NASA has detected a small star system 40 light years away. The star, named Trappist-1, hosts seven orbiting planets labeled B through H, with planets E, F, and G located in what is known as the Goldilocks Zone.
Distance from Earth: approximately 235 Trillion miles. Status: very possibly life sustaining: Future: bleak. Almost seconds after the announcement of potentially habitable worlds, the collective social media posts combined into one terrifying shout; mine.
Humanity is so preoccupied with the issue of can we colonize these planets that it neglected to ask the question of should we colonize these planets. On Earth, Man’s rise has come at the price of Earth itself. Now, before even repairing the damage of one planet, we plan on moving to another.
Conquering these three planets will invariably involve Terraforming. Terraforming is a theoretical process of changing the natural environment of an alien habitat to resemble Earth. In which case, humans would be able to occupy said alien environment. Assuming that these planets are capable of sustaining life, it’s entirely possible that species presently exists there. Terraforming, greatly shaping their environment to match ours, would most definitely result in mass extinctions of the local life. Similarly, if aliens decided to change our planet for the sake of colonization, as in the case of countless Sci-Fi stories, our own survival as a species would be threatened.
Even if the inhabitants of planets E-G are nothing more than bacteria millions of years away from evolving to complex organisms, it’s still their natural right to exist. To destroy them on account of not being as evolved as we are would mean that we judge the validity of life based solely on intelligence. Humans would thus be inescapably fascists and devoid of compassion. And any fascist society has no natural right in expanding its reach.
The apparent absence of Mankind’s humanity would mean that when humans arrive on these planets, they’d be the same monsters bent on conquest that they depicted in almost every Sci-Fi thriller.
So it goes that the race of upright walking primates called Man sets its hungry eyes on new worlds and untapped resources. Because in Man’s own opinion, survival and accomplishment supersede all else in nature. The art, the machine, and even pleasure all take precedent over every other species’ right to exist.
“Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.”
— The Lawgiver, (as spoken by Cornelius in Planet of the Apes)
