Soon, 1 out of every 15 points of light in

the sky will be a satellite

I’m outside at my rural Saskatchewan farm, chatting with my neighbours who I’ve invited over to
appreciate the night sky through my telescope. After exclamations and open-mouthed wonder
over Saturn’s rings, and light that has been travelling through space for more than two million
years to reach our eyes from the Andromeda Galaxy, our conversation inevitably turns to the
pandemic, our work-from-home arrangements and complaints about rural internet. My
neighbour casually mentions they’ve just switched to using Starlink for their internet provider.

I glance up and notice a bright satellite moving across the sky, almost certainly a Starlink, since
they now make up almost half of the nearly 4,000 operational satellites and they’re extremely
bright. I take a deep breath and carefully consider how to discuss the substantial cost that we’re
all going to have to pay for Starlink internet.

I don’t blame my neighbours for switching. Here, as in many rural parts of North America, there
aren’t great internet options, and with many people working and taking classes from home
during the pandemic, anything that makes life easier is immediately accepted.

But I know exactly how high this cost could be. My paper, forthcoming in The Astronomical
Journal, has predictions for what the night sky will look like if satellite companies follow through
on their current plans. I also know that because of the geometry of sunlight and the orbits that
have been chosen, 50 degrees north, where I live, will be the most severely affected part of the
world.

With no regulation, I know that in the near future, one out of every 15 points you can see in the
sky will actually be relentlessly crawling satellites, not stars. This will be devastating to research
astronomy, and will completely change the night sky worldwide.

The future is too, too bright

In order to find out how badly the night sky is going to be affected by sunlight reflected from
planned satellite megaconstellations, we built an open-source computer model to predict
satellite brightnesses as seen from different places on Earth, at different times of night, in
different seasons. We also built a simple web app based on this simulation.

A simulation of the brightness and number of satellites during a full night for 50 degrees north
on the summer solstice.

Our model uses 65,000 satellites on the orbits filed by four megaconstellation companies:
SpaceX Starlink and Amazon Kuiper (United States), OneWeb (United Kingdom) and
StarNet/GW (China). We calibrated our simulation to match telescope measurements of Starlink
satellites, since they are by far the most numerous.

Starlink has so far made some strides toward dimming their satellites since their first launch, but
most are still visible to the naked eye.

Our simulations show that from everywhere in the world, in every season, there will be dozens
to hundreds of satellites visible for at least an hour before sunrise and after sunset. Right now,
it’s relatively easy to escape urban light pollution for dark skies while camping or visiting your
cabin, but our simulations show that you can’t escape this new satellite light pollution anywhere
on Earth, even at the North Pole.

The most severely affected locations on Earth will be 50 degrees north and south, near cities
like London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Kiev, Vancouver, Calgary and my own home. On the
summer solstice, from these latitudes, there will be close to 200 satellites visible to the naked
eye all night long.

Megaconstellations of satellites will be a visible distraction at night.

I study orbital dynamics of the Kuiper Belt, a belt of small bodies beyond Neptune. My research
relies on long time-exposure, wide-field imaging to discover and track these small bodies to
learn about the history of our Solar System.

The telescope observations that are key to learning about our universe are about to get much,
much harder because of unregulated development of space.

Astronomers are creating some mitigation strategies, but they will require time and effort that
should be paid for by megaconstellation companies.

Unknown environmental costs

Starlink internet might appear cheaper than other rural options, but this is because many costs
are offloaded. One immediate cost is atmospheric pollution from the hundreds of rocket
launches required to build and maintain this system.

Every satellite deployment dumps spent rocket bodies and other debris into already-crowded
low Earth orbit, increasing collision risks. Some of this space junk will eventually fall back to
Earth, and those parts of the globe with the highest overhead satellite densities will also be the
most likely to be literally impacted.

Starlink plans to replace each of the 42,000 satellites after five years of operation, which will
require de-orbiting an average 25 satellites per day, about six tons of material. The mass of
these satellites won’t go away — it will be deposited in the upper atmosphere. Because
satellites comprise mostly aluminium alloys, they may form alumina particles as they vaporize in
the upper atmosphere, potentially destroying ozone and causing global temperature changes.

