Terraforming Mars: Can we do it and does Mars have rights?

Glenn Reynolds, Robert Pinson, Robert Zubrin, and Ron Bailey have raised the issue of ethics in terraforming, but Kim Stanley Robinson also dealt with the topic (in a fictional context) in some detail in his Mars Trilogy.  Robinson is a good job in creating characters debating the pros and cons of exploring, colonizing, and terraforming Mars.

Zubrin also makes the argument that the technology for (relatively) inexpensive travel to Mars exists now.  Too bad Newt Gingrich did not argue his Mars plan along those lines (although it is certainly not to late for him to do so).

Related site:  The Mars Society