Earth


Earth as viewed from Outer Space

Earth is a relatively small rocky planet orbiting a G-type main sequence star in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Everyone you have ever known and loved, everyone you have ever learned about, every animal and plant and waterfall and city known to exist is somewhere on Earth. Every book you've ever read, every movie and TV show you've ever watched, every song you've ever listened to, every dream you've ever had, all these things came from Earth. We beamed them all into space, if anyone is interested. So far, no takers.

There's usually a few people who aren't on Earth, but they're in a little pile of tubes zipping around Earth so close that it hardly matters. There's also a few robots that aren't on Earth. They're cool and all, but beyond the scope of this topic.

Once a year, we have a day to remember the place where we put all our stuff. That day is called Earth Day and most of the time folks plant a tree, or pick up some stuff that somebody else left in a place on Earth where stuff doesn't belong. This has no meaningful impact on Earth but it seems to make some people happy.

Every other day is spent with humanity grubbing for resources and generally making Earth a worse place to be. Honestly, this doesn't really let up on Earth Day either, and folks plant plenty of trees and pick up plenty of stuff on other days as well. So what, actually, is the point? And why would anyone expect to find it on The Encyclopedia of Pointless?

Actually it's pretty simple. Earth is all we've got. People with more money than sense love to talk about establishing colonies on Mars but they know, deep down, this is it. Everything we will ever have is already here. This is not a pleasant thought for broken people who experience a constant grinding need to have as much as possible. It makes people do monstrously stupid things, like throw their cigarette butt out the window while they drive or build an oil pipeline across indigenous land even though everyone knows it's going to leak oil into their one and only source of clean water.

You might think they don't care that this is the one and only Earth any of us will ever have, but they care a whole lot. They care more than the people planting the trees, they care more than the people picking up the stuff. They care so much that they're willing to destroy half of it just so they can claim a bigger piece of the other half.

Personally, I don't think they should be allowed to destroy the Earth. I like it here, and everyone else should get to like it here too.