– We Must Do Our Most To Protect And Preserve It
A Brief Commentary from NAL publisher Doug Draper
As a NASA space probe beams back astonishing images of the ninth stone from the sun – the planet Pluto – from billions of miles in space, there are a few things we humans (who like to think of ourselves as the most intelligent beings on our planet) ought to consider.
Pluto up close. It is cold and dark out there. Want to try living there? How ’bout’ working a little harder to look afer our planet Earth?
The first stems from my earliest introduction to Pluto when one of my grade school teachers covered a blackboard with a large poster of our universe, showing that wee, little planet out there, furthest away from the sun. I recall thinking how dark, cold and lonely a place Pluto must be.
To no one’s surprise, the images of the place coming in to NASA, have its experts saying there may be some possibility of “geological activity” occurring on the planet – i.e. volcanic eruptions taking place above a surface coated with sheets of frozen methane gas – but there are no signs of life approaching anything we are aware of on our Earth over the past many millions of years.
Nor has this space probe or any other we have sent into the inner and outer reaches of our universe found any evidence of an ecology on Mars or any other planet that can support life as we know it.
And that brings me to the final thing I want to leave you with.
Regardless of what the merchants for the tar sands and spewing more carbon and other toxic gases into our Earth’s atmosphere – as if our air, lands and water are trash cans – think, and we should all stand up as citizens of this world and say “nay” to what they think, this Earth is our only oasis we know of for life in this universe.
We are racing down a psycho, suicidal track if we don’t say “no” to demented, 19th and 20th century governments like that of Harper in Canada, and work toward a greener future to protect and preserve it.
Remember, we in Canada have a federal election this coming October and there is something we can do about this.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post, but only if you also share your real first and last name. We don’t entertain anonymous cyberspace flame-throwers here.)
Niagara At Large 
Lovely, thoughtful essay. Wishful thinking, though, as the Thugs that lead us (O.G. L. Harper, and his minions) don’t care about anything except their self-aggrandizement and continuing power. The fact that Harper has two children, yet doesn’t care what legacy he leaves them and the family’s potential grandchildren stuns me. Today, Wall railed against Notley on even considering carbon issues, at the same moment that a rail carrying oil derailed just below the Alberta border, and a bitumen crap oil line spill occurred just outside of Fort McMurray. What is it that these Neo-Cons do not get?
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Doug – I appreciate the reminder to better focus on some closer truths. This week while training to volunteer in a crises service capacity, our facilitator asked us to share a favourite film – the icebreaker exercise. I announced ‘Blade Runner’. It was an intuitive response, feeling how we now live in an era of vivid contrasts, stressors, novelty and deprivation—depending on your perspective of course. Earthlings might do well to heed social and environmental warning signs to avoid a blockbuster of a terrestial adventure.
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Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that human kind can send a space probe billions….not millions….of miles to Pluto or another to a moon of Saturn (Titan) and actually land on that moon yet they are unable to find viable alternative fuels on earth?
I always compare this inexcusable, purposeful blindness to the accomplishment of Gates and Jobs. Just 50 or 60 years ago nobody could envision people having a computer in their home let alone on their wrist. People like these two had the vision to see what was thought impossible. As a result progress has been mind boggling and Gates is among the wealthiest people on the planet. Even though their prime motivation is greed, the fossil fuel magnates can’t give up their immediate cascade of cash to attain as much or more wealth in the form of future technology. Gates saw the future, these guys cling to the past. If money is their goal can they not see what wealth there is to be attained for the people who discover and make such resources accessible to all!!!! The magnates want wealth and it’s waiting to be had but they are too selfish and short sighted to go for it. Losing jobs is a bogus excuse too because there will be an equal number, if not a greater number of jobs, safe and clean jobs, to be had in the fields of new technology and energy supply.
These creeps want their cake and eat it too without any concern for the planet and their own descendants nor the insight to realize that even greater wealth is there for anyone who cares to find the solutions.
They need to read Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” but then it would likely soar over their heads because they are evil without a shred of humanity. They are sociopaths.
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