Climate Crisis

The quick deflation and withering of your Earth Day balloon, Rai, made me think about the fact that the very same thing is happening to our planet Earth. It's easy to be environmentally conscious on Earth Day but, now that Earth Day has come and gone, the true test of one's eco-friendliness is in how they live their day to day life. Like many others, we have a deep and genuine concern for the natural world around us. However, also like many others, we continue to live in a way that does little to alleviate the environmental crisis.
The wanton destruction of planet Earth and its life-sustaining eco-systems used to stress me out. I spent hours, days, months contemplating the crisis, my role in it, and considering what could be done to slow, stop, or reverse the path to destruction that mankind is on.
Then, one day, while watching a short film at the planetarium at the new Academy of Sciences, I found that the perpetual state of environmental worry that I was living in was beginning to subside. In the film, we began on planet Earth, then above it. As we flew out into the galaxy Earth grew smaller, smaller, and smaller until it finally disappeared completely. Earth is just an inconsequential speck in the endlessness that is the universe. There are literally billions of other planets and an unfathomable amount of space between them.
All of a sudden, our quest to save the Earth seemed as ego-centric as the quest to destroy it. The belief that humanity is at the center of the universe seems to fuel both the desire to mutilate the Earth and the seemingly opposing desire to save the Earth.
I guess you could say that my perspective expanded greatly while watching that short film. I used to think that my hometown was the center of the world. Then, I traveled and found myself possessing a more holistic, world-view. Now, I'm more of a universalist. The universe will hardly notice if one of its billions of planets is lost. There are so many worlds out there and many of them may actually have life. Is this to say that I've turned hedonist, consumer, and anti-green? Not even close, but at least now I can sleep at night.