How Important is our Planet Earth in the Universe?
J. Morris Hicks
People occasionally talk about inter-stellar travel, setting up colonies on other planets, etc. Famed Harvard biologist and Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson wrote about that in his
recent book shown below.
For me, he put to rest the notion of human colonies on distant planets being our salvation after we get done trashing our own planet. I have found his work comforting as we contemplate our future. It has helped me understand how we got here in the first place and what we must do to survive long-term as a species--on the only planet capable of keeping us alive.
I found this quote (from this book) particularly descriptive as to how we fit into the "big picture" of the universe:
The tiny blue speck we call home is proportionately no more than that, a mote of stardust near the edge of our galaxy among a hundred billion or more galaxies in the universe. It occupies just one position in a continuum of planets, moons, and other planet-like heavenly bodies that we have just begun to understand.
It would be becoming of us to speak modestly of our status in the cosmos. Let me offer a metaphor: Earth relates to the Universe as the second segment of the left antenna of an aphid sitting on a flower petal in a garden in Teaneck, New Jersey, for a few hours this afternoon.
The Bottom Line.Our planet is not very "important" in the cosmos, but it, and its ecological health, is ESSENTIAL to us humans. Here are links to two of my "E.O. Wilson inspired" blogs that touch on my favorite topic: Sustainability.
