Here's a podcast episode about environmentalism from unique perspectives, including Christian perspective, by The Liturgists podcast. It's a few years old but certainly entertaining, informative, and relevant today. There is a little language and quips that you may feel are not appropriate for children (just in case you want to listen with them).
Updated: Apr 22, 2020
In September 1977, NASA launched a spacecraft called Voyager 1 to study our outer solar system, and eventually, interstellar space. In February 14, 1990, as Voyager 1 left our solar system, renown astronomer Carl Sagan convinced NASA to turn its camera around one last time before powering down its camera, facing us, and take a picture of Earth within the vast expanse of space - a cosmic selfie, if you will.
This is the photo that Voyager 1 took:
Can you see where Earth is? Where we are? It's that little dot on the right of the picture. This is what we look like about 6 billion km (3.7 billion mi) away.
In his book Pale Blue Dot, Sagan made this profound reflection:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Sagan continued, reflecting:
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Seeing the picture while reading Sagan's reflection, I experienced an intense spiritual experience: to recognize the insignificance of our existence, our irrational cruelty towards one another, our towering hubris, and yet, I also recognize the miracle of life and existence, the oasis within the deserted space, the beauty of Earth, and the intrinsic value of nature.
Humans have imagined and sought after paradise. This photo shows that we already live in paradise.
Let's treat our home well.
First photo by Joe Haythornthwaite and Tom Ruen, taken from Wikipedia
Second photo taken by NASA
Sagan, C. (1994). Pale Blue Dot. United States: Random House USA Inc.
It's the 50th anniversary of Earth Day (or Week)! Usually, we would celebrate it by spending time in our natural environment, but due to the pandemic, that may not be possible. Because of that, I'm going to sharing throughout the week about our planet our home, the natural environment, the created order in the Bible, and Christians who are working to protect our environment our home. So stay tune!
Here's an overview of the history of Earth Day: