Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Since the Apollo 8 mission to the moon in 1968, we've become very accustomed to seeing the
Earth from space. But how, exactly, do we 'see'? Colour images like the one reproduced here in
black-and-white typically show large areas of blue ocean, white cloud and green (or sandy) coloured
land. Some show the Earth floating in dark space; others show the sun's rays illuminating a portion
of its surface. The overall effect is to present the Earth as, first and foremost, a biophysical unit -
whole and indivisible. The 'human impact' on the environment that's been of so much concern,
on-and-off, since the late 1960s, is subsumed in an image that suggests the enormity but finiteness of
the planet. As environmentalists Barbara Ward and René Dubos put it in the title of their germinal
1972 topic, there is
Only one Earth
(Ward and Dubos, 1972).
shared assumption. It's the assumption that because there are, today, more
people, more industry, more consumption, more pollution, more travel and
more 'invasive' technologies than ever before, then there's therefore less
'nature' - it seems to be a zero-sum game in which the natural world is
the clear loser. In environmentalist Mark Lynas's (2011: 12) dramatic words,
'Nature no longer runs the earth. We do. It's our choice what happens from
here.'
Many thus reason that we need to act decisively before it is 'too late'. We
ought, they argue, to restore, protect, hoard and preserve the nature we've
not yet destroyed or degraded (see
Figure 1.2
). We should do this, they sug-
gest, by downscaling our own presence. What is required are fewer babies,
less trade, less travel, less 'materialism' and so on. We should observe the
'precautionary principle' and take no further undue risks with our own biol-
ogy or the planet's ecology. Alternatively, it's argued that we should use the
