by Michael Douglas Carlin
Our Galaxy has 100 billion stars. The Universe has 400 billion galaxies. We can see all of this and have yet to identify a single planet that can sustain life as we enjoy it. We should therefore protect Mother Earth at all costs.
We can give meaning to the loss of life–our flora and fauna—by coming together on April 22nd every year and honoring our home, Mother Earth. Who will march with us on this Earth Day?
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Our Galaxy has 100 billion stars. The Universe has 400 billion galaxies. We can see all of this and have yet to identify a single planet that can sustain life as we enjoy it. We should therefore protect Mother Earth at all costs.
Truth exists. The more fully you align yourself with Truth, the better your life will be. Frustrations come from being out of harmony with Truth.
Why Conservatives and Liberals should begin hugging their nearest tree:
I remember being a part of America as a kid and being swept away with the newest hit on the airwaves. I must have been one of the first to buy the album, "Hotel California." I played that album over and over on my record player. I was warned that I would damage the record, but that didn't stop me from listening to it again and again. I thought that I would just go down to the record store and buy another, because I was living in the disposable era of America. I am quite sure that I was not alone in discovering what I thought was an obscure tune on the other side of the album called "The Last Resort." I would sing that song, off key, for hours on end, because I connected with the simple meaning.
"Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier.
We have got to make it here.
We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds. In the name of yesterday and in the name of God.
And you can see them there on Sunday morning.
Stand up and sing about what it's like up there.
They call it Paradise, I don't know why.
Callin' some place Paradise, kissing it goodbye."
We, as humanity, are obsessed with finding Paradise. Milton's Paradise Lost, the Bible's Garden of Eden, and Dante's Inferno all talk about the qualities of Paradise. There are many names for Paradise: Nirvana, Heaven, Elysian Fields,Tian, or in the poetry of Janna. There have been many great migrations throughout history looking for the greener grass…for Paradise. Columbus gave Europeans the "New World," where men and women could carve out their own personal Paradise. The Vikings migrated to the Mediterranean, Iceland and Greenland as well as the Continent of North America.
Today, finding our own Paradise has become a little more complicated. Nearly seven billion people occupy the planet, and every landmass has been identified and mapped. Today's flight from our circumstances includes the dream of space travel to another planet. The fact is that there is no place to go. Our neighboring planets are uninhabitable. Our moon is uninhabitable. The only home we know is Earth. The time is upon us as humanity to face this fact and to be careful about the choices we make to keep our home safe and comfortable. At least for the next five billion years.
WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I BECAME A MORMON
Like the line from the song, I was looking for the "grand design." I was searching for answers. I was on a quest to find more. I found the message of the Mormons very interesting in my youth for a number of reasons.
I still have many friends and family in the Mormon Church and have no axe to grind. I still have many beliefs that are couched in Mormonism. Their eleventh Article of Faith is: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."
I would add to it a provision for the ever-growing population of agnostics or atheists to not worship at all.
Star Trek was a popular television series at the time I joined Mormonism. Close Encounters, ET, Alien and Star Wars all created alternate space-based realities that appealed to my sense of adventure. I was easily swept up in the belief that there were many planets to visit and that aliens were plentiful.
As one of their core beliefs, Mormons believe that being good in this life results in a reward that will lead to the right to have your own planet and to become a lesser "god in charge" to design and implement a plan for that planet. I have since thought that entire concept through and have no interest in that much responsibility. Additionally, if there are other planets out there to design, we have yet to discover a single instance of a Mormon-ruled planet.
A very good friend of mine was the production executive on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He influenced me by letting me in on a secret that the researchers didn't want to get out at the time the movie was released, and that was that all of their research up to that time had led to the conclusion that there is nothing else out there. Since the release of the movie, we have progressed so much. We created the Hubble Telescope, other ground and space observatories, and radio telescopes; we have sent numerous probes to the four corners of our solar system; and we have recorded images millions of light years away. So far, not a single planet has been discovered that is confirmed to be able to sustain life as we experience it.
THE GOLDILOCKS MISSION
Life is around us in many forms: viruses, bacteria, microorganisms, flora and fauna. Some life forms can exist in extreme conditions. The possibility that alien life forms exist is highly probable. Stephen Hawkings has warned us that the best course of action with alien life forms is to simply steer clear because of the threat they might pose to humans if we ever meet. Space is a gigantic place. The odds of us finding intelligent life before it finds us is rather slim. In the 1950's, SETI was formed to find life on other planets. Just on how many planets are they looking?
Let's look at some numbers. In our own galaxy, there are 100 billion stars. In the part of the universe that we can see, there are 400 billion galaxies. If we assume an average of three planets per star, that becomes an unfathomable number of planets in the universe. Environments that can sustain human life are very rare, even on our own planet. Extreme conditions of floods, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and droughts take human life. Man-made disasters also can destroy life.
