Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2019

The Current Transcript for December 5, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

We are losing a lot of data. We are losing potential data because this new form of light pollution is ruining our astronomical observations.

LAURA LYNCH: That new form of light pollution, lots and lots of satellites. And while that technology helps us with G.P.S. and mobile Internet, one astrophysicist fears it's ruining our study of the universe. Ethan Siegel in an hour. Before that?

SOUNDCLIP

Well, it started out as sort of an acne rash. A day later, I was having lunch with a friend and he said, you know, whatever is going on with you, it's growing and turning bright red.

LL: Words no one wants to hear and words many don't expect to hear as adults. But the viral infection, known as shingles, is stealthy and too often misunderstood as the number of cases rise. We'll look at why. And new options for prevention. But before we get to public health, a word about our ailing planet. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

COP 25 - Environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Environmentalist

Guests: Jonathan Wilkinson, Christine Abreu

SOUNDCLIP

ANTONIO GUTERRES: Climate change is no longer a long term problem. We are confronted now with the global climate crisis and the point of no return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us.

LL: Sharp words from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, which opened in Madrid this week. He accused the world's largest economies of having a lack of political will in the fight against climate change. Representatives from nearly 200 countries are expected at the summit, including Canada's new minister of Environment and climate change, Jonathan Wilkinson. In his role, he'll have to balance a lot of competing agendas from resource development to reducing carbon emissions. Jonathan Wilkinson is in our Ottawa studio. Hello.

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Hello.

LL: I want to pick up on those words from Antonio Guterres. Do you believe that when it comes to climate change, we are hurtling towards a point of no return?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Yes, I do. It is, you know, I think it's pretty clear that we are in a crisis. We need to act boldly in order to stabilize world temperatures below a two degree rise. And in the event that we are not able to do so, the effects are going to be quite catastrophic.

LL: All right. Well, then in that vein, Mr. Guterres also said this.

SOUNDCLIP

ANTONIO GUTERRES: The other option is the best of hope. At best, where more fossil fuels remain, where they should be in the ground and where we are on the way to carbon neutrality by 2050.

LL: All right. This strikes at the heart of the tensions here in Canada between your government and those of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Does the Liberal government believe that to be true, that fossil fuels should stay in the ground?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, what we have said is we need to be moving to a much lower carbon future. We committed during the campaign to net zero emissions by 2050. There is clearly a lot of work to do to get there. In the context of the use of fossil fuels, obviously, there will continue to be the use of fossil fuels as we move through this transitional period. And that is something that's important for everybody to recognize. But clearly, we need to be reducing emissions intensity and over time, we need to be reducing the use of the burning of fossil based fuels.

LL: All right. So in this sense, then, you do disagree somewhat with Antonio Guterres. Your government has taken a lot of criticism from environmentalists for the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline that goes from Edmonton to Burnaby, BC across from your constituency. On Tuesday, the company broke ground in Alberta on the project, on the expansion project. And Minister Seamus Oregon was there. How does this pipeline fit into your government's climate change plan?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, it's very much part of the transition. I mean, as I say, and as any observer would say, there is going to be a transition in the context of the Trans Mountain pipeline. All of the upstream emissions associated with oil that will go through that pipeline have been captured in Canada's climate plan as a starting point. I would tell you that much of the oil or a good chunk of the oil that will eventually flow through that the twin of the existing pipeline are already flowing by rail. So this is also a much safer way of doing it. But at the end of the day, the focus needs to be on reducing demand for hydrocarbon fuels globally and in Canada.

LL: I suppose the other part of this that is particularly relevant to you, given their constituency, is across the inlet from where the tankers will be filling up with this is the concerns about a spill of oil from the tankers that are moving the oil out, as well as the impacts on the orca populations there. There's still outstanding court challenges on this. How do you view that, especially given the people you represent?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, so those are entirely appropriate concerns. I think the worst thing that any political figure can do is to say, you know, those concerns are not relevant. And certainly they were relevant to the. Station before the twinning of the pipeline was approved.

LL: But this increases it by orders of magnitude, the problem and the risk.

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, actually, that's not true. So if you look at the number of tankers going out, it goes from about one a week to about six or seven weeks.

LL: Which is a seven fold increase.

JONATHAN WILKINSON: But with due respect, if you look at at the volume of traffic that goes into the harbour, there's about 3200 large ships, whether they're cargo ships or cruise ships that come in and out. All of those ships carry large amounts of bunker sea fuel. All of those are a risk in terms of a spill. So the focus is how do you actually ensure that the risks associated with any kind of spill from any of those vessels is low. And that's exactly why we put into place them. The Oceans Protection Plan, which has a range of measures to ensure that we are doing this in a safe manner. But it is not an issue that is associated with any one particular project. And anybody who tries to say that it is doesn't fully appreciate the issue.

LL: All right, Minister, let let's move on. You mentioned 2050 already. Your government's plan is to reach carbon zero by 2050. Tell me what Canada's fossil fuel industry looks like in 2050?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, I think that's a really good question. I mean, certainly in the transition between now and 2050, the focus is really on reducing emissions intensity over time. But I think there are real opportunities for us to explore from a technology perspective. My background is clean tech. I ran clean tech companies for 15 years before I got into office. I think that, you know, what we need to do is focus on the issue being pollution. The issue is not the energy resources that exist in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, etc. The issue is pollution. And there's lots of work that can be done. And certainly companies like Econo in Vancouver, companies like Proton in Calgary that are focussing on how could you monetize the value of the existing resource in the form of hydrogen and leave the carbon in the ground. And so I think that's part of a conversation that I intend to have with Alberta, Saskatchewan and others to see if there are pathways where we can work on these kinds of things together.

LL: Well, because at the same time, Premier Scott Moe's government in Saskatchewan is planning to ramp up oil production by nearly 30 percent by 2030. How do you reconcile your goals with the future Saskatchewan sees for itself?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, I think part of it relates to what I was just saying, which is I think that we need to focus on pathways that are non-polluting, that may allow us to monetize the energy resources going forward. But part of it goes back to what I said before, which is the issue is about demand for hydrocarbon products in the world. We need to be focussed here on reducing the demand that exists for oil that's used largely for transportation purposes. Over time, we need to transition away from the use of gas for heating purposes. But we also need to be part of the conversation globally because we need to be working to ensure that other countries are doing likewise and as demand for hydrocarbon products is reduced, oil and gas production will either be done in a manner where it's non emitting or, you know, there won't be nearly as significant a market as exists today.

