Here’s the message we need on Earth Day: The more we know about ourselves and our home, the more we must recognize that the only planet that can sustain us is the one we evolved on. From Arwen Nicholson and Raphaelle Haywood:
“We are complex lifeforms with complex needs. We are entirely dependent on other organisms for all our food and the very air we breathe. The collapse of Earth’s ecosystems is the collapse of our life-support systems. Replicating everything Earth offers us on another planet, on timescales of a few human lifespans, is simply impossible.”
Science fiction fantasy, from Star Trek to Star Wars, assumes we can flit about the universe and make ourselves at home any darn place we please. But as Nicholson and Haywood explain, that’s impossible.
The notion of humans as intergalactic cosmopolitans arose from the current mindset of radical individualism, which sees humans as discrete beings who thrive when the restraints of society and tradition are severed. But what really happens when we lose our connections to people and places is an uprooted alienation not just from others, but ourselves. That’s what’s driving the simmering rage and mutual antagonism of modern politics and culture.
This Earth Day, let’s take the time to renew our connections to our roots. Time is running out–because there is no Planet B.
M.C. Tuggle, Writer 
Dear Mike,
I completely concur with you. Uprooted alienation aside, even if there is neither the limit imposed by thermodynamics nor the environmental chaos caused by growth, there is still a good chance that humanity will doom itself by its “intelligence”, or rather by its inherent flaws.
If I were asked the question “Would you rather live on Earth or elsewhere in the universe?”, I would choose the latter for two major reasons. The first reason is that we spent years accumulating knowledge and wisdom only to see our corporeal form disintegrating in mere decades. The second reason is that the human species is so flawed that there are no long-lasting peace and redemption. Given the escalating social problems and ongoing environmental crises on Earth, it would be easy for some of us to imagine that we could be citizens in the kind of morally and technologically advanced societies portrayed in Star Trek. Unfortunately, we were born several centuries too early. Sometimes one might indeed feel that it would be very nice to join Roy Neary in the movie “Close Encounter of the Third Kind” and to leave the Earth in that giant mothership for good so as to achieve or awaken interstellar or (inter)galactic Spiritual Revolutionaries!
You can find all of these reasons, pitfalls and outstanding issues and a great deal more, being provided in detail in my highly analytical and multidisciplinary post entitled 😱 We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology 🏰🚀“, published at
This said post has been expanded considerably.
Wishing you a very happy and fulfilling Earth Day!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle🦅
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Being doomed by our own intelligence is indeed a real possibility. We still don’t understand the difference between intelligence and wisdom.
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So much…thank you.
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I think there other habitable planets but that’s not the problem. Our attitude toward the earth and each other is spiritual, heart and soul centered. Our relationship with our own body and by extension, the birth family who MADE our body and our mother. That is the problem that will not be solved by traversing the universe or going to another planet. We would just transfer our inner toxicity. I support individuals and groups. But above that, the CHOICE to live as an introvert or extrovert without social judgment.
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“That is the problem that will not be solved by traversing the universe or going to another planet.”
Well said. Couldn’t agree more.
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