Asteroid mining is a neat chess move on a cosmic board, but the real win comes from the fine print. Right now, our environmental laws were drafted for soil, water, and air—not for mining rocks millions of miles away. The Outer Space Treaty already says we can't claim whole celestial bodies, but it’s vague on pollution, waste, or fair sharing of resources. So we’ll need a new set of rules that thread those terrestrial protections into space—no greenwashing, no unregulated dumping of ore dust into the vacuum. Think of it as drafting a treaty in a language that both Earth lawyers and rocket scientists can read. Until we get that, any “planetary‑friendly” claim is just a marketing slogan, not a legal guarantee.