LL: That's interesting you say, because Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, is going to be taking on a new role as the U.N. special envoy on climate action and finance. And he's been saying that companies and industries that aren't moving towards zero carbon emissions will be punished by investors and face bankruptcy. Could that happen? Do you think the provinces, like to the industries and provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan or even Canada as a whole?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, first of all, I think Mr. Carney's decision to take on the role at the United Nations is quite important. You know, Mr. Carney is somebody who could have done pretty much anything leaving the Bank of England and his decision to actually take on a role with respect to global climate issues. I think underlines how important this is both in terms of just addressing it, but also from a financial perspective. He's essentially saying that we really need to be thinking about sustainable finance. We need to be thinking about carbon in the context of business decisions. I agree with Mr. Carney. But I also think, as I said before, that there are pathways here that we should be exploring collectively with Saskatchewan and Alberta and other hydrocarbon producing regions around is there are their methods through which we can ensure that we can continue to enjoy economic prosperity. We can continue to enjoy some of the value associated with resources but in the non-emitting way.

LL: Let me put this to you. By 2030, your government says Canadian carbon emissions will be 30 percent below 2005 levels. However, our emissions in 2030 are expected to be 15 percent above targeted projections, according to the latest U.N. report. So how do we get there?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: So I think I would probably characterize it a little bit differently. You know, we came to power in 2015 and virtually nothing had been done to address the climate issue. But we brought together the provinces and territories, developed a climate plan for Canada that included 50 different initiatives that are in the process of being implemented, like the accelerated phase out of coal fired power. We have identified over 200 megatons in reductions through that plan. There is work to do to go forward to close the remaining amount, to achieve the targets under Paris. Some of that are things that are underway that we have not yet fully quantified, like investments in public transit, for example. And there's probably additional things that are going to need to do. That's exactly what the prime minister has asked me to figure out, is how do we not only meet those targets, but how do we exceed them?

LL: So does that mean then - and I'm just coming back to something we talked about earlier - if you need to do more then does that mean that in 2050 the oil industry will be dead?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: I think that we need to define the pathways that exist or that may exist between now and 2050 that get us to net zero. Net zero means net zero. There are a range of technologies that are negative emissions technologies that may play into the net zero. There are technologies that I talked about before in terms of how do you monetize the value of energy resources.

LL: But I am not getting a clear picture from you. Forgive me. With all due respect, I can't get a clear picture from you of what the oil industry will look like in 2050. Do you simply not know?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well, I think it again, depends very much on the pathways. And that's the work that we have said we will bring expert together to do. I'm not going to prejudge the work that has been committed to do in terms of defining the pathways. But certainly as we develop those pathways, we need to be sensitive to the legitimate concerns and aspirations of people in all parts of this country. That certainly includes Alberta and Saskatchewan. I grew up in Saskatchewan. I used to work for a premier in Saskatchewan. I negotiated forces Scotchman as a federal provincial relations specialist. I think it's very important for us as a country to ensure that we're listening to all regions of the countries and working to try to ensure that we are responding in in thoughtful ways.

LL: Minister, this is off topic, admittedly, but you're a cabinet minister and you're here. So I think we should talk about this. At Buckingham Palace two days ago, snippets of a conversation involving Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the French president Emmanuel Macron were captured. The group appeared to be joking about Trump's press conference earlier in the day. And yesterday, President Trump called Prime Minister Trudeau two faced. I'm wondering what your reaction to all of this is, as some have suggested, and criticizing Prime Minister Trudeau that he sounded more like a high school gossip than the prime minister. What do you say?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: The prime minister has spoken to this issue publicly, and I think that has addressed the issues that you raise. Certainly collaboration, cooperation internationally is incredibly important. We all recognize that. Everybody in the cabinet recognizes that. We need to ensure that we're working together to address the fundamental issues are our day. And certainly the fundamental issue of our day from an environmental perspective is the climate issue.

LL: All right, Minister, we will leave it there. Perhaps we'll speak to you again from from COP.

JONATHAN WILKINSON: All right. That would be great.

LL: Bye bye.

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Thank you.

LL: Jonathan Wilkinson is the minister of Environment and Climate Change. He was in our Ottawa studio. Catherine Abreu is the executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. She is at the COP 25 summit in Madrid. And that's where we've reached her. Hello.

CATHERINE ABREU: Hello.

LL: You have a chance just then to listen to Minister Wilkinson talk about Canada's climate change policy. What do you make of his comments?

CATHERINE ABREU: Well, we have in the last four years seen some really critical foundations for climate action laid in Canada in the form of pan Canadian framework on climate change and green growth. Minister Wilkinson was there for that as the parliamentary secretary to environment and climate change at the time. It's great to hear that he's committed to following through implementing the over 50 policies laid out in the BCA. Also great to hear him reiterate the commitments made at the election platform to increase Canada's ambition on climate change by legislating that net zero by 2050 goal and thinking through a more ambitious Paris pledge for 2030. There were a couple of pieces missing from what he had to say, however, that I was disappointed not to hear. The principle of which is a conversation around economic diversification in Canada. He spoke a fair amount about investments in clean tech to make sure that the fossil fuel industry is reducing the emissions of its production. And that was it. I didn't really hear anything about investments in clean technology outside of the fossil fuel sector, nor did I hear about investing in sectors that are not necessarily clean tech, but are low emitting sectors that we know need to grow as we move into an economic future that protects people and the planet. I think it's important to figure out how to make Canada's oil and gas industry less greenhouse gas intensive in the near term for sure. And there's some interesting work happening to do that. But the reality is that Canada's oil and gas sector is currently the single largest source of green cars gas emissions. It's 27 percent of Canada's emissions and the amount that that sector accounts for and our GDP is declining. So it's clear that we also need to be thinking about and investing our time and resources into building other sectors and economies up.

LL: There are a lot of Canadian delegates from civil society groups attending the summit. What do you think that they want to hear from Mr. Wilkinson when he arrives? What you just talked about or something else?

CATHERINE ABREU: We have huge representation from labour groups, health groups, faith groups, indigenous organizations and communities. They think what we're all waiting to hear Minister Wilkinson tell the world is that Canada is on track to deliver a more ambitious Paris pledge in 2020. 2020 is really the year of ambition for the Paris agreement. It's the moment that the accord welcomes parties back to the table to take stock of how they've done so far and ratchet up the ambition of their targets. Because what's currently articulated under the Paris agreement is going to take us well past three degrees of warming. And the U.N. released a report last week that makes it very clear that if we exceed three degrees of warming, we really won't be able to live in the ways that we're accustomed to on this planet.

LL: So at the summit itself, what are the main items that countries are trying to agree on?

CATHERINE ABREU: So, yeah, we always have this kind of blip at the U.N. climate negotiations between the really technical elements of the negotiations and those more political elements, the negotiations. On the technical side, a big part of what we're trying to hammer out here in Madrid is to finalize the rules for what's called Article 6 of the Paris agreement. That's that part that deals with cooperative mechanisms between countries to reduce emissions. Also could deal with carbon markets. An example that's relevant to Canada is the Quebec California cap and trade system, where cut back primarily is funding emissions reductions in California. Then celting that to where their own emissions reductions. So Article 6 of the Paris agreement is what would allow Canada to count that toward our own domestic inventory.

LL: Why is that such a sticking point?