This has not yet been studied in-depth because low Earth orbit is not currently subject to any
environmental regulations.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from

Cape Canaveral, Fla., with satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.
Regulating the sky
Currently, low Earth orbit, where all of these satellites are planned to operate, is almost
completely unregulated. There are no rules about light pollution, atmospheric pollution from
launches, atmospheric pollution from re-entry, or collisions between satellites.

These megaconstellations might not even be financially viable over the long term, and internet
speeds may slow to a crawl when many users connect at the same time or when it rains.

But companies are launching satellites right now at a frenetic pace, and the damage they do to
the night sky, the atmosphere and the safety of low Earth orbit will not be undone even if the
operators go bankrupt.

There’s no doubt that rural and remote internet users in many places have been left behind by
internet infrastructure development. But there are many other options for internet delivery that
will not result in such extreme costs.

We can’t accept the global loss of access to the night sky, which we’ve been able to see and
connect with for as long as we’ve been human.

With co-operation instead of competition between satellite companies, we could have many
fewer in orbit. By changing the design of satellites, they could be made much fainter, having less
of an impact on the night sky. We shouldn’t have to make a choice between astronomy and the
internet.

But without regulations requiring these changes, or strong pressure from consumers indicating
the importance of the night sky, our view of the stars will soon be changed forever.

Sweden’s flight-free movement: how

views about holiday air travel are
changing
Air travel is often presented as desirable, despite its high environmental cost. In Sweden,
however, a movement advocating avoiding flying has gained influence since 2016, and has
started to change the way travel is portrayed in the Swedish media.

Going on holiday is the most common reason for flying globally. In Sweden, 80% of national
flight emissions are caused by leisure and holiday travel. Our recent research studied how
media articles, advertisements, and images from popular magazines and newspapers reflect
shifting ideas and assumptions about holidays by plane in Swedish society.

To study changing views and representations of holiday air travel, we analysed these media
articles and images from 1950 to 2019. We looked for common themes (like the purpose of
holidays), and identified how these themes were represented over time. For example, we found
that the idea of a holiday as restorative has been consistent over time, but the way to achieve
that has changed in some travel media from flying to find sunshine towards searching out
experiences closer to home.

Our analysis documented how Swedish media depicted holiday air travel over three phases
(see graphic below): from luxury aspirations (1950s-1990s, light blue row), to a normal part of
very mobile lifestyles (1990s-present, dark blue row), to increasingly being linked to debates
about climate change (2016-present, green row).

Our media analysis identified five themes of holiday air travel: the purpose of vacation, ideas of
the good life, time, mobility, and climate change. These themes were represented differently
over time, indicating three phases of views on air travel

These shifts are illustrated by the images below. For example, the SAS advert below shows how
flying was seen as an important and appreciated part of the holiday experience in the 1950s,
with the plane trip seen as comfortable and luxurious.
In the 1990s, holiday flying tended to be represented as a normal part of middle-class Swedish
life and as an escape from everyday pressures, as illustrated in the advert below from holiday
company TUI.

Representations of holidays used to evoke aspirational luxury (left) and air travel as a way to
make time to relax (centre), but there has been a shift to more coverage of slower travel that
doesn’t include flying overseas (right). I

While positive representations of flying are still common, from 2016 the Swedish public debate
shifted to highlight alternative ways of travel, as illustrated in the cover image of train travel in
the Swedish travel magazine Vagabond above. Newspaper articles started to discuss the idea
of taking responsibility for the climate cost of flying and challenging the idea of aviation as
socially desirable.

Slow travel
The media started to reflect a shift in attitudes about flying to holiday destinations articulated by
some sections of society. Coverage of this new phase also reflects increasing concern for the
importance of acting with urgency to tackle the climate crisis; living according to one’s values;
taking moral responsibility for climate harm; and enjoying climate-friendly travelling.

Discussions about avoiding flying became far more high profile from 2016 when celebrities,
journalists, academics, and campaigners started to publicly pledge to stop flying in the Swedish
news media. One of the first was the famous opera singer Malena Ernman (who is also activist
Greta Thunberg’s mother). Others followed up their social media pledges with the hashtag
#JagStannarPåMarken (#IStayOnTheGround).

These pledges marked the beginning of an intensified public debate in Sweden about the
desirability and necessity of air travel, which spread internationally over the following years.
Some commentators mistakenly believe this trend is driven by “flight shame”. But the shift we
identified in Swedish travel media frames living flight-free as positive, emphasising all the
environmental benefits, and feeling good about staying on the ground.

