Tournament: NSDA qualifiers | Round: Quads | Opponent: astroworld | Judge: anthonys depression
Prefer my framework for the following reasons- Westacott ‘19.
https://www.thoughtco.com/basic-principles-of-utilitarianism-3862064
- Pleasure or Happiness Is the Only Thing That Truly Has Intrinsic Value.
Utilitarianism gets its name from the term "utility," which in this context does not mean "useful" but, rather, means pleasure or happiness. To say that something has intrinsic value means that it is simply good in itself. A world in which this thing exists, or is possessed, or is experienced, is better than a world without it (all other things being equal). Intrinsic value contrasts with instrumental value. Something has instrumental value when it is a means to some end. For example, a screwdriver has instrumental value to the carpenter; it is not valued for its own sake but for what can be done with it. Now Mill admits that we seem to value some things other than pleasure and happiness for their own sake—we value health, beauty, and knowledge in this way. But he argues that we never value anything unless we associate it in some way with pleasure or happiness. Thus, we value beauty because it is pleasurable to behold. We value knowledge because, usually, it is useful to us in coping with the world, and hence is linked to happiness. We value love and friendship because they are sources of pleasure and happiness. Pleasure and happiness, though, are unique in being valued purely for their own sake. No other reason for valuing them needs to be given. It is better to be happy than sad. This can't really be proved. But everyone thinks this. Mill thinks of happiness as consisting of many and varied pleasures. That's why he runs the two concepts together. Most utilitarians, though, talk mainly of happiness, and that is what we will do from this point on.
2. Actions Are Right Insofar as They Promote Happiness, Wrong Insofar as They Produce Unhappiness.
This principle is controversial. It makes utilitarianism a form of consequentialism since it says that the morality of an action is decided by its consequences. The more happiness is produced among those affected by the action, the better the action is. So, all things being equal, giving presents to a whole gang of children is better than giving a present to just one. Similarly, saving two lives is better than saving one life. That can seem quite sensible. But the principle is controversial because many people would say that what decides the morality of an action is the motive behind it. They would say, for instance, that if you give $1,000 to charity because you want to look good to voters in an election, your action is not so deserving of praise as if you gave $50 to charity motivated by compassion, or a sense of duty.
3. Everyone's Happiness Counts Equally.
This may strike you as a rather obvious moral principle. But when it was put forward by Bentham (in the form, "everyone to count for one; no-one for more than one") it was quite radical. Two hundred years ago, it was a commonly held view that some lives, and the happiness they contained, were simply more important and valuable than others. For example, the lives of masters were more important than slaves; the well-being of a king was more important than that of a peasant. So in Bentham's time, this principle of equality was decidedly progressive. It lay behind calls on the government to pass policies that would benefit all equally, not just the ruling elite. It is also the reason why utilitarianism is very far removed from any kind of egoism. The doctrine does not say that you should strive to maximize your own happiness. Rather, your happiness is just that of one person and carries no special weight. Utilitarians like the Australian philosopher Peter Singer take this idea of treating everyone equally very seriously. Singer argues that we have the same obligation to help needy strangers in far-off places as we have to help those closest to us. Critics think that this makes utilitarianism unrealistic and too demanding. But in "Utilitarianism," Mill attempts to answer this criticism by arguing that the general happiness is best served by each person focusing primarily on themselves and those around them. Bentham's commitment to equality was radical in another way, too. Most moral philosophers before him had held that human beings have no particular obligations to animals since animals can't reason or talk, and they lack free will. But in Bentham's view, this is irrelevant. What matters is whether an animal is capable of feeling pleasure or pain. He doesn't say that we should treat animals as if they were human. But he does think that the world is a better place if there is more pleasure and less suffering among the animals as well as among us. So we should at least avoid causing animals unnecessary suffering
Ian Sample 7-19-2019 “Apollo 11 site should be granted heritage status, says space agency boss” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/19/apollo-11-site-heritage-status-space-agency-moon (PhD at Queens Mary College)Elmer
But protecting lunar heritage may not be straightforward. On Earth, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) decides what deserves world heritage status from nominations sent by countries that claim ownership of the sites. Different rules apply in space. The UN’s outer space treaty, a keystone of space law, states that all countries are free to explore and use space, but warns it “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”. In other words, space is for all and owned by none. Wörner is not put off and sees no need for troublesome regulations. “My hope is that humanity is smart enough not to go back to this type of earthly protection. Just protect it. That’s enough. Just protect it and have everybody agree,” he said. A no-go zone of 50 metres around Tranquility base should do the job, he added. Martin Rees, the Cambridge cosmologist and astronomer royal, said there was a case for designating the sites so future generations and explorers were aware of their importance. “If there are any artefacts there, they shouldn’t be purloined,” he said. “Probably orbiting spacecraft will provide routine CCTV-style coverage which would prevent this from being done clandestinely.” Beyond the dust-covered hardware that stands motionless on the moon, Lord Rees suspects future activity could drive calls for broader lunar protection. The Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmidt has advocated strip mining the moon for helium-3, a potential source of energy. The proposal, which Rees suggests has raised eyebrows in the community, could potentially provoke a backlash. “There might be pressure to preserve the more attractive moonscapes against such despoilation, and to try to enforce regulations as in the Antarctic,” he said. Fifty years on from Apollo 11, the moon is still a place to make statements. In January, the Chinese space agency became the first to land a probe on the far side. On Monday, India hopes to launch a robotic probe, the delayed Chandrayaan-2 lander that is bound for the unchartered lunar south pole. Far more is on the cards. Major space agencies, including ESA and Nasa, plan a “lunar gateway”, described by Wörner as a “bus stop to the moon and beyond”. His vision is for a “moon village”, but rather than a sprawl of domes, shops and a cosy pub, it is more an agreement between nations and industry to cooperate on lunar projects. The private sector is eager to be involved. Between now and 2024, at least five companies aim to launch lunar landers. In May, Nasa selected three companies to design, build and operate spacecraft that will ferry scientific experiments and technology packages to the moon. The coming flurry of activity may make protection more urgent. Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer at the University of Mississippi, co-founded the non-profit organisation For all Moonkind to protect, preserve and memorialise human heritage on the moon. While she conceded that not all of the sites that bear evidence of human activity needed protection, she said many held invaluable scientific and archaeological data that we could not afford to lose. “These sites need to be protected from disruption if only for that reason,” she added. The protection should be far wider, and more formal, than Wörner calls for, Hanlon argues. “It is astounding to me that we wouldn’t protect the site of Luna 2, the very first object humans crashed on to another celestial body, and Luna 9, the very first object humans soft-landed on another celestial body,” she said. The Soviet Luna programme sent robotic craft to the moon between 1959 and 1976. “The director general has a much more optimistic view of human nature than I do,” Hanlon said. “I completely agree that the entities and nations headed back to the moon in the near future will take a commonsense approach and give due regard to the sites and artefacts. However, that is the near future. We have to be prepared for the company or nation that doesn’t care. Or worse, that seeks to return to the moon primarily to pillage for artefacts that will undoubtedly sell for tremendous amounts of money here on Earth.”
Corporate development, tourism, and looting will destroy scientifically rich Tranquility base artifacts.
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Sophie Fessl 7-10-2019 “Should the Moon Landing Site Be a National Historic Landmark?” https://daily.jstor.org/should-the-moon-landing-site-be-a-national-historic-landmark/ (PhD King’s College London, BA Oxford)Elmer
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, the pictures sent to Earth captured a historical moment: It was the first time that any human set foot on another body in our solar system. Fifty years later, experts are debating how to preserve humankind’s first steps beyond Earth. Could a National Park on the moon be the solution to saving Armstrong’s bootprints for future archaeologists? Flags, rovers, laser-reflecting mirrors, footprint—these are just a few of the dozens of artifacts and features that bear witness to our exploration of the moon. Archaeologists argue that these objects are a record to trace the development of humans in space. “Surely, those footprints are as important as those left by hominids at Laetoli, Tanzania, in the story of human development,” the anthropologist P.J. Capelotti wrote in Archaeology. While the oldest then known examples of hominins walking on two feet were cemented in ash 3.6 million years ago, “those at Tranquility Base could be swept away with a casual brush of a space tourist’s hand.” Fragile Traces Just how fragile humankind’s lunar traces are was seen already during Apollo 12. On November 19, 1969, Charles “Pete” Conrad and Alan Bean manually landed their lunar module in the moon’s Ocean of Storms, 200 meters from the unmanned probe Surveyor 3, which was left sitting on the moon’s surface two years earlier, in 1967. The next day, Conrad and Bean hopped to Surveyor 3. As they approached the spacecraft, they were surprised: The spacecraft, originally bright white, had turned light brown. It was covered in a fine layer of moon dust, likely kicked up by their landing. Harsh ultraviolet light has likely bleached the U.S. flag bright white. Without Apollo 12 upsetting the moon dust, Surveyor 3 would likely have remained stark white. Unlike Earth, the moon has no wind that carries away the dust, no rain to corrode materials, and no plate tectonic activity to pull sites on the surface back into the moon. But the moon’s thin atmosphere also means that solar wind particles bombard the lunar surface, and harsh ultraviolet light has likely bleached the U.S. flag bright white. The astronauts’ first bootprints will likely be on the moon for a long time, and will almost certainly still be there when humans next visit—unless, by tragic coincidence, a meteorite hits them first. Had LunaCorp not abandoned the idea in the early 2000s, the company’s plan to send a robot to visit the most famous sites of moon exploration could have done a lot of damage. And with Jeff Bezos’ recent unveiling of a mock-up of the lunar lander Blue Moon, it is only a matter of time before corporate adventurers and space tourists reach the moon. Historians and archaeologists are keen to avoid lunar looting. Roger Launius, senior curator of space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., warned: “What we don’t want to happen is what happened in Antarctica at Scott’s hut. People took souvenirs, and nothing was done to try to preserve those until fairly late in the game.” On the other hand, there is a legitimate scientific interest in investigating how the equipment that’s on the moon was affected by a decades-long stay there.
