“NO TMT” doesn’t mean build it anyway, by adding a few restrictions to reduce impact on the environment and assuage the local culture. The Thirty Meter Telescope itself will impact the environment and Hawaiian culture.

It is either built or not built — no in-between. Therefore, there’s nothing to negotiate. The only compromise is to build it in the Canary Islands.

Apart from temporary financial gain for contractors and laborers, the only ones whose lives will be enhanced by peering into the TMT and making educated guesses about stars, black holes, galaxies — whatever — millions of light years yonder, are the astronomers and a few fascinated amateurs. The ratio to the state population is insignificant, regardless of the PR about how everyone will benefit from the TMT’s astronomical non-cures for cancer, diabetes and bedbugs, and its usefulness to Hawaiian navigators.

Carol Han

Makiki

Click here to read more Letters to the Editor.