CATHERINE ABREU: Because we know what happens when we get the rules for these kinds of systems wrong. We have an example with the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol, the last big international climate agreement where we got the rules wrong and it's significantly undermined the level of ambition that countries were taking on climate action. And it resulted in a lot of emissions reductions. There weren't actually real being counted. So we need to avoid that. And we also need to avoid some of the human rights abuses that the bad rules, the clean development mechanism [unintelligible]. So with Article 6. We're trying to get it right. We're trying to make sure there's strong environmental integrity and that human and indigenous rights are respected.

LL: Now we know that is still the Paris agreement goal to limit future warming to 10.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. What do you think about Canada's own emissions reductions targets? How confident are you that the federal government will be able to reach those?

CATHERINE ABREU: We have our work cut out for us. I don't think it's worth being naive about that. That being said, everything looks impossible until you start generating the momentum that allows you to do it. So we had about a decade of inaction on climate change at the federal level in Canada. We've now laid some really important groundwork. And really I have interested in what we're going to do right now to make sure that we are able to build on our targets and to actually reach those targets. And part of that, from my perspective, means putting in some accountability mechanisms that keep us on track to our goals. We're now in this world of 1.5 Degrees. Minister Wilkinson, mention too, which I've kind of surprised by, because I think we are we've accepted that global goal now is to hold warming to that safer level of 1.5 degrees. The U.N. tells us that means we have to reduce emissions by 7.6 Percent every year for the next 10 years until 2030. From my perspective, we have the technology now. We know it's feasible to do. The only thing we've been lacking is the political will. And we need to get to a place in Canada where all political parties understand the urgency of climate change and are contributing meaningful solutions to the problem. And I think the Canadian election made it clear that Canadians want their political parties to have serious climate plans and to think about how they can work together on this issue. And now it's time for politicians to move into a space of providing some really courageous leadership, starting some what might be some tricky conversations about the future of Canada's economy and job market. But doing that in a way that is really inclusive of the voices of communities that are being impacted.

LL: I thank you for your time. I'm Catherine Abreu.

CATHERINE ABREU: Pleasure to be with you.

LL: Catherine Abreu is the executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. She is in Madrid, Spain. The CBC News is coming up next. Then what do you do with an itch that cannot be scratched?

SOUNDCLIP

Oatmeal, Aveeno, Alamy? Anything just to not rub my skin raw?

LL: That's right. We're talking about shingles. Who gets it? Why and how it's misunderstood. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

Shingles

Guests: Andre Picard, Vivien Brown

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

MIMI MAXWELL: [Music: Theme].

LL: Coming up, the story of how a scientist revived a coral reef with underwater speakers. But first, a virus that's often underestimated.

SOUNDCLIP

MI: They were large welts up my right leg, basically in a pattern like a ladder. I wanted to scratch my leg off. I thought, I'm going to get an infection from scratching. I was surprised because the first time I had shingles, I was under 50. And I thought, well, I'm too young for this.

LL: Yikes. That was Mimi Maxwell describing her first experience with shingles. As you heard, it can be an itchy, blistering rash. And for many, the pain can last for months, even years. Shingles is typically associated with people over 60. But doctors say it seems to be on the rise in people of all ages. Like Mimi, Elizabeth Deesen was in her 40s when she got shingles. She describes it as one of the worst experiences of her life.

SOUNDCLIP

ELIZABETH DEESEN: I started having very severe pain in my neck, up by my hairline. It was so bad that I literally would wake myself up screaming in the middle of the night. That's how bad it hurt. And so I went to the doctor. The doctor said, you know what? Before we do anything, I'm going to treat you for shingles. It was horrible. She asked me what my pain level was on a scale of one to 10. I told her it was a 15. It was located at the top of my neck, near my hairline. And it also went down my arm and along my side. And it was itchy. Initially it looked like hives and then they started popping. Not exactly like chicken pox, but more like actual blisters. And then they popped and they sort of scab over the nerve pain stuck around. And it would come and go. Some days we're OK and some days we're just miserable. I thought I was dying. It was terrible. It was the most pain I've ever been in my whole entire life.

LL: Now there are two vaccines that can help prevent shingles in Canada, but they're not affordable for everyone. Andre Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail. Hello.

ANDRE PICARD: Hi.

LL: What is shingles?

ANDRE PICARD: So shingles is a terrible illness that you can get a rash and pain, etc.. It's exceptionally essentially the older adult version of chickenpox. Only people who had chickenpox can get shingles and the virus lies dormant for often for decades and then it springs up again.

LL: How painful can it be?

ANDRE PICARD: Or it can be debilitating. One of the people I talked to said it was like being wrapped in barbed wire to give you an example. You can become blind. You can become deaf. But the worst thing is the nerve pain. So a small number of people get this really debilitating nerve pain all around you.

LL: And that can last for a long time. Can it?

ANDRE PICARD: Can last forever. There's not really a cure to it. There's treatment, but it it's unpredictable who can get it. But it's one of the most difficult conditions to treat in medicine.

LL: Now, so many of us of a certain age got chickenpox when we were kids. So how many people get shingles in Canada each year?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, about 130,000 people get shingles, but it's actually about 90 percent of people born before 1995 will have had chickenpox. It's very common childhood illness until we had a vaccine available. And that wasn't until 1995. So it's a large number of people, but it's a small percentage of the population. So 130,000 people get shingles, there's about 5.8 million seniors.

LL: And of those 130,000, who is most likely to get it?

ANDRE PICARD: About two thirds of people are over the age of 50. So it's something that recurs when your immune system starts to fade a bit. But, you know, if you look at the math the other way, about one third of people are under the age of 50. So it's going to happen in your 20s or 30s, your 40s, et cetera.

LL: And are there treatments for it?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, we can treat symptoms, right. You can treat pain. You can treat- you get these awful skin rashes that are very, very itchy. So you can put cream on those. But there's not really a treatment. It has to just go away.

LL: I've heard, though, that antivirals can help.

ANDRE PICARD: There's some people who are treated with antivirals. It is a viral disease. But those sort of minimize the symptoms rather than cure.

LL: And how contagious is it?

ANDRE PICARD: It's not contagious at all unless you cross someone who's never had chickenpox. So it's not that dangerous. Spreading it to someone else is not that big. Unless you're interacting with people who have immune conditions, you know, people with AIDS or people with cancer, then it's very, very- it's even life threatening to them.

LL: And there's been some discussion that you have to actually touch someone else's rash to get it.

ANDRE PICARD: There's all kinds of mythology, but it's not. That's all that to say it's very difficult to spread it to someone else. That's not the big concern.

LL: So there are vaccines. What are they?

ANDRE PICARD: So there are two vaccines on the Canadian market. One is called Zostavax vaccine. The other is called Shingrix. Zostavax has been around for a long time since 2008, it's moderately, moderately effective. And then the newer vaccine that just arrived in 2018, Shingrix, has very good results in trials. So very, very effective and especially for older people. That's why it's attracted so much attention.

