Evidence for flowing water on Mars: This opens up the possibility of life, of wonders people cannot begin to imagine. Its discovery is an astonishing achievement. Meanwhile, martian scientists continue their search for intelligent life on Earth.
People might be captivated by the thought of organisms on another planet, but they seem to have lost interest in their own.
The Oxford Junior Dictionary has been excising the waymarks of the living world. Adders, blackberries, bluebells, conkers, holly, magpies, minnows, otters, primroses, thrushes, weasels and wrens are now surplus to requirements.
In the past four decades, the world has lost 50 percent of its vertebrate wildlife, but across the latter half of this period, there has been a steep decline in media coverage. Last year, according to a study at Cardiff University, there were as many news stories broadcast by the BBC and ITV about Madeleine McCann (who went missing in 2007) as there were about the entire range of environmental issues.
Think of what would change if people valued terrestrial water as much as they value the possibility of water on Mars. Only 3 percent of the water on this planet is fresh; and of that, two-thirds is frozen. Yet, people lay waste to the accessible portion. Sixty percent of the water used in farming is needlessly piddled away by careless irrigation. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are sucked dry, while what remains is often so contaminated that it threatens the lives of those who drink it. In the UK, domestic demand is such that the upper reaches of many rivers disappear during the summer. Yet, still people install clunky old toilets and showers that gush like waterfalls.
As for salty water, of the kind that so enthralled the masses when apparently detected on Mars, on Earth people express their appreciation with a frenzy of destruction.
A new report suggests fish numbers have halved since 1970. Pacific blue-fin tuna, which once roamed the seas in untold millions, have been reduced to an estimated 40,000, yet still they are pursued. Coral reefs are under such pressure that most could be gone by 2050. And in their own deep space, their desire for exotic fish rips through a world scarcely better known to people than the Red Planet’s surface. Trawlers are now working at depths of 2,000 meters. One can only guess at what they could be destroying.
A few hours before the discovery on Mars was announced, Shell terminated its Arctic oil prospecting in the Chukchi Sea. For the company’s shareholders, it is a minor disaster: The loss of US$4 billion; for those who love the planet and the life it sustains, it is a stroke of great fortune. It happened only because the company failed to find sufficient reserves. Had Shell succeeded, it would have exposed one of the most vulnerable places on Earth to spills, which are almost inevitable where containment is almost impossible. Are such matters going to be left to chance?
At the beginning of last month, two weeks after he granted Shell permission to drill in the Chukchi Sea, US President Barack Obama traveled to Alaska to warn Americans about the devastating effects that climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels could catalyze in the Arctic.
“It’s not enough just to talk the talk,” he told them. “We’ve got to walk the walk.”
People should “embrace the human ingenuity that can do something about it,” he said.
Human ingenuity is on abundant display at NASA, which released those astounding images, but not when it comes to policy.
Let the market decide: this is the way in which governments seek to resolve planetary destruction. Leave it to the conscience of consumers, while that conscience is muted and confused by advertising and corporate lies. In a near-vacuum of information, people are left to decide what they should take from other species and other people, what they should allocate to themselves or leave to succeeding generations. Surely there are some resources and some places — such as the Arctic and the deep sea — whose exploitation should simply stop?
All this drilling and digging and trawling and dumping and poisoning — what is it for, anyway? Does it enrich human experience, or stifle it?
A couple of weeks ago the hashtag #extremecivilisation was launched on Twitter. Suggestions have flooded in. Here are just a few of the products that Internet users have found. All of them, apparently, are real.
An egg tray for your fridge that syncs with your telephone to let you know how many eggs are left. A gadget for scrambling them — inside the shell. Wigs for babies, to allow “baby girls with little or no hair at all the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic hair style.” The iPotty, which permits toddlers to keep playing on their iPads while toilet training. A spider-proof shed. A snow sauna, on sale in the United Arab Emirates, in which you can create a winter wonderland with the flick of a switch. A refrigerated watermelon case on wheels: Indispensable for picnics — or perhaps not, as it weighs more than the melon. Anal bleaching cream, for, to be honest, who wants to know? An “automatic watch rotator” that saves you the bother of winding your luxury wrist-candy. A smartphone for dogs, with which they can take pictures of themselves. Pre-peeled bananas, in polystyrene trays covered in cling film; just peel back the packaging.
Every year, clever new ways of wasting stuff are devised and every year people become more inured to the pointless consumption of the world’s precious resources.
With each subtle intensification, the baseline of normality shifts. It should not be surprising to discover that the richer a country becomes, the less its people care about their impacts on the living planet.
People’s alienation from the world of wonders, with which they evolved, has only intensified since David Bowie described a girl stumbling through a “sunken dream,” on her way to be “hooked to the silver screen,” where a long series of distractions diverts her from life’s great questions. The song, of course, was Life on Mars.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations