Captain Kirk would be ‘appalled’ at state of Earth’s decline, William Shatner says
By Canadian Press on June 29, 2025.
Captain James T. Kirk would be appalled at the rapid acceleration of climate change on Earth, says William Shatner, the Montreal-born actor who played the head of the USS Enterprise in the “Star Trek” franchise for decades.
“I think he would probably be as appalled as I am,” Shatner said during a recent video call from his home in Los Angeles.
The actor said he could imagine Kirk “skywriting” a message to his fellow Earthlings, urging them to take action.
“Education, education, read everything,” Shatner said. “Everybody should acquaint themselves with the problem, and make a decision.”
The 94-year-old actor is in his hometown of Montreal later this week for the city’s Comiccon event. The three-day fan convention begins Friday at the Palais des congrès.
Shatner is scheduled to make an appearance on the second and third days of the conference. Other scheduled guests include Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and Kane Hodder, who starred in the “Friday the 13th” franchise as the deranged hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees.
Shatner was born in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood in 1931, and he still has a deep emotional connection to the city. “That’s my whole childhood,” he said, adding that he has a “vast” number of relatives living there, including a sister.
He began acting when he was a small child, and he continued even after graduating from McGill University in 1952 with a commerce degree. The school’s university centre is known to students as the Shatner Building, though the university confirmed it is not the building’s official name.
He first played Captain Kirk in the “Star Trek” TV show in 1966. His last appearance in the franchise was in the 1994 film “Star Trek Generations,” where Kirk is killed off.
He also starred in the shows “Boston Legal” and “T.J. Hooker.” He wrote several books, including “Star Trek” novels and a memoir about his friendship with the late actor Leonard Nimoy, who famously played Spock in the original series. And he recorded more than a dozen albums, from 1968’s “The Transformed Man,” a collection of dramatic readings of popular songs, to last year’s children’s album, “Where Will the Animals Sleep? Songs for Kids and Other Living Things.”
Last month, he was onstage in Seattle with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about space and life in a show they called “The Universe Is Absurd.”
He went to Antarctica last year, with deGrasse Tyson, and he went to space in 2021, aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttle.
Always curious and hungry for knowledge, Shatner said he is inspired and fascinated by the capabilities of artificial intelligence and applications such as ChatGPT.
“I was researching a speech I was making, and I could use ChatGPT immediately, (instead of) going down to the library, trying to find the book, read what the book says, come back home and realize I had a question I didn’t ask,” he said. “Artificial intelligence has been a revolution in mankind’s acquisition of knowledge.”
Even still, Shatner said he was frustrated by how little one man can ever really know.
“I’m going to die very unhappily because I don’t know anything,” he said. “There’s so much glorious information out there that it’s impossible to acquire. But what little bits and pieces the human brain can contain in a lifetime are fascinating.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 29, 2025.
The Canadian Press
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There are many who make strong arguments against Mr. Shatner’s assertion that, ““Artificial intelligence has been a revolution in mankind’s acquisition of knowledge.”
https://asbruckman.medium.com/ai-and-the-erosion-of-student-knowledge-and-integrity-5d8cef0ffaee
https://www.thewhitehatter.ca/post/seeing-is-no-longer-believing-the-erosion-of-visual-truth-in-the-age-of-ai
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-erosion-critical-thinking-dr-noah-cheruiyot-mutai-tmqbc
It also appears that Mr. Shatner is challenged in his quest for knowledge vis a vis extremely important aspects surrounding the acquisition of knowledge relative to critical thinking and analysis. In this regard, he claims to be appalled by the rapid acceleration of climate change; however, this item does not mention his space flight in 2021, his disappointment as a result of the flight, nor the manner in which the space industry contributes significantly to climate change.
“Space activities are known for releasing different kinds of pollutants into the atmosphere. This study employs cointegration and error-correction techniques to explore the environmental impacts of U.S. space activity over both short and long terms. The findings reveal a long-run relationship between space activity and the environment. In the short run, except for biocapacity, space activity shows no significant impact on the environment according to the error-correction model analysis. In the long run, noteworthy relationships emerge, such as the launch of objects correlating with an increased ecological footprint and a decline in ozone concentration, and both objects and space debris contributing to reduced ozone concentration. Specifically, the estimates indicate that a one-percent increase in launches increases footprint by 0.07%, whereas a one-percent increase in object launches and space debris reduces the ozone concentration by 2.231% and 0.499%, respectively. The impulse response functions analysis affirms a predominantly permanent negative impact of space activity on the environment, jeopardizing environmental sustainability. Additionally, two crucial breakeven points are identified: space debris initially increases (i.e. deteriorates) the ecological footprint for the first 9 years before permanently improving footprint, while it initially enhances the ozone concentration for about 6 years before causing a lasting detrimental effect on the ozone layer.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161893824000127