LL: What makes that one so much more effective?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, it has a way that they boost the immune response using particular products, chemicals in the vaccine. So it just makes it - try and explain it in not scientific terms - sort of makes it more powerful, if I could put it that way. We don't know exactly. But that's the theory.

LL: But it's especially important for those who are older with compromised immune systems. That makes sense. How much do the vaccines cost?

ANDRE PICARD: Shingrix is in two doses, roughly 300 dollars, if depends if there are dispensing fees, you can be charged to get the vaccine because it's not covered publicly. So more or less 300 dollars. Zostavax would be a little less.

LL: how much of a barrier is cost then to getting the vaccine?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, 300 dollars is a lot of money, especially for seniors. So it is definitely a barrier. The people who are getting vaccinated tend to be people who are a little wealthier. And that's not necessarily who needs the most protection. In Canada's only one publicly funded program, Ontario Funds Zostavax. So if you're between the age of 65 and 70 and live in Ontario, you can get a shingles vaccine, but it's not the most effective one.

LL: But that the only coverage across the country? I mean, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons is calling on all provinces to fund the vaccines.

ANDRE PICARD: Yes. So far, only Ontario has done it. And many would argue they're probably not funding the right vaccine, but they have a contract that they have to fulfil. So that will probably change. But the provinces have been very slow on the uptake for this because it is very expensive.

LL: Well, then what are you hearing from health professionals of anything about what the human cost is that there's not being covered by the provinces?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which looks at vaccines and decides if they're worthy, it has said that everyone over 50 should get this vaccine. And under our ethical rules in Canada, when NACI says that a vaccine should be given, every doctor has a responsibility to tell their patients that, even whether it's covered or not. So we should be having a much bigger discussion of this, to start off with. What you hear from the public, what you hear from physicians is it's really horrible to have shingles and it's really horrible to treat people with shingles. So they would love some help out there. They'd love some prevention in the form of the vaccine, but it has to be affordable. So there would have to be some- if there's centralized buying, some serious negotiations to make it more affordable. And then there are those, there are critics of this who say it's not worth the price. So you can have these scientific debates. We judge the value of vaccines based on a measure called NNT or a number needed to treat to figure out how effective a vaccine is. So for shingles, you have to vaccinate 35 people to prevent one case. So when you put that against the cost, you have to see what else can we do for that money to prevent other illnesses, et cetera. So this is always the big calculation in public health and in vaccination. How do we get the most bang for the buck for our vaccines?

LL: Well, what's interesting now is that there are more cases of people in their 30s getting shingles, but there's no vaccine for people under the age of 50.

ANDRE PICARD: Right. So anyone can get the vaccine, but it's only recommended for under the age of 50. The main reason is we just don't have research. It's difficult to do these. You track team studies and the numbers, the percentage of people get them in their 30s is very, very low. So it's almost impossible to do a study of that age group.

LL: But is there any information about why shingles seems to be on the rise?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, it's just, you know, that chicken pox is coming home to roost, if I could put it that way. So all these people over time had chicken pox that now they are getting a little older. Why did this happen in younger people? Well. Because we have more people living today with immune compromised, because we can treat people for all these illnesses that they used to die for the young age. There is a lot of people who are more at risk, is the short answer for that.

LL: Well, it's interesting to see all of this happen. And I thank you for giving us a primer on all of it, Andre.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

LL: Andre Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail for Dr. Vivien Brown, it's quite common to see patients with shingles. She's a family doctor in Toronto. A board member of Immunized Canada and an author of the book A Woman's Guide to Healthy Aging. And she joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

VIVIEN BROWN: Good morning, Laura.

LL: What are you seeing when it comes to shingles cases in your clinic?

VIVIEN BROWN: Well, shingles is a very common disease. And as a family doctor, I probably see a case maybe a week or a case every two weeks. People will come in with a rash. Sometimes they recognize that this is shingles themselves and sometimes they'll come in with a very localized pain and no rash. They often can come in before the rash even erupts. And so you have to be on the lookout for shingles because that localized pain is very suspicious.

LL: Okay. So what are some of the more severe cases that you have seen over the years?

VIVIEN BROWN: And unfortunately, having been in practice for a while, I have seen some severe cases. Not too long ago, one of my patients ended up with shingles meningitis, which means the shingles virus, that varicella, or chickenpox virus, got into the fluid around her spinal cord.

LL: What happened to her?

VIVIEN BROWN: She was extremely ill with high fever, with headache. She was admitted to hospital and was in the ICU for a couple of days on antivirals in order to suppress the virus. I also have seen someone with shingles encephalitis. That means inflammation of the brain. And that actually has left that particular patient with some impairment, some permanent impairment. So not just pain, not just light sensitivity or photo phobia, but actually cognitive impairment. So this can be a real significant disease.

LL: Wow, aside from the antivirals, treatment options, what are they?

VIVIEN BROWN: Well, the antivirals are really important and we use them as soon as possible, which is why if I even suspect shingles, even before the rash comes out, I'll put someone on antivirals. It prevents the virus from multiplying and so it makes the course of the rash shorter. What it doesn't do, unfortunately, is it doesn't decrease your risk for nerve involvement. So that postherpetic neuralgia is not related to whether or not you're on an antiviral. So the antivirals will make the skin better and shorten or hasten the recovery of the rash. The other treatments are really treatments to decrease nerve sensitivity. So there's no good treatment to just eradicate the virus or get rid of the virus. We're really treating the symptoms of nerve sensitivity and there's various narcotics and non-narcotic medications that we can use for that.

LL: Are you frustrated by the lack of options for treatment?

VIVIEN BROWN: I would say that this is a very difficult disease to treat when someone has nerve involvement. If it's just the rash, a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of itchiness goes away in 10 to 14 days, we can survive that. But when someone has chronic, debilitating pain, that is very difficult. And we do have pain guidelines in Canada as to how to treat it, because it is very complicated. And the side effects from the pain medications make a huge difference. So people are impaired not only from the rash, not only from the nerve pain, but from the side effects of the drugs.

LL: Now, shingles may not be very contagious, but you can still infect someone else.

VIVIEN BROWN: That's right. You can infect someone who is at risk for chickenpox. So any baby under the age old one has not been immunized for chickenpox yet. Anybody who is immunocompromised can get chickenpox when you have shingles, but you're not going to give shingles to your partner because shingles really is your own immune system, not suppressing that chicken pox virus. And presumably your partner is in your own age group and probably had chickenpox when that partner was younger as well.

LL: So are they going to get shingles from them?

VIVIEN BROWN: No, they won't get anything if their own immune system is robust. But if they're stressed or immunocompromised, they can get shingles as well.

LL: I was going to ask you about stress. I mean, we hear about the different ideas. Andre talked a bit about this. What causes shingles? Is stress a big reason, do you think?

VIVIEN BROWN: So the main reason for shingles, the number one cause of shingles, if you if you look at in those terms is aging. And what we know is our immune gets weaker with age. That's called immunosenescence, our immune system is just getting a little bit older. And if you add on top of that an older immune system and stress, we know that stress affects the immune system. And Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn in 2008-2009 got the Nobel prise for her work on stress and telomeres and the aging immune system. So, yes, stress does have an impact.

