Mercury is the first planet from the sun. A little too warm for most people - average temperatures are around 330 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s like an oven. You could bake a cake in there.
Earth is the third rock from the sun, so to say, having a solid core like the other inner planets. It’s comfortable, so comfortable that life was established here billions of years ago and continues to proliferate.
This is Mars, fourth planet from the sun and freezing cold. There may be life there but hiding underground with the water. If there is water. Doesn’t look like a thriving planet.
We could go on visiting all the planets in our solar system: Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus. There’s no sign of life on any of them. It’s just here on planet Earth. We haven’t yet found any planets outside our solar system that have life either. There may be. They’re just too far away to see.
On planet Earth there are approximately 100 million species and Lord knows how many independent life forms (even Google couldn’t answer that question). Our planet is covered with life from earthworms to elephants and including of course the tiny ones that you can’t see - the microbes. They live and die and procreate with their own DNA and their own agenda.
What is a microbe’s agenda, one might ask? I don’t exactly know but there must be one otherwise why is it even alive? What caused it to rise up from the grit and slime of primordial matter? There must be some reason, some principle at work.
Anyways, planet Earth is full of life. We take it for granted though, don’t really appreciate what’s been given to us. Take another look at Mercury.
That planet has geology but it doesn’t have biology. We have geology: continents, oceans, mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes and we have biology. Geology and biology combined is called a biosphere. We have a biosphere.
Here’s in praise of our biosphere. It’s fantastic! Let’s not wreck it folks. We’ve been leaning on it pretty heavily for the last 200 years. Right now species are going extinct at 1,000 times the normal rate that they would if humans weren’t around wrecking everything.
We live in the biosphere. It’s like a protected zone against all the odds, the solar radiation, the cosmic rays and the cold, airless void of space. But we’re vulnerable. We’re on top of the food chain and if anything breaks we’re liable. What if we crash the system? What are we going to do, make food in a factory? From what? Water and air and soil? That’s what the biosphere does already. It makes food for everybody. For free.
There’s time to change our wasteful ways, but we better hurry. Nothing is guaranteed, not even the survival of the human race. We’re on top of the food chain, alrighty, and that’s great but we would be sure to fall if it breaks.
Thank you to All India Radio from Melbourne for this amazing song. I have admired it for a long time. It features the gorgeous voice of Leona Gray.
fall