On this day 9 July 1965, two time Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson gave what was to be the last speech of his life, to UNESCO. In it he used the imagery of “Spaceship Earth”, which he had cadged from Barabara Ward.
“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”
https://www.bartleby.com/73/477.html
Why this matters.
The language of fragility, of danger? Yeah, we have been saying and hearing that for a long time. And for a lot of that time it has been about the comfort and convenience of a sliver of the population, amid worries that those on the pointy end of “development” might somehow rise up…
What happened next?
The economist Kenneth Boulding popularised the phrase “Spaceship Earth”. It became popular. The Earthrise photo happened.
Then Earth Day. And the world? It was not saved, as per Jeremiah 8:20.