The Dire Effects of Space Pollution

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24 | THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, January/February 2022.

Copyright © 2022, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

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GPS signals, also free, to navigate their

giant cultivators and reduce runo by

applying chemicals judiciously. Pack-

age delivery companies use GPS to

minimize gasoline usage. A proposed

probe called MethaneSat would moni-

tor the thousands of sites emitting that

virtually uncontrolled greenhouse gas.

And of course consumers benet

from satellites in Low Earth Orbit.

Our smartphones receive GPS signals.

Several companies oer satellite phones

that can be used anywhere on the plan-

et, communicating through a constel-

lation of dozens of orbiting repeaters

skimming just above the atmosphere.

And Elon Musk’s Starlink is launching

thousands of small satellites that col-

lectively will bring the internet to every

part of the globe. ere are already a to-

tal of 4,000 active satellites of all kinds.

But there are numerous dead ones, and

space agencies track 23,000 objects

The Dire Effects

of Space Pollution

THE environment got a big

boost last September when

a rocket blasting o from

Vandenberg Air Force Base

orbited Landsat 9. e new satellite

is a highly instrumented space probe

designed to scrutinize the Earth from

aloft with visual images and an array of

other sensors. Test photos taken shortly

after launch showed outstanding reso-

lution of the biosphere unrolling below.

Sadly, Landsat 9 and thousands of

other useful satellites just above the

atmosphere are an endangered spe-

cies, threatened by their very number

and by the detritus of orbital opera-

tions called space junk — at rst, lost

wrenches used by astronauts and globs

of their frozen urine, but now increas-

ingly the shards of crashed satellites.

Worryingly, the number of satel-

lites has doubled in the last two years

and that growth is accelerating; the

increasing euvia caused by resulting

crashes could create a runaway chain

reaction. Scientists call this a Kessler

Syndrome — a hypothetical cascade

of collisions ooding space with pro-

jectiles that then take out other satel-

lites, until nothing is left in the valu-

able Low Earth Orbit zone but menac-

ing chunks of metal and plastic. Space

junk is already damaging vital satel-

lites, even endangering astronauts on

the International Space Station.

Society would suer from this loss

of a priceless resource in countless

ways, including its ability to discover

and manage global hazards. Much of

environmental protection depends on

information gathered by Landsat 9’s

predecessors and other orbiting plat-

forms. For instance, scientists use data

gathered by satellites to feed into

their climate models. ese probes

detect everything from the chemical

composition of the atmosphere to the

extent of Arctic sea ice, the thickness

and annual runo from the Greenland

icecap, the calving of Antarctica’s oat-

ing ice sheets, the rate of recession of

melting glaciers in temperate latitudes,

and the rise of sea levels.

at’s not all. e ozone hole was

discovered by satellites, which con-

tinue to monitor progress as the polar

stratosphere heals. Orbiting probes

also monitor oceanic dead zones, forest

cover, and topsoil loss. Satellites detect-

ed the spreading of deserts in northern

Africa and the extent of illegal forest

clearing in Amazonia and Indonesia.

And wildres are tracked from orbit.

An outt called Planet.com has

200 Earth-imaging satellites, provid-

ing almost real-time photos updat-

ing the entire Earth’s surface down to

three-meter resolution every 24 hours.

ese data enable scientists to track

everything from the loss of mangroves

to unregulated emissions from smoke-

stacks. Activists can employ Google

Earth, a free utility, to monitor land

use in their neighborhood. Farmers use

safe, quality education

for every girl without

climate action.”. . .

UNICEF found that

natural disasters and cli-

mate-induced migration

often lead to increased

levels of violence against

girls and women, who

make up 80 percent

of people displaced by

“If current trends con-

tinue, by 2025 climate

change will be a contrib-

uting factor in prevent-

ing at least 12.5 million

girls from completing

their education each

year,” wrote Malala

Fund researchers. . . . “It

shows that we cannot

achieve 12 years of free,

climate change. Child

marriage and increased

household responsi-

bilities for girls are also

factors.

For example, women

and girls collect 80

percent of water for

households globally

and are forced to travel

longer distances in dan-

gerous conditions when

water becomes scarce,

according to a study

from UNICEF. About

20 percent of girls in

Ethiopia miss school to

collect water compared

with 5 percent of boys

— a proportion that is

likely to increase.

— Climate Wire

Climate Change Will Worsen Life Quality for Girls, Women

Shell, which said in Febru-

ary that its oil production

peaked in 2019 and will now

fall 1 or 2 percent per year until

2030, has a goal to be a net-zero

business by 2050.

“At a time of unprecedented

change for the industry, it’s even

more important that we have an

increased ability to accelerate the

transition to a lower-carbon glob-

al energy system,” Shell Chairman

Andrew Mackenzie said in a state-

ment. — Politicopro.com