Rare Earth(s)… Why Our Planet Is So Unique and Vulnerable.
I’ve always been a curious person. I’ve studied so many subjects ranging from psychology to philosophy, physics to chemistry, cosmology to astronomy, economics, and so on. Having a B.A. Philosophy, my academic training constantly exposed me to different worldviews, cultures, political views, etc.
Cosmologists and astronomers keep looking further back in time and further outward in space and, while they found earthlike planets inhabiting the Goldilocks zone around a sustainable star, they’ve still found zero evidence of life in any form everywhere we’ve looked. If that doesn’t give you perspective on how rare our planet truly is, then I don’t know what would.
Without getting political here, our earth is so rare, so sacred and so vulnerable. We have to do more.
One can argue CO2 emissions, natural climate cycles, and so on, but the fact remains the same. We are capable of screwing up our planet, and we may have already done that. I’ve always tried to be an optimist with a healthy dose of realism. And, I do have hope that our human ingenuity and science will fix this problem through some combination of renewable energy sources and environmental protections.
Seems like all the other political and social issues take a backseat to the environment for me. None of those issues mean anything if we don’t have a habitable planet. I’m not your typical socialist liberal looking to dismantle our economy with environmental sanctions and punishments. But, I do think we need to do more to protect our beautiful planet and sustainer of life.
Just imagine what the water and air quality would be today had the EPA not been established decades ago. We can’t rely on the goodwill of corporations solely to ensure that they don’t subject our planet to toxic waste and other pollutants.
In closing, the universe is unimaginably large and old and the more we look out the larger it seems to be. With no evidence of life anywhere else, we should all strive to protect and preserve our precious planet.