- Private Key Card – AT: Alt Causes
- AT: Unilat CP
- AT: Adv CP
- AT: Generic DA
- AT: OST DA
- Solvency Advocate
Hertzfeld and Pace 13 (, H. and Pace, S., 2013. International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage. online Cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com. Available at: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.gwu.edu/dist/7/314/files/2018/10/Hertzfeld-and-Pace-International-Cooperation-on-Human-Lunar-Heritage-t984sx.pdf Accessed 18 January 2022 Dr. Hertzfeld is an expert in the economic, legal, and policy issues of space and advanced technological development. Dr. Hertzfeld holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. from Washington University, and a Ph.D. degree in economics from Temple University. He also holds a J.D. degree from the George Washington University and is a member of the Bar in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Dr. Hertzfeld joined the Space Policy Institute in 1992. His research projects have included studies on the privatization of the Space Shuttle, the economic benefits of NASA RandD expenditures, and the socioeconomic impacts of earth observation technologies. He teaches a course in Space Law and a course in microeconomics through the Economics Department at G.W. Dr. Hertzfeld has served as a Senior Economist and Policy Analyst at both NASA and the National Science Foundation, and has been a consultant to many U.S. and international organizations, including a recent project on space applications with the OECD. He is the co-editor of Space Economics (AIAA 1992). Selected other publications include a study of the issues for privatizing the Space Shuttle (2000), an analysis of the value of information from better weather forecasts, an analysis of sovereignty and property rights published in the Journal of International Law (University of Chicago, 2005), and an economic analysis of the space launch vehicle industry (2005). Dr. Hertzfeld has also edited and prepared a new edition of the Study Guide and Case Book for Managerial Economics (Sixth Edition, W.W. Norton and Co.). Dr. Scott N. Pace is the Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council (NSpC). He joined the NSpC in August 2017. From 2008-2017, he was the Director of the Space Policy Institute and a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. From 2005-2008, he served as the Associate Administrator for Program Analysis and Evaluation at NASA. Prior to NASA, he was the Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. From 1993-2000, he worked for the RAND Corporation’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, and from 1990-1993, he served as the Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Office of Space Commerce, in the Office of the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce. In 1980, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College; in 1982, Masters degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and in 1989, a Doctorate in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School.)-rahulpenu
International Cooperation on Human Lunar Heritage The U.S. Apollo Space Program was a premier technological accomplishment of the 20th century. Preserving the six historic landing sites of the manned Apollo missions, as well as the mementos and equipment still on the Moon from those and other U.S. (e.g., Ranger and Surveyor) and Soviet Union (e.g., Luna) missions is important. Some of the instruments on the lunar surface are still active, monitored, and provide valuable scientifi c information. But recent government and private-sector plans to explore and potentially use lunar resources for commercial activity raise questions about the use of the Moon and potential accidental or purposeful threats to the historic sites and scientific equipment there. Although some steps to protect these sites have been proposed, we suggest a better way, drawing on international, not U.S. unilateral, recognition for the sites. Less than 2 years before the fi rst footsteps on the lunar surface on 20 July 1969 (see the image) , the United Nations Outer Space Treaty (OST) was drafted, ratifi ed, and came into force ( 1). Article II of the OST reinforced and formalized the international standard that outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies would not be subject to claims of sovereignty from any nation by any means, including appropriation. The OST prohibits ownership of territory or its appropriation by any state party to the treaty, which includes the United States, Russia, and 126 other nations. It does not prohibit the use of the Moon and its resources. In fact, the treaty emphasizes the importance of freedom of access to space for any nation and the importance of international cooperation in space exploration. These principles of the space treaties have enabled gains in science and technology and have contributed to international stability in space. New attention is being focused on the lunar surface. China has an active Moon exploration program and is considering sending astronauts (taikonauts) to the Moon. Private firms are contemplating robotic missions that could land in the vicinity of the historical sites of Apollo and other missions. Although we might assume the best of intentions for such missions, they could irreparably disturb the traces of the first human visits to another world. NASA has taken steps to protect the lunar landing sites and equipment and to initiate a process to create recognized norms of behavior. In July 2011, guidelines were issued for private companies competing in the Google Lunar X Prize that established detailed requirements for avoiding damage to U.S. government property on the Moon ( 2). H.R. 2617, The Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, was introduced into the U.S. Congress on 8 July 2013 ( 3). In essence, it proposes to designate the Apollo landing sites and U.S. equipment on the Moon as a U.S. National Park with jurisdiction under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Although the bill acknowledges treaty obligations of the United States, it would create, in effect, a unilateral U.S. action to control parts of the Moon. This would create a direct conflict with international law and could be viewed as a violation of U.S. commitments under the OST. It would be an ineffective way of protecting historical U.S. sites, and it fails to address interests of other states that have visited and will likely visit the Moon. It is legally flawed, unenforceable, and contradictory to our national space policy and our international relations in space ( 4). There is a better way for the United States to protect its historic artifacts and equipment on the Moon. The fi rst step is to clearly distinguish between U.S. artifacts left on the Moon, such as fl ags and scientifi c equipment, and the territory they occupy. The second is to gain international, not unilateral, recognition for the sites upon which they rest. Aside from debris from crash landings (by Japan, India, China, and the European Space Agency), there are only two nations with “soft-landed” equipment on the lunar surface: the United States and Russia. China has plans to soft-land Chang’e 3 on the Moon in December 2013. All three nations (and any others wishing to participate) have much to gain and little or nothing to lose from a multinational agreement based on mutual respect and mutual protection of each other’s historical sites and equipment. Legal Issues Although ownership of planets, the Moon, and celestial bodies is prohibited, ownership of equipment launched into space remains with the nation or entity that launched the equipment, wherever that equipment is in the solar system. Under the OST, that nation is both responsible and liable for any harmful acts that equipment may create in space. There are no prescribed limits on time or the amount of damage a nation may have to pay. The U.S. government therefore still owns equipment it placed on the Moon. Ownership has the associated right of protecting the equipment, subject to using necessary and proportional means for protection. But, because no nation can claim ownership of the territory on which equipment rests, there is an open issue of how to control the spots on the Moon underneath that equipment, because the site is integral to the historical signifi - cance. In H.R. 2617, establishment of Apollo sites as a unit of the U.S. National Park System could be interpreted as a declaration of territorial sovereignty on the Moon, even though ensuing paragraphs specify the Park’s components as the “artifacts on the surface of the Moon” at those sites. This problem needs international legal clarifi cation, achievable via a formal agreement among those nations that have the technological ability to directly access the Moon ( 5). Section 6(a) raises another legal issue. The bill proposes that the Secretary of the Interior shall administer the park in accordance with laws generally applicable to U.S. National Parks. It also requires the Secretary to act in accordance with applicable international law and treaties. The U.S. National Park System Act states that the Parks are “managed for the benefi t and inspiration of all the people of the United States” ( 6). The OST clearly emphasizes that the exploration and use of space by nations is to benefi t all peoples. The laws and space policies of the United States have always emphasized peaceful uses of space and the benefi ts of space for humankind. It may not be possible to implement and execute provisions of this Bill without raising important and fundamental questions about these contradictions between the language of the treaty and the mandates of our National Park Service. A third legal issue is raised in section (6) (c)(2) that allows private donations and cooperative agreements to “provide visitors centers and administrative facilities within reasonable proximity to the Historical Park.” This implies future private use of the Moon under rights granted by the U.S. government. Unilateral granting of lunar territorial rights to private individuals and implicit sovereign protection of that territory violates the OST. Finally, section 8 of the bill requires the Secretary of the Interior to submit the Apollo 11 lunar landing site to the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for designation as a World Heritage Site. This violates Article II of the OST. All current World Heritage Sites are located on sovereign territory of nations. The only exception is a separate treaty that allows UNESCO to designate underwater sites (such as sunken ships) as protected cultural sites ( 7). These designations are very limited, and although the convention has been ratifi ed by 43 nations, the United States, Russia, and China are not among them. Thus, any new treaty of this type specifi cally for outer space would have little chance of being ratifi ed by the major space-faring nations. A Proposal to Protect Lunar Sites Although a new U.N. treaty for space artifacts of signifi cant cultural and historic importance may be reasonable someday, this would start a very long process with unknown outcomes. Such a treaty could be delayed to a point beyond the time when nations and/or companies may be active on the Moon ( 8). Our suggested alternative is to create a bilateral agreement between the United States and Russia, offered as a multilateral agreement to other nations with artifacts on the Moon. This would be more legally expedient, politically sustainable, and would more likely meet and exceed the stated goals of the bill. It would also emphasize the important role of national laws to implement and enforce these international space agreements. Any nation with assets on the lunar surface will endeavor to protect those assets. This creates a situation where those nations have a timely, current, and common interest incorporating important implications for peaceful uses of outer space; scientific research and the advancement of knowledge; and cultural and heritage value, either presently or in the foreseeable future. The United States, Russia, and China all engage in multilateral cooperative space programs. They share many economic and trade dependencies adding to the international importance of promoting cooperation in space and commerce. In spite of today’s charged political environment, an agreement of the type we propose may still be possible to negotiate because it focuses on the culture of space, the use of space to benefit humankind, and the archaeological record of our civilization. It specifi cally would not touch sensitive issues of real property rights, export controls, human rights, or the weaponization of outer space. Cooperation on recognizing and protecting each other’s interests in historical sites and on equipment and artifacts also has no signifi cant security, prestige, or technological impediments. It reinforces the basic principles of the existing space treaties, avoids declarations of sovereignity on the Moon, and encourages multilateral cooperation resulting in a more stable and predictable environment for private activities on the Moon. The best mechanism for implementing a new agreement would be direct negotiations at highest levels of government in the United States, Russia, and China, with priority to include Russian sites in a proposal that protects U.S. sites. It could be included in meetings of heads of state of those nations, either jointly or sequentially among the three nations. Such an agreement could be executed in a relatively short period of time, setting precedents for peaceful and coordinated research, exploration, and exploitation of the Moon ( 9). An international agreement on lunar artifacts among the United States, Russia, and China would be a far superior and long-lasting solution than the unilateral U.S. proclamation in H.R. 2617. Enforcement of the agreement would be through each nation’s national laws, applying to those entities subject to the jurisdiction or control of the agreement members. Each nation’s property would be protected and preserved. Other nations should be free to join the agreement, and particularly encouraged to do so if they have the ability to access the Moon. An important result would be to develop a new level of trust among nations that could then lead to more comprehensive future cooperative agreements on space, science, exploration, commerce, and the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies.
