The following statement was published in January 2026 and represents the consensus view of the CSE Founders.
We are the product of individual protons and electrons left to Nature’s devices for billions of years. In only the last half century, humanity splashed back into the wider cosmos, across Earth’s orbit and beyond the edges of the Solar System. From accelerating discoveries in science to exciting engineering breakthroughs, we became a more connected society. But this came at a high cost due to the environmental destruction such progress dragged in its wake. As humanity begins to anchor itself more permanently in outer space, concerns regarding the degradation of nature are playing out on a new stage — the space environment. The lessons of environmental history on Earth are manifold, and it is more important than ever that humanity learn them in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
In response, we hold that outer space is a human environment, and, alongside the terrestrial environment, is worthy of our respect, consideration, and long-term stewardship. For this reason, we established the Center for Space Environmentalism to inspire, inform, and guide the preservation and protection of the space environment.
Traditional space stakeholders are large entities with larger-than-life capabilities: nation-states, militaries, and more recently, billionaire-owned corporations. We rise up to the same scale as a grassroots collective whose power is in its numbers and diversity – we do not concede ground. We amplify the voice of the global public, as well as the peoples who have historically endured the consequences of outsized actions of traditional actors. We further give voice to Nature on and off the Earth’s surface as well as to intangible potentialities, such as scientific discovery, social justice, and cultural significance.
We balance the differing views of the multitude of stakeholders with the intention, above all, to create action that manifests a future that realizes our vision outlined below. We are a group of people that braves exploring uncomfortable questions and steps into action, advocates for an outcome, and moves onto the next challenge. We set our sights not solely on a theory or horizon, but also towards individual objects along the way by adopting the spirit of the “Yes, if” ethos of the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance safety culture.
We believe that:
Space is an environment and is now a part of the human environment.
A continuum exists between the coupled system of the Earth’s environment and the space environment, and increasing human space activities stand to affect that continuum.
The Earth and space environments alike are worthy of respect, consideration, and long-term stewardship.
The sustainability of the entire Earth-space system for all stakeholders must be considered, rather than simply using space as a means to make human activities on Earth more sustainable.
If left unchallenged, the rapid acceleration of human space activities creates significant risk to, and may yield irreversible harm in, terrestrial ecosystems and “pristine” space environments alike unless proper precautions are taken or incorporated into regulation.
Humans have an obligation to consider the long-term consequences of their space-related activities on both the Earth and space environments, as well as on the rights of cultures, the rights of present and future generations, and the rights of Nature.
Given limitations of current scientific and policy research, and recognizing what we do not presently know about the space environment, the Precautionary Principle should be employed in decision making when appropriate, on all scales of governmental and commercial space-related activities.
Increased interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches among the humanities, arts, social sciences and physical sciences are necessary to more completely consider and find solutions to emerging issues related to human engagement with the space environment.
Proper stewardship of the space environment is required in order to bring about a truly just, equitable, and sustainable future for humanity on Earth and in outer space.
It is in humanity’s interest to prevent potentially irreversible contamination of outer space by carefully considering the consequences of acts undertaken in the pursuit of its goals and practicing minimally invasive space exploration.
“Progress” is measured by the ability to complete a task with minimal adverse damage, or to know when to cease or use limited resources when abundance without recklessness is equally viable.
Space activities should maximize benefits to the greatest number of people.
We are not the sole entity to speak on behalf of the space environment, and we will take every opportunity to work with others in its defense.
Emerging in a moment of entangled hope and despair, we have agency to make decisions and try new things.
As such, we seek:
A safe and sustainable space environment for all people and for its own sake.
Prevention of outcomes illustrated by environmental history in which catastrophes resulted from inadequate attention to the consequences of human actions upon the natural world.
Common legal recognition that outer space is, and for some time has been, a human environment.
That people and governments around the world afford the space environment the same general kinds of protections that conscientious humans aspire to apply to the terrestrial environment.
Currently, space-related human activities are governed by the choices of nation-states supervising private commercial actors to varying degrees. With few legal guardrails, activities in space stand to have profound — and even lethal — consequences for terrestrial ecologies and human inhabitants.
Existing legal frameworks and the major stakeholders occupying space have changed dramatically from the late 1950s when space exploration first began and the late 1960s when the Outer Space Treaty (OST) was framed. The OST does not contemplate contemporary activities, implicitly focusing on the geopolitical alignments of the Cold War era. The treaty also does not envision the proliferation of commercial activities that now dominate the space industry and environment.