While flying is still widely presented as desirable, changes in some media coverage show the
influence of the flight-free movement and illustrate that different perspectives of what constitutes
a good life under climate change are gaining some influence.

Channel deaths: the UK has clear legal

responsibilities towards people crossing
in small boats
At least 27 people have drowned in the English Channel attempting to cross in a small boat.
There were three children, seven women, one of whom was pregnant, and 17 men.

Although a joint search and rescue operation was seemingly launched in the narrow maritime
area between the UK and France (which is only 20 miles wide), the highly equipped authorities
of both coastal states were not able to intervene in time to save the victims.

The British government has responded to these deaths by calling on France to take back
anyone who attempts the crossing.

Speaking in parliament following the tragedy, Home Secretary Priti Patel placed heavy
emphasis on the French government’s responsibility for the tragedy, which she said was “not a
surprise”.

Regardless of how these people got there, the UK has clear legal responsibilities to anyone who
finds themselves in trouble in the Channel. However much French authorities bolster their own
efforts, the UK is obliged by multiple international conventions to maintain robust search and
rescue operations in the area.

What are the UK’s obligations?

It is not legal to send boats crossing the Channel back to France. Pushbacks are illegal
(regardless of whether smugglers use smaller or larger vessels to transport migrants), and
states have an obligation under the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue to
disembark everyone rescued or intercepted at sea at a place of safety, which can only be on dry
land.
The UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants has concluded that this is
because every person has a right to have their protection claim individually assessed before
removal. And in January 2021, the UN Human Rights Committee established that Italy was
liable for failing to cooperate in saving the lives of more than 200 people who drowned in waters
that fall into Malta’s search and rescue jurisdiction, because Italian authorities had knowledge of
the distress event and did not intervene in due time.

The UK has responsibilities towards people coming towards its shoreline on boats. According to
Article 98(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, nations have a duty to
provide assistance to people in distress. It states that they should “proceed with all possible
speed to the rescue of persons in distress, if informed of their need of assistance”.

The International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue states that a rescue operation
can be effectively considered concluded only when the shipwrecked are disembarked at a place
of safety.

The duty under this convention is one without qualification. Any person in distress “regardless of
[their] nationality or status […] or the circumstances in which they are found” should be rescued.

Crucially in the case of the UK, Article 98(2) of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
requests states to promote the establishment, operation and maintenance of effective search
and rescue services. “Every coastal state” is obliged to do this and is responsible for its violation
if the inadequacy or inefficiency of its search and rescue service contributes to loss of life at sea.

Therefore, regardless of whether France boosts its shoreline patrols to prevent people from
entering the water in the first place, the UK must continue to rescue people at sea.

A UK Border Force boat brings people in

from the Channel.

The English Channel is a highly monitored area. On top of naval patrol, it is subject to aerial
surveillance. Drones operate in the area and thermal cameras are deployed to seek out people.
Once the maritime rescue coordination centre of a coastal state has knowledge of a distress
event at sea, it has a duty to intervene – a duty, which exists even if the boat calls from the
outside of its territorial waters or search and rescue areas.
Once a boat enters UK territorial waters, the UK’s primary responsibility for search and rescue is
triggered. Nor is there any grey area when it comes to the Dover Strait – the narrowest part of
the Channel across which most flimsy migrant boats travel. Here, there are no international
waters. France and the UK are so close that as soon as vessels leave French waters, they enter
UK waters. The UK’s primary responsibility is triggered the moment a boat leaves French
waters.

A duty to work together

The UK and France also have a duty of cooperation under the International Convention for the
Safety of Life at Sea and the Search and Rescue Convention to prevent loss of life at sea and
ensure completion of a search and rescue operation. This includes a responsibility on both
sides to contact the other’s authorities as soon as they receive information about people in
danger and to cooperate on search and rescue operations for anyone in distress at sea.

Despite media coverage, European countries, including the UK, are not facing a migration crisis
comparable to that of 2015, when more than a million refugees reached Europe by sea. Even if
they were, and even during a public health emergency, their discretion in determining how to
react is not absolute.

A duty to protect life exists for governments, not only under refugee and human rights law, but
also under the law of the sea on search and rescue. Whatever the political pressures at home,
the UK has signed up to multiple conventions that require it to cooperate to provide prompt
assistance, save lives, and deliver the shipwrecked to a place of safety.

