Beyond Earth (ATWG) - Chapter 28 - The Earth Observatory by Langdon Morris

From The Space Library

Chapter 28

The Earth Observatory

By Langdon Morris

The Problem

Today there is no regular and reliable source of information about the condition of the global environment that is available to the general public. Except for moments of extreme crisis, there is no consistent coverage of issues such as pollution, depletion of resources, human population demographics, global warming, toxic waste, or a hundred others. Nor is there systematic coverage of the extensive work that is being done worldwide in response to these vital issues, nor of the ongoing scientific research on the underlying characteristics and principles that compose the living systems of the Earth which might help us to make better choices as we confront a future that will only become more complex.

The news coverage of these issues, such as it is, is completely fragmented. Major events such as oil spills or other pollution crises, extreme climate conditions, storms, and exceptional instances of environmental degradation are reported by the media as though they were yet another sporting event, and after the immediate crisis has passed and the finals core is tabulated, they fade from the public's attention. And as we have seen with the lack of follow-through in New Orleans from the Katrina disaster, they apparently fade from the attention of politicians and bureaucrats as well.

The primary reason for this lack of effective coverage is a matter of media culture. Television, newspapers, magazines, radio, and now the internet are compelling media for conveying the immediacy of crisis, and they excel at displaying the drama of the spectacle, the emotion of conflict and confrontation, violence, risks and threats. They are also, we now know, quite adept at creating such drama, which they do through provocation, distortion, and manipulation. The conflict of a political debate is raised to peaks of screaming anger, the excitement of a championship sporting event is made into global spectacle, the heartbreak of human suffering brings out tissues by the millions. But then by tomorrow morning we forget and move on to a new disaster (and pass the popcorn, please).

However, most of the important issues concerning environmental destruction tend to be decades-long processes hidden as incremental change, and they aren't able to be conveyed in a compelling way via the event-oriented mass media. The long-term, evolutionary nature of these challenges makes them inaccessible to the "news" mentality. The notion that we are responsible for these forces that we unleash, or that we can or ought to do something about them, is rarely even whispered.

Hence, most of today's environmental news coverage is fragmented and ineffective as a source of meaningful education. Since the media do thrive on controversy, scientific and regulatory argument about the meaning of particular events or trends receives the majority of the coverage, which only results in a yet more confused public. Did the talking head for or against the issue win the sound-bite war in the 30 second news story? Ok, move on!

Even focused environmental programming is inadequate, because programs on networks like the Discovery Channel are presented without reference to any broader conceptual context. They stand alone as unconnected bits and pieces, lacking any overall framework to clarify and reflect their true meaning or potential importance, which merely reinforces the prevalence of fragmentation.

1st person: "Too bad about the rain forest."

2nd person: "Yeah, too bad. Turn the channel. I wanna see who's winning the game."

1st person: "Pass the popcorn."

2nd person: "Hey, he hit a home run!"

1st person: "Cool!" Of course this is a cultural problem as much if not more than a media problem, because we all know only too well that the media only show us what we want to watch. Well, that's what the purveyors of mass media want us to believe, anyway. In truth, the media themselves also exert significant influence on our tastes, and at the moment it is in their financial interest to degrade our tastes to a frighteningly low level; as a nation are being significantly and rapidly degraded by an endless stream of drek, not only with respect to mass media, but in many other aspects of our lives as well. Our lives, our televisions, our refrigerators, our garages and basements are becoming filled with poor quality, shoddy, lazy, thoughtless, junk, and we fear that our minds, or the minds of our neighbors, are also becoming hollow junkyards.

In contrast, a great deal of the allure of the space movement is that it is a veritable antidote to the degradation we see all around us. Space exploration is anti-junk by its very nature. Junk science does not make rockets that reach orbit, that reach the moon, the sun, Mars, Venus, asteroids, the outer planets, and beyond, only real science does. Shoddy engineering does not make crafts that land flawlessly and operate autonomously for years on other planets, only real engineering does. Lazy thinking and successful space exploration are not compatible with one another.

Similarly, lazy thinking is no longer compatible with the survival of the Earth. And happily, millions of people, or perhaps even billions, still do admire and even revere excellent thinking, hard work, and thoughtful decision making, and they feel pride when their nation, their race, their humanity succeeds in its endeavors in space. And just as in the US, careful sociology55 has identified that there are indeed millions of people who despise the cultural decline they see around them and who desire to create a culture that carries our best qualities forward into the future, rather than our worst, and who are quite aware that insidious incremental processes are destroying precious, perhaps irreplaceable resources; and who are ready to be engaged in a systematic activity to measure, monitor, synthesize, and manage the scientific information, data, and knowledge that will lead to sound understanding and wise choices, so, then, we must engage these very people, and we must do so promptly.

The Response: Earth Observatory and EarthMedia

What's needed is to a new way to create and deliver news coverage and educational programming about environmental issues that carries with it a sense of immediacy, while at the same time delivering a larger framework of context, thereby matching the strengths of mass media with useful, contextualized information about what's really happening, so that people understand. This is the mission of the Earth Observatory.

The Earth Observatory would be a working information, research, policy, conference, and media center for environmental issues.