LL: So then we are seeing more younger people getting shingles. Now, what would explain that? And how often do you see younger people coming in?

VIVIEN BROWN: I do see younger people coming in with shingles. But the nice thing about being younger is your immune system is still robust. So it's less likely when you get shingles as a younger person to have any nerve involvement. Most people get better relatively quickly. And that's why we generally are not immunizing before age 50, because the main goal of immunization is not only to prevent the rash, but also to prevent the nerve damage from the rash.

LL: So let's talk about the immunization. What kind of uptake are you seeing with patients opting for that newer, more effective, effective vaccine shingrix?

VIVIEN BROWN: So shingles has been out now for two years. It has incredibly great data in terms of how efficacious it is, how well it works. And so in the population that I'm seeing, people are anxious to be immunized. This vaccine is recommended. Our Canadian body recommends it. Currently, it is unfunded and we have lots of things that are recommended but unfunded. Think of car seats for infants recommended. It's the law. But unfunded. Bicycle helmets for kids. Recommended. It's the law, but unfunded. Well, now we have this fabulous vaccine that's very efficacious, offered to a population that understands this disease because everybody knows somebody who's had shingles. It's not a disease that is hidden. So the uptake is fantastic. People are very interested in being immunized because people are afraid of this disease and rightly so.

LL: But it also is expensive. Some people can't afford it. Shouldn't it be covered?

VIVIEN BROWN: I think it should be covered because we do have an aging population. And the goal is to keep people independent. The goal is to keep people living in their own community, not in a nursing home, not in a facility. If you get a bad case of shingles, if you get chronic nerve pain, multiple medications, very quickly, an older, maybe more frail person can no longer live independently. And as we're successful with all of these chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and COPD and asthma, and people are surviving cancers. They're surviving and they're independent, but they do have underlying chronic disease. And when you get a disease like shingles, it destabilizes your chronic disease. So it's not just the shingles that you're worrying about, not just the nerve pain, but the effect on the individual for all their other diseases, which they were managing well and now maybe not so well.

LL: Dr. Brown, I thank you for coming in.

VIVIEN BROWN: Thank you, Laura.

LL: Dr. Vivien Brown is a family doctor. She's a board member of Immunise Canada and she was in our Toronto studio. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One and Sirius XM. I'm Laura Lynch.

Putting loudspeakers in the ocean can help coral reefs, says marine biologist

Guest: Tim Gordon

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Ocean]

LL: The beach. If you're thinking of a vacation, someplace warm, maybe even near a coral reef, that's surely one of the sounds you're looking forward to hearing. The sounds are not just important to humans, though, for fish living in those ocean waters and near those coral reefs, sounds can lead the way. A group of scientists has discovered that coral reefs have a distinct sound and it's quite different when the reefs are alive or dead. When those scientists tried to use sound to attract more fish, they were happy with what they heard.

SOUNDCLIP

TIM GORDON: My name is Tim Gordon. I'm a marine biologist and I study the sounds of coral reefs. Most people think of coral reefs and the underwater world is silent. But actually coral reefs are some of the noisiest ecosystems there are underwater. When you listen and through a specialized underwater microphone, it's like there's a whole new world revealed to you. There's this constant crackle of shrimps clicking their claws and invertebrates, making noise as they scrape along the bottom fish and making all sorts of woops and grunts and clicks and buzzes. And it's a complete cacophony down there. For several years now, we've been working on the Great Barrier Reef and listening to and recording the sounds of the reef. We've understood that that sound is really important for juvenile fish, which start their life out in the open ocean and then have to find a coral reef to settle on in the first few weeks of their life. They do that by listening out for a reef. But when a reef degrades, as it gets quieter, that sound is less attractive, it travels less far and the fish no longer called back into the reef. That's sad, but it's also concerning because the fish are really important for the future of the reef. So we thought on a local scale, what if it was possible to reverse that? What if it was possible to use an underwater loudspeaker to bring back some of those sounds? Would you be able to call the fish back in? And when we made the patches, sounds like they were healthy we discovered there were twice as many fish came back and settled onto these habitat patches, than when we didn't do anything to the sound. It was really encouraging. The fact that we see so many more fish coming back points to the fact that this could be a useful local scale restoration technique. Healthy coral reefs are really noisy, really chaotic, really bustling places. They are gull of activity. And you can see that when you snorkel or scuba dive, all these colours and shapes and different animals all around you. And you can also hear that when you listen, all of these different noises that these animals are using as they go about their day to day lives, unhealthy reefs sound very different. When a reef degrades. You can hear it happening and it's quite chilling. It's quite haunting. Where there was a real buzz of energy and a lot of noise and many different sounds all going on, it's comparatively silent. As the animals die, the noises that they make also disappear. It's also an empty sound. There's fewer different noise types going on. There's fewer sort of pops and buzzes in amongst the crackle. And sometimes you can even make out the sound of waves washing against the shore in the background. That's a real indication of what has been lost. There's no way you could hear those background sounds in a healthy reef because they'd just be drowned out by the diversity and abundance of other sound types going on. Knowing what it used to look like, what it used to sound like, to then go back and find all the sound, all the colour, all the life gone is heartbreaking. My favourite sounds are actually the ones that we don't know what they are. That really fills me with intrigue. And you'll be swimming along underwater, you know, clearing your ears and trying to make them work while or listening to a recording that will take them back. And a lot of the fish you recognise and a lot of that sounds very familiar. And then out of nowhere will come this one that you've never heard underwater before, you've no idea what's making it. And to me, that's fascinating to me is just a little picture of how little we know about some of these places underwater.

[Sound: Shatter]

TIM GORDON: Clownfish applying their teeth together really quickly. They use that to make up shattering sound and they use that in aggressive interactions between each other.

[Sound: Whooping]

TIM GORDON: The unborn damsel fishes almost like a songbird. It makes this quite high pitched little whooping sound. It's a nice sound because you you'll be swimming along the edge of a reef. They often live right on the edge near the sand. Before you see the fish, you'll just hear it's very gentle. Whoop whoop whoop.

[Sound: Tapping]

TIM GORDON: The reef croaker makes quite a low pitched sound by squeezing the muscles around its swim bladder and it essentially plays its own swim bladder like a drum to make these really low pitched sounds that can travel a long way underwater. Sergeant Majors sit up high in the water column and as you swim through shoals of them, you sometimes hear these growling sounds that they make at each other. It's almost like a growl or a purr. It's a very different sound to a lot of other things. Coral reefs worldwide are being decimated by warming oceans. As the temperature rises, the coral bleaching is effectively just cooks and that destabilizes the whole ecosystem. Where I work on the Great Barrier Reef, coral mortality has been as high as 80 percent in the last couple of years. That's massive. It's really important to be realistic here. This isn't the only solution. This isn't going to be a silver bullet. And just using large speakers to call in fish isn't going to solve the coral reef crisis. What this is, is a new technique that is a tool that we can add to our toolkit to help us restore degraded areas on a local scale. But it's really important that it's combined with those other tools and also that we remove the original stressor that caused the damage in the first place. In most instances worldwide, that is climate change and warming seas. So without strong and decisive action on carbon emissions, any reef restoration will ultimately be fruitless.