Why some people find it harder to be

happy
The self-help industry is booming, fuelled by research on positive psychology – the scientific
study of what makes people flourish. At the same time, the rates of anxiety, depression and
self-harm continue to soar worldwide. So are we doomed to be unhappy, despite these
advances in psychology?

According to an influential article published in Review of General Psychology in 2005, 50% of

people’s happiness is determined by their genes, 10% depends on their circumstances and 40%
on “intentional activity” (mainly, whether you’re positive or not). This so-called happiness pie put
positive-psychology acolytes in the driving seat, allowing them to decide on their happiness
trajectory. (Although, the unspoken message is that if you are unhappy, it’s your own fault.)
The happiness pie was widely critiqued because it was based on assumptions about genetics
that have become discredited. For decades, behavioural genetics researchers carried out
studies with twins and established that between 40% and 50% of the variance in their happiness
was explained by genetics, which is why the percentage appeared in the happiness pie.

Behavioural geneticists use a statistical technique to estimate the genetic and environmental
components based on people’s familial relatedness, hence the use of twins in their studies. But
these figures assumed that both identical and fraternal twins experience the same environment
when growing up together – an assumption that doesn’t really hold water.

In response to the criticism about the 2005 paper, the same authors wrote a paper in 2019 that
introduced a more nuanced approach on the effect of genes on happiness, which recognised
the interactions between our genetics and our environment.

Nature and nurture

Nature and nurture are not independent of each other. On the contrary, molecular genetics, the
study of the structure and function of genes at the molecular level, shows that they constantly
influence one another. Genes influence the behaviour that helps people choose their
environment. For example, extroversion passed from parents to children helps children build
their friendship groups.

Equally, the environment changes gene expression. For example, when expecting mothers were
exposed to famine, their babies’ genes changed accordingly, resulting in chemical changes that
suppressed production of a growth factor. This resulted in babies being born smaller than usual
and with conditions such as cardiovascular disease.

Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology.

Nature and nurture are interdependent and affect each other constantly. This is why two people
brought up in the same environment may respond to it differently, meaning that behavioural
genetics’ assumption of an equal environment is no longer valid. Also, whether or not people
can become happier depends on their “environmental sensitivity” – their capacity to change.

Some people are susceptible to their environment and so can significantly change their
thoughts, feelings and behaviour in response to both negative and positive events. So when
attending a wellbeing workshop or reading a positive psychology book, they may become
influenced by it and experience significantly more change compared to others – and the change
may last longer, too.

But there is no positive psychology intervention that will work for all people because we are as
unique as our DNA and, as such, have a different capacity for wellbeing and its fluctuations
throughout life.

Are we destined to be unhappy? Some people might struggle a little harder to enhance their
wellbeing than others, and that struggle may mean that they will continue to be unhappy for
longer periods. And in extreme cases, they may never experience high levels of happiness.

Others, however, who have more genetic plasticity, meaning they are more sensitive to the
environment and hence have an increased capacity for change, may be able to enhance their
wellbeing and perhaps even thrive if they adopt a healthy lifestyle and choose to live and work
in an environment that enhances their happiness and ability to grow.

But genetics does not determine who we are, even if it does play a significant role in our
wellbeing. What also matters are the choices we make about where we live, who we live with
and how we live our lives, which affect both our happiness and the happiness of the next
generations.

What is the metaverse? 2 media and

information experts explain
The metaverse is a network of always-on virtual environments in which many people can
interact with one another and digital objects while operating virtual representations – or avatars
– of themselves. Think of a combination of immersive virtual reality, a massively multiplayer
online role-playing game and the web.

The metaverse is a concept from science fiction that many people in the technology industry
envision as the successor to today’s internet. It’s only a vision at this point, but technology
companies like Facebook are aiming to make it the setting for many online activities, including
work, play, studying and shopping. Facebook is so sold on the concept that it is renaming itself
Meta to highlight its push to dominate the metaverse.
 The best-selling science fiction novel ‘Snow Crash’ gave the world
the word ‘metaverse.’

Metaverse is a portmanteau of meta, meaning transcendent, and verse, from universe. Sci-fi
novelist Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash” to describe the virtual
world in which the protagonist, Hiro Protagonist, socializes, shops and vanquishes real-world
enemies through his avatar. The concept predates “Snow Crash” and was popularized as
“cyberspace” in William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 novel “Neuromancer.”

