A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
Sustainability and Humanity's Future in Space : A Conceptual Exploration
Authors: Puumala Mikko M.
Editors: Garasic Mirko Daniel, Di Paola Marcello
Publishing place: Abingdon
Publication year: 2024
Book title : The Philosophy of Outer Space : Explorations, Controversies, Speculations
Series title: Routledge Research in Anticipation and Futures
First page : 100
Last page: 110
Number of pages: 220
ISBN: 978-1-032-44892-3
eISBN: 978-1-003-37438-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003374381-8
Web address : https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003374381-8/sustainability-humanity-future-space-mikko-puumala?context=ubx&refId=b99e8c78-4bdb-4595-b400-a47986bf472d
This chapter explores the relation between sustainability and human space activities. While the sustainability framework can and perhaps ought to give guidance for discussing, planning, and implementing different human activities in space, the prospect of a long-term space future and humanity’s turn into a multiplanetary species is impactful for the concept of sustainability itself. Taking the standard definition of sustainability from the Brundtland Commission’s 1987 report Our Common Future as a starting point, the chapter will discuss the conceptual and normative effects of the New Space Age for three concepts or ideas that are key to sustainability’s definition. These concepts and ideas are substitutability, the idea that there are planetary limits to economic growth, and the notion of future generations. The chapter suggests that to remain relevant for the long-term future, sustainability must accommodate space activities, and cannot maintain its Earthist or Earth-bound conceptual ties to there being only one planet to inhabit, develop, and sustain life in.