Top 3 reasons why TMT Mauna Kea proponents would be wise to reconsider their extreme, authoritarian, colonial, no-compromise position

When proponents of the so-called thirty meter telescope (TMT) use the word compromise, every one of the so-called compromise scenarios includes building an eighteen story thirty meter telescope on the highest, most sacred mountain peak on planet Earth: Mauna Kea.

That is not compromise. That’s gaslighting.

Maybe some readers are tired of hearing this term, but there’s a reason that we’re still talking about it so much at the end of 2019. Gaslighting is both an interpersonal and politically abusive behavior; a long-time favorite policy-making tool for aggressively colonizing global corporate interests. In the TMT case, it’s used as a way to justify a “compromise” regime that amounts to “TMT’s way or the highway,” masked in the lingo of intellectually honest cooperation. “We want to work with the Hawaiian people in a culturally sensitive way,” we read, knowing there is zero intention of moving TMT.

It doesn’t need to be this way. At Mauna Kea, history is providing the global scientific community with an historic opportunity to adapt to the post-Standard Model Era of physics. Confirmation of the Higgs boson’s existence in 2012 completed the centuries-old Standard Model of particle physics. Verification of all known mathematical predictions for particles was fulfilled, and an entire scientific epoch came to an end. Science had triumphed.

However, like many of us who reach long term goals and then lose our sense of meaning and direction in the quest itself, nearly eight years later, science is still reeling from a collective sense of anomie and denial that the work which defined a central field of inquiry in the scientific quest has come to an end. Like a thirty or forty year marriage that is suddenly over.

How does an insatiably questioning species find new, relevant, meaningful questions in such a world; a world in which we believe that we’ve outgrown our old relationships to the point that we have all our own answers? Ipso facto, we do, in a sense, effectively proclaim that we have found all of our own answers – at least to the particle-physics construction of so-called objective reality – by the very nature of a complete Standard Model.

On the other hand, if we are genuinely willing to continue growing, both as individuals and as scientists, then how do we generate even more precise, provocative, and probing questions; and how do we do so in a much more democratic, environmentally responsible, and ultimately humane manner?

This is where the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, along with the greatest think-do tanks and foundations in the world have an historic opportunity to begin defining those new questions by forging new fundamental scientific agendas that will dramatically improve billions of lives; and they can signal that intent with one single decision: protect the highest peak on Earth as an ecological sanctuary and shrine to our tiny blue dot of a planet, and all of its rich cultural heritage.

In an age of unprecedented ecological precarity and awareness, it is inexplicable how the highest peak in the world, rising majestically from the Pacific ocean floor, is not already widely considered the ninth wonder of the world. The geographic and geological rarity of Mauna Kea alone is enough for common sense to make that simple, yet profound distinction; the kind of distinction that has easily warranted the protection of state, federal, international bodies in far less significant places.

The highest peak distinction alone should be enough for even the most disinterested people to understand why kiaʻi – the Hawaiian word for protection, or protectors – stand to protect Mauna Kea. There is not a single protester that has ever set foot on the Mauna Kea access road. Every single soul that has visited or stood upon that ala – Hawaiian for road – stands in protection of the mauna. Not one single person is protesting science, progress, or modernity. Kū kiaʻi mauna is Hawaiian for “stand in protection of the mountain.” It has absolutely nothing to do with protest.

Yet, Mauna Kea’s empirical status as the highest peak in the world is still secondary, and only one of the top three reasons why TMT is better constructed on another site, namely:

1. Demonstrate genuine understanding, value, and respect for indigenous cultural self-determination. Decolonize the fundamental scientific enterprise on a global scale.
2. Preserve the geographic, geological, environmental, and symbolic uniqueness of Earth’s highest peak (from sea floor).
3. Recognize the 2012 conclusion of the standard model of particle physics epoch as marking a significant inflection point in the long arc narrative of scientific inquiry. Namely, a pivot from seeking answers further and further away, to seeking answers deeper and deeper within ourselves, our institutions, our cultures, and our societies.