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Office of Science and Technology Policy March 2018 “PROTECTING and PRESERVING APOLLO PROGRAM LUNAR LANDING SITES and ARTIFACTS” (The Office of Science and Technology Policy is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President, established by United States Congress on May 11, 1976, with a broad mandate to advise the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.)Elmer
The Moon continues to hold great significance around the world. The successes of the Apollo missions still represent a profound human technological achievement almost 50 years later and continue to symbolize the pride of the only nation to send humans to an extraterrestrial body. The Apollo missions reflect the depth and scope of human imagination and the desire to push the boundaries of humankind’s existence. The Apollo landing sites and the accomplishments of our early space explorers energized our Nation's technological prowess, inspired generations of students, and greatly contributed to the worldwide scientific understanding of the Moon and our Solar System. Additionally, other countries have placed hardware on the Moon which undoubtedly has similar historic, cultural, and scientific value to their country and to humanity. Three Apollo sites remain scientifically active and all the landing sites provide the opportunity to learn about the changes associated with long-term exposure of human-created systems in the harsh lunar environment. These sites offer rich opportunities for biological, physical, and material sciences. Future visits to the Moon’s surface offer opportunities to study the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment on materials and articles, including food left behind, paint, nylon, rubber, and metals. Currently, very little data exist that describe what effect temperature extremes, lunar dust, micrometeoroids, solar radiation, etc. have on such man-made material, and no data exist for time frames approaching the five decades that have elapsed since the Apollo missions. While some of the hardware on the Moon was designed to remain operational for extended periods and successfully telemetered scientific data back to the Earth, much of what is there was designed only for use during the Apollo mission and then abandoned with no expectation of further survivability. How these artifacts and their constituent materials have survived and been altered while on the lunar surface is of great interest to engineers and scientists. The Apollo artifacts and the impact sites have the potential to provide unprecedented data if lunar missions to gather and not corrupt the data are developed. These data will be invaluable for helping to design future long-duration systems for operation on the lunar surface. NASA has formally evaluated the possible effects of the lunar environment and identified potential science opportunities. For example, using Apollo 15 as a representative landing site, the crew left 189 individually cataloged items on the lunar surface, including the descent stage of the Lunar Module, the Lunar Roving Vehicle, the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, and a wide variety of miscellaneous items that were offloaded by the astronauts to save weight prior to departure. The locations of many of these items are well documented, and numerous photographs are available to establish their appearance and condition at the time they were left behind.
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Belinda Smith 7-18-2019 “Who protects Apollo sites when no-one owns the Moon?” https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-07-19/apollo-11-moon-landing-heritage-preservation-outer-space-treaty/11055458 (Strategic Communications Advisor at Department of Education and Training at University of Victoria)Elmer
It's not just about history Alongside heritage value, the bits and pieces left on the Moon have enormous scientific significance. Take moon dust. It's a real problem for moon-bound equipment because it's made of fine, super sticky and highly abrasive grains, which have a habit of clogging instruments and spacesuits. But as Armstrong and Aldrin trotted across the surface, the footprints they left behind gave us valuable information into the properties of moon dust, Flinders University space archaeologist Alice Gorman said. "The ridges on the boots were meant to measure how far they sank into the dust. "Then they used the light contrast between the ridges to measure the reflectance properties of the dust." A boot print in grey dust. This iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin's footprint is also a science experiment. (Supplied: NASA) It's data like this that will help if we want a long-term base on the Moon — we need to know how our gear will stand up to lunar conditions. Apart from the sticky, gritty dust, the lunar surface is also peppered with meteorites and cosmic rays. So, Dr Gorman said, one of the very few reasons to revisit a moon site is to collect some of the equipment left behind and see how it fared. "What has happened to this material in 50 years of sitting on the lunar surface? "This is going to be really interesting scientific information because it will help planning for future missions and get an understanding of long-term conditions." And NASA has already done this. The Apollo 12 mission, which landed on the Moon four months after Apollo 11, collected parts from the 1967 Surveyor probe and brought them back to Earth. An astronaut standing next to a piece of equipment on the lunar surface Along with rocks and soil samples, Apollo 12 astronauts collected pieces of the Surveyor 3 probe for analysis back on Earth. (Supplied: NASA) Another reason to preserve the equipment left on the Moon is to prove we really went there, Professor Capelotti said. "There's a lot of people out there who still don't believe it happened. "The stuff on the Moon is a testament to what we did and when we did it."
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(, Y., Liu, G. and Guo, H., 2017. Moon-based Earth observation: scientific concept and potential applications. online Volume 11, 2018. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2017.1356879 Accessed 22 January 2022 Yixing Ding - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Guang Liu - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Huadong Guo - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.)-rahulpenu
4. Scientific goal of moon-based earth observation A basic question for moon-based Earth observation is, ‘What to see?’ According to the characteristics of moon-based Earth observation, the phenomena suitable for Moon-based Earth observation may have at least one of the following features: long-lasting, related to Sun–Earth–Moon motion, requires stable baseline observation, large-scale and describes multiple parameters. In the following sections, we will present several observation objectives to discuss in detail. 4.1. Solid earth dynamics Solid Earth tides, continental plate movement and glacier isostatic adjustment (GIA) are three typical large-scale solid Earth movements (Jiang et al. 2016), the measurement of which is a basic task of geodesy. For a uniform layered Earth, accurately predicting tidal movement can be done theoretically, but complex ocean tides and the inelasticity and heterogeneity of Earth’s interior material make the solid tide of the real Earth difficult to research theoretically. For GIA studies, prior knowledge about ancient ice cover evolution and a large amount of observational data are needed. Plate tectonics theory is a quantitative description of Earth plate movement (Ni et al. 2016). It may well explain the movement of most oceanic plates, but still have some problems to explain the mechanism of strong continental earthquakes, large-scale continental deformation, as well as the movements of other oceanic plates (Bird 2003). Accurately measuring solid Earth dynamics is beneficial to understanding solid Earth tides, continental plate movement and GIA, and provides further support for geodynamics and seismology. Devices such as a superconducting gravimeter and global navigation satellite system are currently used to measure small deformations of solid Earth, but these point-by-point methods are spatially limited to certain regions. Spaceborne InSAR measures deformation continuously, but the swath is not wide enough for mapping large-scale solid Earth movement. The Moon is a vast and stable platform that can provide sufficiently long and stable baseline interferometry. Its movement is easier to predict and the time interval of repeat-pass interferometry could be reduced to one day (Fornaro et al. 2010). In addition, the Moon is one of the main sources of tides on the Earth; so if we compare two measurements at different times, the lunar tide portion can be subtracted, leaving only the solar tide portion. After proper processing, it may help us learn more about the interior structure of Earth’s crust. To measure the large-scale deformation, a Moon-based repeat-pass InSAR system needs to be carefully designed. Except for the general SAR parameters, the critical baseline is a key factor that impacts its performance. The critical baseline Bc leading to a complete spatial decorrelation is given by Bc = BlDem tan ui c . (7) In this equation, the incidence angle ui is related to the observational geometry, while l and B are optional. When the bandwidth is 100 MHz and the incidence angle is 25°, the critical baselines are 14,000, 3300 and 1770 km at the L-band, C-band and X-band, respectively. In order to keep the correlation between two repeat passes, a practical baseline must be smaller than Bc. Therefore, from a practical point of view, the L-band is better than the C-band or X-band. Figure 4 shows the simulation results of one-day interval interferometry, but the side-looking constraints are not involved. In this case, the temporal decorrelation is highly reduced. It is obvious that the interferometric area is larger in the L-band than in X-band. Meanwhile, when the declination of the Moon is near the extremes, the interferometric area becomes larger. When the declination of the Moon is near the equatorial plane, one-day interval repeat-pass interferometry is not feasible, but a half month or one month interval repeat-pass interferometry is available. The magnitude of the solid Earth motion is not large. For example, the typical solid Earth tide amplitude is dozens of centimetres in one day. A resolution of hundreds of metres or even coarser will be enough if the wave is stably scattered. 4.2. Energy budget of earth Fundamentally, climate change depends on Earth’s radiation balance. Observation of both the solar radiation and Earth’s reflection and emission will depend on accurate measurement with space technology. Since the late 1970s, the United States and Europe have launched a number of missions to measure solar and terrestrial radiation, such as NASA’s Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Series programme (ACRIM1, 1980–1989; ACRIM2, 1991–2001; ACRIM3, 2000–present), Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE, 1984–1994), Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES, 1997–present), Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE, 2003–present) and the French Megha-Tropiques satellite on the Scanner for Radiation Budget (ScaRaB, 2011–present). These missions have greatly improved our understanding of Earth’s energy system. