Never, ever thought I'd be tempted to contribute to PETA. But this is such a darn good cause:
PETA, ever inventive in finding new ways to be outrageous, has hit upon an idea of making Mars a meat-free planet. Toward that end, it has sent a plea to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to make sure this happens, reports Mogulite. How Musk would have that power is an open question.
It is no secret that the ultimate vision of Musk is to someday settle Mars. In that line, Mars Society President Robert Zubrin recently devised a way to get humans to Mars using SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launchers, now in development.
Part of Zubrin's vision for a Mars settlement is that it would become a "laboratory of democracy," experimenting with ways of ordering a society. Zubrin's own view, as expressed in his book "How to Live on Mars," is that the Mars settlers will be of a libertarian, free-market bent, settling on the Red Planet to escape the bureaucracy, conformity, and political correctness that adheres on Earth.
In a way, Zubrin's vision is a version of early America, which become a place where misfits and malcontents could leave the old country and start life anew in an untamed wilderness. The American republic that eventually resulted became an example for other nations of what can happen when a people decide to be free. Thus, Zubrin suggests, Mars would serve the same purpose.
PETA seems to agree that Mars could be a laboratory for ordering a society, but with a decidedly different view.
Of course the group might have trouble convincing some people to contribute to the cause, since the best evidence is that its members already live on another planet.
I kind of like Zubrin's idea to make Mars a libertarian haven. Every place on this planet -- including the ones like America and Australia that began as a testament to individualism -- has ended up trading liberty for equality and personal effort for collectivist mediocrity, which requires redistributing what we have to bring up everyone's level of creature comforts and makes us a planet of wusses.
