Here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon; Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

        The 2013 proposed federal budget for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that was released February 13 cuts funding by $59 million dollars from last year’s budget. The largest cuts will be seen in NASA’s planetary science program, which not only researches the intricacy and depths of our solar system but also observes and assesses global threats from meteors & asteroids, water & energy systems, and atmospheric changes. These cuts are detrimental to United States citizens, yet these same citizens remain ill-informed and inactive due to a lack of media coverage.

If we, as a nation, aren’t going to take responsibility for global climate change—because it points the finger at ourselves and requires reforming our gluttonous lifestyles—then why can’t we at least focus our attention on potentially catastrophic extraterrestrial threats? If nothing else, why doesn’t the government find it important enough to monitor these threats if only to ensure they still have a country to govern? Is it not the job of our federal government to protect us from both national and global threats, and if so why is it not more of a concern to fund NASA when it’s an educational program geared towards protecting the planet? Is it that our government officials are ignorant to these extraterrestrial threats, or are they simply choosing to ignore them for larger political gain?

These budget cuts could very well be a life or death matter, as they make it even more difficult to detect potentially threatening meteors. While a six to nine mile wide extinction-level meteor (the kind Hollywood makes cheesy and laughably inaccurate blockbusters about) only comes around every 100 million years or so, hundreds of smaller but still disastrous threats menace Earth every year. NASA and other space agencies have catalogued over 4,000 meteors with the potential to impact the planet over the past two decades, and over 1,700 of those classified as “large” with a diameter greater than 0.62 miles. Why are these “large” meteors such a threat if they’re barely one tenth the size required for human extinction? If a large extra-terrestrial body were to strike the U.S. or its bordering bodies of water (to say nothing of the rest of the world), it could cause massive tidal waves up to 3,000 feet tall to sweep across the coast and cause catastrophic devastation the likes of which human kind has never seen. Millions would perish, the already tenuous economy would collapse, and we would likely never recover.

The good news is that we have solutions to these threats. NASA not only observes potentially dangerous meteors, but also researches and plans methods for averting an impact disaster. The program has the ability to prevent a meteor from hitting the planet, so long as they are able to spot it in time. So, cutting their funding is not necessarily the best way to go if we plan on protecting not only our nation, but the world at large. We can all help be a solution to these threats by pressuring our government to support space and asteroid watch programs, and becoming independently informed on the threats to society that don’t make news coverage.

Closing time for Climate Control: you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

The Huffington Post featured a blog post by David Goldstein titled No Option: An Adult Response to Climate Change, a heartfelt plea calling for the citizens of the world to take responsibility and work towards addressing climate change. Goldstein argues that our climate change situation is no different than his personal experience dealing with a liver transplant, an “adult choice” between following expert advice to get better or ignoring said advice and (probably) dying. He urges his Huffington Post audience, generally liberal leaning news conscious individuals, to wake up to climate change by citing the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “A 4 degrees Celsius world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4 degrees Celsius warming simply must not be allowed to occur -- the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen.” Goldstein believes both our resistance to acknowledge facts and refusal to be proactive about the situation can be broken down into three categories: 1) avoidance of reality, 2) inversion of rationality, and finally 3) ignorance and/or lying. The first is evident when you consider that even though scientists have warned the aforementioned 4 degree Celsius warming constitutes a global emergency, carbon emissions continue to rise 3% annually and the US state department has fast tracked the Keystone XL pipeline. When confronted with such facts, many climate change doubters begin to (in Goldstein’s words) “invert rationality,” equivocating accepted science with “blind, inflexible orthodoxy.” Finally, whether it be through outright lying or mere ignorance, detractors will resort to “[broadcasting] misinformation about a topic that is projected to cause great suffering and hardship,” as Goldstein claims Texas Governor Rick Perry did during the 2012 GOP primary. What I admire most about Goldstein is his call to change: “Embracing the reality of 'no option', however challenging the viable option may be, allows us to finally open to new possibilities, to see obstacles as challenges to be overcome not as justifications to delay and dissemble.” It is a way to turn our negative outlook on climate change by shining it in a positive light, without ignoring the fact that it is an obstacle he chooses to look at these issues as opportunities to work together as a global community and find solutions.