Kickstarting Environmentalism
Although some may think the main outcomes of space exploration are the inventions of Velcro and non-sticking pans, or the dreams of holidaying on Mars one day, it has by far more important effects.
First, it allows us to observe and understand both our origins and the principles of physics, energy, matter and time itself. Second, it advances the development of technologies and strategies that can help humanity thrive.
It also has a third consequence that was not foreseen by scientists and engineers: It widens our cosmic perspective, confronting us with the vastness of the universe. It offers a unique point of view to reflect on our home, and on humanity and its endeavors -- a point of view that significantly defined the environmentalist movement.
It's no coincidence that Earth Day (April 22) was established only 15 months after the publication of "Earthrise." The pacifist and activist John McConnell made flags with the iconic photograph and gave them to the people at the Moon watch of the Apollo 11 landing in 1969. He then had the idea of celebrating Earth Day, the first environmental festival. One year later, Earth Day was officially accepted and has been on our calendars since.
These new views of the Earth from space were an unforeseen revelation. The first missions to other worlds inspired interest in ecology and the protection of the Earth's environment. At the same time, scientific advances led to a greater understanding of the human impact on the planet.
For the first time, many realized that we had the potential to disrupt or even destroy Earth's life-support systems. The sense of environmental crisis was intensified by social and political turmoil, something we are seeing again today.
Spaceship Earth: The Bigger Picture
In 1969, the inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller published a striking metaphor for a new ideal of planetary management in a book entitled Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Fuller famously proclaimed, "We are all astronauts," and argued that techniques developed for managing life in space should be transferred and applied to globally scaled environmental problems on Earth. "We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody."
More books followed -- like The Closing Circle (1971) in which Barry Commoner declared his famous four ecological laws, The Limits to Growth (1972) or Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (1972) -- to tackle the big question of what would be required for humanity to continue to thrive.
Former NASA employee James Lovelock and biologist Lynn Margulis released the Gaia Hypothesis in 1974, a piece that proposed to look at planet Earth as a living organism, an integrated entity with interlinking geological and biological processes. Despite the initial resistance from the scientific community, the Gaia hypothesis generated many thought-provoking questions and helped to stimulate a holistic approach to studying Earth.
With intellectual audacity, the authors of these books on sustainability at the time were all big-picture, interdisciplinary thinkers. They offered a path-breaking analysis of the challenge of raising living standards for the poor without degrading the environment.
Developed nations needed to acknowledge the damage that they were inflicting on the biosphere and accept that their fate was inseparable from the prospects of the rest of the world. It was clear that many environmental threats were global; planetary interdependence had to become a moral and political reality, not just a hard and inescapable scientific fact.
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