Appreciate The Earth, Our Earth, Our Little Blue Dot and the life it supports!

The Appreciate The Earth design series was inspired by a NASA ‘Houston We Have a Podcast’ interview between Tom Cruise and Victor Glover in relation to the effect of space travel on the human body. It also links with several interviews of people commenting on the need to Appreciate Our Earth, using STEM disciplines to highlight the issues we currently have along with some ways to mitigate them to repair the Earth’s biosphere and improve life on Earth. This is one of the central themes of Alltheus.com.

 

During the interview Victor recounts the effect of seeing the Earth below and connects it to the Overview Effect (a term coined by Frank White commonly used to describe the experience of many astronauts seeing the entire Earth below from space and our duty of care to protect this little blue marble hanging in space). Victor wanted to capture the feeling of awe seeing the world just as it is. Seeing the whole ocean but appreciating he could walk on the beach and stand in the surf. He noted that the overview effect starts here at 1 gravity on the Earth’s surface with each other. It was a powerful and informative interview. And we hope Victor and Tom managed their planned skydive!

 

 

THE QUOTES AND THEIR ORIGIN

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath.                  

Nathaniel Egleston (writing about deforestation in 1882, but the quote speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today). If we make the Earth inhospitable for us the planet will keep on going on without us.

 

 

Climate change is not really a question of trends. It is more an increase in climate extremes

Chris C. Funk, Climate Hazard Center, Dept of Geography, University of California Santa Barbara

Science Weekly podcast (16 Dec 2021 9min 10sec in with Madeline Finlay, an update of a probable drought related catastrophe from the accumulated oceanic warming impacting African climate about 6min 25sec in on the 15 May 2022 BBC’s Science in Action) as well as a further update from 2 March 2023 here and from the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre here. The latest research shows that the El Nino effect has become stronger after a change in the Pacific in the late 1990’s and Dr Funk now has a way of quantifying it. We can’t say we were not warned!

The Climate Hazard Center blog is here

His book “Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Catastrophes” is here

 

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “look at that you sonofabitch”.

Edgar Mitchell, NASA Astronaut - Apollo 14

 

It isn’t important in which sea or lake you observe a slick of pollution or the forests in which country a fire breaks out or on which continent a hurricane arises. You are standing guard over the whole of our Earth.

Frances Arnold, Nobel Laureate

 

“This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. Its lonely.  Its small. Its isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it.”

Scott Carpenter, Astronaut, One of the Mercury 7

 

"The costs of climate policy are also real to certain constituencies and certain communities who have a strong stake in stalling action, so that they can benefit economically in the short term at the expense of the social wellbeing of everyone in the medium term."

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Matto Mildenberger, University of California Listen to the Science Show podcast here

 

We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children  

Chief Seattle (a beautiful, pithy and wise sentiment). And in a similar vein:

 

“If you don't understand it, you can't protect it. And if you don't care, you won't protect it.”

Nainoa  Thompson, Native Hawaiian navigator and the president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. (from a Kevin Fong Tweet 17 Feb 2020)

 

“We, the Indigenous Peoples, are the children of nature so we fight for our Mother Earth because the fight for Mother Earth is the mother of all fights. We are fighting for your lives. We are fighting for our lives.”     Artemisa Xakriabá in 2019 Climate activist from Brazil (19 y o as at Jun 2020)

 

And from the most ancient continuous culture on Earth:

“Sand Talking: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World” here          

Tyson Yunkaporta

 

“If you still say we are wasting valuable lesson time then let me remind you that our political leaders have wasted decades through denial and inaction”

Greta Thunberg, climate activist

 

“The good Earth—we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.              “              

Kurt Vonnegut

 

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilt by all those grand emperors so that in glory and triumph they can be the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”           

Carl Sagan, Astronomer and Science Communicator including writing and hosting the first groundbreaking ‘Cosmos’ series

 

"We emerge from nature and we are entangled with nature and the future of us as humans is entangled with the future of the planet… We are learning that also in the lab when we are trying to do new medicines, trying to do new materials."              

Dr Sonia Contera Hear the Science Focus podcast here about 35min 15 sec in

 

“The science of climate change is not a belief, a religion, or a political ideology. It presents facts that are measurable and verifiable.”                                                                        

From the book "The Future We Choose" Christiana Figueres and co-author Tom Rivett-Carna

 

"Technology created climate change in the first place, through the industrial revolution. But if we continue to also use technology to our advantage, maybe we can fix some of the stuff that we have broken." Martijn Lukaart (Reported in The Australian Financial Review 10 Jan 2020 behind a paywall)

 

“Climate change: Don’t undermine the science just because you don’t like the economics”

Professor Brian Cox