Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In thinking about Earth, I am reminded of an encounter I once had with
Bill Anders, an astronaut who was in the first manned spacecraft to orbit the
moon. He told me that as he emerged from the dark side of the moon and
saw Earth again, suspended in space, he held his thumb out in front of his
eye and blotted out the entire planet. Now we are all familiar with that
famous photo of the blue planet, and we can easily do the same thing with
that image. But Anders had the experience, in effect, of making the whole
planet, the real Earth, disappear in an instant. He said it made him, so totally
dependent on the systems of his small spacecraft at that moment, pro-
foundly understand how dependent we are on the systems of Earth. So I
say, although it has become a cliché, we must care for this spaceship and all
of its systems.We must save as much biodiversity as we can and give those
systems a chance to survive and function. We seem to be accelerating into
a murky future, and I am trying here to provide a few beacons to guide our
technology in the next century and millennium. All of the areas examined
in this topic are among the great frontiers to be explored.
As a professor of history, I am hopeful that the younger generations may
be developing a greater concern for Earth's systems. Some of my students
once placed an ad in the personals column of a local newspaper's classified
section:
Temperate but endangered planet, enjoys weather, photosynthesis, evolution, conti-
nental drift. Seeks caring relationship with intelligent life form.
Maybe that intelligent life form could be us, the sapient primate. Maybe our
capacity to think, to invent, to imagine, to innovate, could truly be an asset
rather than the liability it has become without ethical restraints. Maybe we
could create a higher and gentler technology. Maybe we could prove to be
that intelligent life form, in a caring relationship with a finite planet.
