More News Briefs

Once again, here are some brief comments on a few of things that have been happening in the world:

Having mentioned the apparent failure of the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission a few weeks ago (a few days ago contact was finally made with the probe, still in orbit around the Earth, but it seems that there is little if any chance of it going on to Mars), it was good to see more positive news for Mars exploration in the successful launch of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Mission, featuring the large rover Curiosity. If it reaches Mars successfully, this rover will be by far the biggest ever to explore Mars, and will no doubt do some amazing science in and around its landing site at Mars's Gale Crater, especially if it can match the longevity of the previous two rovers to explore Mars, Spirit and Opportunity. The latter rovers landed on Mars separately in 2004; Spirit stopped responding only last year, and Opportunity is still operating, making it the longest lasting Mars probe ever. Curiosity is five times larger than its two predecessors and carries ten times the mass of scientific instruments, so it is capable of accomplishing much more, even helping to lay the groundwork for a future human mission to the red planet. Of course a successful launch from Earth doesn't guarantee the spacecraft will make it to Mars; the real hard part will be landing (which scheduled to happen in August 2012). But at least the first hurdle has been overcome.

Back on Earth, revolution has returned to Egypt with new protests in Tahrir Square against the ruling military council. The protesters are fully justified in their anger, as the military has failed to noticeably improve the miserable human rights situation that existed under Mubarak (as shown by everything from the "virginity tests" they gave to some arrested female protesters to the continued suppression of dissident voices and the violence meted out to Coptic protesters not long ago), and seems inclined to maintain a long-term hold on power rather than submitting to civilian control. Whether the protesters will be able to force the military to relinquish power is another question. Now that Egypt is voting in its first post-Mubarak elections for parliament, we will soon see if the results, whatever they turn out to be, will lead to real change.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, there have been some seemingly positive developments with respect to Syria and Yemen. In an unprecedented move, the Arab League has voted to impose sanctions on Syria for its continued violent suppression of protests. Unfortunately the UN has not been able to a similar step, thanks to the usual friends of oppressive governments, China and Russia (not that the US has not been known to block UN votes against its own allies who engaged in harmful acts -- such as Israel's continued settlement building in Palestinian lands -- but overall China and Russia have an even worse record for blocking measures against reprehensible states). It is also uncertain how much effect the Arab League sanctions will have, as neither Lebanon or Iraq, which share long borders with Syria and would be needed to help enforce them, voted in favor. But at least it isolates Syria further. In Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh has finally agreed to leave power. Of course he hasn't actually left yet, and given his record, he may yet renege once again, and the immunity from prosecution the agreement gives him understandably doesn't sit well with many Yemeni protesters. But if they can really get rid of him, it would be a step in the right direction.

Speaking of small steps in the right direction, it's worth noting that we've also seen some of those in Burma (Myanmar) in recent months. One of the most notable was that the government actually listened to popular sentiment and stopped a dam project in the northern part of the country that was environmentally destructive and was mainly being built to provide power for China, not for Burma itself. They have also taken steps to reduce censorship and open up the political process, to the point that Aung San Suu Kyi herself may be able run for political office in the next elections. Some political prisoners have also been freed (though still only a minority of them) and government officials have maybe positive statements about liberalizing the country. Of course there is still a long ways to go, as the fact that most political prisoners have not been freed shows, and the junta-imposed constitution still gives the military a guaranteed share of power that it certainly does not in the least deserve. But it is still good to see positive signs out of a country which has long suffered under one of the world's worst regimes.

Here in Taiwan, the elections are getting closer and the DPP's Tsai Ing-wen has a slight lead in polls over KMT President Ma Ying-jeou. Complicating the race is the fact that former KMT heavyweight James Soong has decided to run yet again as the head of his so-called People's First Party. I really don't want to see any more of him, but on the plus side, he will mainly take votes from Ma, which makes it more likely that Tsai will win.

In the US, the so-called super-committee tasked with coming up with a plan to cut the budget deficit failed to reach an agreement. In some ways this is not a bad thing, as almost any agreement the Republicans would have been willing to sign on to would almost certainly have been awful. Unfortunately, until the right wing extremists have their numbers reduced substantially, long-term prospects for a reasonable budget deal remain dim.

News Briefs

Some brief comments on recent news stories:

The tragic series of self-immolations in Tibet have gotten some international attention, though not as much as they should have. There are a couple of petitions online that people can sign to encourage the world's leaders to put more pressure on China to stop its repression, one from Avaaz addressed to the leaders of the US, France, Britain, Australia, India, and the EU and the other on the White House's We the People petition site (the deadline for this is in only a day or so, but there are a number of other petitions that are worth signing here).

Unfortunately, the Russian mission to Phobos, the larger of Mars's tiny moons, seems to have suffered a glitch. If they can't fix it, the probe will remain stuck in Earth orbit rather than traveling on to Mars. This would be highly regrettable, as if this mission could fulfill its goals of exploring Phobos and sending a sample of its soil back to Earth, we could learn a lot. What's more, previous Russian missions to Mars, including the only previous attempts at missions to Phobos, have also failed (no, this isn't because of some kind of curse, conspiracy, or defensive action by intelligent Martians; it's just bad luck).

Flooding is still creating big problems in Thailand, and has hit some areas of Bangkok that I have been to in the past. As tragic as this has been for Thailand, it seems likely that Bangkok can expect more of this in the future, as it is slowly sinking while the world's oceans are rising due to global warming. The Thais haven't helped matters in the past by filling in many of the city's canals to make more roads (though there are still quite a few canals, it's no longer truly the Venice of the East, as some have called it). One might hope this year's flooding will prompt more long-term planning for Bangkok's future, as well as stronger measures to reduce carbon emissions (Thailand may not be anywhere near as bad as countries like the US, China and Australia in terms of emissions, but it no doubt could do better).