Moreover, the OST and current legal discourse surrounding space regulation, governance, and mission planning use language that does not accurately reflect the considerations of all stakeholders, referring to actions inherently as “uses” and “exploration” of space that support an exploitative view of space as an object of human utility first and foremost. This underpinning implicitly excludes mechanisms for humans to function as guests in an environment to which they owe as much as they take. It also relies heavily on the expectation of good-faith actions in service of common goals, self-policing, and voluntary best efforts and practices.
As a consequence, the public absorbs the consequences of nation-states’ actions without the guarantee or transparency of a meaningful enforcement regime. Furthermore, the existing framework fails to realize that some actions are inherently detrimental to the space environment and Earth-space continuum and should not be undertaken in order to preserve that environment.
Similarly, launching states increasingly place a high priority on planting seeds for commercial space capabilities and space-based military capacity. We see increasingly today the consequences of those decisions: the commercial sector has evolved to operate independently of civil objectives and Earth’s orbit has become coveted as the “ultimate high ground.” Consequently, opportunities to participate in decision-making are narrowing for public citizens while widening for defense and commercial stakeholders. With the proliferation of military and commercial missions to space, the intentions of human activity in space have shifted to benefit specialized groups of people with comparatively fewer options for public stakeholders’ participation in decision making.
The CSE therefore calls on people, governments and private actors everywhere to take the following actions:
Extend the protections and considerations of existing terrestrial environmental law to the space environment in appropriate ways;
Extend the protections and considerations of existing terrestrial environmental law to aspects of the Earth environment that are traditionally outside of environmental impact analysis, such as launch rates accelerating;
Recognize the status and value of cultural resources in space and protect them as a matter of law, and follow through on the effective implementation of that law;
Offer means by which private actors can abide by the Planetary Protection measures in place for NASA missions and other suggestions by the Committee on Space Research Panel on Planetary Protection;
Prohibit destructive antisatellite weapon testing in space by international treaty with meaningful enforcement provisions; and
Intentionally solicit and incorporate the views of the public in the rulemaking and legislative processes concerning space activities from the processes’ beginnings, particularly from traditionally underrepresented and/or marginalized groups.
And the U.S., in particular, should:
Revisit the Federal Communication Commission “categorical exclusion” of space activities from scrutiny under the National Environmental Policy Act or identify a more suitable method;
More thoroughly consider during Federal Aviation Administration launch license evaluations the aggregate effects of space launch activity on the upper atmosphere, including unintentional re-entries of spacecraft and upper rocket stages;
Limit, to the greatest practical extent possible, unintended electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) from satellites through appropriate FCC licensing requirements; and
Reconsider the applicability of “Findings of No Significant Impact” to launch cadences that have increased to more than double their original scope given a more thorough understanding of the effects of global space activity on the atmosphere and surface environment.
We recognize that there is a human future in space. We are driven by the economic practice of “internalizing externalities,” which accounts for both the continued “use” of outer space and the status of humans as “guests”. The freedoms of others in space are connected to our own, and connected to each other, from billionaires to the common folk. We champion the idea that a sustainable future depends critically on a healthy and protected space environment. As in the case of the terrestrial environment, preservation cannot rely on individual good-faith actions, but rather achievable, consensus-driven norms of behavior taken from proven successes on Earth and achievable ambitions for the future. As in all areas of the commercial sector, self-policing has its limits: a single malicious actor has the potential to disrupt outcomes for the entire group.
Our goals can be reached only through the creation of durable legal instruments, with meaningful consequences that protect and restore the health of the Earth-Space environment. We support the rule of law as the best means by which to establish enforceable standards governing human activity in and around outer space. We support policies informed by evidence where it exists, and by the Precautionary Principle where evidence does not exist. We support policies that center space as a human environment and give at least co-equal consideration to the long-term integrity and sovereignty of that environment. And we recognize the rights of people affected by such decisions to participate in making those decisions through the democratic process.
Humanity stands to gain a truly sustainable future closer to abundance, integrity and harmony with Nature if it heeds our call to action. It will gain lasting access to outer space that is not contingent upon the vagaries of potentially conflicting (inter)national laws. It will see preservation of human material culture on the Moon and elsewhere, as well as reduced stress on terrestrial systems such as the Earth’s atmosphere. This is further balanced by an enhanced, lasting security in space that rushed militarization cannot provide. As with any law, lifetimes of maintaining this balance require consistent attention and follow-up, which creates a recurrent state of “completing” the action.
