Dear Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk and all SpaceX Board Members, Officers, and Lead Investors,
In 1962, when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, insects were so thick upon this Earth that you could not drive a car very far, anywhere in the world, without its windshield becoming splattered with their bodies.
Ms. Carson would not recognize the world today: Windshields are clean. Birds are starving. Crops have no pollinators. A solution has been suggested for farmers: robotic bees, which are being developed at Harvard University. But that is not a solution for the world, because as the insects go, so go we.
And the world knows this. Why have millions of people joined environmental organizations? Why did Jeff Bezos just create a $10 billion-dollar environmental fund? Why are wealthy people signing up to go live on Mars and leave the Earth behind? Because our home is being destroyed, and on some level everyone knows this. But they do not know why. Yes, there are climate change, habitat destruction, and insecticides, but those cannot explain the 76 to 82 percent decline in flying insects in 63 nature preserves in Germany. Those cannot explain the 97 to 98 percent decline in crawling insects in a pristine rainforest in Puerto Rico.
If you expose honey bees to an ordinary cell phone for just ten minutes, their metabolism shuts down. Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins build up in their blood. They can no longer metabolize their food or utilize the oxygen they breathe. And since the same radiation is bathing us all, to a greater or lesser degree, everywhere on Earth, the same thing is happening to every living thing. It happens faster in bees than in us because bees have a much higher metabolism. The radiation comes from all forms of wireless technology, on Earth and in space, and it is being treated as if it is not there.
