Fifty eight years ago, on this day, March 8th, 1966, American thinker Kenneth Boulding was talking about the importance of how we think about our position in the universe. Hint – we are on a fragile spaceship.
March 8 1966 Boulding Coming Spaceship Earth –
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that we just put people in space, everyone was thinking about space and spaceships and astronauts and spacewalks. And that sense of fragility was growing.
What I think we can learn from this is that Kenneth Boulding was a smart guy. So did other smart people, Bucky Fuller, Lewis Mumford. Barbara Ward, you name it. But our smarts didn’t save us (and our luck always runs out).
What happened next: Three years later, everyone’s got EarthRise posters. Everyone’s talking about her fragile planet. All of that kind of went away in 1972-73, at least publicly. Presumably, there’s a whole lot of people who still believe that but feel powerless and isolated to do anything meaningful about it (that Spiral of Silence). Fortunately, we learned our lessons and from 1989 We’ve been busy saving the world ever since [sarcasm].
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
March 8 – International Women’s Day – what is feminist archival practice?