Thirty Meter Telescope

High on the slopes of Mauna Kea
and looking across the sea,
Here is the place we learn each day
and we're as happy as can be

Did your elementary school have an anthem? Well, that was ours at Ernest B. deSilva school in Hilo.

I feel lucky to have grown up in Hawaii.

It was the seventies. That was around the time when native Hawaiian activists, inspired by the Civil Rights movements on the mainland, were pushing for renewed cultural awareness and political power in Hawaii.

Recently, the Thirty Meter Telescope project has gotten some attention. It's an issue which brings together elements from my past, growing up in Hawaii, and my present, as a staffer at UNM's Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Telescopes have been built at the top of Maunakea for the past fifty years because conditions are ideal for astronomical observation. Maunakea is the tallest mountain in Hawaii, at 13,800 feet. It is dry, dark, cold, and clear.

Currently there are about a dozen telescopes at the Maunakea summit. Ten years ago astronomers proposed building another one. This one was going to be very large: the mirror array would be thirty meters across, about as big as a basketball court. It was going to cost $1.2 billion. The TMT project, which is funded by groups from Canada, the U.S., India, China, and Japan, would sweeten the deal by allocating $1 million annually for scholarships and science education programs for students in Hawaii.

Normally this kind of project goes through smoothly. But this time, when the groundbreaking ceremony was about to take place in 2014, activists blocked the road up to the mountain and refused to let anyone pass through, even workers for the existing observatories.

Protests have continued, and to this day, people are still camped up there -- it is hard to say how many -- as the delays and additional costs add up day by day. And the fate of the Thirty Meter Telescope project seems dimmer and dimmer.

Now this is where I feel conflicted. Though I was raised in Hawaii, I'm not native Hawaiian. But I am liberal and I'm used to being on the side of people who oppose development.

For example, when I was in high school, developers planned a luxury hotel on Hapuna beach, one of the few pristine white sand beaches on the Big Island. I went door to door asking people to put this issue on a ballot and prevent this from happening. The petition went through, but the vote failed, and the developers built the hotel. And now it's been years since I've gone to Hapuna beach.

I continue to go to rallies and marches and protests. I've taken the bus to Washington D.C. and marched for civil rights, reproductive rights, and women's rights. As recently as last night, I attended a rally to show opposition to the current Republican administration in the White House and the Senate.

Yet now that a cause has arisen which threatens my paycheck, I'm exhibiting value drift. As you get older, you stop standing up so quickly for the kinds of things you used to jump up for right away.

I get paid for supporting science and astronomy. And perhaps because of that, I support building the Thirty Meter Telescope on Maunakea.

Some protestors say we could build the telescope somewhere else. This strikes me as a form of Not-In-My-Back-Yard thinking. The consortium has studied other sites and determined this is the ideal spot to have it.

I understand that native Hawaiians have historically suffered. The American military, spurred on by American business, locked up the last Hawaiian Queen in 1893 and Hawaiians never had control of their land again. Their religion was banned, the language spurned, their political power stripped. This kind of generational trauma expresses itself in real ways. Native Hawaiians and part Hawaiians have some of the worst health, poverty, and education statistics among all island ethnic groups.

The act of coming together to protest this telescope has in itself been beneficial to the Hawaiian activist movement. There has been a renewal of focus on Hawaiian pride and self-determinism similar to the awareness that came when protesters gathered to oppose building the Keystone XL Pipeline.

However, there are different degrees of development. I think the TMT is an example of a positive development that should go through.

It's not based on extracting resources, like mining; it's not destructive, like tourism; there's no pollution, like manufacturing. It's rare to get large sums of money together for basic research. Usually big money funds projects for industry or the military. But the Thirty Meter Telescope will lead to discoveries about the universe we didn't know before and may even lead to new understandings about ourselves. Basic research goes in directions we don't determine.

Right now the mayor of Hawaii, Harry Kim, and the governor of Hawaii, David Ige say they will remove law enforcement from the blocked road and see what develops. The protesters are determined to continue camping on the mountain this winter, and they are developing their own sense of camaraderie against the elements, with shared food, meetings, cultural exchanges, and political planning. It sounds kind of like a Rainbow gathering.

I think that's a good thing too. Hawaiian activism and cultural practitioners built the Hawaiian language immersion programs, the Hawaiian language PhD program at the University of Hawaii and the revival of the Hula, among many successes. When you get people together for a cause, it can't help but build awareness and networks.

Yet in the end, I hope the activists back down and let the TMT project go through.

I go back to my elementary school theme song: "High on the slopes of Mauna Kea/and looking across the sea". We have the opportunity to look across the sea, not the Pacific ocean, but the sea of stars, the sea of our universe. How incredible is that! Wouldn't all our ancestors have been amazed and astonished! We are very fortunate to learn each day about our universe and ourselves.

That young idealism and eagerness to learn is the reason I support building the Thirty Meter Telescope. I hope if you have the opportunity to express yourself that you will likewise speak out in favor of TMT on Maunakea.