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RandomFactor writes:

In a paper published April 16th researchers make the case that we should designate and protect 85% of the solar system as 'protected wilderness'

We make a general argument that, as a matter of fixed policy, development should be limited to one eighth, with the remainder set aside. We argue that adopting a "one-eighth principle" is far less restrictive, overall, than it might seem. One eighth of the iron in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater than all of the Earth's currently estimated iron ore reserves, and it may well suffice for centuries.

The rational for the limitation is more to do with the nature of human expansion rather than just protecting the environment of the rest of the solar system.

A limit of some sort is necessary because of the problems associated with exponential growth. We note that humans are poor at estimating the pace of such growth and, as a result, the limitations of a resource are hard to recognize before the final three doubling times. These three doublings take utilization successively from an eighth to a quarter, then to a half, and then to the point of exhaustion. Population growth and climate change are instances of unchecked exponential growth. Each places strains upon our available resources, each is a recognized problem that we would like to control, but attempts to do so at this comparatively late stage in their development have not been encouraging.

There are challenges and the authors point out that inaccessible resources, like Jupiter, should be excluded from the calculation and that more research is needed to even determine the amount of resources accessible with accuracy.

Assessing how many tons of potentially extractable resources are awaiting us on those worlds will require a lot more space exploration

Additionally, this is not a limit we are going to hit anytime soon

"Worldwide, the present rate of planetary mission launches is 15 per decade," the authors wrote. "At this rate, even just the nearly 200 worlds of the solar system that gravity has made spherical would take 130 years to visit once."

As an aside, it is not a given that resources in Jupiter are inaccessible with numerous articles on atmospheric mining and extraction approaches and even colonization of Jupiter available.

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