There are three key aspects of the metaverse: presence, interoperability and standardization.

Presence is the feeling of actually being in a virtual space, with virtual others. Decades of
research have shown that this sense of embodiment improves the quality of online interactions.
This sense of presence is achieved through virtual reality technologies such as head-mounted
displays.

Interoperability means being able to seamlessly travel between virtual spaces with the same
virtual assets, such as avatars and digital items. ReadyPlayerMe allows people to create an
avatar that they can use in hundreds of different virtual worlds, including in Zoom meetings
through apps like Animaze. Meanwhile, blockchain technologies such as cryptocurrencies and
nonfungible tokens facilitate the transfer of digital goods across virtual borders.

Standardization is what enables interoperability of platforms and services across the metaverse.
As with all mass-media technologies – from the printing press to texting – common
technological standards are essential for widespread adoption. International organizations such
as the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group define these standards.

Why the metaverse matters

If the metaverse does become the successor to the internet, who builds it, and how, is extremely
important to the future of the economy and society as a whole. Facebook is aiming to play a
leading role in shaping the metaverse, in part by investing heavily in virtual reality. Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in an interview his view that the metaverse spans
nonimmersive platforms like today’s social media as well as immersive 3D media technologies
such as virtual reality, and that it will be for work as well as play.

Hollywood has embraced the metaverse in movies like ‘Ready Player One.’

The metaverse might one day resemble the flashy fictional Oasis of Ernest Cline’s “Ready
Player One,” but until then you can turn to games like Fortnite and Roblox, virtual reality social
media platforms like VRChat and AltspaceVR, and virtual work environments like Immersed for
a taste of the immersive and connected metaverse experience. As these siloed spaces
converge and become increasingly interoperable, watch for a truly singular metaverse to
emerge.

These three firms own corporate America

A fundamental change is underway in stock market investing, and the spin-off effects are poised
to dramatically impact corporate America.

In the past, individuals and large institutions mostly invested in actively managed mutual funds,
such as Fidelity, in which fund managers pick stocks with the aim of beating the market. But
since the financial crisis of 2008, investors have shifted to index funds, which replicate
established stock indices, such as the S&P 500.
The magnitude of the change is astounding: from 2007 to 2016, actively managed funds have
recorded outflows of roughly US$1,200 billion, while index funds had inflows of over US$1,400
billion.

In the first quarter of 2017, index funds brought in more than US$200 billion – the highest
quarterly value on record.

Democratising the market?

This shift, arguably the biggest investment swing in history, is due in large part to index funds’
much lower costs.

Actively managed funds analyse the market, and their managers are well paid for their labour.
But the vast majority are not able to consistently beat the index.

So why pay 1% to 2% in fees every year for active funds when index funds cost a tenth of that
and deliver the same performance?

Some observers have lauded this development as the “democratisation of investing”, because it
has significantly lowered investor expenses.

But other impacts of this seismic shift are far from democratising. One crucial difference
between the active fund and the index fund industries is that the former is fragmented,
consisting of hundreds of different asset managers both small and large.

The fast-growing index sector, on the other hand, is highly concentrated. It is dominated by just
three giant American asset managers: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – what we call the
Big Three.

BlackRock’s Manhattan headquarters.

Lower fees aside, the rise of index funds has entailed a massive concentration of corporate
ownership. Together, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have nearly US$11 trillion in assets
under management. That’s more than all sovereign wealth funds combined and over three times
the global hedge fund industry.

In a recently published paper, our CORPNET research project comprehensively mapped the
ownership of the Big Three. We found that the Big Three, taken together, have become the
largest shareholder in 40% of all publicly listed firms in the United States.

Figure 1: Network of ownership by the Big Three in listed US firms.

In 2015, these 1,600 American firms had combined revenues of about US$9.1 trillion, a market
capitalisation of more than US$17 trillion, and employed more than 23.5 million people.

In the S&P 500 – the benchmark index of America’s largest corporations – the situation is even
more extreme. Together, the Big Three are the largest single shareholder in almost 90% of S&P
500 firms, including Apple, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Electric and Coca-Cola. This is the
index in which most people invest.
Figure 2: Statistics about the ownership of the Big Three in listed US firms.

