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Full Description
This book shows how our new-found ability to observe the Earth from "the necessary distance" has wide and profound cultural and ethical implications. First of all, it is the outcome of speculations and investigations of human beings in relation to their home planet carried out over millennia. In particular, it reveals a split between the ancient idea of the Earth as nurturing mother and the more recent conception of the Earth as a neutral resource able to be infinitely exploited by humankind. The 1968 Earthrise photograph, showing the beauty and fragility of the Earth, helped spark a worldwide environmental movement; now the comprehensive coverage of global change provided by satellites has the potential to convince us beyond reasonable doubt of the huge alterations being wrought upon the Earth and its climate system as a result of human actions, and of the need to act more responsibly.
Contents
Introduction.- Cosmology and astronomy from pre-history to the Roman Empire.- Aquinas to Newton.- The Enlightenment, the Romantic Rebellion, the Industrial Age, the nature conservation movement and total war.- The post-war period and the rise of ecological consciousness.- Non-western cultures' attitudes to environment.- The ethical dimension: the slow evolution of environmental ethics.- A short history of earth observation.- The resistances.- The aesthetic dimension.- Earth observation for whom? Towards an environmental democracy.- Conclusion.- Epilogue.