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), placed at the earth–Sun first Lagrangian point, has been designed to measure the outgoing radiation of the sunlit Earth disk with a constant look angle. But in the outgoing radiation, the reflected shortwave radiation is highly affected by albedo and atmospheric conditions, showing obvious anisotropy. Lack of sampling in space and time is vulnerable to uncertainties. The lunar observatory provides large-scale observation with continuously changing angles, enabling it to calibrate the data of satellites in different orbits at different times. Its most important property is that it can provide a very long-term time series from a single orbit platform. In a year, the time series covers all local times, all seasons (different weather pattern) and all Earth phases for all underlying surfaces (Pallé and Goode 2009; Karalidi et al. 2012). The diversity of the surface-weatherphase combination is beneficial to improving the quality of global energy budget data and to the study of regional energy redistribution and its multi-layer coupling effects. The Moon-based data will also provide a direct connection between the data from space technology and the data from ground-based earthshine measurement series, which span almost one hundred years. The system design can consult the DSCOVR satellite, a radiometer measuring irradiance of the Earth phase and an imaging camera taking images of the Earth phase for various Earth sciences purposes. In order to take into account the needs of observing the Earth’s environmental elements, 1 km spatial resolution and 20–30 channels of the camera are suggested. 4.3. Earth’s environmental elements Vegetation is an important part of the global carbon pool and a key element of global carbon cycle. Most vegetation is distributed in middle- and low-latitude regions. A Moon-based optical camera can image global vegetation almost every day. SAR maps not only the horizontal distribution of vegetation, but also extracts forest morphological structure through tomography. The Moon provides multi-baseline accessibility within a single pass to eliminate the tomographic temporal decorrelation, but the imaging temporal decorrelation within a long synthetic aperture time hampers the focusing of forest. Therefore, to validate the feasibility of Moon-based 3D mapping of forest, more imaging methods for unstable scatterer, for example, the time reversal imaging method (Jin and Moura 2007), need to be tested and new methods are also expected. Glaciers are sensitive variables of climate change. The monitoring of glacier area, surface velocity and mass balance plays an important role in understanding the status of glaciers and their response to global change. Remote sensing techniques, such as optical sensors, SAR and altimeter data, provide regular observations of key glacial parameters. A lunar platform would provide continuous three- or four-day temporal coverage per month at the polar regions, but the observation incidence angle would typically be larger than 40° (see Figure 5) due to the relatively small inclination angle of the lunar orbit. For the High Asia area, the average coverage is about 4 h per day with proper incidence angle. The challenges may be the cost of high-resolution mapping for the optical sensor, and the layover problem (Tilley and Bonwit 1989) in heavy gradient area for SAR. Moon-based altimetry faces the same problems as LiDAR mentioned before, and is not recommended. An atmospheric observatory on the Moon can be used to evaluate the cloud fraction in an unambiguous manner, determine the composition in terms of the major trace gas and aerosols (Hamill 2016), and shed light on the relationship between lunar phases and cloudiness or precipitation. Particularly, the Moon offers a good place for occultation observation, which means observing the light or microwave changes emitted by stars or satellites when they are obstructed by atmosphere around the Earth. The Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars (GOMOS) instrument on board the Envisat satellite is a typical system using the stellar occultation measurement principle in monitoring ozone and other trace gases in Earth’s stratosphere (Kyrola et al. 2004). Moon-based occultation was proposed in Link (1969), and was considered promising in Moon-based Earth atmosphere monitoring (Hamill 2007, 2016; Guo et al. 2014). The advantage of Moon-based occultation is that a star descends several times slower through the atmosphere than when viewed from a LEO satellite. This helps by increasing the SNR and resolution to some extent, but the practical performance also relies on the system design and the probability of finding an appropriate occultation geometry. 4.4. Earth-space environment Observing the environment of outer space surrounding Earth requires much larger FOV than only observing the solid Earth. The Moon is an ideal place to monitor the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. Moon-based observation combined with high near-polar Earth orbit or Molniya orbit observations can help us construct the three-dimensional structure of the magnetosphere by X-ray and EUV remote imaging. Images in all meridian planes of the whole plasma layer have already been captured by the EUV camera on the Chang’e 3 lander. Some initial results reflect the basic features of the plasmasphere, and also verified the accessibility of high-quality data of magnetosphere from the Moon (Feng et al. 2014). 5. Conclusion In this paper, we propose the Moon as a platform for Earth observation with long-term, dynamic capabilities, mainly focusing on large-scale geoscience phenomena. The characteristics of a lunar platform, the sensors and the scientific objectives of Moon-based Earth observation are discussed in detail. A lunar platform could observe Earth in quite a different way, and give a long-lasting disk view, a stable baseline and a unique perspective. The proposed sensors include some optical sensors and SAR. LiDAR, altimeters and scatterometers may not be functional on the lunar surface mainly because of the long viewing distance, and Moon-based radiometers may not be necessary if spaceborne radiometers are effective enough. Though the cost is not discussed in this paper, a Moon-based SAR would be extremely expensive and face too many specific technical difficulties to be implemented at the present time. On the contrary, passive optical sensors, such as spectrographs and panchromatic cameras, are much easier to realize. The scientific objectives of Moon-based Earth observation include measuring solid Earth dynamics and the global energy budget, and monitoring Earth’s environment and the surrounding environment of outer space. Moon-based Earth observation will be effective in measuring solid Earth tides, detecting outgoing radiation, and monitoring the magnetosphere and some of Earth’s environmental elements. Finally, we suggest that numerical simulations are indispensable to validate the proposals and to address specific problems.
Moon Base is the only option and outweighs Satellites.
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(, Y., Liu, G. and Guo, H., 2017. Moon-based Earth observation: scientific concept and potential applications. online Volume 11, 2018. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2017.1356879 Accessed 22 January 2022 Yixing Ding - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Guang Liu - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Huadong Guo - Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.)
There are several characteristics of Moon-based Earth observation as listed below. (1) Longevity The life cycle of artificial satellites is generally several years, while the Moon has already existed for billions of years, and will not go extinct in the foreseeable future. It is a longstanding, essentially permanent platform. The revisit cycle is quite different from LEO satellite. Except for the polar regions, the revisit period is one day, the same as Earth’s rotation period. The revisit period in the same geometric condition is one month, the same as the moon’s revolution period. The temporal sampling of the lunar platform is not systematically biased. It covers all local times in a month and all seasons in a year. This will be very useful for long-term time series analysis in climate change research. Furthermore, the lunar platform can also provide time series data to calibrate the remote sensing data from other platforms. (2) Integrity The whole Earth disk facing the Moon, both the sunlit portion and dark portion, is always observable from the near side of the Moon, with a field angle of only about 2°. This allows an observer on the Moon to view the whole Earth disk at any given time and Earth’s entire surface in a day, both in dark and sunlit conditions. (3) Stability Studies show that the lunar crust lacks plate tectonics; so the quantity and degree of moonquake activities are much less than earthquakes (Jaumann et al. 2012). Compared to satellite platforms, the Moon has vast spaces on which to install a set of sensors to form a long, stable baseline of large observational networks for precise measurement. Moon also moves stably, which enables repeat-pass interferometry. (4) Uniqueness Moon exerts influences on precipitation, ice nuclei concentrations, diurnal pressure changes, hurricanes, cloudiness, thunderstorm and surface temperature (Balling and Cerveny 1995). The tidal force of the Moon is also considered as a trigger of earthquakes (Cochran et al. 2004) and a resource generating internal waves (Simmons et al. 2004). For those Moon-related terrestrial phenomena, the lunar platform provides such a unique perspective that any place on the Earth can be continuously monitored at different Moon–Earth phase angles each day. A Moon-based sensor can dynamically trace the whole process covering their occurrence, development and dissipation. It will help the understanding of the relationship between the tidal phases and the evolution of the phenomena. 3. Sensors for moon-based earth observation For most of the history of lunar exploration, the United States, China and Japan have been taking a few pictures of Earth with cameras both on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit. This proved that it is possible to observe Earth utilizing Moon-based optical sensors. However, except for observing Earth’s magnetosphere, these photos had no specific scientific objective. Few works about the sensors for Moon-based Earth observation have been published by previous missions. So, in this section we discuss the feasibility and the key parameters of various traditional remote sensors, including both the optical sensors and the microwave sensors. 3.1. Optical sensors for moon-based earth observation One important parameter of most remote sensing systems is the spatial resolution. The detection range of Moon-based optical sensors is much further than spaceborne sensors. The diffraction limited resolution of optical sensors r is given by = 1.22lR/d, (1) where l is the wavelength, d the telescopic aperture and R the distance from the sensor to the target. In the visible band, the limiting resolution is 0.17–0.36 km, when d is 1 m. In short, if the telescopic aperture is 0.5 m, the spatial resolution can be less than 1 km in the visible band and several kilometres in the near-infrared and thermal infrared bands, which satisfies the needs of climatologic models and global mapping for oceans, clouds and land use (Ding, Guo and Liu 2014). LiDAR is an example of an active sensor. To place a LiDAR on the Moon, many technological challenges must be taken into consideration, such as the echo power, the size of the laser beam on earth’s surface and the coverage performance. If the scattering solid angle of a homogeneous scatterer is p, the received power of this system falls within the square of the distance from LiDAR to scatterer R (Wagner et al. 2006): Pr = PtrD2 r 4R2 , (2) where the received power and transmitted power is Pr and Pt, Dr the receiving aperture and r the reflectivity. The power needed for Moon-based LiDAR would be a hundred thousand times greater than that of satellite-based LiDAR, which is at the megawatt level. The footprint of the laser beam on Earth’s surface is proportional to the laser divergence angle. Under a divergence of 0.1 m/rad, the beam of Moon-based LiDAR would be 36–40 km, two orders of magnitude larger than the beam width of spaceborne LiDAR. Such a large beam would stretch the length of the echo signal and complicate its waveform, and will lead to a difficulty to determine the exact echo position of the target in measuring the altitude of sea surface and the thickness of vegetation.
