Where will we be when the sun goes out?
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Posted on September 17, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized, Deep ecology, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
I rather liked this — the New York Times editorializing about the time some billions of years from now when the sun expands to a red giant as its energy begins to run out, swallowing up Mercury and Venus. Recent discoveries of another solar system where a planet seems to have survived such an event has spurred hope that the Earth might also survive, if things go just right.
The Times editors note that we tend to talk about this as if there will be humans there to witness the event, holding their breaths to see whether or not the planet survives, standing perhaps on the roofs of our skyscrapers and homes watching the celestial drama unfold.
We have a hard time internalizing our disappearance from the cosmos, something that will have occurred long before the sun’s last gasp.
And this isn’t even the worst of it. Following this flaring out, the sun will ultimately collapse into a white dwarf, and our solar system will grow cold — forever.
So I appreciate what the editors are trying to tell us here — that we seem bent on accelerating our demise, ending the human story long before necessary, rather than fully appreciating how wondrous and unique our very evolution-into-being is in the context of the universe — or at least what we know of the universe — and how a healthy species might think it important to preserve as long as possible the conditions that made us possible, rather than rapidly destroy them.
My other thought is this: we don’t know the real significance of our appearance and of the evolution of conscious awareness within this whole story (unless perhaps you believe that it is for the salvation of an individual soul that will be taken into heaven outside the universe somewhere, providing we live a righteous life). Since we don’t know, and since the chances of this happening are so small within the vastness of the cosmos, it is all the more confounding that we would treat our evolutionary history and the biosphere that made us possible with such disrespect, such a cavalier attitude.
I don’t know what can get us to change this attitude. Our ecological stresses are only going to get worse and the question is whether too much damage will be done by the time we realize what we have done.
So, before the sun ‘goes,’ we might want to think about what it’s warmth and our right distance from it, and whatever it was that kicked off the journey of life billions of years ago, gave to us, made possible for us. How sad that it produced a species that could wipe out those precious gifts so ‘prematurely,’ as the Times writes.
On the other hand, how glorious that it has also produced within that species the ability to know this is happening and, with that, the ability to change course — if we want to.
For a bit more reflection today, check this out: The Promise of More, by John Surette, SJ, of SpiritEarth. On the home page, click on ‘current article’ in the Reflection box.
Technorati Tags: red giant, end of the sun, evolution of consciousness, earth history, SpiritEarth, John Surette
Photo credit:
Image by Mark Garlick © HELAS: National Geographic News
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