As an Information Center, the Earth Observatory gathers video and data on the environment from numerous partner organizations all around the globe. The purpose is not to create new data, but simply to gather as much of it as possible into one place - measurements, maps, photos, graphics, animation, time-series forecasts, news feeds, and computer-based analysis of activities, events, and trends chronicling the life of our planet, stories of environmental destruction, conservation, and preservation. Naturally, a significant proportion of the data, information, and images contained in the Earth Observatory would come from space, from satellites and other craft operated by NASA and other agencies.

As a Research Center, a professional staff of resident and visiting scholars and students are engaged in their own scientific research, as well as in helping to interpret the enormous flow of information for the media. They design, monitor, analyze, and manage research projects worldwide.

As a Conference Center, the Earth Observatory hosts researchers and policy makers in large and small, formal and informal conferences and gatherings on a wide range of environmental topics and issues.

As a Policy Advocacy Center, the Earth Observatory will support a different sort of decision making. Instead of decisions based on bureaucratic priorities, adversarial illogic, or mis-informed ideological distortions, a trusted source of sound, science-based environmental information supports participative decision making. It also provides the means to rise above prejudiced partisan politics to arrive at a reasonable discussion of issues that are surely difficult enough to handle without added ideological distortions. In the environmental field we need an organization to play the role that the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, or the Underwriter's Laboratories Seal, or even Consumer Reports plays in the consumer markets.

As a Media Center, the Earth Observatory is the home of EarthMedia, from which original programming and content will be disseminated worldwide on television, radio, in print, and on the web. A production set is located in the facility so that the ongoing activities of the Earth Observatory will be carried on EarthMedia, and presented by a team of hosts and moderators who will provide continuity just as a team of news anchors and reporters convey continuity in broadcast news.

By integrating these five functions, the Earth Observatory puts in place the conditions that support a comprehensive understanding of the environment and humanity's impact upon it, and the dissemination of that understanding on a global basis.

The Earth Observatory will be a vital resource for students and educators, for policy makers, activists, and media producers. It will also be a membership organization that engages citizens of all nations in the process of learning to care for our precious home.

Envisioning a Facility

To become a credible institution, the Earth Observatory needs to be a physical place where people can go, see, touch, and talk. A familiar model for it might be NASA's Mission Control, a single room where teams of scientists work round the clock to monitor and manage the activities of space missions, astronauts, satellites, and experiments. In the very nature of what they're doing there is tension and immediacy, a sense of urgency that comes from the inspiring nature of space exploration, its risks, and its complexity. New data are constantly arriving, new situations emerging, and a competent staff is on hand to collect, analyze, and explain everything that's going on. The drawing below gives a first impression of how the Earth Observatory might look.

Figure 28.1 The Earth Observatory Concept Plan

The Control Room is also the EarthMedia broadcast set; the Project Rooms support various ongoing conferences and research activities. Additional facilities not shown would include offices, technical equipment, food service, and spaces accessible to the public. This drawing was prepared by Patri Merker Architects, and appeared originally in Managing the Evolving Corporation by Langdon Morris.

Not long after the first NikeTown store opened in Portland, Oregon, it also became the city's number one tourist attraction. Now maybe there aren't that many tourists in Portland, but in any case, wherever it comes to be located, the Earth Observatory should aspire to national and international renown, aspire to becoming an extraordinary place to visit in person or online, a source of amazement and insight, of stark beauty and piercing truth, of a trusted source of knowledge that is invaluable for the future of our civilization.

Conclusion

The concept of the Earth Observatory and EarthMedia as trusted sources of environmental information would build upon the success of CNN and the new paradigm for news that CNN established 3 decades ago. Prior to CNN, the news was a once-a-day event; CNN transformed it into an around-the-clock process, eliminating time lag. CNN also overcame the New York-centric orientation of the three old networks with a dynamic everywhere-to-everywhere openness, thereby surpassing the networks' intellectual dominance of news content and interpretation. In other words, CNN created a new context for globalized, 24/7news, which soon became a new context for society as a whole.

Exactly the same shift is now needed for the environment, a new paradigm that breaks the intellectual headlock of the "event' mindset. It's time to create a new context and a new advocate for environmental awareness as only an Earth Observatory and integrated EarthMedia could. Or just as MTV created a new expert and advocate for youth culture, EarthMedia will be the expert and advocate for the environment, making it possible to coherently convey the big picture and the details of the important environmental issues that our culture must quickly learn to competently address.

Imagine, therefore, if you will ...

• Imagine a conference center dedicated to environmental issues ...
• Imagine an information center where vital environmental issues are tracked from day to day ...
• Imagine an internationally recognized center for environmental research ...
• Imagine the definitive environmental database complied from leading sources all over the world ...
• Imagine a policy advocacy group that earns the trust of all the world's citizens ...
• Imagine one place that is all these things, and a media hub dedicated to disseminating a profound understanding of the Earth to all people of all nations.
• You are imagining ... the Earth Observatory and EarthMedia. In a short time, the Earth Observatory should become the definitive repository of trusted scientific data on the Earth's environment, an exemplar fully engaged in forging the crucial marriage of science, public policy, and public education. The unification of these three critical functions into a single, cohesive force in world politics and global policy-making could make the Earth Observatory one of the most vitally important factors in our future survival.

We have the means, now, to make it happen, and with such means also comes ... the responsibility.

About the Author

Extracted from the book Beyond Earth - The Future of Humans in Space edited by Bob Krone ©2006 Apogee Books ISBN 978-1-894959-41-4

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