LL: Tim Gordon is a marine biologist. We reached him on Lizard Island on the northern Great Barrier Reef off the East Australian coast. Coming up in our next half hour, what you need to know about the Liberal minority governments throne speech? And then:

SOUNDCLIP

It's sort of like looking for a firefly next to a really in like thousand watt light bulb.

LL: Why new mega constellations of satellites in space mean trouble for stargazers? I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

Throne speech

Guest: Chris Hall

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

What we're looking for in this throne speech is some clear indication that Mr. Trudeau wants to really make a difference in people's lives and invest in health care, invest in pharmacare, make it public and universal. Stop taking indigenous kids to court, tackle the climate crisis like we actually want to win it. We are more than willing to work together, but we will not vote for something that doesn't align with what Canadians need.

LL: That's NDP leader Jagmeet Sing, laying out what he hopes to hear later today when the Liberal government kicks off the forty third Canadian parliament with a speech from the throne. For more on what to expect, I'm joined by Chris Hall. He's the CBC National Affairs editor and host of The House and he joins me from our Ottawa studio. Hi, Chris.

CHRIS HALL: Good morning.

LL: What do you think will be the headline from today's throne speech?

CHRIS HALL: I hope that it's brief. We're expecting it to be about 20 minutes, which is kind of a surprise. Laura, you've worked here. If it's a big, broad mandate type of letter that you're expecting from the government, this I don't think we'll be it. And this is the reason: since Justin Trudeau has decided to make public all of the mandate letters that he gives his cabinet minister. In other words, the marching orders he sends to each and every cabinet minister that has been a better clue and will be a better clue as to what the priorities of the government will be. So this is more about the broad strokes. There'll be three, I think, basic themes here around the importance of collaboration, not just with the other parties in the Commons, as we just heard from Jagmeet Sing, but also with the premiers. Climate change will clearly be one of the key measures that they want to talk about. It might not be in the kind of detail that Jagmeet Sing might like. And the last one, of course, is affordability is a big theme during the campaign for almost all the parties making life easier for particularly middle class Canadians.

LL: But as you said, broad themes. And where are the mandate letters?

CHRIS HALL: Well, we had expected them tomorrow on Friday, may be Monday, but they're coming shortly. I think they the schedule is a bit knocked off by the NATO visit that the prime minister just concluded. So either tomorrow or Monday, we'll get a real sense of what the priorities for each of those cabinet ministers will be.

LL: And of course, the other dynamic here, which is highlighted by what Jagmeet Sing had to say, is that this is a minority government. So the Liberals need to play nice. Do you expect any concessions to to the NDP as priorities or other party's priorities?

CHRIS HALL: I don't know. There will be a nod to them, a concession, maybe too strong a word. The message that I was getting and talking to various people yesterday is the importance of collaboration to signal to Canadians that the liberals got the message in the last election campaign y by being reduced to minority government, by being blanked and in Saskatchewan and Alberta, that they need to work and to listen to members of the opposition and to those premiers. So I think there will be a collaborative sort of tone. I think, for example, under the heading of affordability. We'll see a reference to pharmacare if it falls short of an absolute commitment to introduce universal single payer system. There'll be a talk about the importance of dealing with those costs. We heard from the premiers earlier this week that they want to see the transfers for health care to be increase, not for new measures like pharmacare, but to deal with the on growing problem of recruiting and retaining doctors, of trying to reduce waiting times at hospitals, this sort of thing. So I think that they do need to send a note that they have listened and that they are prepared to work with those parties to get things done.

LL: Would you expect any other bold initiatives in the throne speech about regional alienation?

CHRIS HALL: No, I don't think so. I think there's an acknowledgement here that the government will have heard the message and they will talk about some of the big issues that they have confronted. But to your point, I asked a number of people yesterday, for example, would the government consider signalling in the throne speech a willingness to open regional offices? For example, the Ministry of North Natural Resources might open an office in Edmonton where, after all, is a sort of the headquarters of Jason Kenya's government, but also a big part of the oil patch, the energy sector maybe open a minister's office for Western economic development, as in Saskatoon or Regina, just to show that you're listening and you have a footprint in the area, even if you didn't elect any MP. I don't know if that will be there, but that was certainly one of the signals that a number of MP told me they would like the throne speech to include.

LL: So again, with a minority government, there's the issue of possible confidence votes. There's the potential for the other opposition parties to band together and hold the government down. Throne speech could become a confidence vote or a spending initiative could become a confidence vote. They're facing these early on. Is anyone angling to take the government down?

CHRIS HALL: No, I don't think so. In talking to both the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois, which are the two, one of those two, the government would need to be able to stay in power. There's enough MPs from one or other of the parties to do that. The Bloc recognises it has a new foothold in Quebec and is willing and wants to show Quebeckers that that vote wasn't wasted, that they can get things done for Quebec. So they'll be looking on the climate change file, for example, around pipelines. What is the signal on pipelines? And my understanding is that the liberals are alive to that issue, that they need to show that they are aware of the Bloc and that Quebec has a different kind of set of needs and desires in this. The NDP, quite frankly, doesn't have the money to run a campaign again. And I think that they're also after being reduced from 44 to 22 seats, that they need to show that they can get things done even with the smaller membership and to give Jagmeet Sing an opportunity to prove that what we saw of him during the campaign, his ability to strike the right chord can continue in the House of Commons. One last quick point on that. We are looking, as you mentioned, Laura, for a number of bills to be introduced fairly quickly, as is only supposed to be a week or 10 days that we have the parliament sitting before Christmas. I think we're going to see legislation that would introduce that middle class tax cut sometime next week to ensure that Canadians see that they are beginning to look to deliver on that promise. I think we'll see legislation to ban assault weapons. After all, this was a huge wedge issue for the Liberals. Every single MP I talked to said that the one big vote driver, particularly those suburbs around Toronto, was the harder stand that they're taking on firearms and gun control. And lastly, potentially a fiscal update to give Canadians a sense of where the books are. It may be in the context of a supply bill because the government needs money to continue to operate. So these are the sorts of things we'll get an early indication of what at least the legislative the initial legislative priorities will be.

LL: Twenty seconds, Chris. We've got to talk about President Prime Minister Trudeau's hot mic comments at the NATO meeting and U.S. President Trump calling them to face. How big a deal is this?

CHRIS HALL: I don't think it's a big deal in Canada. U.S. relations that might be a bigger deal here. We heard both Jagmeet Sing and Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader, talking about the mist up in a very important international setting. And Justin Trudeau, frankly, should have known better instead of having a focus on the throne speech. We spent a large part of yesterday talking about whether he's hurt Canada U.S. relations.

