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The Current Transcript for August 5, 2016

Host: Connie Walker

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

SOUNDCLIP

[helicopter noise]

São Paolo is the helicopter capital of the world. The rich and successful go from building to building without ever having to touch the ground.

CONNIE WALKER: High in the sky above the Olympic venues fly Brazil's super rich. The athletes may win gold and silver, but the Brazillionaires will be the real winners of this Olympiad, according to one author. Journalist Alex Cuadros joins me today to talk about the massive inequities underpinning the Rio games, and the gold rush they've become for the country's billionaires. And then...

SOUNDCLIP

In January 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake knocked out power in Los Angeles. In the following hours emergency services fielded an alarming number of phone calls from people asking if the big silvery cloud hovering in the night sky somehow caused the quake — they were referring to the Milky Way.

CW: Yes, sad but true that more and more of us don't even recognize the Milky Way when we see it. Later today, we'll hear about the true extent of light pollution, and ask what it means for us as humans to no longer see the stars at night.

How Brazil's wealthy benefit from the Rio Olympics

Guests: Alex Cuadros

CONNIE WALKER: I'm Connie Walker, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[crowd cheering]

Brazil welcomes the world with open arms.

CW: Let the games begin. Despite all of the reports of problems in the run up to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, it was the sound of celebration when the Opening Ceremony finally got underway Friday night. Rio Organizing Committee President Carlos Nuzman spoke of pride of country when he took to the podium.

SOUNDCLIP

I’m the proudest man alive. Yes, I'm proud of my city, my country. [Brazilian language]

CW: But one group that hasn't been universally keen in the lead up to the games are the citizens of Rio themselves. In a TED talk in 2012, Eduardo Paes the mayor of Rio talked about his goals for the Olympics transforming Rio into a city of the future. One that would bring the rich and the poor closer together.

SOUNDCLIP

I think it's not to tell you that things can be done. That you don't have always to be rich or powerful to get things on the way. A city of the future. I really do believe that it's a city that cares about its citizens, integrates socially its citizens. A city of the future is a city that can never let anyone out of this great party which our city is.

CW: But it hasn't quite turned out that way. Journalist Alex Cuadros says that in fact when it comes to the many Olympic projects leading up to the games, the real winners have been Rio's wealthy. He's profiled Brazil's ultra-rich in his new book Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power Decadence and Hope in an American Country. Alex Cuadros joins me from New York. Hello.

ALEX CUADROS: Hi.

CW: Hi. So you just heard the mayor of Rio say that Rio is a city that cares about its citizens. Just to what extent are those citizens feeling that love as the Olympics begin?

ALEX CUADROS: Well, not very much. And not just the citizens of Rio, but Brazilians in general are very much against the Olympics. You know, and this is an amazing change actually if you look at the last seven years in Brazil. In 2009 when Rio won the right to hold the games, thousands of people crowded the beaches of Copacabana and were celebrating the win. It was a time when the economy was booming, the developed world was mired in recession, and it felt like Brazil could do anything. And I think that to political leaders, from the mayor, who you played a clip, to the president at the time Lula, it seemed like a win win. That they could build useful infrastructure for the citizens of Rio, better public transportation and so on, while also funneling funds to construction firms owned by Brazilian families who happen to be major campaign donors, and distributing [unintelligible] to local political allies. But, the reality turned out a bit different. It wasn't a win for everyone. You know, projects were built that weren't really so useful for the population as a whole. And an inordinate proportion of the money was poured into a wealthy suburb of Rio where just a fraction of the population lives.

CW: So we'll get into why that shift happened and why those changes happened, but so suffice to say the citizens of Rio aren't necessarily as excited. But what do the Olympics mean to the billionaires that you profiled in your book?