Rood and Gibbons 21
Richard B. Rood and Elizabeth Gibbons 9-11-2021 "After a summer of weather horrors, adapting to climate change is an imperative" https://archive.is/VKac8#selection-391.0-413.1 (Richard B. (Ricky) Rood is a professor of climate and space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan. Elizabeth (Beth) Gibbons is executive director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals.)Elmer
This summer, the extraordinary heat in the Pacific Northwest, floods across the Northern Hemisphere and Hurricane Ida’s swath across the country have awakened more people to the dangers of climate change. As professionals working on climate change, we receive many requests for comments and interviews. More telling, perhaps, have been panic-tinged personal letters from family and friends as well as colleagues working in the field awakening to the real-world consequences of our warming climate. Public messaging on climate change is dominated by the discussion of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to limit the warming and to stop the “worst effects” of climate change. This is the mitigation of global warming. Headlines range from declarations of climate despair to the measured voices of those who insist that there is still the time and wherewithal to limit warming to the goals aspired to by the United Nations. Amid this cacophony of mitigation panic and sought-after patience is another discussion that has been going on for more than a decade. Namely, that we are not likely to meet emission-reduction goals such as those of the Paris agreement. This is complemented by the fact that we live in a rapidly changing climate, rapid change will continue, and we are not going back to the climate of our childhoods. When we consider how we will address our climate future, it is worth considering our past behavior and choices. We have had the ability and the roadmap to make major strides in reducing carbon dioxide emissions and mitigating climate change for many years. In many cases, these mitigation tactics are “no regrets,” with very quick monetary payback for expenditures — the insulation of houses and choosing fuel-efficient vehicles, for example. Yet we have not taken these steps at the scales that are required for effective intervention. Mitigation is one response, but adaptation can be framed as the other response. Adaptation is responding to the effects of warming or perhaps coping with the consequences of the warming Earth. With the public conversation focusing overwhelmingly on mitigation, adaptation has been a neglected topic. Compared with mitigation, adaptation is relatively easy. Effective mitigation requires changing human behavior, ingrained geopolitical and economic power structures, and built infrastructure on a global scale. It requires convincing people to invest for the common good of other people, often decades into the future. At its simplest, adaptation can be carried out by an individual. You can sell the house next to the ocean and move to northern Michigan. You can reinforce your roof and put your oceanside house on stilts. There is a concrete value proposition. Although adaptation can be carried out by individuals, it is better and certainly more equitable to plan on the larger scales of a community, a city or a region. As the geographical scale increases and more individuals, organizations and local governments are involved, it does get more difficult. However, the threats to life, property and the local environment often serve as motivation to challenge the barriers of cooperation and shared beneficial outcomes. For example, a region threatened by rising seas is motivated to come together to find solution strategies. Indeed such efforts are underway, for example, in the Southeast Florida climate compact, the Puget Sound climate collaborative, and efforts across Southeast Virginia’s Hampton Roads region. When a region successfully implements adaptation plans, communities are likely to have wins when the next storm is not as destructive and costly. These wins help people cope with global warming and realize some ability to take control of what has been often stated as an existential threat. There have been those calling for adaptation policy for many years. However, it has been difficult to get adaptation on the policy agenda. This is ascribed to many reasons, including the persistent, spurious argument that if we talk of adaptation, then we will decide that we do not need to mitigate our emissions. However, we are at the point that, even if we were to meet all of the emission reduction goals of the United Nations’ Paris agreement, adaptation will still be required. In the end, the most important aspect of adaptation is fundamentally human. If individuals and communities can see adaptation as a way of sustaining their well-being in the face of rapidly changing weather, then it is a step of moving past the narrative that we must, between now and 2030, solve an existential threat to our survival. We can see successful adaptation strategies spreading, scaling, and bringing planetary warming into the mind-set and the behavior of more and more people. We must entrain dealing with the weather of a warming Earth into all that we do. And that, we assert, will make the need for mitigation more real and urgent.
Barrios et Al 18,
Alonso, Guillermo Trincado, and René Garreaud. "Alternative approaches for estimating missing climate data: application to monthly precipitation records in South-Central Chile." Forest Ecosystems 5.1 (2018): 1-10. (Graduate School, Faculty of Forest Sciences and Natural Resources)
The effects of climate on natural resources have become highly relevant (Cannell et al. 1995). In forestry, there is an increasing interest to study the influence of climate on forest productivity (Álvarez et al. 2013), forest hydrology (Dai et al. 2011), soil water availability (Ge et al. 2013), and wood quality (Xu et al. 2013). Nowadays, climate data are also required for parameterizing process-based simulators of tree growth (Sands and Landsberg 2002) and for studying forest water balance (Huber and Trecaman 2002), phenology processes (Caveside et al. 2005) and to carry out pest and disease research (Ahumada et al. 2013). To perform these studies, complete and homogenous climate data that covers a sufficiently long period of time is required (Teegavarapu 2012; Khosravi et al. 2015). Climate data often have missing information that limits their use (Alfaro and Pacheco 2000). Missing values in climate series affects parameter estimation when applying regression and multivariate analysis techniques (Ramos-Calzado et al. 2008). In most cases, some techniques must be applied to estimate missing data. In forestry, there are few studies that have compared the accuracy of different approaches. Furthermore, factors that might affect their precision have not been studied in detail. The simplest approach for imputing missing values involves the data being filled-in. The main limitation is that these approaches are suitable for small gaps and can only be applied to climate variables with a high degree of autocorrelation (Khosravi et al. 2015), which is not the case for annual mean temperatures or precipitation values. A more common approach to complete missing data is to use information from neighboring meteorological stations (Vasiliev 1996), using techniques such as inverse distance weighting (IDW). Nonetheless, horizontal distance is not a measure of spatial autocorrelation (e.g., Ahrens 2006; Ramos-Calzado et al. 2008), especially when the region contains prominent topographic features or major water bodies. Indeed, two relatively close stations can feature substantial differences in their mean climate and climate variability if they are located at opposite sides of a mountain range. Spatial correlations could be quantified by calculating the correlation coefficient between time series obtained at different locations. Teegavarapu and Chandramouli (2005) found that replacing distances with correlation coefficients as weights improved estimation of missing precipitation data. The resulting method is known as a coefficient of correlation weighting (CCW), reported by Teegavarapu (2009).
Sears 21
(, N., 2021. Great Powers, Polarity, and Existential Threats to Humanity: An Analysis of the Distribution of the Forces of Total Destruction in International Security. online ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350500094 Accessed 22 November 2021 Nathan Alexander Sears is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at The University of Toronto. Before beginning his PhD, he was a Professor of International Relations at the Universidad de Las Américas, Quito. His research focuses on international security and the existential threats to humanity posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. His PhD dissertation is entitled, “International Politics in the Age of Existential Threats”)-re-cut rahulpenu
Climate Change Humanity faces existential risks from the large-scale destruction of Earth’s natural environment making the planet less hospitable for humankind (Wallace-Wells 2019). The decline of some of Earth’s natural systems may already exceed the “planetary boundaries” that represent a “safe operating space for humanity” (Rockstrom et al. 2009). Humanity has become one of the driving forces behind Earth’s climate system (Crutzen 2002). The major anthropogenic drivers of climate change are the burning of fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, and gas), combined with the degradation of Earth’s natural systems for absorbing carbon dioxide, such as deforestation for agriculture (e.g., livestock and monocultures) and resource extraction (e.g., mining and oil), and the warming of the oceans (Kump et al. 2003). While humanity has influenced Earth’s climate since at least the Industrial Revolution, the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the mid-twentieth century—the “Great Acceleration” (Steffen et al. 2007; 2015; McNeill and Engelke 2016)— is responsible for contemporary climate change, which has reached approximately 1°C above preindustrial levels (IPCC 2018). Climate change could become an existential threat to humanity if the planet’s climate reaches a “Hothouse Earth” state (Ripple et al. 2020). What are the dangers? There are two mechanisms of climate change that threaten humankind. The direct threat is extreme heat. While human societies possesses some capacity for adaptation and resilience to climate change, the physiological response of humans to heat stress imposes physical limits—with a hard limit at roughly 35°C wet-bulb temperature (Sherwood et al. 2010). A rise in global average temperatures by 3–4°C would increase the risk of heat stress, while 7°C could render some regions uninhabitable, and 11–12°C would leave much of the planet too hot for human habitation (Sherwood et al. 2010). The indirect effects of climate change could include, inter alia, rising sea levels affecting coastal regions (e.g., Miami and Shanghai), or even swallowing entire countries (e.g., Bangladesh and the Maldives); extreme and unpredictable weather and natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes and forest fires); environmental pressures on water and food scarcity (e.g., droughts from less-dispersed rainfall, and lower wheat-yields at higher temperatures); the possible inception of new bacteria and viruses; and, of course, large-scale human migration (World Bank 2012; Wallace-Well 2019; Richards, Lupton and Allywood 2001). While it is difficult to determine the existential implications of extreme environmental conditions, there are historic precedents for the collapse of human societies under environmental pressures (Diamond 2005). Earth’s “big five” mass extinction events have been linked to dramatic shifts in Earth’s climate (Ward 2008; Payne and Clapham 2012; Kolbert 2014; Brannen 2017), and a Hothouse Earth climate would represent terra incognita for humanity. Thus, the assumption here is that a Hothouse Earth climate could pose an existential threat to the habitability of the planet for humanity (Steffen et al. 2018., 5). At what point could climate change cross the threshold of an existential threat to humankind? The complexity of Earth’s natural systems makes it extremely difficult to give a precise figure (Rockstrom et al. 2009; ). However, much of the concern about climate change is over the danger of crossing “tipping points,” whereby positive feedback loops in Earth’s climate system could lead to potentially irreversible and self-reinforcing “runaway” climate change. For example, the melting of Arctic “permafrost” could produce additional warming, as glacial retreat reduces the refractory effect of the ice and releases huge quantities of methane currently trapped beneath it. A recent study suggests that a “planetary threshold” could exist at global average temperature of 2°C above preindustrial levels (Steffen et al. 2018; also IPCC 2018). Therefore, the analysis here takes the 2°C rise in global average temperatures as representing the lower-boundary of an existential threat to humanity, with higher temperatures increasing the risk of runaway climate change leading to a Hothouse Earth. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change set the goal of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to “well below” 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C. If the Paris Agreement goals are met, then nations would likely keep climate change below the threshold of an existential threat to humanity. According to Climate Action Tracker (2020), however, current policies of states are expected to produce global average temperatures of 2.9°C above preindustrial levels by 2100 (range between +2.1 and +3.9°C), while if states succeed in meeting their pledges and targets, global average temperatures are still projected to increase by 2.6°C (range between +2.1 and +3.3°C). Thus, while the Paris Agreements sets a goal 6 that would reduce the existential risk of climate change, the actual policies of states could easily cross the threshold that would constitute an existential threat to humanity (CAT 2020).