LL: All right, Chris, thank you very much.

CHRIS HALL: Okay, Laura, thanks.

LL: Chris Hall is a CBC national affairs editor and host of The House. He was in our Ottawa studio.

Threats to the night sky

Guest: Ethan Siegal

[Music]

SOUNDCLIP

CHILD: I see something looking at all the planets, the Milky Way, and the big dipper, it was just so amazing. It's awesomely amazing.

LL: That is a young star gazer at Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania, one of the world's top dark sky destinations. But there are growing concerns about the state of the night sky for future astronomers like her. And it's not just the light pollution we're used to around big cities that has astronomers worried.

SOUNDCLIP

Five, four, three, two, one, zero. Ignition lift-off with gratitude for Veterans today and always. Go USA.

LL: That was launched last month by entrepreneur Elon Musk's Space X company, sending a rocket with 60 new satellites into space as part of an ambitious project called Starlink. It's meant to bring the world closer together, but there are fears it may also be closing our window on the universe. Ethan Siegal is a theoretical astrophysicist. He blogs at Starts with a Bang and his work appears on. Forbes.com he's in Toledo. Washington, hello.

ETHAN SIEGAL: Thank you for having me on the program.

LL: So tell me, how important is a dark, clear sky for astronomers?

ETHAN SIEGAL: Well, for those of you who live in cities, for example, you would notice immediately the difference when you go out to the country, away from city lights, away from light pollution. And throughout most of the 20th century, light pollution was the biggest threat to astronomy. And this is why all of our modern day cutting edge observatories are from dark sky sites. They're from sites away from populated areas. Normally at the tops of very high mountains where there's still clear air, cause that's the best way to overcome the challenges that ground based astronomy in a civilized human centric world has been.

LL: Okay, so we're talking about a problem for astronomers. But this story actually starts with the solution to another problem, which is about access to high speed Internet around the world. What is the Starlink project?

ETHAN SIEGAL: Well, so this is something that's really important. If you want to connect the world through the Internet, you really have two options. One is you can go the local route, you can set up cables, you can set up wiring, you can set up cell towers. You can have all of this local infrastructure. And right now, that's a great option, but not everywhere. It's not a great solution in underdeveloped areas in the world. However, with the right technology in space, you could provide this Internet access or this cell access or whatever access you're trying to provide through satellites. So launching a large network of satellites to keep the signal strength at the level you need it, to keep the bandwidth at the level you need it. That could really help connect the world, building a network of satellites in space is a great way to overcome that problem.

LL: So a project with good intentions. And as of that launch that we just heard earlier, they've sent about 120 starling satellites into orbit. But what is the ultimate vision for this?

ETHAN SIEGAL: Well, so Starlink is one of right now three companies, Space X is Starlink is competing with two other companies to be sort of the first Internet providers of 5G service around the world like this. The initial satellite constellations, they typically come in three phases. And what Starlink is saying is for phase one, they'll need somewhere between 1000 and 2000 satellites and to go to phase two, which is what they propose, as you know, the near-term thing they want to do, they're going to go up to 12000 satellites. And when they look to Phase three, they're looking at more than 40000 starling satellites. And remember, this is just one of three U.S. based companies seeking to do this. And that's not even getting into the plans that India and China and many other nations have to provide this international 5G service.

LL: So that sounds like a lot to me.

ETHAN SIEGAL: It's a big number for sure. You know, when we think about the number of stars you can see in the night sky with human eyes from anywhere on earth, you're talking about 6000. When these startling satellites, they're very bright now because they're close to earth. But when they make it to their final orbits, they're going to be right at that limiting human magnitude, except instead of 6000 of them. If you talk about all of the companies doing this, we're talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of these satellites.

LL: Okay. And this is what has astronomers very concerned. Tell me about why astronomers are so concerned.

ETHAN SIEGAL: I mean, we talked a little bit earlier about the challenge of dark night skies. But what you don't think about is how satellites, how huge numbers of satellites is really going to start polluting your astronomical surveys, the way you take an astronomical image is you look up at the sky for a certain amount of time. You leave your shutter open with a certain filter on it and you collect the light. And then from all these different images, you add them together, you stack them together and you produce that final data set that you'll use to determine what's in the universe, what has changed from moment to moment. What did we find that lies beyond our own galaxy or our own local cluster of galaxies? What have we seen as far as objects in the outer solar system that are hazardous to us. The more artefacts, the more stray pieces of noise you have confounding your data, the more difficult this tasks gets. These satellites, they are bright, they are fast moving. And when they pass through the telescope's field of view, at this point, we have to throw that data away.

LL: Right. You mentioned it's already become a problem. Apparently, astronomers are seeing their work and Starling is having an impact on their work. There was a well-publicized case at a major observatory in Chile last month. Can you explain what happened?

ETHAN SIEGAL: Yeah. So this is at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. And in South America, there is a beautiful sight along the Chilean Andes. This is arguably the second best site for optical astronomy on the planet behind the top of Mauna Kea, which is the number one site.

LL: That's in Hawaii.

ETHAN SIEGAL: That one is in Hawaii. This is the second best astronomical site on the planet. We have dozens of cutting edge astronomical observatories there. And we are currently building the two largest ground based telescopes ever in that same mountain range, in that same location. Last month, all 60 of those recent starling satellites, because they fly in formation, they flew over this observatory in the Chilean Andes in this mountain range while it was taking observations. And it was spectacular to see how thoroughly ruined this astronomical observation was. And it's important to see it now because with just 122 satellites up there, with just 0.1 Percent of the total number of satellites that are probably going to wind up out there, we are already seeing how significantly this can impact astronomy.

LL: I just want to go on with us a bit more and get sort of what was a real time reaction from one of the astronomers who was there. [Unintelligible], she tweeted this in the moment: 'Wow. I'm in shock. The huge amount of Starlink satellites crossed our skies tonight. Our exposure was heavily affected by 19 of them. This is not cool". I guess you would agree with that. Not cool.

ETHAN SIEGAL: I mean, I think anyone who would argue with that is someone who a you know, in in previous times we would have called a philistine because how can you just choose to sacrifice what is arguably the oldest science on earth? The science of astronomy, where you could make modifications to these satellites easily, where you could still provide Internet to the entire world, where you could still provide this 5G service without destroying the night sky.

LL: You're anticipating. My next question, because I've looked at those images that the astronomers got from that night and you see these bright streaks from the satellite. So are there fixes for this? What are they?