ALEX CUADROS: Well, to a few families it means billions of dollars in fresh revenues. The companies that built most of the projects for the Olympic Games, from the new subway line that connects this wealthy suburb to Ipanema, another wealthy neighborhood, to the express bus lines and downtown port renovations and so on, all of these projects were built by a handful of companies that are owned by billionaire families that have been at the center of power in Brazil for decades, for the better part of a century really. And they've maintained their influence by basically staying close to whoever happens to be in government, and you know, so these projects brought them revenues. And in the specific case of Rio, what we've seen is that in this wealthy suburb known as Barra da Tijuca, where the Olympic Park is and most of the sporting events are happening, a couple of landowners have probably gotten richest of all. Because so much money was poured into infrastructure in this suburb, it's dramatically increased their property values. And in the case of the athletes’ village where all the athletes are staying, this was built with subsidies from the government. And afterwards, unlike London where these accommodations were turned into affordable housing afterward, they're going to become luxury condos. So it's a luxury condo project subsidized by the government.

CW: So obviously the Brazillionaires as you call them have benefited a lot from these Olympic Games. But let's go back to when they were first announced, what was promised to the poor leading up to the games?

ALEX CUADROS: There was an idea that part of the Olympic legacy would be extending vital basic services to the favelas of Rio. And favelas, they're often described as slums, that's not quite accurate. You know, they're working class neighborhoods but usually informally built, built initially without the basic infrastructure of water and electricity and so on. And Mayor Eduardo Paes, one of the things that he promised was that he would extend all of these basic services, garbage pickup, everything else, to all of Rio's 1000 or so favelas by 2020.

CW: How many people live in the thousands of favelas in the city, millions?

ALEX CUADROS: This is a city of 12 million people, if you include the whole metropolitan area, and one in seven live in favelas. So we're talking about a major slice of the population, but one that has been historically neglected by the government.

CW: So, we reached out to Mayor Eduardo Paes for comment about whether the wealthy in Rio have benefited more than the poor, we didn't hear back from him. But he told The Guardian newspaper “there has never been so much transformation for poor people. It's crazy to say there is no investment in poor areas.” What is your take on that quote? How much have the poor actually benefited from the Olympics?

ALEX CUADROS: Well, Eduardo Paes is frankly kind of slippery and very slick at marketing himself. And proof of that is that you have a clip of him giving a TED talk, and he often gives talks for global foundations like the Clinton Foundation and so on. So, he's been very successful at selling a progressive image of himself. But when you look at the numbers and when you look at the maps, his marketing version of what's happening in Rio just really doesn't match up with the facts. The fact is that most of the money has been poured into this wealthy suburb, while the vast working class north side of the city that's far from the beach has been mostly neglected.

CW: Is there any evidence of anything illegal or corrupt happening with Eduardo mayor or any of the Olympic projects?

ALEX CUADROS: Nothing implicating the mayor himself, but investigators have uncovered a bribe taking in several Olympic projects by members of Eduardo Paes’ own party, the PMDB, which is the same party of the current interim president in Brazil. And you know, these very rich billionaire-owned construction companies that built these Olympic projects are the same companies that build everything in Brazil. They have operated for years as a kind of informal cartel and they're at the heart of a multibillion dollar corruption scandal that's been progressively uncovered over the past couple of years.

CW: The Petrobras scandal.

ALEX CUADROS: Exactly.

CW: Yes. So I will definitely get to that, but you mentioned the athletes’ village and how in London it was designed to after the Games were over to provide low income housing. But the athletes’ village in Rio has a different purpose after the games. How has the builder described his vision for that apartment complex?

ALEX CUADROS: The developer of the athletes’ village is a guy named Carlos Carvalho, and he's 92 years old but still very vital. And you know, there's a Brazilian term sincericídio, which is like a mixture of sincerity and suicide when he spoke a little bit too frankly about his ambitions for this place. The name of the athletes village after it's done being the athletes village is Ilha Pura, which means pure island. And he said you know, this is going to be an island for the elite and we can't have poor people around here. And what's especially galling about this statement is that in order to build the athletes village and the nearby Olympic Park and access roads between them, a favela was demolished, a favela known as Villa Autódromo, and some 600 families were forced to move. Many of them resisted for years, faced [with] what they describe as intimidation. And this is just one of many favelas that were demolished to make way for Olympics-related projects. More than 20,000 families have been evicted from their homes in the last seven years in Rio. And it's the largest favela demolition drive in the city's history.

