Personally I have a lot of sympathy for the views expressed. The current dominant terrestrial culture has utterly obliterated any indigenous peoples and culture

Personally I have a lot of sympathy for the views expressed. The current dominant terrestrial culture has utterly obliterated any indigenous peoples and cultures that have lived more in harmony with the planet we inhabit. The language that the article picks on summarises that rather nicely. Point by point. I'm sure pollution is a problem. It certainly won't be noticeable when there's only a hundred colonists, but we're unlikely to constrain until it is becoming a problem - then we're simply repeating our mistakes. It's about mindset and attitude. We have to learn to live within the constraints of the ecosystem. Doesn't matter if that ecosystem is Earth, or it's a small size base on some other planet. Main difference is the extra-terrestrial ecosystem or life-support we create will be more fragile and easy to break for a long time. I'm certain we will pollute, for two reasons. First because we have not yet learnt not to, secondly because we can. The very second there's enough stuff been sent from earth to assemble a mining robot it will be done - to reduce the amount sent in future. From there it will escalate. There's a whole infinite, empty, lifeless (probably, maybe) planet - why bother with the expense of cleaning and keeping it tidy? Fast forward a thousand years and we've pushed two planets to the point of irreparable ruin. Maybe by then planet #1 is an overheated, uninhabitable wreck. The animal experimentation is again a fair summary of attitude. We're already exporting those industrial attitudes into space, and orbit. Perhaps there's no alternatives to mice experiments on the space station, I know not. Life is a good enough reason to explore. Is it? If that's all it is, sure. Except it will become, in short order, to exploit and affect. There is no way we'd leave somewhere alone because we discovered it had life. We can't even leave the Antarctic alone, despite the unique international treaties. "I don't understand why the Hawaiians are so negative about scientific progress". Who says they are? There are plenty of locations around the world where telescopes have been placed that aren't culturally or religiously significant. Why ride roughshod over the views of the indigenous people? Do they not matter? Is it always OK to ruin a bit more habitat for economic incentives? Seems like we need to learn to stop that before we wreck the entire solar system.