ETHAN SIEGAL: Well, I mean, so the thing is, when you are doing astronomy, you can get stray pixels or you can get cosmic rays or you can get the existing satellites that are out there. The thing with existing satellites is they all meet a few criteria with very few exceptions. One is almost all of the satellites that are up there are small. These are much larger satellites than all but maybe 60 of them that we currently have in orbit, like it might be small compared to the International Space Station. But it is a bright, reflective, large satellite compared to almost all of the other satellites that are up there. There has been no effort taken to reduce the reflectivity of these satellites. And so they are almost as reflective as possible. It's like they're covered in aluminium. They are close to earth, which means they are bright. When we do astronomy, we are looking for stars and for signatures that are millions of times fainter than what you can see with the naked eye. And so when you have these super bright satellites that are up there that are millions of times brighter than the sources you're actually looking for, you're not going to be able to make those observations. Why don't they have a low reflectivity coating on them? Why aren't these satellites oriented when they're passing through sunlight? Why aren't they oriented in a way so that they won't be reflective in a way that will interfere with earth observatories? Why do these satellites have to have autonomous A.I. driven orbits so that astronomers can't even. Predict when they will fly overhead. All of these are new problems with this network of satellites, and I'm in the position of looking at this and I see that there has not even been a good faith effort among Space X or any of the prospective 5G satellite providers to engage with the astronomy community and say, hey, what can we do in order to do this responsibly?

LL: Well, why don't you think that is why? I think Space X has reached out and tried to help them fix the problem.

ETHAN SIEGAL: Well, I think this is something we see in every industry. You know, when someone wants to build a new coal fired power plant, they don't do the environmental impact study unless you make them do the environmental impact study. When someone wants to produce a new plant to, you know, to bottle some water or anything, you know, they will only do a waterways impact study if you force them to do it. And no one has forced Space X or any of the satellite providing companies to do this, it's sort of a, well, we don't have any laws about space other than the Outer Space Treaty. This is a Sputnik era treaty that prohibits the militarized use of outer space. That's it. That's the only national or international agreement we have about this.

LL: Do you know whether these kinds of fixes would be very expensive or time consuming for space X?

ETHAN SIEGAL: I've put forth a number of suggestions that that would be very easy and very low cost. And at most I think they would set a company like Space X back by six months. But these latest Starlink satellites that you've talked about, the company Space X is planning on launching a new constellation of 60 satellites every two weeks until - as far as I can tell - until they're 12000 satellites are up there. I feel like this is someone asking for forgiveness rather than someone trying to do something responsibly from the outset.

LL: I should mention that we did reach out to Space X for comment and we haven't heard back. But there was an exchange on Twitter earlier this year between Elon Musk and an astronomer who said he was afraid of seeing 500 of these satellites in the sky at any one time. And Elon Musk tweeted back, 'Exactly. Potentially helping billions of economically disadvantaged people is the greater good. That said, we'll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. We care a great deal about science'. What do you make of that reply when you start saying, oh, it's a greater good to do this, that does not automatically give you permission or absolution for whatever harm you cause. You know, we have an entire civilization. And you can't say I want to do my thing that I perceive as bettering humanity. And if the cost is we lose all of ground based astronomy, that's fine. We're the greater good. I really don't like the idea that one mega billionaire can decide this.

LL: We've been talking about, as you say, ground based astronomy. But what about telescopes that orbit in space beyond where the satellites are? Wouldn't they still give us a clean vision of space?

ETHAN SIEGAL: Those telescopes will be unaffected, but there is a limit. You know, we focus when we have observatories like Hubble, these are fantastic observatories. They can do things in space that we cannot do from the ground. But what we can do from the ground is vastly superior to what we can do in space in a number of ways. We just take those waste for granted. You want to view the entire sky at once with a really large telescope. You can build a larger one from the ground than you can build in space. So when you're saying like, well, we could still do space based astronomy, that's not only very risky because with space you get one shot, you launch something, it's up there. That's the end of it. You want something from the ground, you can upgrade it constantly. You can fix anything that went wrong with it. You can maintain it. You can upgrade it. You can do all of these things from the ground at about 0.1 to one percent of the cost of what you can do in space.

LL: I want you to help me out with something here, because I'm not an academic. Most of our listeners aren't. Tell me what's at stake here if astronomers work is really affected by this.

ETHAN SIEGAL: I mean, right now, when we try and study the universe, there are some really big things that are optimal to do from the ground. Some of them are things that the average non-scientist probably won't care about. The average non-scientists might not care about, you know, whether dark energy is this thing or that thing or how fast the universe is expanding. But you might care about finding that potentially earth hazardous asteroid or comet. This is something we do from the ground using the exact techniques that Starlink will most interfere with. So if you care about our planet not getting hit by an asteroid or comet or us knowing whether an asteroid or comet is going to hit our planet, you would want ground based astronomy. We were not going to do this as successfully from space, no matter what. If you care about finding a potentially habitable world outside of our solar system, if you care about looking for signs of life beyond worlds that orbit the sun, we need ground based astronomy to do that.

LL: But if companies like Space X don't take it upon themselves to mitigate. What options do astronomers really have?

ETHAN SIEGAL: I mean, that's the whole thing is if someone cannot act in good faith or will not act in good faith and actually solve these problems that they're causing, it's going to require a more powerful entity to step in. And right now, the only more powerful entities are either, you know, national or international governments. So that's it. Either we need a national law in the United States that will regulate this, or we need an international treaty that will regulate this. Those are really the only two options I see, because if a private company isn't compelled to come to the table by some greater power, it's possible that they never will.

LL: Ethan Siegal, I thank you for your time.

ETHAN SIEGAL: Thank you for having me.

LL: Ethan Siegal is a theoretical physicist and writer. He blogs that starts with a bang and his work appears at Forbes.com. He's in Toledo, Washington. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q with Tom Power. Now, this week's NATO summit was a good reminder for politicians everywhere: always assume the microphone is on. That said, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not the first politician to be caught. We leave you today with a timeline we're calling a brief history of the hot mic. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: 1984, Ronald Reagan jokes about bombing Russia during a sound check for a radio interview.

RONALD REAGAN: My fellow American, I'm here to tell you today that I've signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

VOICE 2: 2009, then President, Barack Obama calls Kanye West, quote, "jackass" for his behaviour towards Taylor Swift.

BARACK OBAMA: The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She's getting her award. What's he doing? Why would he do that? He's a jackass. [Laughter]

VOICE 1: 2010, Joe Biden gets so excited about Obama signing health care legislation, he quietly drops an F bomb on live television.

JOW BIDEN: [Applause] [Beep] Thank you, everybody. Thank God my mother wasn't around when that comment was picked up years ago.

VOICE 2: 2015, a boom mic catches former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott joking about climate change.

[Whispering and laughter]

VOICE 1: 2016, normally pretty taciturn Queen Elizabeth The second appears to call Chinese officials very rude.

VOICE: She told me that the trip was off.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II: They were very rude, the ambassadors.

VOICE 2: and 2019. U.S. President Donald Trump is caught on a hot mic, commenting about another hot mic with fellow NATO leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Manual Micro were caught talking smack about him.

DONALD TRUMP: [Indistinct] Double digits for press conferences. And then you know waht they'll say? He didn't do a press conference. He didn't a press conference. That was funny when I said the guy is two faced.

Thursday December 5, 2019 Full Episode Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode