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Lenman argues that, even if we agree that biodiversity is a good thing, it only means that it’s good that there should be natural diversity while life exists on Earth. It doesn’t mean, however, that it’s worse if life on Earth goes extinct sooner rather than later.¹³ Just because biodiversity is good does not mean that life is good.

I don’t find this view plausible; actually, it seems rather parochial. Why should biodiversity matter only on Earth? If we are trying to view things from an objective perspective, biodiversity in the universe is what should matter. While we have no way of finding out how much biodiversity the universe contains, Earth is the only inhabited planet in the solar system, as far as we know. As things stand, if all life on Earth were to go extinct, then the biodiversity in the whole solar system would drop to zero. In the future depicted in The Expanse, with self‐sustaining habitats established in various locations, extinction of life on Earth would not end biodiversity in the universe—although it’s true that no other habitat comes even close to Earth in terms of biodiversity.

Comparing existence in time with existence in space, Lenman argues that it makes sense to lament the extinction of the white rhino, but it makes no sense to lament its nonexistence in northern Scotland. Nor does it make sense to argue that it would be better if white rhinos lasted for 1 billion years rather than, say, 1 million. But that is because other living beings exist in Scotland and, we hope, other living beings will be around 1 billion years from now. On the contrary, since Earth is, as far as we know, the only planet in the solar system with a biosphere, if life on Earth were to disappear, no other life would exist anywhere in the solar system, possibly ever again. That would be an incredible loss. If we could prevent this extinction by spreading life to currently lifeless planets, that would be a good outcome.

Suppose humans were to colonize Mars (at first). Not only would humans be on Mars, but we would also need to take plants and microbes along with us, at the very least, since we would need to create a new ecosystem to sustain human life. Consider the Ganymede greenhouses in The Expanse, the ever‐necessary photosynthetic plants to produce oxygen in the Belt colonies, or even the ferns that humans end up carrying with them to another solar system.¹⁴ In fact, self‐sustainable ecosystems that would allow long‐term human survival probably require a high degree of biodiversity, upwards of 4,000 different species.¹⁵ The expansion of humans beyond Earth would also be the expansion of Earth life beyond its native planet. And that would certainly be a good thing.

It matters that those planets are lifeless, however.

If we found life on Mars, for example, we would face a moral dilemma. We might decide that we would still have overwhelming reasons to colonize Mars, but we would at the very least also have a strong reason to preserve any native Martian life. The alien protomolecule makers seem to have had no such qualms. They produced a technology capable of destroying all life on a planet, just to build a galaxy wormhole super‐highway for themselves. We don’t know their motivations, but it’s possible that the alien civilization that created the protomolecule just didn’t care about any species other than themselves. Or they might have been under the impression that most life in the universe is simple and unicellular. Yet, this should not be a reason to disregard it or consider it without value. Imagine if the protomolecule had arrived on Earth instead of getting stuck in the outer planets. Complex life on Earth might never have evolved.

The difference between the careless destruction of other life forms by the protomolecule makers and the prospect of humans (along with other Earth life) expanding to lifeless planets is the difference between morally objectionable colonization, where a particular people (or, in this case, alien species) takes some territory or resources for themselves, without regard for its original inhabitants, and the positively desirable biological colonization of new habitats, which arguably increases the amount of value in the universe.¹⁶

Unfortunately, in Cibola Burn, the first planet outside the solar system that humans colonize is already teeming with native life. The colonization is morally objectionable, not only from the point of view of the preservation of biodiversity, but also because it is dangerous for the colonists themselves.