We all remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Too hot or too cold, too hard or too soft, too big or too small were all countered with the solution that was "just right." Our own planet is "just right." If the earth were spinning significantly faster, It would be too cold to sustain life; if the earth were spinning significantly slower, it would be too hot during the day and too cold at night to sustain life. The earth's distance from the sun is also just right. A little further, and we would be too cold; a little closer, and we would be too hot.
Water is another element necessary to sustain life. Too much water or too little water, and there is no ability to sustain life. Oxygen and carbon dioxide are elements that sustain life, as are plants, nutrients, animals, insects, microorganisms, viruses, bacteria, minerals and sunlight. Each element is important to the overall ecosystem.
According to Dr. Spencer Brown: "The Goldilocks Mission is the first dedicated organization to set, as its goal, the travel to and the colonization of another truly livable planet when it is discovered. It may take many decades before this mission leaves Earth and possibly many more, depending on future developments and discoveries in propulsion in space and time travel, before it arrives at its new home."
Criteria for a sustainable planet:
1. A star in the same class as our sun or perhaps a red dwarf.
2. A dense planet like our Earth.
3. High metallic content.
4. Not too hot or too cold.
5. Enough water but not too much water.
6. Plate tectonics and geological activity.
7. Presence of carbon dioxide and oxygen.
8. Absence of noxious gases or acids in concentrated amounts.
9. Absence of noxious bacteria.
10. Absence of noxious viruses.
11. Foundation for complex chemistry.
To further complicate the search for a place to go is the fact that, even though we have developed the ability to get into space, we have no means to travel the perhaps hundreds of millions of light years to get there. The possibility of a place to go will elude us for thousands of years at best.
If we do find a place to go and we develop the means to get there, we will have to wrestle with the moral issue of displacing other life forms to preserve our own existence.
TIME IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT COMMODITY
We have a home right now called Earth, and time is ticking away.
EARTH DAY
There was a method to the madness of walking two llamas from Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood all the way to Century City. The entire endeavor was without any commercial interests. One day a year, we have a day that honors our great home, Mother Earth. One day a year, it is okay to be motivated not only by profit, but also by giving back. Our goal was to honor Earth Day—not just any Earth Day, but the fortieth anniversary of a day dedicated to being grateful for a place to be, our home. Three of us walked with the llamas. Traffic stopped to photograph us in Los Angeles with these majestic animals.
I got a telephone call from my son when he saw the picture on the AP wire. He was mocking me for walking with the llamas, calling me a "tree hugger." I asked him what he had against trees. The few words that silenced him were these: we wanted to send a message that people could walk more and drive less. It emits less exhaust, saves precious oil, costs less, takes traffic off the road and burns calories. I don't see anything here that you are against. I don't see anything here that anyone is against. Everybody I know, of all political persuasions, wants a clean environment. No one wants one industry to cause other industries to perish due to pollution. All of us want people to take responsibility for their own actions—good or bad.
An environmental disaster caused thousands of birds to perish. The oil spill widened, carried by winds and swells. Seals and dolphins were washing up on shore, dead from oil. Oil was clogging the blowholes of the dolphins, leading to a painful and horrific lung hemorrhaging. The BP spill, you ask? No, this was the Santa Barbara oil spill of February, 1969, which was the impetus behind the very first Earth Day. Said Fred L. Hartley, president of the Union Oil Company, "I don't like to call it a disaster, because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds."
Forty years later, coinciding with the celebration of Earth Day, another major environmental disaster threatens the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The oil will virtually kill the fishing industry in the area and the toll to avian wildlife will be catastrophic. There was loss of human life in this disaster, and Tony Hayward, chief executive of oil and energy company BP, said to the Guardian Newspaper, "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean: The volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." If we don't hold these polluters strictly accountable, they try to minimize the effect and skip responsibility.
Now is the time for all Americans to come together to prevent disasters of this magnitude. In Los Angeles, we have representatives from every country in the world. The most diverse population that has ever existed lives within our city limits. We have the ability to transform every Earth Day into an international event by having representatives from the four corners of the earth who reside in Los Angeles march from downtown Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier with llamas in tow. Picture an International Earth Day, where men and women from all cultures, political affiliations, religions, and walks of life celebrate our home on Earth without any commercialization of the event. After the successful march, we could have the participants reach back to their homelands to encourage participation from every recognized nation on the globe.
Senator Gaylord Nelson created the first Earth Day. We congratulate him on this accomplishment. We can make the day much more meaningful by following in his footsteps. We can use our own footsteps to honor the only home we have ever known, and the only home that we can see through our monster telescopes that can sustain life as we know it.
Thomas Storke spoke after the Santa Barbara Spill: "Never in my long lifetime have I ever seen such an aroused populace at the grassroots level. This oil pollution has done something I have never seen before in Santa Barbara—it has united citizens of all political persuasions in a truly nonpartisan cause."
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