CW: So how was that athletes’ village built? I mean, was it all private money with just some public subsidies or I mean, how can how can he justify that and how can the mayor justify that happening?

ALEX CUADROS: The mayor is very proud of supposedly relying very heavily on private money for many Olympics-related projects. You know, he says we have a far higher percentage of private money in these games than did London for example. As if you know, the businessmen of Brazil just had a greater appetite for risk than businessmen might in the United Kingdom, which is frankly improbable and not true, because many things that are calculated as private investment actually have public subsidies embedded in them. In the case of the athletes’ village, it's essentially entirely financed by a low-interest government loan to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. So, this is money that the government allocated to this project that's going to be a luxury condo complex instead of to a project that could have benefited the one in seven residents of the city who live in favelas.

CW: So you spent obviously some time immersed kind of in the research of the billionaires in Brazil, and one of them is a man by the name of Eike Batista. Who was he, or who is he, rather?

ALEX CUADROS: Well, he is still alive although not the same man he used to be. Eike Batista was for a time Brazil's richest man. And he really embodied this euphoria that there was about Brazil's economic prospects for a time a few years ago. He kind of rode the wave of enthusiasm about Brazil and everyone was excited about you know, all the commodities that Brazil had and commodity prices were booming. China's economy was growing really fast. And so he showed up on the scene and said I have these offshore oil deposits and I'm going to start a company that's going to be the new Petrobras, Brazil's state oil company, only private. And he said I have these iron ore deposits and I'm going to create this company that's going to be the new Vale, which is Brazil's traditional mining giant. And he came up with all these ideas, and he had IPOs and people totally bought into the message and put billions of dollars into these IPOs. And he also raised a lot of money in the bond market as well. But something happened which was that it turned out that he didn't have all that he said he had, and when that became apparent and he started having problems taking oil out of his oil wells, his empire tumbled and crashed the ground in a remarkable time. He had a fortune of $30 billion, he was the world's 8th richest man in 2012, and within a year and a half he lost everything.

CW: Wow. So I mean, he wasn't so subtle about his wealth. But in your book you also talk about another class of rich Brazilians that you call the hidden billionaires. Who are they and what's their relationship to big business and to politics in Brazil?

ALEX CUADROS: Right, well Eike Batista was incredibly flashy. He loved to show off his yachts and jets, he'd invite reporters to this sprawling mansion he had in Rio. He very famously and proudly got a $35,000 hair, it's not exactly a wig, but a hair augmentation treatment that integrated with his balding scalp.

CW: You actually I mean, you went and spoke to the salon that helped him with that right?

ALEX CUADROS: I did, yes. This Italian guy in São Paulo who ran the salon who said that Eike liked the treatment so much that they became friends, and started showing text messages from Eike to prove it. So he was someone who he embodied this kind of American style of wealth and ostentation. But this was something really new in Brazil. For the most part the rich in Brazil have tried to keep a lower profile and that's partly because corruption has always been such an integral part of the business culture in Brazil. And even if not outright corruption, connections to the government have been really important in building a lot of the biggest fortunes in Brazil. So you know, I think there's this common idea among Brazilians, not all, but many, that wealth is somehow inherently tainted--

CW: [interposing] With corruption.

ALEX CUADROS: So most, with corruption, or it's just not meritorious. So, most billionaire families in Brazil traditionally have tried to hide from the spotlight. And one of my tasks during the time that I spent as a billionaire's reporter for Bloomberg, was to uncover these quote unquote hidden billionaires as my editors called them. And it was actually simpler than it sounds. Even though they didn't own public companies, I just started looking at the city around me. I started looking at everything I consumed. You know, the yogurt I'm eating, like who made this, you know what's the brand, what’s the company that made this. I would go into a building and I would start wondering you know, who owns this building. And in São Paolo for example, right in a subway I see the plaque in the subway that reads Camargo Correa, which is one of these giant construction firms now involved in projects for the Olympics. And what I discovered was that the owners of this company weren't on the Forbes list in 2012, but the woman who owned it who was the widow of the founder was worth $13 billion at the time, she was Brazil's richest woman and no one really knew who she was.

CW: So I mean, obviously things have changed from the Olympics beginning, now there's a huge economic downturn and with the economic challenges that Brazil continues to face, what is your assessment on the role that Brazil's billionaires will play in the future of the country?

ALEX CUADROS: I think that Brazil's billionaires have often held progress back in Brazil. And they've done this by using their money to influence the government so that public policy will benefit them. And you know, going back to this idea that the Olympics could be a win win for everyone, this is never going to be exactly true because the incentives are distorted when very rich and powerful people are able to use their money to influence the process. And I think that this has been a big problem in much of Brazil's history. The incentives have been biased toward special interests and wealthy families rather than to the population as a whole. And when we look at right now with the country in crisis, Brazil is going through a period of austerity.

CW: Alex, I'm afraid I have to end it there but thank you very much. This is something we'll continue to watch. Alex Cuadros is the author of Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence and Hope in an American Country. He was in New York City. I'm Connie Walker, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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ENCORE: Why 80 per cent of North Americans can't see the Milky Way

Guests: Dan Duriscoe, Robert Dick, Roberta Bondar

CONNIE WALKER: Hello, I'm Connie Walker and you're listening to The Current. While the night sky has been a source of wonder for as long as there have been people, but the simple act of gazing up at the stars is under threat. An international scientific study from earlier this year reports that vast portions of the world's population now live in places where the stars are barely visible at night. Here in North America, nearly 80 per cent of us can no longer see the Milky Way at night. The culprit is light pollution. Dan Duriscoe is one of the study's co-authors and a physical scientist for the US National Park Service Night Sky program. He spoke with Anna-Maria in June from Fort Collins, Colorado.

AMT: Hello.

DAN DURISCOE: Good morning.

AMT: What are the highlights of the findings of your study?

DAN DURISCOE: Well this new work utilizes up to date remote sensing data and is put through an enhanced model for the propagation of light in the atmosphere, which can predict what the observer on the ground might see in terms of artificial sky glow at any location on Earth. And I think the primary results is that it has shown that while there are still areas on land and the Earth where you can enjoy a pristine view of the night sky but most of us, most people who live in the cities and towns our view of the cosmos is really significantly obscured.

AMT: What are the percentages that you've come up with?

DAN DURISCOE: Well, the atlas was used an analysis both on population and on land area. And based on population, I think that something like 80 per cent of us, those of us who live in town have some level of degradation of the night sky that is really making it less than inspirational shall we say. As far as land area, there I think there's still something like 30 per cent of the land area in the habitable world that is available for really nice enjoyment of the night sky.

AMT: So you're saying though that is 80 per cent of North Americans can no longer see the Milky Way because of the light at night?

DAN DURISCOE: Yes. In terms of population that's about right.

AMT: Sixty per cent of Europeans.

DAN DURISCOE: I believe that's what they came up with. Yes. It's just a factor of the way our population is distributed all over the land.

AMT: You've been studying night skies for years. How do you react to these changes?

DAN DURISCOE: Well, for myself you know, I've been an amateur astronomer all my life ever since I can remember and I've always sought our skies. And back in the 1960s and 70s it wasn't really very hard. I grew up in Southern California in a large metropolitan area but a half hour trip out of town was adequate to get away from the light pollution. But I think these days it's more like an hour or two. And I think that's pretty much an unfair or unreasonable impact on the majority of people who live in cities, to deprive them of this opportunity or make it really so hard to get to that most people just don't have time.

AMT: What's the biggest factor when it comes to the increase in light pollution?

DAN DURISCOE: Well, I think the causes are primarily just the growth of population and a little more ubiquitous use of outdoor lighting for advertising, perhaps more pedestrian shopping areas where a level of light is expected where you can function and see items on the shelves and so forth. But there is hope that this trend of increasing use of lights could be reduced with new technologies and a little more judicious use of outdoor light.

AMT: And the lead author of this study calls the inability to see the night sky a cultural loss of unprecedented magnitude. What are your thoughts on that?

DAN DURISCOE: I think he's hit the nail on the head as far as the entire world's population. Just about every culture we know of has some connection to the night sky. There's a real spiritual or intellectual connection from the beginning of time. And this light pollution phenomenon is really pretty recent in our culture, when you think about it and it's kind of a future shock. You know, people are growing up now without even knowing what they're missing. As long as there are places where people can go though, like the National Parks of the western United States or Canada, I think there's hope. You know, because then people will understand what they're missing if they can visit these places on a clear night.

AMT: And so the New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness, when you look at it you can see the places where it's the most acute.

DAN DURISCOE: Yes, as well as the places where it's still dark. And you know, it's a good tool for people who are seeking out a place to go to observe.

AMT: OK well, Dan Duriscoe, thanks for talking to me today.

DAN DURISCOE: Oh it’s my pleasure.

AMT: DAN DURISCOE is a physical scientist for the US National Park Service Night Sky Program. He's in Fort Collins, Colorado. And we'll actually link to that atlas on our site cbc.ca/thecurrent. There may be even more at stake in the brightening night sky than a sense of wonder and joy that comes at gazing at the stars. Losing the dark sky at night can possibly have a real impact on human health. Robert Dick is the manager of the Canadian Dark Sky Preserve Program and chair of the Light Pollution Abatement Committee at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. He also has a company that manufactures low impact outdoor lights. Robert Dick joins us from Ottawa. Hello.

ROBERT DICK: Good morning Anna-Maria.

AMT: So you've studied this issue, what are the effects of light pollution on human health?

ROBERT DICK: It's a lot more than I would have thought. Just like Dan, my passion is for the night sky and looking at the stars. And I went to a conference back in 2003 in Muskoka district north of Toronto expecting to talk to a bunch of like-minded people, and I found that there are only two of us that were essentially associated with astronomy. Everyone else was biologists, biochemists, entomologists, cognition scientists and so on. And I was overwhelmed by the impact that artificial light at night has on of both physical and mental well-being of humans and as well as animals.

AMT: So how well documented is the link between artificial light at night and the health side effects?

ROBERT DICK: I think it's very well documented. There have been literally thousands of papers over the last 15 odd years since it began to become an issue. And the one problem with it is that artificial light at night doesn't cause these problems, it exacerbates problems. So, in other words when it comes to healing disease or infection, artificial light at night will reduce your body's ability to fight those. And as a result of that you find throughout society and not just the Western society but in the developing world as well, increasing levels of a number of different diseases.

AMT: Such as?

ROBERT DICK: It could be as odd as obesity and diabetes. There is an increase of stress and anxiety, it increases the results of dementia and so on.

AMT: And it's affecting our circadian rhythms is it? Is that what the belief is?

ROBERT DICK: It gets down to the basics of that your body behaves or your biochemistry doesn't happen all the time, all of it doesn't happen all the time, but rather it's scheduled throughout the 24 hour period. And this is called circadian rhythm, and a lot of the repairs and rejuvenation of your body occur at night only when it is dark. And this is an evolutionary fact because during the daytime you have to be very alert and active, and some of these functions that your body does to repair itself really you have to be sedated. And that occurs at night when you're sleeping.