Campbell, C. (2019, July 17). From Satellites to the Moon and Mars, China Is Quickly Becoming a Space Superpower. Time. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://time.com/5623537/china-space/ Graduate, Glasgow University. Following a move to Asia, initially worked as a travel writer based in Thailand before joining exiled Burmese media organization The Irrawaddy. 2013, joined TIME as Reporter and later as Associate Editor, Hong Kong office. Helped helm Hong Kong's overnight breaking news coverage on Time.com while still reporting on South-East Asia, including turbulent elections in Cambodia, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and Thailand's military coup. Interviewed four current Asian world leaders. Currently, TIME Correspondent, Beijing. ech
It was perhaps only a matter of time before the Celestial Empire reached for the stars. China’s government has made conquering space a key strategic priority, with the nation’s reported $8 billion space budget second only to the U.S., according to the Space Foundation, an American non-profit. Chinese scientists were early pioneers of rudimentary rockets back in the year 900, though only launched its first Long March rocket in 1970 on the back of Soviet technology, sending a human into space in 2003. Now, it’s is making fast progress. In January, China broke new ground by landing its Chang’e 4 lunar lander on the far side of the moon, which, due to the moon’s synchronous, tidally locked rotation, remains constantly hidden from Earth. There, China’s Jade Rabbit 2 rover was able to transmit data back to Earth via a satellite previously deployed around the moon to establish a radio link. In another first, a cotton seed was germinated onboard the Chang’e 4, which is named after China’s mythical moon goddess. After the mission, Chinese President Xi Jinping praised the “outstanding feats” that had “set a model for the whole Chinese Communist Party, the whole armed forces and people of all ethnic groups in China.” Such backing from the top underscores the scale of China’s ambitions. China already has the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the world, which measures just over 1,640 feet across. Other than visiting Mars, China plans to send probes to asteroids, Jupiter and even Uranus. It also aims to build a scientific research station in the moon’s southern polar region, as well as establish its own sophisticated large-scale space station within 10 years. “They have has a strategic, long-term set of goals and work deliberately and systematically to achieve those goals,” says Kathy Laurini, who served as NASA’s senior advisor for Exploration and Space Operations, among other roles, during 36 years with the American space agency. Satellite launches are a priority, too. China had 38 launches last year, more than any other country, as it attempts to catch up with the West’s satellite infrastructure. And last month, China launched a rocket from a mobile platform in the Yellow Sea for the first time, sending five commercial satellites and two others containing experimental technology into orbit. The feat meant China is only the third country after the U.S. and Russia to master sea launches. The speed at which China is surpassing each technological hurdle spotlights how the Beijing government views space as vital for boosting the economy and promoting high-end industry and spill-off technologies. “They see space as a very important driver for growth and competitiveness going forward,” says Andrew Jones, a journalist specializing in China’s space program.
Olson, S. (2020, September 30). Are Private Chinese Companies Really Private? The Diplomat. Retrieved December 8, 2021, from https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/are-private-chinese-companies-really-private/ Mr. Olson began his career in Washington DC as an international trade negotiator and served on the US negotiating team for the NAFTA negotiations. ear
China has often been criticized for a lack of transparency, especially with regard to its economic and trade policies. While in many cases these criticisms are valid, it belies the fact that in other instances, China is remarkably open and transparent about its intentions and ambitions. Such is the case with China’s “Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era,” recently released by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (and further elaborated on by President Xi Jinping himself). This document tells us in no uncertain terms that Chinese private companies will be increasingly called upon to conduct their operations in tight coordination with governmental policy objectives and ideologies. The rest of the world should take note. A Different Vision of “Private” Business The 5,000 word “opinion” aims to ratchet-up the role and influence of the CCP within the private sector in order “to better focus the wisdom and strength of the private businesspeople on the goal and mission to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The objective is to establish a “united front” between business and government and facilitate the “enhancement of the party’s leadership over the private economy.” According to the plan, “private economic figures are to be more closely united around the party,” thereby achieving “a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee on political stand, political direction, political principles, and political roads.” All of this stands in stark contrast to long-accepted concepts of how private companies function in a free market. The overriding purpose of business, according to these traditional precepts, is to earn profits through the provision of value-added products and services, in response to marketplace signals and under the constraint of basic economic realities. Government ideology plays no role in that equation. Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. But China has a very different vision. Government officials and government ideologies are directly infused into business operations. Private sector employees are “educated” on government policies and ideologies, with the expectation that this “enlightenment” will help inform their business decisions. This government-business symbiosis is further cemented by the provision of massive government subsidies (estimated to be about 3 percent of China’s GDP) to Chinese companies. To be clear, China – like any other sovereign nation – is entirely free to define the nature of the relationship between the Chinese state and the Chinese private sector, and craft its own economic development philosophies. So there can be no complaint with China for exercising its sovereignty.
(Luke, a Guardian foreign correspondent. His book Shadow State is published by Guardian Faber. Click here for Luke's public key) “The space race is back on – but who will win?” The Guardian, 7/16/21. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/the-space-race-is-back-on-but-who-will-win RR
The biggest challenge to US space supremacy comes not from Russia – heir to the Soviet Union’s pioneering space programme, which launched the Sputnik satellite and got the first human into space in the form of Yuri Gagarin – but from China. In 2011 Congress prohibited US scientists from cooperating with Beijing. Its fear: scientific espionage. Taikonauts are banned from visiting the ISS, which has hosted astronauts from 19 countries over the past 20 years. The station’s future beyond 2028 is uncertain. Its operations may yet be extended in the face of increasing Chinese competition. In its annual threat assessment this April, the office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) described China as a “near-peer competitor” pushing for global power. It warns: “Beijing is working to match or exceed US capabilities in space to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits that Washington has accrued from space leadership.” The Biden administration suspects Chinese satellites are being used for non-civilian purposes. The People’s Liberation Army integrates reconnaissance and navigation data in military command and control systems, the DNI says. “Satellites are inherently dual use. It’s not like the difference between an F15 fighter jet and a 737 passenger plane,” Hilborne says. Once China completes the Tiangong space station next year, it is likely to invite foreign astronauts to take part in missions. One goal: to build new soft-power alliances. Beijing says interest from other countries is enormous. The low Earth orbit station is part of an ambitious development strategy in the heavens rather than on land – a sort of belt and rocket initiative. According to Alanna Krolikowski, an assistant professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, a “bifurcation” of space exploration is under way. In one emerging camp are states led by China and Russia, many of them authoritarian; in the other are democracies and “like-minded” countries aligned with the US. Russia has traditionally worked closely with the Americans, even when terrestrial relations were bad. Now it is moving closer to Beijing. In March, China and Russia announced plans to co-build an international lunar research station. The agreement comes at a time when Vladimir Putin’s government has been increasingly isolated and subject to western sanctions. In June, Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping renewed a friendship treaty. Moscow is cosying up to Beijing out of necessity, at a time of rising US-China bipolarity. These rival geopolitical factions are fighting over a familiar mountainous surface: the moon. In 2019 a Chinese rover landed on its far side – a first. China is now planning a mission to the moon’s south pole, to establish a robotic research station and an eventual lunar base, which would be intermittently crewed. Nasa, meanwhile, has said it intends to put a woman and a person of colour on the moon by 2024. SpaceX has been hired to develop a lander. The return to the moon – after the last astronaut, commander Eugene Cernan, said goodbye in December 1972 – would be a staging post for the ultimate “giant leap”, Nasa says: sending astronauts to Mars. Krolikowski is sceptical that China will quickly overtake the US to become the world’s leading spacefaring country. “A lot of what China is doing is a reprisal of what the cold war space programmes did in the 1960s and 1970s,” she said. Beijing’s recent feats of exploration have as much to do with national pride as scientific discovery, she says. But there is no doubting Beijing’s desire to catch up, she adds. “The Chinese government has established, or has plans for, programmes or missions in every major area, whether it’s Mars missions, building mega constellations of telecommunications satellites, or exploring asteroids. There is no single area of space activity they are not involved in.” “We see a tightening of the Russia-China relationship,” Krolikowski says. “In the 1950s the Soviet Union provided a wide range of technical assistance to Beijing. Since the 1990s, however, the Russian space establishment has experienced long stretches of underfunding and stagnation. China now presents it with new opportunities.”
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (2021, April 9). Annual Threat Assessment. United States Unclassified Reports. Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2021-Unclassified-Report.pdf ech
Space Beijing is working to match or exceed US capabilities in space to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits that Washington has accrued from space leadership. We expect a Chinese space station in low Earth orbit (LEO) to be operational between 2022 and 2024. China also has conducted and plans to conduct additional lunar exploration missions, and it intends to establish a robotic research station on the Moon and later an intermittently crewed lunar base. 8 The PLA will continue to integrate space services—such as satellite reconnaissance and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT)—and satellite communications into its weapons and command-and-control systems to erode the US military’s information advantage. Counterspace operations will be integral to potential military campaigns by the PLA, and China has counterspace weapons capabilities intended to target US and allied satellites. Beijing continues to train its military space elements and field new destructive and nondestructive ground- and space-based antisatellite (ASAT) weapons. China has already fielded ground-based ASAT missiles intended to destroy satellites in LEO and ground-based ASAT lasers probably intended to blind or damage sensitive space-based optical sensors on LEO satellites.
