Why ‘Earthrise’ Matters

It is perhaps the most famous photograph ever taken. It came into being almost by accident, when on the morning of Christmas Eve 1968 one of the astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft, Bill Anders, turned the camera from the supposed object of their mission – the moon – towards a spherical, brightly glowing, blue object rising above the lunar horizon. This was Earth, our irreplaceable planetary home. Suddenly humankind was able to view its habitat with a gaze hitherto reserved for the entity we have termed God.

Earthrise allowed us to feel a kind of care, even love, for the planet. Viewed from space, we see it protected from terrific bombardments of meteorites and solar and cosmic rays, and made habitable, only by an infinitesimally thin membrane – which it is now wholly in our remit to destroy. Our oxygen rich atmosphere – the difference between a barren desert planet like Mars, and our lush, abundant, breathable home – appears in the photo as the vaguest of halos.

From up here, it is possible to feel so much more generous towards the human project than we normally do. We can smile gently at humanity and perhaps admire it a little too. Everyone’s faults drop away against such majesty. We are tugged towards being more patient and warm around our fellow ants spinning with us in endless darkness. We might like to tell one or two of these ants in franker, more direct terms how fond we are of them.

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