There is a wager that we must all make; for the small stake of some rewarding mental training, we can attain lasting contentment and contribute to a positive outcome for our planet.
Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them.
I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.
Recent results from astronomers who study the occasional gravitational lensing of unknown worlds by intervening stars suggest that orphan planets could be at least as numerous as the stars. In other words, there could be hundreds of billions of orpha...
In days gone by, scientists would speak solemnly about our solar system's 'habitable zone' - a theoretical region extending from Venus to Mars, but perhaps not encompassing either, where a planet would be the right temperature to have liquid water on...
Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and marvellous and mysterious is turning out to be our own planet earth. There is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway.
Describing current human mindsets reflecting our ignorance and cowardice and non action-oriented mentality: "I'm going to do nothing but escapist drugs and hop from one party or festival to another. I will dance my way out of the harsh realities of P...
Look too on this poor planet of ours, Torn by the storms of mysterious powers, Evil contending with good from its birth, Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,— Ah! what infinities circle us here, Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sph...
If you represent the Earth's lifetime by a single year, say from January when it was made to December, the 21st-century would be a quarter of a second in June - a tiny fraction of the year. But even in this concertinaed cosmic perspective, our centur...
There's almost no food that isn't genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution. Things change because our planet is subjected to a lot of radiation, which causes DNA damage, which gets repaired, but results in mutations, w...
Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. ...
Just as our solar system has a certain idiosyncratic assortment of planets and moons, different from any neighboring system yet categorically equivalent, so each distinct period of human history might have special qualities and individuals, character...
Life is fragile: it thrives only in a narrow range of temperatures between freezing and boiling. How lucky that our planet is just the right distance from the sun: a little farther, and the death of the perpetual Antarctic winter - or worse - would p...
Like many other scientists who hold the Catholic faith, I see the Creator's plan and purpose fulfilled in our universe. I see a planet bursting with evolutionary possibilities, a continuing creation in which the Divine providence is manifest in every...
There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent, if we do not accept that in the end we are people, all alike, sharing the Earth among ourselves and also with other sentient...
Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we hav...
Energy is one topic on which different countries can work together collaboratively. If we can all produce energy from an element that's available in abundance on our planet, that would be a good thing, but we have to learn how to produce energy in la...
I think the future of this planet depends on humans, not technology, and we already have the knowledge - we're kind of at the endgame with knowledge. But we're nowhere near the endgame when it comes to our perception. We still have one foot in the da...
The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space...
Is it in our national interest to overheat the planet? That's the question Obama faces in deciding whether to approve Keystone XL, a 2,000-mile-long pipeline that will bring 500,000 barrels of tar-sand oil from Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf of...
If you look at the ecological circuitry of this planet, the ways in which materials like carbon or sulfur or phosphorous or nitrogen get cycled in ways that makes them available for our biology, the organisms that do the heavy lifting are bacteria.