As the highest peak on the planet from the sea floor, Mauna Kea is a natural symbol and sanctuary for cultivation of humanity’s highest values and aspirations. In the Hawaiian language: Kapu Aloha. For the entirety of Hawaiian human history, Mauna Kea has been a natural cathedral and monastery, not built with human hands, not to be desecrated, diminished, or improved upon by crude human edifice. In the words of the kiaʻi, or protectors, “Sacred Mountain, Sacred Conduct.”

Ironcially, it is precisely because Mauna Kea is unique on the planet that radical proponents of TMT proclaim Mauna Kea not only as the single most desirable location, but the only acceptable location in the world for the eighteen story telescope.

With an almost religious zeal, the most fanatical TMT proponents claim that everything about the location is perfect for astronomy, therefore they have the intrinsic moral right to build. Mauna Kea is the highest peak on the planet, so astronomers can see further, better. Nevermind that the location had always been perfect for many other purposes, such as a natural cathedral, like the Grand Canyon; that doesn’t enter the TMT equation, at all. If it’s perfect for our uses we have the right to build; if it’s perfect for your uses, you do not have the right to stop us.

This is what scientific colonialism looks like.

After all, why should astronomers and investors settle for the second-best location when building an instrument of such technological prowess and precision? We’re scientists, after all, and everything done in the name of science is unquestionably good for the Earth and all its inhabitants, right?

That’s why, when disingenuous proponents of TMT speak of compromise, every single one of the “compromise” scenarios includes building the eighteen story thirty meter telescope on Mauna Kea. Are you beginning to see the conquistador-like behavior in all of this? “You do not have to agree with us, but if you choose to not agree with us, you will face violence.”

Not only is this gaslighting and colonizing behavior, it’s all based upon utterly absurd lines of reasoning. For instance, are people seriously supposed to be pursuaded that 1,800 meters of elevation on the surface of the Earth matters significantly to a telescope designed to gaze billions of light-years into the distance?

ʻOiaʻiʻo? Really? Eighteen hundred meters in the context of billions of light-years distance? Eighteen hundred meters. That’s the difference between the height of Mauna Kea and La Palma. Absurd.

As for the claim that Mauna Kea alone is the most perfect of all locations for the TMT, we need look no further than Voltaire, who is credited with the aphorism, “the perfect is enemy of the good.” More literally, “the best is the enemy of the good,” from his Dictionnaire Philosophique in 1770: “Il meglio è l’inimico del bene” (Wikipedia).

Unyielding insistence upon perfectionism is its own vain undoing. Unfortunately, TMT zealots cannot imagine settling for less than perfection. The most hot-headed TMT proponents are afflicted by an evangelical fever of perfectionism; perfection from their own perspective, for their own purposes. For such people, finishing second among a hundred runners in a foot race is unthinkable, and considered utter failure.

The fact of the matter is, even if Mauna Kea is considered “perfect” or the “best” site for a thirty meter telescope, that does not necessarily mean that the site advances the highest good of the planet, its people, or even the astronomical community and the wider scientific enterprise, itself. Science does not take place in a vaccuum. It is an all too human activity. Accordingly, our human obsession with perfection all too often distracts us from achieving the highest good for ourselves, for others, and for our local and global community.

If there are other excellent locations for thirty meter telescopes on planet Earth – and there are – then why are TMT Mauna Kea proponents so unrelentingly fixated on Mauna Kea? Why do proponents insist upon taking the position that “it’s our way or the highway?”

Some of the seemingly irrefutable arguments for placing TMT on Mauna Kea include the argument that, “La Palma is just too low, too warm, and too wet to be competitive with Mauna Kea in the thermal IR and isn’t good enough with AO (adaptive optics) to really make up the difference. Some science, including that in exoplanets, La Palma might not be able to do at all but would be feasible from Mauna Kea,” said [astrophysicist Thayne] Currie, who is familiar with the source data for the report <https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2019/09/05/astronomers-refute-claim-that-canary-islands-comparable-to-mauna-kea-for-tmt/>.