AMT: Well, given what you know about these studies and what you also know about the growing abundance of light at night, how big of a public health threat is this in your view?

ROBERT DICK: Personally I think it's a very dangerous path that we're on. To prove it is another matter, it gets back to when it came to the impact that smoking has on human health. The connection required an awful lot of study and detail work, and it was delayed because people wanted to have absolute proof and there's no real absolute proof in this. But the studies of humans as well as animals have shown that it does have a significant impact. However, trying to prove it is very difficult because you can't remove all the variables. One of the more interesting studies I found was out of Israel where they looked at the electrification of towns and villages. And the first thing that happens when they put electricity into a place is that they put in outdoor lighting. And once that occurred you started having increases in these types of diseases.

AMT: So does the lighting industry acknowledge a link?

ROBERT DICK: Not really. They acknowledge a link in terms of your ability to see. For example, glare from light reduces your ability to see things. However, the lighting industry is a very old industry. It's about a 50 billion dollar industry and it's very slow to change. In fact, even the governing agencies or societies in the lighting industry have trouble making substantial changes. And that's simply because when they recommend or they develop guidelines, they develop these guidelines based upon what can be done or what has been done, essentially using best practice. But that's looking over your shoulder into the past rather than into the future. And frankly the studies into the biology and the effects on cognition, they’re relatively recent, only in the last 15 odd years or so and many of the decision makers simply are too old to have read this literature.

AMT: Is Canada doing anything to combat light pollution? Is there a way to work on lights or?

ROBERT DICK: In Canada, in terms of urban lighting very little seems to be done, even though we talk to a lot of people. They do really want to believe what the industry tells them in terms of you need high impact lighting to reduce crime and to see and to make your city look beautiful. However, when it gets into the country, this light that scatters off the atmosphere over cities can be seen for 100 kilometres or more across the countryside. And this light is what's impacting the wildlife. Some of the illumination of the countryside can exceed that of the full moon, and even the light of the full moon can curtail the foraging patterns of many animals. So, the animals move out further and further from the cities or the urban areas, and essentially put pressure on the otherwise pristine landscapes, and there are winners and losers.

AMT: Fascinating. Robert Dick, thanks for your time this morning.

ROBERT DICK: Thank you very much.

AMT: Robert Dick, manager of the Canadian Dark Sky Preserve Program, Chair of the Light Pollution Abatement committee at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. We reached him in Ottawa. Well, our last guest on this topic has some experience with the stars of the night sky. She has gazed at them from her hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario here on planet Earth. She's also enjoyed the view of the cosmos from outer space, during her mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992. Dr. Roberta Bondar is a Canadian astronaut and neurologist and photographer. She joins us from her home in Toronto. Hello.

ROBERTA BONDAR: Good morning.

AMT: Well, I'm just wondering what you're thinking. Dan Duriscoe outlined how dire the situation is when it comes to our ability to see the Milky Way. What do we lose?

ROBERTA BONDAR: Your guests have very eloquently described some of the effects, animals, humans, and also the beginning talking about the past, the history, the creative part. My view, and I have a foundation in my name that really is about reconnecting and connecting people to nature. And the natural light in the sky is part of our natural environment. So, to be able to say hey you know, we like to look up and see star we can't see them anymore and you have to drive an hour out of Toronto or maybe more than that to get rid of the sky glow. It is really a pressure on society to say hey you know, how can we reconnect individuals to something that has been free to everybody throughout time? That is to be able to look up and not just be enamoured of the sky and want to be an astronaut, or want to figure out why the planets are the way they are, but to give us a more deep philosophical insight into who we are as a life form. I think without that, we become a society that's really just looking down all the time at our feet. And we become much better than little moles running around the surface. We don't have that ability to look beyond the edge of our planet and really try to understand what this is all about.

AMT: You've been instrumental in creating a dark zone in Alberta then, the Wood Buffalo National Park, it’s the largest in the world is it not?

