Pale Blue Dot

Earth, a tiny 4.5 billion-year-old speck hurtling through the cosmos, the place that each and every one of us calls home. This fragile little world has given us every breath we have ever taken and everything we have ever taken for granted. We owe our very existence to this spinning orb of land, sea and air. However, despite this beautiful fact, humanity is inexplicably bent on environmental collapse. We are the only species in existence to be both complicit in creating and able to prevent a major extinction event.

Recently, NASA released a spectacular sunlit photo of earth from 1 million miles away, captured by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). This humbling sight, much like the historic “Earthrise” photo taken by the Apollo 8 crew, reminds just how very small we are and how very big the stakes are. Sadly though, the human race has still gambled it's future on a sour bet of fossil fuels, excess and unsustainably. We have set ourselves on a course for self-destruction.

Right at this very moment, our civilization is churning out Greenhouse gases on a massive scale; cars and factories pump out carbon dioxide and the cattle industry and landfills produce methane. There is deforestation, dumping in the ocean, overuse of water, drilling, fracking, poaching, oil spills and warfare. The polar-icecaps are melting at an alarming rate and the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable, meanwhile, mega-corporations line their pockets and some of the very people payed to represent our best interests deny the very existence of a problem.

All of this may sound a bit grim but I still believe there is hope for a brighter future. The climate is shifting but, fortunately, so are perceptions. Just last month, in fact, there was a UN climate change conference in Germany as well as the 400,000 strong "Peoples Climate March” in NYC. Climate change, pollution and ecological destruction are not political opinions or abstract debate topics, they are cold hard facts. The time for denial has long passed, the time for action is critically upon us.

To me, humans are a very innovative species bursting with imagination. If we can channel the same unstoppable ingenuity that brought us medical breakthroughs, space travel and the Internet we can face these environmental problems head-on. As a society we need to be investing in renewable energy, holding companies responsible for their impact and electing politicians who are tough on climate issues. We are part of this planet it is not merely a resource to exploit.

There is a long hard road ahead but we must make a change, not just for the sake of humans but for all of the amazing living-things we share this planet with. We may not be able to reverse global warming at this point but we can slow it's progress and treat the earth with the respect it's so desperately deserves. Every moment we delay makes the future that much more bleak, we must ask ourselves what are we leaving for generations yet to come? I believe we have an obligation as a species to take care of what Carl Sagan referred to as, "The pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."