This is Earth, third planet from Sol. Blue
and white, heart-breakingly serene. Home to seven billion-plus humans, so far as
we currently know, the only sentient beings in the universe. Home, also, to millions
of species of plants and animals, insects and microbes, connected in a complex
web of inter-related life that our science is only just beginning to fully understand.
This is a familiar image for us now, our
planet as seen from space. From orbit, or from further out in the solar system,
the problems of the people who inhabit the surface of that beautiful orb seem
small, distant. The astronauts who have stared at the Earth from their capsules
or from the dusty plains of the moon confirm that political squabbles, economic
downturns, even wars between countries seem petty and insignificant in the sight
of that big, blue ball spinning in the black night. Home to all of us together.
Here below we are battered and bruised by a
long and corrosive political campaign at home; by unceasing war on several
fronts overseas; by racial and religious divisions, economic stagnation, environmental
assault everywhere. It is nearly impossible to gain perspective in our public
discourse, or in our day-to-day interactions with others.
But look again. From out there the view is
very different.
I would ask all our newly elected officials,
from the U.S. President-elect and members of Congress down to the lowliest
dog-catcher in the smallest town in the middle of nowhere, to consider this image
of our world. I would ask those given the task of directing the most powerful
nation in the world to remember that they lead on behalf of not just the
strongest among us, but the weakest, too. That their actions affect not just
those that supported them, but those that opposed them, and those that had no
say in our elections at all—the rest of the billions of our beautiful, blue
planet.
The one that is home to us all.
Cheers, Donna