The power of passive investors

With corporate ownership comes shareholder power. BlackRock recently argued that legally it
was not the “owner” of the shares it holds but rather acts as a kind of custodian for their
investors.

That’s a technicality for lawyers to sort. What is undeniable is that the Big Three do exert the
voting rights attached to these shares. Therefore, they have to be perceived as de facto owners
by corporate executives.

These companies have, in fact, publicly declared that they seek to exert influence. William
McNabb, chairman and CEO of Vanguard, said in 2015 that, “In the past, some have mistakenly
assumed that our predominantly passive management style suggests a passive attitude with
respect to corporate governance. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

When we analysed the voting behaviour of the Big Three, we found that they coordinate it
through centralised corporate governance departments. This requires significant efforts because
technically the shares are held by many different individual funds.
Hence, just three companies wield an enormous potential power over corporate America.
Interestingly, though, we found that the Big Three vote for management in about 90% of all
votes at annual general meetings, while mostly voting against proposals sponsored by
shareholders (such as calls for independent board chairmen).

One interpretation is that BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are reluctant to exert their
power over corporate America. Others question whether the Big Three really want this voting
power, as they primarily seek to minimise costs.

Corporate American monopoly

What are the future consequences of the Big Three’s unprecedented common ownership
position?

Research is still nascent, but some economists are already arguing that this concentration of
shareholder power could have negative effects on competition.

Over the past decade, numerous US industries have become dominated by only a handful of
companies, from aviation to banking. The Big Three – seen together – are virtually always the
largest shareholder in the few competitors that remain in these sectors.

This is the case for American Airlines, Delta, and United Continental, as it is for the banks
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup. All of these corporations are
part of the S&P 500, the index in which most people invest.

Their CEOs are likely well aware that the Big Three are their firm’s dominant shareholder and
would take that into account when making decisions. So, arguably, airlines have less incentive
to lower prices because doing so would reduce overall returns for the Big Three, their common
owner.

In this way, the Big Three may be exerting a kind of emergent “structural power” over much of
corporate America.

Whether or not they sought to, the Big Three have accumulated extraordinary shareholder
power, and they continue to do so. Index funds are a business of scale, which means that at this
point competitors will find it very difficult to gain market shares.

In many respects, the index fund boom is turning BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street into
something resembling low-cost public utilities with a quasi-monopolistic position. Facing such a
concentration of ownership and thus potential power, we can expect demands for increased
regulatory scrutiny of corporate America’s new “de facto permanent governing board” to
increase in coming years.
How Hong Kong Umbrella movement was
crushed and pro-democracy activists
gradually silenced
Young Hong Kong democracy activists Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law were
released on bail from jail on October 23. They will now appeal against the prison sentence for
their role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement.

Hong Kong’s version of “Occupy Wall street”, the Umbrella movement against Beijing politics
was the most important protest in recent years, lasting three months.

But three years later, Hong Kong’s democracy is still kept at bay.

As hundreds paid homage to the 2014 protests on September 29 in Hong Kong, the challenges
facing the new generation of activists are not how to mobilise mass protests, but how to wrestle
with the state’s innovative strategy to manage society.

On 17 August 2017, three leading activists, aged 19 to 24, who had served their community
service sentences for civil disobedience, were imprisoned following the Hong Kong
government’s unprecedented appeal of the ruling. Less than a month ago, four pro-democracy
legislators, who were elected to office with more than 100,000 votes, were unseated by the
Court of Appeal for their “insincere” oath taking.

Seeding discord
Citizens continue to take to the streets to voice their discontent, and strike without support from
their union leaders. But the scale of their rallies has diminished, and their targets have blurred.

Hong Kong’s liberal autocracy seems to have distanced itself from contention between state and
society, while benefiting from conflicts between various groups of people. Some supporting the
pro-democratic movements, some forming counter-movements.

Counter-movements have also become increasingly common. Led by pro-regime groups but
appearing to be citizen-based initiatives, the participants can adopt more confrontational tactics
than the government and politicians. They protest side by side in peaceful rallies, enter
university campuses, and bully activists on social media. These tactics have discouraged
citizens from participating in mass protests by intimidation.

Young people are either alienated from politics or favour radical actions, as seen in the so-called
Fishball Revolution in 2016. This is when people took part in violent protests to defend local
night food stalls and businesses.
According to the sociologist Charles Tilly, states are known to respond to protests by choosing
from the classic repertoire of repression, concession, or toleration.

