Welcome to this new decade! What will Earth be like when my darling grandchildren (now 3 and 3 months old) turn 80? Will the next century arrive safely?
Gazing at Earth from space must be a surreal and magnificent experience. How excited I become glimpsing the Atlantic from a plane descending over Boston Harbor, seeing other-worldly glaciers in Anchorage, or flying above the snow-covered Caucasus Mountains.
Flying east over Russia in 2016
I worry about the next decade, the one after that, and the one after that. On NPR recently I listened to an interview with Carl Sagan, the renowned American astronomer who told us more than twenty years ago:
“In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.” — Carl Sagan
More than twenty years ago I asked my Maine high school students, “Do you know how lucky we are to have been born on this patch of land we call the United States?” I don’t recall anyone responding.
We’ve been taking our clean water, our familiar weather patterns, our beautiful planet for granted for a very long time. Our one and only Big Blue Marble.
May 2020 inaugurate a decade when we reinstate science, fight off climate change, and upgrade civility among the planet’s humans.
For all our children and grandchildren. For the Earth itself.
Our one and only Big Blue Marble. I hope it survives.
Tucson Writer Editor 
Nice post. Thanks!
Amen.
Thanks for reading. We are all in this together.
A moving, heartfelt plea to us all to do whatever we can for our children’s children’s children.
Thank you, Amy. Here’s to a happy and healthy, creative and insightful 2020. May it be a year of transformative politics!
Beautiful!
Thanks Julie. Now I’m concerned about war. Stay tuned. What can I do but write, speak my truth, and vote?
Thank you for this passionate wake up call for all of us who love our grandchildren, love this planet. It’s easy to feel powerless, but I’ve made a few small changes at a personal level to conserve water, forests, habitat, our animal brothers and sisters. I went vegan in 2019 primarily for environmental reasons, but it has had tremendous health benefits too. I buy used clothes instead of new – recycle, reuse, renew. Thank you for your calls to consciousness and action!
Thanks for your important contribution, Kate! I figure that something I can do is write, speak up!