I have to agree. It seems to be terribly short-sighted to worry about polluting the Moon. Essentially what we're saying is, "no! please! For the love of god don't disturb the moon! Continue to destroy Earth instead!"

Don't people understand that a modest foothold on the Moon makes it possible to eventually move all your industrialization to some far away asteroid or something?? You have to get the foothold first though. If these people could actually stop us from industrializing the moon, then we never get that foothold, and we are ALL worse off in the long run.

This just seems like crazy talk to me. You could put every factory on Earth inside Copernicus crater and have room to spare. Are there really people who would object to that (if it were within our means)? Are there really people who would rather have a factory on Earth belching out pollution, so long as they can't see it??

In spite of the pollution caused by the industrial revolution, we are all better off because of it. We now have the wealth to talk about conservation. Imagine if such short-sighted people had been around in 1830 saying "whoa whoa! Not so fast! You can't build that factory until we work out ALL the possible consequences!" If that had happened in 1830 then you and I would be living on farms today, cutting down trees MORE than we do today to build our homes and heat our homes, we'd been poorly educated, there'd be no Internet, we'd all have at least 10 kids to help with chores. The world would be a terrible place! Can't you see that?