EARTH - BEAUTIFUL, BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE, UNIQUE, FASCINATING, IMPORTANT - VULNERABLE

EARTH - BEAUTIFUL, BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE, UNIQUE, FASCINATING, IMPORTANT - VULNERABLE.

Earth - measured against the vastness of just the Solar System, let alone the unimaginable hugeness of the Galaxy - is the tiniest of pin-head sized jewels. Yet it is the most beautiful and biologically active of heavenly bodies in our star system, probably the most unique and fascinating of heavenly bodies in our Galaxy, and from the perspective of our conscious thought, the most important body in the Universe.

It is also the most vulnerable. Four and a half billion years after its creation, we have been here for barely two million as 'humans', and in our current guise as Homo sapiens, just a couple of hundred thousand. Civilisation is a few thousand years old, and industrial and technological development, a mere few hundred. Our time on 

Earth has been a tiny, insignificant fraction of the planet's history, yet we are already destroying the life we share the planet with, and our ability to control this destruction is reducing year by year. We possess the potential to remove so much of this planet's beauty, it's biology, its unique fascination, and its importance in the blink of a cosmic eye. The one thing we should remove as a matter of some urgency, is its vulnerability.