As our politicians and policy makers continue to pay lip service to warnings by scientists (made over many decades) to reduce emissions and stop the destruction of the earth’s biosphere it is worth reflecting on thoughts of Carl Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, author and researcher, referring to the pale “Blue Dot” that is planet earth, an image taken 32 years ago from the Voyager1 probe about 6 billion km away.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home…The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena…Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world..it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known”.
Despite numerous claims by our politicians and policy makers, our “leaders” continue to plan on the basis of business as usual to suit their own political agendas and ignore lessons that should be learnt from failed civilisations during the last 10,000 years.
The extent to which this results in global decline and ultimately collapse has always been in our hands, but whatever course of action humanity takes from now on, adaption in an increasingly hostile world on a planet that supports fewer and fewer people will be unavoidable and needs to be planned for.