Chow and Kelley 21
(Brian G., policy analyst for the Institute of World Politics, Ph.D in physics from Case Western Reserve University, MBA and Ph.D in finance from the University of Michigan, and Brandon, graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service) “China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Could Conquer Taiwan—Or Start a War,” National Interest, 8/21/2021 JL
If current trends hold, then China’s Strategic Support Force will be capable by the late 2020s of holding key U.S. space assets at risk. Chinese military doctrine, statements by senior officials, and past behavior all suggest that China may well believe threatening such assets to be an effective means of deterring U.S. intervention. If so, then the United States would face a type of “Sophie’s Choice”: decline to intervene, potentially leading allies to follow suit and Taiwan to succumb without a fight, thereby enabling Xi to achieve his goal of “peacefully” snuffing out Taiwanese independence; or start a war that would at best be long and bloody and might well even cross the nuclear threshold. This emerging crisis has been three decades in the making. In 1991, China watched from afar as the United States used space-enabled capabilities to obliterate the Iraqi military from a distance in the first Gulf War. The People’s Liberation Army quickly set to work developing capabilities targeted at a perceived Achilles’ heel of this new American way of war: reliance on vulnerable space systems. This project came to fruition with a direct ascent ASAT weapons test in 2007, but the test was limited in two key respects. First, it only reached low Earth orbit. Second, it generated thousands of pieces of long-lasting space junk, provoking immense international ire. This backlash appears to have taken China by surprise, driving it to seek new, more usable ASAT types with minimal debris production. Now, one such ASAT is nearing operational status: spacecraft capable of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs). Such spacecraft are inevitable and cannot realistically be limited. The United States, European Union, China, and others are developing them to provide a range of satellite services essential to the new space economy, such as in situ repairs and refueling of satellites and active removal of space debris. But RPO capabilities are dual-use: if a satellite can grapple space objects for servicing, then it might well be capable of grappling an adversary’s satellite to move it out of its servicing orbit. Perhaps it could degrade or disable it by bending or disconnecting its solar panels and antennas all while producing minimal debris. This is a serious threat, primarily because no international rules presently exist to limit close approaches in space. Left unaddressed, this lacuna in international law and space policy could enable a prospective attacker to pre-position, during peacetime, as many spacecraft as they wish as close as they wish to as many high-value targets as they wish. The result would be an ever-present possibility of sudden, bolt-from-the-blue attacks on vital space assets—and worse, on many of them at once. China has conducted at least half a dozen tests of RPO capabilities in space since 2008, two of which went on for years. Influential space experts have noted that these tests have plausible peaceful purposes and are in many cases similar to those conducted by the United States. This, however, does not make it any less important to establish effective legal, policy, and technical counters to their offensive use. Even if it were certain that these capabilities are intended purely for peaceful applications—and it is not at all clear that that is the case—China (or any other country) could at any time decide to repurpose these capabilities for ASAT use. There is still time to get out ahead of this threat, but likely not for much longer. China’s RPO capabilities have, thus far, lagged about five years behind those of the United States. There are reasons to believe this gap may close, but even assuming that it holds, we should expect to see China demonstrate an operational dual-use rendezvous spacecraft by around 2025. (The first instance of a U.S. commercial satellite docking with another satellite to change its orbit occurred in February 2020.) At the same time, China is expanding its capacity for rapid spacecraft manufacturing. The Global Times reported in January that China’s first intelligent mass production line is set to produce 240 small satellites per year. In April, Andrew Jones at SpaceNews reported that China is developing plans to quickly produce and loft a thirteen thousand-satellite national internet megaconstellation. It is not unreasonable to assume that China could manufacture two hundred small rendezvous ASAT spacecraft by 2029, possibly more. If this happens, and Beijing was to decide in 2029 to launch these two hundred small RPO spacecraft and position them in close proximity to strategically vital assets, then China would be able to simultaneously threaten disablement of the entire constellations of U.S. satellites for missile early warning (about a dozen satellites with spares included); communications in a nuclear-disrupted environment (about a dozen); and positioning, navigation, and timing (about three dozen); along with several dozen key communications, imagery, and meteorology satellites. Losing these assets would severely degrade U.S. deterrence and warfighting capabilities, yet once close pre-positioning has occurred such losses become almost impossible to prevent. For this reason, such pre-positioning could conceivably deter the United States from coming to Taiwan’s aid due to the prospect that intervention would spur China to disable these critical space systems. Without their support, the war would be much bloodier and costlier—a daunting proposition for any president. Should the United States fail to intervene, the consequences would be disastrous for both Washington and its allies in East Asia, and potentially the credibility of U.S. defense commitments around the globe. Worse yet, however, might be what could happen if China believes that such a threat will succeed but proves to be wrong. History is rife with examples of major wars arising from miscalculations such as this, and there are many pathways by which such a situation could easily escalate out of control to a full-scale conventional conflict or even to nuclear use.
Maher 16 - Research Fellow in the Europe in the World program at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), Italy. Richard Maher, 5-30-2016, "The Rise of China and the Future of the Atlantic Alliance," http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438716300102, Date Accessed: 6-22-2016 NM recut by HA
China's dramatic rise has been arguably the most important geopolitical development of the past two decades.4 China has already become the world's second largest economy and second biggest military spender, and is the only country that could one day challenge the United States’ status as the world's sole superpower. Barring catastrophic internal convulsions in China, world politics thus seems headed toward a return to a kind of bipolarity, with the United States and China the two dominant powers in the international system. While a U.S.-China bipolar system would differ in many important respects from the bipolar system that existed during the Cold War, a return to a two-superpower world would affect international politics in profound ways, especially in alliance dynamics.5 As several analysts have pointed out, China likely will emerge as a much more formidable adversary for the United States than was the Soviet Union. China's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to surpass that of the United States within the next decade. China is already the world's biggest exporter, the world's second biggest creditor (after Japan), and will soon become the world's largest importer. China has embarked on a military modernization program that will make it a potent military competitor to the United States, particularly in the coastal waters of the western Pacific. China—unlike the Soviet Union, which had a world-class military establishment but a dysfunctional economy—will thus become both an economic and a military superpower. And with its growing wealth and power, China will demand enhanced status and recognition.6 Geopolitical tensions between the United States and China are rising.7 As its power continues to grow, China will be more likely to challenge directly U.S. military supremacy in East Asia and the western Pacific.8 As a result, security issues increasingly dominate the U.S.-China agenda. As Aaron Friedberg has written, “The United States and the People's Republic of China are today locked in a quiet but increasingly tense struggle for power and influence, not only in Asia but around the world.”9 China increasingly shows signs of being a revisionist power, seeking changes in the regional and international systems that reflect its growing wealth and influence. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a “new type of great-power relationship” with the United States, for example, in which Washington acknowledges China's arrival as a great power and its sovereignty claims to contested islands in the East and South China Seas.10 Institutions like the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) are designed to compete directly with U.S.-led institutions such as the World Bank and, with Japan, the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Tensions between China and several of its neighbors are also rising, many of which—including Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam—are U.S. allies. In territorial and maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas, China has tried to intimidate its neighbors and force resolutions that would ensure its control of these contested areas. China and Japan nearly came to blows in 2012 over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, for example, which are administered by Japan but also claimed by China.11 China has started to build military airfields on disputed reefs in the South China Sea and, in November 2013, announced an exclusive “air defense identification zone” over contested islands in the East China Sea. Both measures have been viewed by regional powers and the United States as a signal of a more assertive Chinese foreign policy, and have raised uncertainty, elevated hostilities, fuelled resentments, and made Chinese intentions in the region increasingly hard to understand.12 China is upgrading its nuclear arsenal, and determined to introduce multiple warheads on its most powerful long-range ballistic missile, the DF-5, which is capable of reaching the United States.13 For decades, China opted to maintain a minimal nuclear deterrent against potential aggression. This commitment is now questioned by the United States and other powers, and China's decision to make its most advanced nuclear weapons more lethal raises the fear of a potential nuclear arms race that was a core feature of the Cold War.14 China has made major investments in cyber technology and has created a powerful arsenal of cyber weapons.15 Cyberattacks against U.S. government and corporate sites that emanate from China are a central and increasingly divisive issue between the two governments. The United States accuses China of being engaged in widespread and systematic hacking, which has led to the theft of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property. U.S. officials believe that the purpose of Chinese “probes and attacks” on American computer networks is “both to steal intellectual property and prepare for future conflict.”16 China is expanding and modernizing its submarine force and building a second aircraft carrier, which will extend its power projection capabilities as far as the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.17 In late 2014, China sent submarines through the Persian Gulf for the first time, waters traditionally dominated by the U.S. Navy. Rather than trying to match America's global reach, however, China's military modernization program has focused on weapons systems designed to blunt U.S. technological superiority in the event of military conflict, such as developing a means to disrupt American surveillance and communications satellites and expanding the accuracy and range of its tactical and ballistic missile systems.18 Several points of tension, thus, exist between China and the United States, and many analysts fear that forces are bringing the two countries into overt and sustained strategic competition. Even though European countries have an important stake in maintaining stability in the Asia-Pacific, it is unlikely that they will be able or willing to contribute much to a future U.S.-led balancing coalition again China. There are three main reasons why an EU contribution would be unlikely: divergent threat perceptions, limited strategic capabilities, and lower dependence on the United States today for their security. The remainder of this article will examine these factors in turn.
