[wing-_-nuts]

>If a civilization has sufficiently advanced technology, then I would imagine they would be scouring the cosmos for more resources.

Stable elements are not scare, life is scarce. I would hope that any civilization advanced enough to travel the verse would be able to strip mine the elements it needs from lifeless rocks and leave planets with life alone.

Bezos is right that we should ultimately move resource extraction to space.

[baja_blast]

Also extracting resources from astroids avoids the problem of getting them out of the gravity well. Sure they could mine Earth, but they would have to haul it off Earth too.