This category of claim is interesting in that it presumes that the list of challenges to thermal IR are somehow insurmountable, and therefore the project can only procede as presently designed. However, this is simply not how engineering works. If the assignment requires better thermal IR, then we build better thermal IR.

Ask any first year engineering student and they will tell you that the practice of engineering is to work with the resources at hand. However, what is not taught, and must be taught, is that the question of what resources are at hand is often epiphenomenal to engineering; it is often outside of the scope of the engineering discipline itself. In cases of large scientific construction projects such as TMT, the question of available resources is often a political, financial, military, or natural resource question. There is a preconceived agenda to be fulfilled, or there is oil, or other natural resources to be seized.

In the case of TMT, had the meteorological conditions of La Palma been given as initial design constraints, the entire project would have evolved differently. The factors that are presented as disadvantageous to TMT at La Palma would have instead driven the innovation agenda. La Palma’s latitude, temperature, humidity and elevation would have become design requirements, not pesky deployment impediments, as they are currently framed by uncompromising TMT Mauna Kea advocates. In that context, the term ‘adaptive optics’ takes on a different meaning when required to also compensate for additional atmospheric characteristics; perhaps making AO technology even better, and more generally useful at a larger number of observatory sites, planet-wide.

Instead, scientists admit that, “TMT was specifically designed to study the galactic center immediately after it is completed, ‘driving the requirements for one of TMT’s primary instruments,’ said [Professor Ben Mazin, physicist at the University of California Santa Barbara]” <https://www.astronomyhawaii.com/experts-clarify-claim-about-tmts-site-hawaii-is-much-better-than-spain/>.

This reveals the fact that the specific geographic and meteorological conditions of Mauna Kea were presumptive design assumptions, right from the drawing board; regardless of the decades of extremely vocal, cultural, and legal opposition to telescope construction atop “Big Mama,” as many local kānaka maoli — indigenous Hawaiians — affectionately refer to Mauna Kea.

This is a textbook case of settler colonialism in the scientific endeavor. The presumption of a manifest destiny atop Mauna Kea, for the TMT.

Moreover, as reported by CBS News, “Thirty Meter Telescope officials acknowledge that their backup site atop a peak on the Spanish Canary island of La Palma is a comparable observatory location, and that it wouldn’t cost more money or take extra time to build it there” <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-telescope-why-locations-mauna-kea-hawaii-la-palma-spain-might-not-matter/>.

If there were not so much at stake in terms of environmental, cultural, and social impact, the additional fact that some scientists actually resort to using the word magic as some kind of penultimate rationale might be laughable. “Every once in a while at Mauna Kea, you get one of those magic nights,” said University of California, Santa Cruz astronomy and astrophysics professor Michael Bolte, a Thirty Meter Telescope board member. “When the air is super stable above the site, you get images that you simply couldn’t get anyplace else” <https://apnews.com/363f20ee7712439ab73633df97a8edbd>. While magic is, of course, a euphemism, and the specific atmospheric conditions are subsequently described in strictly meteorological terms, it’s revealing whenever scientists resort to romantic or poetic terms like “magic” to justify their work. Lest this come across as too pejorative, what this reveals is the fact that scientists themselves are just as human as the rest of us.

Scientists love, and are loved. Scientists do not understand the mystery or magic of love, but they know it exists because they experience it firsthand, for themselves

This then, our common humanity, our common roots in indigenous values and sensibilities, is what we must focus upon in the TMT Mauna Kea context, as well as in the context of defining a more insightful agenda for the post-standard model of particle physics scientific endeavor; today, and throughout the remainder of the 21st century.

If we can finally come to know ourselves and somehow, miraculously, even magically (in the strictly scientific sense), bring the anthropocene back from the brink of Extinction Risk; maybe, just maybe, we can earn the opportunity to continue exploring – both the furthest mysteries of the cosmos and the deepest mysteries of this consciousness which alone enables us to explore and observe anything at all – for billions of light-years to come.