Scientists have called for a legally binding treaty to ensure Earth's orbit isn't irreparably harmed by the future expansion of the global space industry.

The number of satellites in orbit is expected to increase from the current 9,000 to more than 60,000 by 2030, with estimates suggesting there are already more than 100 trillion untracked pieces of old satellites circling the planet.

While such technology is used to provide a huge range of social and environmental benefits, there are fears the predicted growth of the industry could make large parts of Earth's orbit unusable, wrote an international collaboration of experts in fields, including satellite technology and ocean plastic pollution, the journal Science.

This demonstrates the urgent need for global consensus on how best to govern Earth's orbit, said researchers, including from the Universities of Plymouth, Arribada Initiative, The University of Texas at Austin, California Institute of Technology, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spaceport Cornwall and ZSL (Zoological Society of London).

The experts acknowledged that a number of industries and countries are starting to focus on satellite sustainability, but this should be enforced to include any nation with plans to use Earth's orbit.

Any agreement, they added, should include measures to implement producer and user responsibility for satellites and debris, from the time they launch onwards. Commercial costs should also be considered when looking at ways to incentivise accountability.

"Minimising the pollution of the lower Earth orbit will allow continued space exploration, satellite continuity and the growth of life-changing space technology," said co-author Kimberley Miner, scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

>Plastic pollution in oceans has reached 'unprecedented' levels in 15 years

Plastic pollution in the world's oceans has reached "unprecedented levels" over the past 15 years, a new study has found, calling for a legally binding international treaty to stop the harmful waste.

Ocean plastic pollution is a persistent problem around the globe -- animals may become entangled in larger pieces of plastic like fishing nets, or ingest microplastics that eventually enter the food chain to be consumed by humans. 

Research published on Wednesday found that there are an estimated 170 trillion pieces of plastic, mainly microplastics, on the surface of the world's oceans today, much of it discarded since 2005. 

"Plastic pollution in the world's oceans during the past 15 years has reached unprecedented levels," said the study, published in open-access journal PLOS One.

Researchers took plastic samples from over 11,000 stations around the world focusing on a 40-year period between 1979 and 2019. 

They found no trends until 1990, then a fluctuation in trends between 1990 and 2005. After that, the samples skyrocket. 

"We see a really rapid increase since 2005 because there is a rapid increase in production and also a limited number of policies that are controlling the release of plastic into the ocean," contributing author Lisa Erdle told AFP. 

The sources of plastic pollution in the ocean are numerous. Fishing gear like nets and buoys often end up in the middle of the ocean, dumped or dropped by accident, while things like clothing, car tyres and single-use plastics often pollute nearer to the coast.

They eventually break down into microplastics, which Erdle said can look like "confetti on the surface of the ocean".

>'Flood of toxic products'

On current trends, plastic use will nearly double from 2019 across G20 countries by 2050, reaching 451 million tonnes each year, according to the report, jointly produced by Economist Impact and The Nippon Foundation. 

In 1950, only two million tonnes of plastic were produced worldwide. 

Recycling, even in countries with advanced waste management systems, has done little to help the pollution problem since just a small percentage of plastics are properly recycled and much often ending up in landfills instead. If landfills are not properly managed, plastic waste can leech into the environment, eventually making its way to oceans. 

"We really we see a lack of recycling, a flood of toxic products and packaging," Erdle said. 

The rates of plastic waste were seen to recede at some points between 1990 and 2005, in part because there were some effective policies in place to control pollution. That includes the 1988 MARPOL treaty, a legally binding agreement among 154 countries to end the discharge of plastics from naval, fishing and shipping fleets. 

But with so much more plastic being produced today, the study's authors said a new, wide-ranging treaty is needed to not only reduce plastic production and use but also better manage its disposal. 

"Environmental recovery of plastic has limited merit, so solution strategies must address those systems that restrict emissions of plastic pollution in the first place," the study said. 

Last year, 175 nations agreed to end plastic pollution under a legally binding United Nations agreement that could be finalised as soon as next year. 

