This 1968 picture showed how precious and vulnerable life on this planet really is. I've been thinking a lot about it from the perspective of 2006.
The photograph was made by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968. (In grainy black-and-white TV images -- the color film was developed later -- human beings saw an image of their planet rising over the moon for the first time.) It was the tail end of a tumultuous, terrible year -- a time at least as awful in its way as the one we are going through now. On Christmas Eve, the photo showed a new and possibly more hopeful way of looking at things.
An awful war raged in Vietnam and blew up in the Tet offensive, Gene McCarthy knocked LBJ out of the presidential race, Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy were gunned down, a riot in the streets of Chicago left the Democratic party bitterly divided, and Richard Nixon rode the turmoil all the way to the White House. At year's end, the world was still bitterly divided, but here was a vision of unity, a way of seeing Earth, whole, without artificial political boundaries.
It wasn't the first view of "the whole Earth" from space, but it was by far the most powerful. By showing the Earth, lonely and fragile against the all too lifeless expanse of the moon, the picture memorably portrayed the vulnerability of "Spaceship Earth." It was a profoundly moving and spiritual moment.
NEIL de GRASSE TYSON, Hayden Planetarium, NYC: It was the first real occasion where people saw earth, not as you see it on the globe you buy in the map store, with political boundaries color coded. All it was, was oceans and continents and clouds. And it was at that moment that people started calling our planet, "Space Ship Earth", because we're all in it together, moving through space.
STEWART BRAND, Founder, Whole Earth Catalogue: The planet seeing itself from the outside was a major self-realization of its existence as a planet, as a beautiful thing, as a kind of fragile appearing thing. It is clearly alive. Photographs with the moon in the foreground emotionally dramatize the difference between a dead planet and a living planet. It's not hard to imagine, well, you know, a living planet can become a dead planet unless steps are taken.
Apparently
not everyone got the message.
NASA has reportedly eliminated the promise "to understand and protect our home planet" from its mission statement. That statement was repeatedly cited last winter by NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who said he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.
...
One observer noted results from NASA's increasing involvement in monitoring the Earth's environment have sparked political disputes concerning the Bush administration's environmental policies. Hansen said the elimination of the phrase involving protecting the planet might reflect a White House desire to shift the spotlight away from global warming. He told The Times: "They're making it clear that they ... prefer that NASA work on something that's not causing them a problem."
That figures. George Bush is the last person to "understand and protect our home planet." If anything, he's been making war on it. He rejected the Kyoto Treaty -- along with the very idea of global warming. And then there's his tendency to favor threats and violence over more traditional diplomacy.
"A living planet can become a dead planet unless steps are taken," says Stewart Brand. Exactly. Since we can't rely on Bush, we need to take the steps ourselves.
Take another look at the picture. Think about it. What do you see? What does it mean to you? Then treat the election this fall as if the future of the planet depends on it. It probably does.
(NOTE: An earlier version was posted at Letter from Here.)
UPDATE: Thanks to GreyHawk for noting pinche tejano's eloquent diary about the impending destruction of most of the original Apollo film footage. Check it out and let your congressional representatives know it's unacceptable.