Tag: international law

Inconvenient Truths

Our Current Human Population is Unsustainable

All attempts to address the effects of human-induced climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and environmental pollution will utterly fail without a substantial reduction in human population.

The only acceptable method to reduce human population will require a substantial number of people opting for one child or no children.

Those of us alive today are burning through the Earth’s natural resources and polluting the environment (our environment) with toxic substances at a rate that is unsustainable for another one or two generations let alone a hundred. This aspect of overpopulation doesn’t get enough attention, and is exactly why our current population is an existential threat that must be addressed immediately and decisively by all nations of the Earth.

We Have Too Many Pets

The number of dogs and cats and other pets worldwide is exacerbating the effects of human overpopulation significantly.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Needs to be Repealed and Replaced

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was enacted in 1791. Much has changed since then! As written, the amendment is too general and does not take into account current realities of gun ownership and use.

The current interpretation of the Second Amendment is a moral and humanistic abomination.

Michael Moore has proposed a 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution which should seriously be considered, at least as a starting point.

We Need Binding International Laws

Globally, we must work toward establishing a global “super-government” that enacts and enforces binding international laws that are in the best interest of all the world’s peoples. Individual nations will have to give up some sovereignty in order to effectively address global threats such as nuclear weapons, warfare, human rights violations, pandemics, climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, cybercriminality, and, yes, the proliferation of Earth-orbiting satellites. Whether the United Nations can be strengthened to serve in this role or a new organization created will need to be explored.

There is No Evidence for the Existence of God

Why does the world have thousands of religions? Why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people? The most sensible explanation is that religion is entirely a human creation based on basic human wants and needs and that there are no supernatural forces actively present in our daily lives.

The greatest of all mysteries is why does our universe exist and how did it come into being? Religion tries to answer these questions, of course, but I think it more likely that our intellect (as amazing as it is) is incapable of fully comprehending these questions let alone the answers. We have only our empirical knowledge of our world (and the universe) and our moral pragmatism (humanism) to guide us.

There is No Evidence for the Existence of an Afterlife

Regarding immortality, since we have no consciousness of anything before we were born, why should we expect that we would have any consciousness of anything after we die? To me, that is the most tragic fact of human existence. Within a few minutes (or hours, if extraordinary measures are taken) after death occurs, all of our knowledge and experience—our memories—everything that makes us who we are—is irretrievably lost. All that remains of us are the artifacts we have left behind (writing, music, art, etc.) and the memories of those who are still living who knew us. After all the people who knew us personally have died, then all that remains of our existence are artifacts. And, sooner or later, all of those will be gone, too. This truly emphasizes the importance of this life, of this world, of this time. How we live our lives and treat others today, tomorrow, and the next day are of paramount importance. It is all we have, or will ever have.

Not believing in God and not believing in an afterlife is incredibly liberating, and allows us to see our world and our lives through less varnished eyes.

A Shroud of Satellites

The first five Iridium satellites were launched on May 5, 1997, and by 2002 there were 66 operational satellites, providing consistent global satellite phone coverage. These satellites have the interesting property that their antenna panels sometimes reflect sunlight down to the Earth’s surface, causing what came to be known as “Iridium flares”, delighting terrestrial observers—myself included. During an Iridium flare event, the satellite suddenly appears and gradually brightens and then dims to invisibility as it moves slowly across a section of sky over several seconds. Many of these events reach negative magnitude, with some getting as bright as magnitude -9.5.

The next generation of Iridium satellites began launching in 2017, but these satellites are constructed in such a way that they do not produce flares. Gradually, the original Iridium satellites are de-orbiting (or being de-orbited), so eventually there will be no more Iridium flares.

The Iridium flares haven’t been much of a nuisance to astronomers because the number of events per night for a given observer have been in the single digits.

But now we’re facing too much of a good thing. The first volley of 60 Starlink satellites was launched on May 24, with 12,000 expected to be in orbit by 2028. These satellites will provide broadband internet service to the entire planet. Though the Starlink satellites aren’t expected to produce spectacular flares like the first generation of the Iridium satellites, they do reflect sunlight as any satellite does, and the sheer number of them in relatively low Earth orbit is sure to cause a lot of headaches for astronomers and stargazers throughout the world.

I estimate that about 468 of the 12,000 satellites will be above your horizon at any given moment, but how many of them will be visible will depend on their altitude (both in terms of distance above the Earth’s surface and degrees above the horizon), and where they are relative to the Earth’s shadow cone (they have to be illuminated by sunlight to be seen).

And Starlink will not be the only swarm of global broadband internet satellites, as other companies and countries plan to fly their own satellite constellations.

This situation illustrates yet another reason why we need a binding set of international laws that apply to all nations and are enforced by a global authority. The sooner we have this the better, as our survival may depend upon it. How else can we effectively confront anthropogenic climate change and the precipitous decline in biodiversity?

As for these swarms of satellites, two requirements are needed now to minimize their impact on astronomy:

  1. Build the satellites with minimally reflective materials and finishes
  2. Fly one internationally-managed robust constellation of global broadband internet satellites, and require competing companies and nations to utilize them, similar to the co-location often required for terrestrial communication towers

I’d like to close this piece with a few questions. Will future “stargazers” go out to watch all the satellites and generally ignore the real stars and constellations because they are too “boring”? Will professional astronomers increasingly have to move their operations off the Earth’s surface to the far side of the Moon and beyond? Will we continue to devalue the natural world and immerse ourselves ever more deeply into our human-invented virtual environments?