Hi, Husker_Hack. Thanks for contributing. However, your submission was removed from /r/Futurology.

> > Many of the responses I receive from ChatGPT are in the same tenor of dialogue which I may use normally. Curious if others experience the same, especially in your own dialects.

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So you think Mad Max....I hope your wrong I hope for star trek. True A.I. if it ever happens it will eliminate the need more money which would eliminate billionaires that could and for sure would do what you propose. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your outlook we don't have a choice, the future don't care about what you or me think it's coming I hope that since we outnumber the 1% we will be the winners.

LLMs echo your tone. That's because tone tends to be consistent and proximate in the training data.

I worked through the whole pandemic (non-stop, perks of management 🙃) but am stuck at home now due to an injury. This is my first time being “off work” for almost a decade—I can’t imagine not doing something productive with my time. I’d go completely bonkers.

I think it’s naive to assume everyone would keep working at the level needed to maintain our society. The article mentioned it, but didn’t offer any good solutions to the “menial, but necessary” jobs problem as they put it. Their suggestion was that employers would have to offer extra benefits to get employees to work more.

The issue is that in my experience people are never going to work more than they have to. All those low-paying jobs that most don’t like doing affect my day-to-day life many times more than the ones with free thought which people would be more drawn towards if they didn’t have to worry about their finances due to a universal wage. Not everyone may hate their jobs but there are many jobs that no one would do without a good incentive. I think most people underestimate how much those employees are needed as well.

One day technology may take away so many jobs that we will be forced to pay a universal wage so people can survive. Until then I think it goes without saying that supplementing people’s income will cause at least some, if not a lot of menial laborers to work less which will directly impact our society.

Did you not see the movie Gattaca?

So what if everyone decides they don't want to contribute labor?

>deep state

​

Nooo you cant use that heckin word here, that is an alt-shite dogwhistle

Bare minimum for me to be able to actually save money and have a life would be $1000

Leninist ideology doesn't advocate for genocide or 'democide', either.

Well, if half the electricity comes from gas or oil the ship is only 5 times better.

Ships could also use sails, kites or other types of wind power. Or maybe hydrogen, not everything have to be electrified.

Replace it with Marxism-Leninism and you get the same result.

State sponsored democide and genocide is not totalitarian enough, apparently.

UBI with out of control inflation makes perfect sense for the braindead robots in society.

UBI will literally create overweight useless robots who conform to any societal norm that is the new plague.

i guess what i’m saying is the other people’s labor isn’t the source of another’s entitlement, per se.

other people’s labor may contribute to material value of shared resources, but that labor doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and a little labor won’t eclipse the sun

just because the labor of other people may touch upon the bounty of our material world, to varying degrees, there are always other factors at play and society may not have relinquished more ancient claims from which all beautiful babies’ entitlement to UBI could be said to derive.

So 2020 and 2021 in the US, and high inflation in 2022 and 2023.

'Stalinism' isn't really an ideology, more like a governmental attitude.

Due to the filters imposed on it though, ChatGPT sounds very wishy washy sometimes. For example it acknowledges that a lot of historians view Stalinism as an inherently totalitarian ideology, but it will refuse to classify it as such itself because that would constitute an opinion rather than being a fact, apparently.

Trucks can be electrified.

Electric ships are a harder challenge.

> but net zero doesn't solve the issue we're having, right?

It does, but only very slowly. The Earth can absorb a certain amount of CO2 per year.

But it could take centuries for all the CO2 we've already put out to disappear. So if we want to solve it within our lifetime, we do need to start scrubbing CO2 out of the air manually.

Literally. The idea that meaningful conversation can only be done in a long sentence is ridiculous.

​

Nice.

This is my question as well. In order for us to keep consuming like we do now, we have to keep producing at the same level. If a lot of people work less, (or if people begin to consume more but work the same) then how are those goods/services provided?

Yeah, arguing that nobody will want to work if UBI is enacted is like saying that nobody would spend a decade in college to become a doctor when you could be a janitor instead. People will always want more money and to have a job they are passionate about and gives them a sense of fulfillment.