As I envision the construction sequence and application construction and usage in GEO, there are two means for restoring the earth surface ecosystem which it enables.
First, the "total recycling" plants in GEO, converting civilization's worst toxic wastes which are not recyclable by man or nature at this time, back into their component elements, within giant solar powered recycling plants operating on the simple mass spectrometer principle. This would prevent these wastes from being dumped into the ecosystem, as it is done today, one way or another.
However, many of these toxins, such as pesticides, are dumped directly into the environment to solve one problem, but causing other problems elsewhere.
Second, if the toxic material from civilization eventually causes a cascade failure of the world's ecosystem, proceeding with destroying mankind's biosystem resource base, if KESTS to GEO were already operational and means for building space settlements in GEO at a high rate robotically from Lunar resources mostly, there still could be a way, if much of humanity moved up into GEO, at least for the duration. The drastic measures that might cleanse the ecosystem such that it might restart recovery, could then be taken, perhaps. If genetic archives of by then extinct critical bioforms have been saved in GEO or on the ground, some opportunity to rejuvenate the biosystem exists that way, too. It would take an immense amount of effort by people to do these things, watching over and nurturing the various kinds of lifeforms on the ground while they learn how to survive and coexist in some balancing effort. The GEO habit ring of space settlements, if built and lived in, could hold many times the present population of earth, so there could be lots of people to do the job.
Of course, humanity would need to have progressed beyond the present-day fascination with violence and lovelessness conflicts, and focus on nurturing and improvement of all concerned. Humanity would also need to be more intellectually functional than our present-day educational system is producing, including the orientation away from conflict, turning a bit toward nurturing, for all this to work right.

Copyright © 2003 by J E D Cline