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I'm figuring about a 65% to 70% chance it gets built. Maybe a bit higher.
1. There's a lot of the native Hawaiian population that wants it to be built, they've been pretty quiet so far but are starting to speak up. Historically, Hawaiians were keen on new tech and they were a seafaring nation. Stars are really important for navigation, although the Hawaiians also used sea currents, wind, waves.
2. It's a ton of money for Hawaii that doesn't involve service wage jobs in the tourist industry. They think eight to ten years of construction time followed by 150 full time high wage jobs. All the astronomy graduates will have a place to work if it gets built.
3. It's not really all about the telescope, a lot of the protest is for past wrongs done to the Hawaiians, although a lot of that they did to themselves. The Great Mahele (1843?) was done while it was a monarchy (Kamehameha III) and that was the prime dislocation of native Hawaiians off their lands. There was also the outbreak of small pox (1853) that was treated with cowpox vaccine instead of smallpox vaccine that decimated the native population. That was also during the monarchy period. I think in both cases the monarchs were taking advice from outsiders, but as a monarch they should have the final rule.
After the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (merchants in Honolulu wanted to keep the crown rights that David Kalakaua had given them, but when his sister Queen Lilioukalani took over she wanted to the crown to have the rights back again and the merchants talked a military ship in the harbor in to take over the monarchy. Queen Lilioukalani told her people to not fight since she didn't want anyone to get hurt. She sent a letter to congress which showed up during a tail end of a lame duck session or some such thing so it never got answered until after the overthrow had been done for so long that they just let it remain. One of the strangest overthrows ever.) Anyway, after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, everything Hawaiian was looked down on and the new Powers-That-Be tried to squelch speaking Hawaiian & pidgin and hula. The anti-Hawaiian lasted until about 1950-1960 when tourism started up and then Hawaiian was a tourist draw. Which is kinda annoying to the Hawaiians as well.
A lot of the pressure on Hawaiians as well as Hawaii itself is the increasing population. Pretty much ever since private land ownership was invented in Hawaii (the Great Mahele) folks who have more money than the Hawaiians have been coming in and buying up all the best lands. People born in Hawaii are pretty much stuck with a choice between living in Hawaii with a low wage service type job or getting a good education & degree and then having to move to the mainland to get a job to match the education. If there was some way to subsidize land ownership for folks born in Hawaii, then I think there'd be a lot less protesting.
I can always count on you for informative intellectual replies. You rock! We were driving by and my family was asking my thoughts. All I could really say from what I know is there is serious weight to it. They said there is already observatories there. All I can say is this is not our fight, but respect all positions.
Yeah, that's OHA, though. (Office of Hawaiian Affairs) Folks get on the list to get land and then die before they ever get any. They also don't own the land, it's leased from OHA so OHA can put additional restrictions on it.
Also, in order to inherit, their kids have to have a certain amount of Hawaiian blood so if they don't marry a Hawaiian, then their kids may not have enough Hawaiian blood to inherit.
To me, the whole OHA thing has the underlying flavor of "you're too ignorant to be able to handle owning land on your own, here - we will let you use this but oversee it to make sure you do it right".
If it were me as a member of a group trying to get land, I'd hui together and work out some way for the members to help each other get land and build something on it. Maybe a group of ten or twenty, pick an area, everyone puts in so much per month while waiting for the land, then so much per month afterwards to help everyone who helped them or some such. Have to play with numbers to make it all equitable and probably draw lots to see who gets their houses first. Buying vacant land and building is one of the quicker ways to get equity and when one person in the group is made stronger, the whole group gets stronger.
This whole fiasco is a great embarrassment to the State. Backwards is as backwards protests progress, stating that we don't want your technology while doing a video selfie with a cell phone (chock full of state-of-the-art technology). OMG
Also, in order to inherit, their kids have to have a certain amount of Hawaiian blood so if they don't marry a Hawaiian, then their kids may not have enough Hawaiian blood to inherit.
To me, the whole OHA thing has the underlying flavor of "you're too ignorant to be able to handle owning land on your own, here - we will let you use this but oversee it to make sure you do it right".
If they don't like the terms they can buy their own land.
Kinda curious. What do y’all think will be the final outcome? TMT gets built?
I think it is likely it will get built. Governor Ige signed off on TMT and he was well aware of the ramifications when he did that, so the protest is probably of no surprise to him.
If you listen to what the protesters are saying, a lot of them are protesting on environmental grounds, which in principle could be addressed. That is an easy compromise for the gov to make and would reduce some of the weight of the protests.
As far as the native Hawaiians who are protesting more on religious and cultural grounds, the governor needs to make sure they represent all native Hawaiians because it is not clear at all to what extent the native Hawaiian community agrees with them. If they don't represent the community, then they are just individuals with a complaint.
I have mixed feelings on TMT. I think it would be a positive thing for the state of Hawaii, particularly since it creates good jobs in something other than tourism. But I also worry about the fact that the earth has lots of problems of its own and perhaps we need to fix those first. But canceling TMT on Mauna Kea would end up getting it built in the Canary Islands. I also worry about environmental issues, but as I said, I think those can be addressed.
Ultimately, Hawaii needs to give more autonomy and other things to the Native Hawaiian community. Things like TMT are going to keep coming up otherwise.
Furthermore, I am quite certain when Pre-Season NFL lights up the ESPN channels, the protests will lose testosterone.
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