The success of this work manifests a future in which the space debris population peaks imminently and begins a decline to more stable levels. The pace of launch and reentry is more seriously considered within environmental frameworks, limiting potential harm to the atmosphere, oceans, endangered species, and local communities. The public comes to recognize that one cannot ‘purchase’ enlightenment through the Overview Effect and expect to justify the ecologically expensive endeavor of space tourism with the potential byproduct of a sudden appreciation for Earth’s rarity in the cosmos. The risk to commercial aviation and human life and property on the ground decreases, and damage to launch sites is reduced. It is a space environment in which the natural history of Solar System bodies is maintained, including meteorite impacts on surfaces, natural weather and geological patterns remain uninterrupted and unaltered by human engineering, and extraterrestrial biomes remain uncontaminated by foreign organisms. It is a sky toward which anyone on Earth can look up, experience an unbroken view of the cosmos free of interruption from human-made light and glints, and truly explore space. It is a scientific future in which all wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum are afforded a view of the deep universe without interruption from unintended, instrumental ‘noise’ from other stakeholders.
Inaction risks ongoing access — both as a commercially-favored use and a personal, self-evident right — to outer space. One example of jeopardized access is the runaway production of space debris known as “Kessler Syndrome”. This may render orbital space near the Earth hazardous to all spacecraft, even those merely transiting through it. It is potentially deadly to humans aboard those spacecraft. It further risks the loss of human cultural heritage on Earth achieved only through connections to the sky and the cosmos that come from the unique vantage point of our lonely blue marble and thousands of years of oral history. By contaminating the terrestrial sky and the worlds of the Solar System, we further risk the irreversible loss of answers to the greatest questions of humanity, such as our origins, our purpose, and our connection to the bigger picture. It further threatens a perpetuation of longstanding human abuse of Nature’s integrity and sovereignty. None of these risks are acceptable to us.
Inaction can result in the loss of future scientific discovery and a degraded quality of human life. Presently, scientific exploration of the cosmos is an imperfect example of a symbiotic relationship to the space environment. However, expanding into the cosmos offers unique benefits as well as risks, such as the potential to better understand how life came to exist in the Solar System, and the geological processes of other planets. Likewise, unchecked human activity in space threatens the accidental and irreversible contamination of these sources. Celestial bodies and space between them teem with potential scientific discovery that does not necessitate all times the visitation of sites, and a minimally invasive approach to space exploration does well to preserve potential scientific discovery and minimize the risk of its loss for future generations.
The current lack of a space policy regime favors actors threatening the space environment precisely because it lacks specificity and enforcement. Historically, space policy has been with the intention of maximizing profitability and commercial access foremost. Humanity has encountered this before when looking to regulate other activities affecting the Earth environment. While it can be a fearful reaction to claim that regulation jeopardizes jobs, we reject that notion in favor of the argument that a healthier environment leads to a healthier population and increased productivity. We similarly reject the idea that we cannot effectively regulate the space environment or take any proactive steps to protect and steward it. We require only the balance of public opinion to shift in our favor. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world,” wrote the American anthropologist Margaret Mead. “Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” We also hold fast to the view expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Unlike the human story of our Earth, so much of the history of the human presence in outer space has yet to be written. We stand to benefit from the lessons of environmental history in order to ensure that this history is one that recognizes and defends the integrity of the space environment while ensuring that the benefits of its development redound to all people and not simply the wealthy and powerful few.
We promote a vision of humanity’s future in space that is ethically just, legally defensible, and environmentally sound. The possibilities are limitless. The future is brought about by the crashing of many waves: laws that frame it, individuals that stretch and break those laws, and consequences that follow in those individuals’ wakes. But these waves are mere ripples upon an even greater tide: the consensus of the public. You, as a member of the public, have the capability to advocate loudly for something you love. We most want to support that vision in you and create a community in which this is done for one another, such that we claim our rights as stakeholders in a global conversation and use those rights to advocate on behalf of the environment.
Through our hobbies, passions, and moral compasses, each individual carries a unique blend of strengths and angles. Be enterprising in learning your “levers” and how to pull them. We will support you in bringing that about however you resonate with our core beliefs. For some of us, investing is our superpower. For others, it’s writing, educating, and public speaking. For others still, it’s visual art, photography, dance, or film. And for some, it’s being policy makers. One size does not fit all.
We call on passionate, thoughtful people everywhere to recognize that space is an environment. Reflect on what this means in your part of the world, your language, your traditions, and your niche. We invite humanity to join us in our quest to make that vision a reality in our shared, collective future, especially because these decisions are being made today, and we don’t want to see them made without you.