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Terraforming: a review for environmentalists

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Summary

The concept of modifying the environment of another planet, so that it can support terrestrial life, is known as terraforming. As a speculative scientific subject, it has been slowly gaining in respectability and, over the past 30 years, has amassed a considerable body of published work. In this paper, the present day capabilities of civilisation to bring about global environmental change are breifly discussed, followed by a review of the progress of research into the terraforming of the planet Mars. Whilst such an undertaking does not appear technologically impossible, whether it will actually happen is an unanswerable question. However, the control space for thought experimentation that terraforming provides is of use for both planetological research and education. The subject is therefore relevant to the present day, as well as to a possible future.

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  1. Probability Research Group, c/o 44 Hogarth Court, Fountain Drive, SE19 1UY, London, UK

    Maryn J. Fogg

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  1. Maryn J. Fogg
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Martyn J. Fogg is an independent researcher and free-lance science writer with a wide range of interests, having published papers on planetary formation and evolution; cometary impact cycles; mass extinctions; blue stragglers; and terraforming. He has been contributing Editor of three special issues ofThe Journal of the British Interplanetary Society devoted to terraforming, and has acted as a consultant on this subject to the BBC, TIME/LIFE books and Yazawa Science in Japan. He was the sole European participant at the 1991 NASA workshop on terraforming Mars, held at the Ames Research Center.

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Fogg, M.J. Terraforming: a review for environmentalists. Environmentalist 13, 7–17 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01905499

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