(de)regulation nation: a message from 1968
"To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together..."
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders created this, the first color photo of the Earth ever made from space by a human being, on Dec. 24, 1968.
“For the first time in all of time men have seen it not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the depth of space; seen it whole and round and beautiful and small,” wrote poet Archibald MacLeish the day Anders made this photo. “What came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space – ‘half way to the moon’ they put it – what came to their minds was the life on that little, lonely, floating planet; that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night."
For most of my lifetime (I was four when Apollo 8 flew), Earthrise has been credited with revolutionizing humanity’s perception of our home planet as fragile and rare. Fifty years later some of us are still wrecking the place, even though the science done over those decades has shown that both are true. One reason I’ve founded (de)regulation nation is to figure out how to connect readers (or viewers or listeners…) as well and as usefully as possible with these facts and their ramifications, and amplify whether those we entrust to respond effectively, in the public interest, are or aren’t live up to their responsibilities.
I hope that reading (de)regulation nation’s balance of bad-better-good-great news over the past year has helped you get to the end of 2018 better informed, at least somewhat hopeful, and curious about what’s next.
See you next year!
Emily
Thanks for reading (de)regulation nation, a production of Brooklyn Radio Telegraph LLC.
This newsletter is written by me, Emily J Gertz. I’m an environmental journalist. Learn more about me and see some of my work at my web site.
This week’s quote is by Archibald MacLeish, from his essay “Riders on Earth Together, Brothers in Eternal Cold,” published in The New York Times on Dec. 25, 1968.
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I welcome your feedback, questions, and story tips: emily@deregnation.com