ROBERTA BONDAR: Yeah, well the Wood Buffalo National Park is the second largest protected land space in the world only after Greenland. But it is the largest national park and it is now classified as a deep sky preserve. And it's really important that we understand in our country we have a number of these. And the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada obviously is instrumental in setting up guidelines, and trying to define what should be a dark sky preserve as opposed to an urban park or a night park. So, they’re really trying to pull Canadians together and say hey you know there are areas you can go to and these areas have been set up and they are wonderful places to explore both on the ground and at night in the sky. When we look at urban parks, it's very difficult in a big city like Toronto to even think of developing an urban sky park. And you'd have to travel beyond Toronto.

AMT: There is one in north of Toronto called Torrance Barrens.

ROBERTA BONDAR: That's correct.

AMT: And there's another one in Kouchibouguac National Park, Eastern New Brunswick.

ROBERTA BONDAR: That's right. Kouchibouguac and Kejimkujik, all the East Coast there is the opportunity for people to be able to participate and look at the night sky. You know, I think that when people pick holiday times, it might be kind of a nice idea that they take a holiday at a time when you can also look at the sky and try to connect with things that are way beyond our understanding here on our planet. We're making baby steps to explore the universe with our satellites, remote sensing our deep space probes. But all of these are way beyond what human beings are able to do physically with their bodies, we have to use instruments to do that. So wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able just to look up and say hey you know, I can connect with the night sky, I could connect with things that are beyond me. They have an incredible way of stimulating our interest in things beyond our selves, which I think is the thing that moves society forward.

AMT: And you know, as a photographer what have you seen change?

ROBERTA BONDAR: It's quite interesting, if you have even a 35 millimetre camera or regular DSLR, a digital signal lens reflex camera, or any kind of point and shoot camera, if you want to take pictures of stars you have to have it sitting on a tripod and you have to have it open for a little bit. As soon as the shutter is open for a little bit longer than you normally take a picture of your family sitting on the beach, it takes in this light from the surrounding sky and then you really have a hard time seeing the stars themselves. So the light glow, the glow that we get because the light hits dust and particles in the atmosphere and scatters it, so it basically makes the sky looks like a big cataract. These are the kinds of things that you don't see unless you are deliberately trying to look for something. But the people don't look up. I mean, the first thing you have to do is look up and if you don't know to look up, even to look for birds in the trees, you’re hardly going to even be motivated to look up to see stars. And if you know there's a like a canopy overhead that’s like having a big white cataract, you're not going to be moved. I mean, that’s the bottom line.

AMT: How much did the night sky growing up affect your choice of career, your decision to go to space?

ROBERTA BONDAR: Well, it affected it very much. I mean, I can't remember a time being born in Sault Ste. Marie and camping on the shores of Lake Superior where we were not able to see a plethora of stars. I mean, it was just [unintelligible] the stars. Once the person's eyes were light adapted and the retina was light adapted to see the stars, and then you could even do things like the missing star phenomenon because the centre of your vision isn’t good enough in low light to pick out stars, you can see them in the corner of your eye and then you reset your eye and it disappears. All those magical things that really stimulate a person's interest in science and asking questions and what's out there, and even thinking about what might be in different planets. Even science fiction, even doing poetry, writing, all the cultural things that give us substance as a life form, that gets taken away. And if it's taken away from the majority of people, then it becomes I wouldn't even call it a lost art, it would become a lost ability to think like a human being. You end up just doing things in a sort of a lighted area that doesn't get you thinking beyond our own planet.

AMT: Roberta Bondar we have to leave it there, thank you for your thoughts today.

ROBERTA BONDAR: Pleasure, there's just so much more.

CW: Dr. Roberta Bondar is a Canadian astronaut, neurologist, and photographer. She flew to space on the Discovery mission STS 42 in 1992. She spoke with Anna-Maria in June. I'm Connie Walker, thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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