The future direction of Libya remains uncertain, and the government oppression goes on in Syria. When will the world be stirred to stronger action in the latter country? Or are the world's leaders secretly hoping the uprising will just peter out? Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has pledged to resign; let's hope he'll stick to that. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf looks set for reelection in Liberia, which is probably a good thing, though I read recently that she has some possible skeletons in her closet that make some Liberians suspicious of her, and perhaps if I investigated further I might end up agreeing with them. Still, she's done better than most other past and present African leaders, at least so far.

In the US, the results from the state and local elections look pretty good, at least from the little I've read. The "personhood" amendment in Mississippi thankfully lost, despite the state's conservatism. The anti-union referendum in Ohio lost in a landslide as well. And the Arizona state senator who pushed their absurd anti-immigrant law looks like he may have been recalled. I haven't yet checked on results from Texas, where there were a number of worthy propositions on the ballot. If they failed, I suppose I'll have to take some of the blame, as I forgot to send in the application to renew my registration in time to vote in this election. I'll certainly try to be sure not to make that mistake again. Also in the US, there's been a lot of reporting on sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Hermann Cain. I haven't bothered to read hardly any of these stories, but as I have said in other cases, I think he should be judged on whether he crossed the line into assault or engaged in repeated, egregious harassment. One or two suggestive remarks should not be considered a big deal. Of course no one should be voting for Cain anyway, because every one of his policy positions that I've heard are terrible.

In Taiwan, the campaigning for next January's elections for president, as well as the legislative elections, are heating up. I may have more to say on this in future posts. Also, changes are being made to Taiwan's laws on sex work, due to a court ruling that held the original laws to be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the new laws are not much of an improvement. Each county and city is supposed to set up a red light district where sex work will be legal, but nothing in the law penalizes them for failing to do so, so none of them have done it. Outside the (non-existent) legal areas, both sex workers and customers will now be fined, instead of just sex workers, but this doesn't do much to help sex workers except make it less likely that their customers will testify against them. As I will argue in detail in a future post (if I get around to writing it), they should simply legalize sex work, though it should be regulated heavily and any strong measures to protect workers' rights should be in place (as should be the case with all industries) to prevent exploitation. But so far, few politicians in Taiwan are willing to go that far (I should note that the one legislator who made a proposal along those lines was a KMT member; though I am not at all a fan of the KMT, some individual legislators do good work on some issues).

Seven Billion Humans

According to United Nations estimates, the world's human population reached seven billion yesterday. As there have been many news stories about this over the past month, many people are already aware of this, but I suspect a large percentage of them haven't really thought about how incredible that number is -- and how scary.

Numbers in the billions, whether referring to people, money, or other things, are thrown about so often in news stories that it's easy to forget how big a number a billion really is. For instance, if you started counting at one number a second, you could count to a million in a little over 11 days of constant counting, but it would take over 30 years to count to a billion. So seven billion people is a lot of people. What makes this number even more incredible is how much larger it is than previous population totals. Before the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, the total human population probably never exceeded 10 million. The world's population grew to several hundred million by the time of the Roman Empire and the Chinese Han dynasty, but it was only with the industrial revolution that it started to grow dramatically. Soon after 1800, the world population first hit one billion. It doubled in a little over a century to two billion, and by 1960 it was three billion. In my own lifetime, the world population has gone from under four billion to today's seven billion. In other words, today there are almost twice as many people in the world as there were when I was born around forty years ago, and there are seven times as many people now as there were just over two centuries ago.

This continual growth has meant that we have had to constantly expand food production at a rapid rate to feed everyone. Not everyone gets enough food, of course, though at present this is a distribution problem rather than an indication of an absolute shortage of food. However, many experts fear we will not always be able to increase food production fast enough to keep pace with population growth. Our growing population has also put a great strain on many other resources, from fresh water to mineral and energy resources. In addition, humans are squeezing out many other species. The biggest reason that many large mammals such as tigers and orangutans are endangered is that we are taking their habitat away with our constant greed for more land to exploit. It is not unusual to read about efforts to cull animals such as wolves and bears because they are "encroaching" on agricultural or ranch land, but in fact in almost every case it is really the humans who originally encroached on the lands that these animals once roamed freely, so one could argue that the culls are aimed at the wrong target, a point humorously made in this Non Sequitur cartoon by Wiley Miller.

Though few would seriously argue for a cull of excess humans, more and more people are starting to openly acknowledge that our environmental problems and overpopulation are closely intertwined, and so advocate measures to slow and eventually stop population growth. Interestingly, it is only recently that a few environmental groups have begun discuss the problem of human population growth head on, as related in this NYT article. The more extreme coercive measures adopted in China are obviously not acceptable, and other issues like gender imbalances and population aging have to be addressed, but it is equal clear that it will be impossible for the Earth to sustain population growth at the current rate forever, especially if more and more people in big countries like China and India demand a standard of living equal to that in the developed world.

Other than sex education, promotion of family planning, and improved access to contraceptives, one of the most effective ways to control population growth is by empowering women. The more control women have over reproduction, the less uncontrolled growth we will see. Of course, general measures to alleviate poverty will also help, as generally speaking more economically developed nations have lower birth rates. In the developed world, it would also be good to see more adoptions and fewer fertility treatments, as there are more than enough children in need of parents for all the couples who want children (though I am aware that the red tape involved makes putting them together a difficult process). However, most efforts at reducing population growth will have to focus on the developing world. Solving this problem won't be easy, but with effort we can ensure that humanity doesn't overrun the world completely and thereby we can make life better for humans and all our fellow inhabitants of the Earth.