But the response in Hong Kong suggests regimes are not adhering to the classic responses;
they’re also using case-to-case and adaptive tactics to wear out challenges.

Nuanced strategy
Semi-democracies like Hong Kong cannot deploy their repressive apparatuses as readily as
autocracies, for they must pay lip service to their “liberal” images. They also lack the
representative mechanisms found in democracies, like full-fledged elections, for absorbing
protests. Conceding to dissent is seldom an option when the demands are about political
change.

A Lingnan University protest

against comments made about ‘killing’ pro-Hong Kong independence advocates, Hong Kong,
China, October 4.

During the Umbrella Movement, the state attempted to repress the nascent protest through tear
gas, but it backfired when hundreds of thousands of citizens occupied several city centres. The
massive mobilisation, which went beyond anyone’s imagination, forced the state to retreat.

So they had to come up with more a nuanced strategy to quell dissent.

The state turned to a smarter strategy, what we call “attrition,” for wearing out the resilient
occupation.

Attrition entails an array of defensive and offensive tactics that go beyond simply tolerating or
ignoring protests.
These include a progressive effort to maintain cohesion among political elites, such as
organising summits for elites to openly declare loyalty, or punishing elites who express
sympathy for the dissent. Through this effort, the state sent a powerful message to incumbents
considering defection.

Pro-regime movements
The state also relies on pro-China counter-movements to curb pro-democracy activism.

For instance, during the Umbrella Movement, counter-movement groups such as the Voice of
Loving Hong Kong and the Silent Majority for Hong Kong would attack and provoke protesters in
the occupied sites. These groups exerted a clear impact on the Umbrella protesters: not only did
these “disturbances” constrain the actions of protest leaders, they also created a violent image
in the protest sites.

Such counter-protests were likely mobilised or incentivised through money or position. But no
clear evidence has yet pointed to the role of the state in orchestrating them.

Three years after the 2014 Umbrella Movement, such counter-movements continue to thrive.
Some have become proactive in attacking public figures whom they identify as “enemies of the
state,” such as by labelling them as stooges of foreign powers on social media or through mass
rallies.

Even pop singers who had voiced support for the Umbrella protests, like Denise Ho and
Anthony Wong, were not spared from this kind of cultural-revolution-like assault.

Pro-China activists with the

‘Defend Hong Kong Campaign’ protest outside the District Court in Hong Kong, China, 19
September 2017.
Legal intervention
The most effective part of this new strategy was legal intervention.

As a highly revered institution in Hong Kong, the legal system gave the government the
legitimacy it lacked to scale back the protests. It became a third-party actor and shifted the
burden of evicting the protest from the police to the judiciary.

Court injunctions filed by private actors, such as transport companies, helped re-frame the
protests from political contention to court disputes and added a touch of unlawfulness to the
protests.

Like counter-movements, the judiciary has continued to be featured in political disputes. The
disqualification of popularly elected legislators and the jailing of young activists, such as
Umbrella Movement leaders Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were pertinent
examples.

What we are now observing in Hong Kong is an evolving semi-authoritarianism. The attrition
strategy that it used for quelling the Umbrella Movement since 2014 has been extended into
some sort of “soft repression” of the pro-democracy movement.

Relying on third party actors such as pro-China movements to crush the actions and hopes of
pro-democracy activists, the government avoids direct confrontation and preserves its façade of
an impartial arbiter amid growing social polarisation.

Despite featuring the rule of law and civil liberties, Hong Kong’s trajectory steadily echoes the
democratic recession worldwide.

Earthquakes caused by industrial

activities: what are the risks and how can
they be reduced?
On September 3, 2016, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck just northwest of Pawnee,
Oklahoma, causing moderate to severe damages in buildings near the epicenter. It was the
largest ever recorded in the state.

The Pawnee earthquake followed the dramatic increase of seismic events in the central United
States beginning in 2009, associated with the increase of underground wastewater disposal by
oil and gas operators. This and other events in the area raised public concerns and led
governmental agencies to shut down injection wells and establish new regulations regarding
wastewater injections.

While human-caused earthquakes have been documented for more than a century, their
increasing number reported worldwide has drawn much scientific, social and political attention.
Such earthquakes are related to industrial activities such as mining, construction of water dams,
injection of liquids such as waste water and carbon dioxide, and extractions associated with oil
and gas exploitation.

