Think of our Pale Blue Dot on Earth Day
- By Helen Craig -
- Apr 20, 2012
This Sunday is Earth Day. It is a day for people of all nationalities and backgrounds to voice their appreciation for the planet and demand its protection. The video above provides a very thought provoking look at our Earth and how we treat it - quite appropriate to watch with Earth Day in mind.
The words read are from Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” which was inspired by an image taken, at Carl Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 4 billion miles away when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, only 0.12 pixel in size.
Each year on April 22, the Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilise the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.
To read more about the history of the day visit: www.earthday.org/earth-day-history-movement
By Helen Craig. Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability at Virgin. Tweets @helcraig
