Ecology is defined as “The branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.” One part of the MotM plot is Eli’s commitment to maintaining the Moon in a pure and untouched condition. Like many others, he misunderstands what this means.
Preservation of useful attributes of the Moon for future generations has to be figured from first principles. What are they?
The primary attribute of the Moon which could be damaged by industrialization is the hard vacuum. The waste product which could do that in industrial operations on the Moon’s surface is primarily oxygen. Comprising 40% of the regolith by weight, it is found largely in the oxides of metals which would be the target of extraction. Extracting iron, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, or manganese would likely mean freeing oxygen in gas form.
Imagine, for example, a powerplant on the Moon which simply generated energy by focusing sunlight on dirt inside a chamber until the oxygen was released. That hot gas could then be used to move pistons or turbines. After a fair percent of energy recovery, the oxygen would just be released. This type of a system would quickly destroy the hard vaccuum of the Moon.
The Green left on Earth considers carbon dioxide a pollutant, on the Moon, it would be oxygen, to the extend that the hard surface vacuum was considered to be an “essential common good.” Because there is no life on the Moon, destroying the vacuum is only relevant to the future uses of the Moon by Man and his machines or derivative AI.
Released into the vacuum on the surface, oxygen molecules would bounce around on sub orbital ballistic loops. Some would become once again embedded in the dirt, others would be caught in a lunar cold trap, and still others would remain “airborne”. The resulting degraded vacuum would make some industrial operations impossible without creating a chamber and pumping it down to a micro Torr level. Of course this would still be far easier than doing it on earth.
Many things which are considered “ugly” on Earth are not so on the Moon. A simple example is strip mining of a virgin forest for coal, as historically occurred in Kentucky. Or the water cannon blasting of entire mountains in California, to extract gold.
The results of the strip mine are visually ugly in comparison with the pristine nature which was there before, but also have negative consequences to wildlife and to humans.
Strip mining on the Moon leaves, because of the weathering of the top layers of the surface by the solar wind, areas which differ in color and possibly texture. Strip mining leaves cut channels and mounds of regolith where before there were mounds of regolith. Because there is nothing alive, nothing is harmed. It would actually be wise to look at the anticipated growth paths of life, and to define good or bad effects in accordance with that. Earlier we noted that for the Moon, any trace atmosphere is pollution of the vacuum.
If men were to go to the moon, prior industrial work by rovers could result in areas poisoned by human standards. Rovers, for example, might work in an industrial process which covered them with traces of by products causing cancer if man was exposed to them. But there is no reason that the two would come into contact with each other. No more than a human would walk through the interior vats of a chemical factory which held similar bad stuff.
One type of direct defacing of the Moon would be carving advertising or political slogans into it, such that might be seen from Earth. It is relatively easy to conceive of such things being done at least such that any telescope would be able to view the surface etchings.
There are commercial disincentives to such attempts. The most obvious is that the same effort, applied to extraction of metals such as titanium, would likely yield a higher profit than the additional sales generated by the slogan viewed on Earth.
In fact, if many on Earth disapproved of it, and that is quite likely, it could lower sales.
Another arguable case of lunar pollution would be if an area was made inhabitable for humans by way of an industrial process concentrating poisonous or hazardous compounds in that area. Or possibly concentrating compounds in an area to the point that future rovers could not use it.
The book touches on this with reference to the areas around the giant crater Aristarchus, where radon-222 may be in various concentrations. Currently it is unknown to what levels and in what specific areas this radioactive element poisons that area. If the rovers were to work in the area, and by doing so carry radon-222 into another area, that second area could then be contaminated and be unsuitable for humans.