Beautiful essay about our Earth and its future

Thanks to my dear Sis/friend Ellen who sent this to me:

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2012/09/abusing_earth_threatens_mankin.html

From the Syracuse Post-Standard:

To the Editor:

Several years ago, this simple country man received a personal letter from a Cornell University superstar: the famous astronomer/philosopher Carl Sagan.

I reread his letter earlier this month as the world celebrated the 35th anniversary of the launching of the Voyager I spacecraft in a thunderous roar into the blue Florida sky.

Both Voyager I (and its insurance policy cousin, Voyager II) are about to break through the Milky Way galaxy's heliospheric bubble into the interstellar universe beyond.

The estimated universe numbers are mind-boggling. Astronomers estimate there may be 100 billion galaxies in addition to our own.

Sometime around 2025, radio transmissions from the Voyagers will end. From then on, they will silently explore forever the truly great universe (unless, of course, an interstellar alien space ship attacks and is able to play their gold-plated copper disk. This 12-inch ''Golden Record'' contains fascinating information - and sounds - about the people and distant civilization that sent these spaceships exploring the universe).

The Voyagers' amazing odyssey and discoveries have been truly astronomical. As one astronomer observed: ''Voyager is an incredible discovery machine discovering things we hadn't even know we didn't know.''

Voyager I is at least 11 billion miles from Earth. If one could somehow look back toward Earth, our sun is just a bright star. Earth is invisible in its glare.

Among its greatest accomplishments was that for the very first time, we were able to see ''our world'' as it truly and objectively is; a tiny, insignificant fleeting: a solitary speck of blue light suspended in an endless sea of cosmic darkness.

On Valentine's Day 1990, Sagan, a powerful and influential champion and popularizer of America's space program, persuaded NASA to program Voyager I to take 640,000 digitally-transmitted images of all the sun's planets.

Voyager I was then ''only'' 3.7 billion miles from Earth. Having traveled more than 40,000 mph since leaving Earth in 1977, it was still in our galaxy's neighborhood. Even at that distance, our sun, as stars go, is medium-sized - an unremarkable pinpoint of light among billions in the cosmic arena.

And Earth? Out of 640,000 images, Earth - our only home - appears on only one of them. We are Carl Sagan's famous pale blue dot: ''There are no nations, no continents, no oceans, no people - nothing but a dot.''

Sagan mused, ''Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.''

If we continue man's ignorant self-centeredness, if we abuse this planet - destroying our ozone layer, the oxygen-making forests, the life-sustaining oceans - we have no other place to go. No help will come here from the universe to save us from ourselves. Our one and only hope is here - and it is us!

As this simple country man looks into the vast night sky, he wonders if mankind's Earthly presence will eventually disappear and never be heard from again. Will there only be a lifeless Earth? Will our only legacy be two spaceships, wandering forever through a lifeless universe?

I humbly stand and wonder about these questions. But tonight I am awed by the stillness and the loneliness of the magical night sky. I feel peaceful and happy. I am enjoying this marvelous spectacle with profound thankfulness that I am here now. And yet a sadness gnaws deep inside me about Earth - and mankind's - future.