United States hegemony in this decade is critical to prevent global war and peacefully end violent Chinese power-grabs
Erickson and Collins 21
(Andrew, A professor of strategy in the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute)(Gabriel, Baker Botts fellow in energy and environmental regulatory affairs at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy) “A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power Is Here,” Foreign Policy, 10/18/2021
U.S. and allied policymakers are facing the most important foreign-policy challenge of the 21st century. China’s power is peaking; so is the political position of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) domestic strength. In the long term, China’s likely decline after this peak is a good thing. But right now, it creates a decade of danger from a system that increasingly realizes it only has a short time to fulfill some of its most critical, long-held goals. Within the next five years, China’s leaders are likely to conclude that its deteriorating demographic profile, structural economic problems, and technological estrangement from global innovation centers are eroding its leverage to annex Taiwan and achieve other major strategic objectives. As Xi internalizes these challenges, his foreign policy is likely to become even more accepting of risk, feeding on his nearly decadelong track record of successful revisionist action against the rules-based order. Notable examples include China occupying and militarizing sub-tidal features in the South China Sea, ramping up air and maritime incursions against Japan and Taiwan, pushing border challenges against India, occupying Bhutanese and Tibetan lands, perpetrating crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, and coercively enveloping Hong Kong. The relatively low-hanging fruit is plucked, but Beijing is emboldened to grasp the biggest single revisionist prize: Taiwan. Beijing’s actions over the last decade have triggered backlash, such as with the so-called AUKUS deal, but concrete constraints on China’s strategic freedom of action may not fully manifest until after 2030. It’s remarkable and dangerous that China has paid few costs for its actions over the last 10 years, even as its military capacities have rapidly grown. Beijing will likely conclude that under current diplomatic, economic, and force postures for both “gray zone” and high-end scenarios, the 2021 to late 2020s timeframe still favors China—and is attractive for its 68-year-old leader, who seeks a historical achievement at the zenith of his career. U.S. planners must mobilize resources, effort, and risk acceptance to maximize power and thereby deter Chinese aggression in the coming decade—literally starting now—and innovatively employ assets that currently exist or can be operationally assembled and scaled within the next several years. That will be the first step to pushing back against China during the 2020s—a decade of danger—before what will likely be a waning of Chinese power. As Beijing aggressively seeks to undermine the international order and promotes a narrative of inevitable Chinese strategic domination in Asia and beyond, it creates a dangerous contradiction between its goals and its medium-term capacity to achieve them. China is, in fact, likely nearing the apogee of its relative power; and by 2030 to 2035, it will cross a tipping point from which it may never recover strategically. Growing headwinds constraining Chinese growth, while not publicly acknowledged by Beijing, help explain Xi’s high and apparently increasing risk tolerance. Beijing’s window of strategic opportunity is sliding shut. China’s skyrocketing household debt levels exemplify structural economic constraints that are emerging much earlier than they did for the United States when it had similar per capita GDP and income levels. Debt is often a wet blanket on consumption growth. A 2017 analysis published by the Bank for International Settlements found that once the household debt-to-GDP ratio in a sample of 54 countries exceeded 60 percent, “the negative long-run effects on consumption tend to intensify.” China’s household debt-to-GDP ratio surpassed that empirical danger threshold in late 2020. Rising debt service burdens thus threaten Chinese consumers’ capacity to sustain the domestic consumption-focused “dual circulation” economic model that Xi and his advisors seek to build. China’s growth record during the past 30 years has been remarkable, but past exceptionalism does not confer future immunity from fundamental demographic and economic headwinds. As debt levels continue to rise at an absolute level that has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade, China also faces a hollowing out of its working-age population. This critical segment peaked in 2010 and has since declined, with the rate from 2015 to 2020 nearing 0.6 percent annually—nearly twice the respective pace in the United States. While the United States faces demographic challenges of its own, the disparity between the respective paces of decline highlights its relative advantage compared to its chief geopolitical competitor. Moreover, the United States can choose to access a global demographic and talent dividend via immigration in a way China simply will not be able to do. Atop surging debt and worsening demographics, China also faces resource insecurity. China’s dependence on imported food and energy has grown steadily over the past two decades. Projections from Tsinghua University make a compelling case that China’s oil and gas imports will peak between 2030 and 2035. As China grapples with power shortages, Beijing has been reminded that supply shortfalls equal to even a few percentage points of total demand can have outsized negative impacts. Domestic resource insufficiency by itself does not hinder economic growth—as the Four Asian Tigers’ multi-decade boom attests. But China is in a different position. Japan and South Korea never had to worry about the U.S. Navy interdicting inbound tankers or grain ships. In fact, the United States was avowedly willing to use military force to protect energy flows from the Persian Gulf region to its allies. Now, as an increasingly energy-secure United States pivots away from the Middle East toward the Indo-Pacific, there is a substantial probability that energy shipping route protection could be viewed in much more differentiated terms—with oil and liquefied natural gas cargoes sailing under the Chinese flag viewed very differently than cargoes headed to buyers in other regional countries. Each of these dynamics—demographic downshifts, rising debts, resource supply insecurity—either imminently threatens or is already actively interfering with the CCP’s long-cherished goal of achieving a “moderately prosperous society.” Electricity blackouts, real estate sector travails (like those of Evergrande) that show just how many Chinese investors’ financial eggs now sit in an unstable $52 trillion basket, and a solidifying alignment of countries abroad concerned by aggressive Chinese behavior all raise questions about Xi’s ability to deliver. With this confluence of adverse events only a year before the next party congress, where personal ambition and survival imperatives will almost drive him to seek anointment as the only Chinese “leader for life” aside from former leader Mao Zedong, the timing only fuels his sense of insecurity. Xi’s anti-corruption campaigns and ruthless removal of potential rivals and their supporters solidified his power but likely also created a quiet corps of opponents who may prove willing to move against him if events create the perception he’s lost the “mandate of heaven.” Accordingly, the baseline assumption should be that Xi’s crown sits heavy and the insecurity induced is thereby intense enough to drive high-stake, high-consequence posturing and action. While Xi is under pressure to act, the external risks are magnified because so far, he has suffered few consequences from taking actions on issues his predecessors would likely never have gambled on. Reactions to party predations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been restricted to diplomatic-signaling pinpricks, such as sanctioning responsible Chinese officials and entities, most of whom lack substantial economic ties to the United States. Whether U.S. restraint results from a fear of losing market access or a belief that China’s goals are ultimately limited is not clear at this time. While the CCP issues retaliatory sanctions against U.S. officials and proclaims a triumphant outcome to its hostage diplomacy, these tactical public actions mask a growing private awareness that China’s latitude for irredentist action is poised to shrink. Not knowing exactly when domestic and external constraints will come to bite—but knowing that when Beijing sees the tipping point in its rearview mirror, major rivals will recognize it too—amplifies Xi and the party’s anxiety to act on a shorter timeline. Hence the dramatic acceleration of the last few years. Just as China is mustering its own strategic actions, so the United States must also intensify its focus and deployment of resources. The United States has taken too long to warm up and confront the central challenge, but it retains formidable advantages, agility, and the ability to prevail—provided it goes all-in now. Conversely, if Washington fails to marshal its forces promptly, its achievements after 2030 or 2035 will matter little. Seizing the 2020s would enable Beijing to cripple destroy the free and open rules-based order and entrench its position by economically subjugating regional neighbors (including key U.S. treaty allies) to a degree that could offset the strategic headwinds China now increasingly grapples with. Deterrence is never certain. But it offers the highest probability of avoiding the certainty that an Indo-Pacific region dominated by a CCP-led China would doom treaty allies, threaten the U.S. homeland, and likely set the stage for worse to come. Accordingly, U.S. planners should immediately mobilize resources and effort as well as accept greater risks to deter Chinese action over the critical next decade. The greatest threat is armed conflict over Taiwan, where U.S. and allied success or failure will be fundamental and reverberate for the remainder of the century. There is a high chance of a major move against Taiwan by the late 2020s—following an extraordinary ramp-up in People’s Liberation Army capabilities and before Xi or the party state’s power grasp has ebbed or Washington and its allies have fully regrouped and rallied to the challenge. So how should policymakers assess the potential risk of Chinese action against Taiwan reaching dangerous levels by 2027 or possibly even earlier—as emphasized in the testimonies of Adms. Philip Davidson and John Aquilino? In June, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified to the House of Representatives that Xi had “challenged the People’s Liberation Army to accelerate their modernization programs to develop capabilities to seize Taiwan and move it from 2035 to 2027,” although China does not currently have the capabilities or intentions to conduct an all-out invasion of mainland Taiwan. U.S. military leaders’ assessments are informed by some of the world’s most extensive and sophisticated internal information. But what’s striking is open-source information available to everyone suggests similar things. Moving forward, a number of open-source indicators offer valuable “early warning lights” that can help policymakers more accurately calibrate both potential timetables and risk readings as the riskiest period of relations—from 2027 onward—approaches. Semiconductors supply self-sufficiency. Taiwan is the “OPEC+” of semiconductors, accounting for approximately two-thirds of global chip foundry capacity. A kinetic crisis would almost certainly disrupt—and potentially even completely curtail—semiconductor supplies. China presently spends even more each year on semiconductor imports (around $380 billion) than it does on oil, but much of the final products are destined for markets abroad. Taiwan is producing cutting-edge 5-nanometer and 7-nanometer chips, but China produces around 80 percent of the rest of the chips in the world. The closer China comes to being able to secure “good enough” chips for “inside China-only” needs, the less of a constraint this becomes. Crude oil, grain, strategic metals stockpiles—the commercial community (Planet Labs, Ursa Space Systems, etc.) has developed substantial expertise in cost-effectively tracking inventory changes for key input commodities needed to prepare for war. Electric vehicle fleet size—the amount of oil demand displaced by electric vehicles varies depending on miles driven, but the more of China’s car fleet that can be connected to the grid (and thus powered by blockade-resistant coal), the less political burden Beijing will face if it has to weather a maritime oil blockade imposed in response to actions it took against Taiwan or other major revisionist adventures. China’s passenger vehicle fleet, now approximately 225 million units strong, counts nearly 6.5 million electric vehicles among its ranks, the lion’s share of which are full-battery electrics. China’s State Council seeks to have 20 percent of new vehicles sold in China be electric vehicles by 2025. This target has already basically been achieved over the last few months, meaning at least 3.5 to 4 million (and eventually many more) new elective vehicles will enter China’s car fleet each year from now on. Local concentration of maritime vessels—snap exercises with warships, circumnavigations, and midline tests with swarms of aircraft highlight the growing scale of China’s threat to Taiwan. But these assets alone cannot invade the island. To capture and garrison, Beijing would need not only air, missile, naval, and special operations forces but also the ability to move lots of equipment and—at the very least—tens of thousands of personnel across the Taiwan Strait. As such, Beijing would have to amass maritime transport assets. And given the scale required, this would alter ship patterns elsewhere along China’s coast in ways detectable with artificial intelligence-facilitated imagery analysis from firms like Planet Labs (or national assets). Only the most formidable, agile American and allied deterrence can kick the can down the road long enough for China’s slowdown to shut the window of vulnerability. Holding the line is likely to require frequent and sustained proactive enforcement actions to disincentivize full-frontal Chinese assaults on the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. Chinese probing behavior and provocations must be met with a range of symmetric and asymmetric responses that impose real costs, such as publishing assets owned by Chinese officials abroad, cyber interference with China’s technological social control apparatus, “hands on” U.S. Navy and Coast Guard enforcement measures against Maritime Militia-affiliated vessels in the South China Sea, intensified air and maritime surveillance of Chinese naval bases, and visas and resettlement options to Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and other threatened Chinese citizens—including CCP officials (and their families) who seek to defect and/or leave China. U.S. policymakers must make crystal clear to their Chinese counterparts that the engagement-above-all policies that dominated much of the past 25 years are over and the risks and costs of ongoing—and future—adventurism will fall heaviest on China.
Chinese revisionism inevitably leads to war and as Edwards stated, war goes nuclear and leads to extinction. This contention links into minimizing suffering because preventing an invasion of Taiwan and preventing Chinese superrority prevents extinction.