issue 31 // vol 44 Elon Musk 1s an ass, but private space travel 1s still important > Twitter outrages shouldn't keep people from appreciating SpaceX’s accomplishments Greg Waldock Staff Writer lon Musk has had a weird year. He's worked with Donald Trump to promote sciences, left, started dating Grimes, has engaged ina multitude of Twitter arguments, and spectacularly embarrassed himself during the Thai cave crisis. However, this should not change how people feel about SpaceX, privatized space travel, and the advancements in technology SpaceX has made over the last decade. Musk can be an idiot on Twitter and still contribute to the field. To start off though, I should clarify specifically which Twitter incidences I am referring to. During the Thai cave rescue operation, where a soccer team and a coach were trapped kilometers deep in a cave with a minimal chance of survival, Musk posted on Twitter that he was developing a few methods to help the victims. He did not end up contributing to the operation, The last straw despite garnering a lot of support and attention online. Vernon Unsworth, a British diver who aided in the rescue, criticized Musk’s proposed automated submarine and decried it as a PR stunt. Musk took this personally and insisted the submarine plan would go ahead anyways—and casually implied Unsworth is a “pedo guy.” It was about as ugly and reprehensible as an insult can get, aimed towards a person risking their own life to save trapped kids. This, as well as his year-long involvement in Trump’s science council, has made him enormously unpopular among a lot of people, and it’s not hard to see why. Though he later apologized, it is hard to come back from calling a rescue diver a pedophile seemingly out of the blue. Despite that, I do not think Elon Musk and SpaceX should be so casually disregarded. A lack of nuance is one of the internet’s greatest problems. If someone does something incredibly stupid, they must be as evil and incompetent as a Disney villain. It does a in a i = nt a c fe) ~ o uw - ° ° FS ° amd a > Plastic straw ban distracts from other environmental issues Jessica Berget Opinions Editor y Fall 2019, Vancouver will be the first major Canadian city to ban single-use plastics in the hopes of eliminating plastic waste disposal by 2040. While this is a first step in the right direction, I don’t think completely cutting out straws is enough to fix the solid waste dilemma. Furthermore, with everyone being fixated on plastic straws, it takes the focus off bigger problems. The solid waste problem is so big, eliminating plastic straws is not nearly enough to solve it. As well-intentioned as the campaign may be, a survey by Australian scientists Denise Hardesty and Chris Wilcox conducted over five years of shore clean-ups has shown that there is an estimated 7.5 million plastic straws on America’s shorelines, estimating about 437 million to 8.3 billion on shorelines worldwide. If you compare that to the 8 million metric tons of plastic waste that goes into the ocean ina year, straws only make up a small percentage, about 2000 tonnes. Drinking with a straw doesn’t seem so bad now, does it? So, what makes up most of this plastic waste? A scientific report by nature.com surveys that about 46 percent of it is “Lost or discarded fishing nets, known as ghost nets,” while other fishing gear makes up almost the rest. If we really wanted to eliminate waste and pollution, I think the solution would be to investigate the corporations that throw away tons of food every day, implement repercussions for those who abandon fishing gear and harsher penalties for dumping things at sea, set up facilities to recycle or dispose of fishing nets, recycle plastics into useful things—almost anything except banning straws. But since that video of the turtle with a straw stuck in his nose went viral, straws are getting all the blame. Some cities treat it as if you are putting straws up turtle’s nose yourself. The city of Santa Barbara has gone as far as to fine servers $1,000 or sentence them with up to six months jail time after a second offence of giving them out, which is nothing short of ridiculous. Overcrowding in jails and prisons is already a huge problem, filling it with people for drinking with a opinions // no. 15 disservice to Musk’s remarkable achievements—founding PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX is nothing short of incredible—and prevents a better dialogue on his many flaws, like his ongoing labour disputes around the treatment and payment of his Tesla workers. Being an asshole online does not make a person or their accomplishments unimportant. Musk and SpaceX shouldn't both be written off by internet anger as evil and mean-spirited. Musk and his company have accomplished amazing things in the past decade, like reusable rockets, synchronized vertical landings, long-term manned space capsules, and many contributions to NASA projects and the ISS. It is, in fact, possible for someone to contribute massively to the future of human space exploration and still be a giant tool. As satisfying as it is to watch a billionaire get taken down a few pegs, the perspective is important. al Wr Photo by Analyn Cuarto plastic tube will only make it worse. Additionally, some disabled people who cannot drink without straws will be negatively impacted by this ban. This ban is one solution to the plastic waste problem, but it’s not a great solution. Dictating what people use to drink liquids from is silly and sending people to jail for it is so absurd it’s almost hilarious...almost.