With the ever-increasing demand for energy and mineral supplies worldwide, the number of
human-caused earthquakes is expected to rise in the upcoming years. Some of the largest and
more destructive earthquakes of the past few years have been related to man-made activities,
such as the 2008 magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan (China) earthquake and the 2015 magnitude 7.8
Nepal earthquake.

In most of the cases industrial activities do not induce earthquakes. But this becomes
problematic when such activities are close to active faults. In this case, even small stresses
underground caused by man-made activities can destabilise faults, inducing earthquakes.

Faulty fluid injections

Such stresses, such as fluid injections, are even capable of migrating long distances in the
planetary crust, and can induce earthquakes days, months or even years after the injection.

Drilling site in the city of Basel, Switzerland.

The above figure shows that as fluid pressure at the top of the well Basel 1 (purple line) was
increasing during injection, the induced seismicity rate also increased (bluish bars). In the
bottom figure, the average squared distance of the induced earthquakes from the well is shown,
which indicates the complex propagation of seismicity away from the well over time. The
largest-earthquakes (magnitude greater than 3, shown with stars) occurred after the injection
ended.

Such problems, along with the general lack of knowledge of the exact stress and faulting
conditions below ground, make such earthquakes difficult to forecast or manage.

In Europe, where the population density is higher than the United States, public concern over
man-made earthquakes is greater. In the well-known case of Basel, Switzerland, which took
place in 2006, approximately 11,500 cubic metres of water were injected at high pressure into a
5-km deep well to make the extraction of geothermal energy possible. During the injection
phase, more than 10,000 earthquakes were induced, including some strong events that were
felt in Basel itself. These raised public concern and anger, leading to the termination of the
project and to more than $9 million on damage claims.

Nature’s work
In Southern Europe, which has a higher risk of natural occurring earthquakes, public tolerance
on induced earthquakes due to industrial activities is even more limited. The deadly 2012 Emilia
(Italy) earthquake sequence became a topic of sustained public debate and political discussion,
based on the proximity of the earthquake epicentres to an oil field.

The Italian government established an international committee to investigate, and while no clear
link between regional seismicity and oil-extraction was found, one wasn’t excluded either. Other
studies concluded that the earthquakes were a natural event.

Another recent case is that of the Castor project, an underground offshore gas-storage facility in
the Gulf of Valencia, Spain. The US$2 billion project was terminated by the Spanish government
in 2014 following a burst of regional seismicity immediately after the initiation of gas-injection
operations, and the public concern that followed.
 European Seismic Hazard
Map.

The above European Seismic Hazard Map displays the most seismically hazardous areas in
Europe measured by the peak ground acceleration (PGA) that may be expected during an
earthquake, with a 10% probability to be reached or exceeded in 50 years. Green indicates
comparatively low hazard values of PGA below 0.1g; yellow to orange show a moderate hazard,
between 0.1-to-0.25g; and red identify high-hazard areas with PGA of more than 0.25.

The challenges ahead

The previous cases illustrate some of the coming challenges to be faced with man-made
earthquakes. The ability to distinguish between natural and human-induced earthquakes can be
difficult or even impossible, especially in seismically active regions, while in other cases the risk
associated with industrial activities is significantly underestimated. Such problems pose novel
challenges for risk mitigation and economic growth, especially in seismically active regions such
as Southern Europe.
Map showing 50-year seismicity in Greece for moderate- and large-magnitude earthquakes and
the regional blocks that have already been or will be licensed for gas and oil exploration and
exploitation.

The image above illustrates the drilling and extraction operations may take place near or within
seismically active regions, increasing the risk of activating faults and/or accelerating the
occurrence of earthquakes that would otherwise would occur naturally sometime in the future.

To significantly reduce such hazards, regulations are required that include hazard modelling as
well as assessment before and during industrial activity that might perturb regional stress fields.
Such regulations were recently issued in North America, including California, Oklahoma, Ohio
and Texas, as well as in and Canada. In Europe, the EU has not yet issued any such
regulations, but guidelines have been put forth in some countries that have experienced induced
earthquakes, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, Germany, France and Italy.
In addition, communication campaigns that will inform the public on the economic benefits and
the risks that such industrial operations may have, should also put forth. Such measures will
assure the effective mitigation of the associated risk and the sustainability of the industrial
project.