translucent blue of a cloudless sky; sunlight, so pure and clean, reflecting from the snowy peaks with an intensity that hurt the eyes.
For 80 million years the mountains had stood thus, aloof and daunting, indifferent to what went on around them. They didn’t seek to be admired. Their grandeur and awesome beauty were sufficient unto themselves. His eye beheld them and they didn’t give a damn whether he looked or not, but remained uncompromising, a savage act of nature arrested in time and space.
His first sight of the earth from the region of the moon had evoked the same response in him.
It had also changed his life.
Born in San Antonio, Texas, a graduate of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he had enlisted in the navy and continued his studies at MIT, emerging with a degree in aeronautics and astronautics. Then came four years with NASA during which he took part in three missions, the longest being an eighty-one-day stint in Skylab. It was to have a profound effect on his whole philosophy.
Up to that point, aged twenty-nine, he had thought no more or less about the environment and matters of ecology than it was fashionable to do. In fact he was rather weary of hearing people refer to the earth as “a spaceship with finite resources.” Like a danger signal too often repeated, it was dismissed as alarmist propaganda. Of course the planet had to be protected, its resources conserved. He understood that. But why keep harping on about it and rehashing the same old stale arguments? Anyway, you couldn’t walk more than a couple of yards without stumbling over a conservationist; there were ecology nuts everywhere. Surely the government was taking the necessary steps, acting on all this free advice.
Then he went into space. As he looked down upon the earth, he thought it was so damned beautiful. He’d been expecting that, of course, having seen with every other person living the color shots of the swirling blue-white planet set against the velvety blackness of space. Still, it was beautiful, no denying it—and vulnerable. That’s what threw him. This incredibly beautiful, peaceful-looking planet floating all alone in the infinite reaches of the cosmos. And although he’d always known this to be true intellectually, now he actually felt the truth of it. He remembered thinking, My God, this is it—and it’s all we’ve got!
In that moment, 130 miles in space, he ceased to be an American citizen and became a citizen of the planet. Every astronaut he knew felt the same. From out there it was all so painfully, horribly obvious that mankind, squabbling and falling out like a pack of ignorant loutish children, was in danger of fouling its own nest. They were mindlessly overpopulating the planet, squandering its resources, filling it with deadly pollution. And all the while demanding more, grabbing more, pushing one another out of the way in a stupid, selfish, greedy scramble.
That experience, that revelation, five years ago, still had the power to make him tremble. It had fueled his determination to do something about it. But what could he do? Wage a one-man crusade against the despoilment of the planet? That was naive and, worse, futile.
A solution of sorts presented itself when, on leaving NASA for the big cruel world outside, he’d been invited by an old friend and classmate from MIT, Bill Inchcape, to join him at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Bill said they needed somebody with his kind of experience to take charge of satellite photography and evaluation. So for the past three years Brad had been head of the department, working in collaboration with the center’s meterologists and atmospheric physicists, people with their heart in the right place, he felt. Yet still it wasn’t enough. In a way he couldn’t explain—even to Binch, who possessed far more technical knowledge and expertise than he did—Brad was gripped by a steadily mounting sense of panic. Time, he was convinced, was rapidly
For 80 million years the mountains had stood thus, aloof and daunting, indifferent to what went on around them. They didn’t seek to be admired. Their grandeur and awesome beauty were sufficient unto themselves. His eye beheld them and they didn’t give a damn whether he looked or not, but remained uncompromising, a savage act of nature arrested in time and space.
His first sight of the earth from the region of the moon had evoked the same response in him.
It had also changed his life.
Born in San Antonio, Texas, a graduate of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he had enlisted in the navy and continued his studies at MIT, emerging with a degree in aeronautics and astronautics. Then came four years with NASA during which he took part in three missions, the longest being an eighty-one-day stint in Skylab. It was to have a profound effect on his whole philosophy.
Up to that point, aged twenty-nine, he had thought no more or less about the environment and matters of ecology than it was fashionable to do. In fact he was rather weary of hearing people refer to the earth as “a spaceship with finite resources.” Like a danger signal too often repeated, it was dismissed as alarmist propaganda. Of course the planet had to be protected, its resources conserved. He understood that. But why keep harping on about it and rehashing the same old stale arguments? Anyway, you couldn’t walk more than a couple of yards without stumbling over a conservationist; there were ecology nuts everywhere. Surely the government was taking the necessary steps, acting on all this free advice.
Then he went into space. As he looked down upon the earth, he thought it was so damned beautiful. He’d been expecting that, of course, having seen with every other person living the color shots of the swirling blue-white planet set against the velvety blackness of space. Still, it was beautiful, no denying it—and vulnerable. That’s what threw him. This incredibly beautiful, peaceful-looking planet floating all alone in the infinite reaches of the cosmos. And although he’d always known this to be true intellectually, now he actually felt the truth of it. He remembered thinking, My God, this is it—and it’s all we’ve got!
In that moment, 130 miles in space, he ceased to be an American citizen and became a citizen of the planet. Every astronaut he knew felt the same. From out there it was all so painfully, horribly obvious that mankind, squabbling and falling out like a pack of ignorant loutish children, was in danger of fouling its own nest. They were mindlessly overpopulating the planet, squandering its resources, filling it with deadly pollution. And all the while demanding more, grabbing more, pushing one another out of the way in a stupid, selfish, greedy scramble.
That experience, that revelation, five years ago, still had the power to make him tremble. It had fueled his determination to do something about it. But what could he do? Wage a one-man crusade against the despoilment of the planet? That was naive and, worse, futile.
A solution of sorts presented itself when, on leaving NASA for the big cruel world outside, he’d been invited by an old friend and classmate from MIT, Bill Inchcape, to join him at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Bill said they needed somebody with his kind of experience to take charge of satellite photography and evaluation. So for the past three years Brad had been head of the department, working in collaboration with the center’s meterologists and atmospheric physicists, people with their heart in the right place, he felt. Yet still it wasn’t enough. In a way he couldn’t explain—even to Binch, who possessed far more technical knowledge and expertise than he did—Brad was gripped by a steadily mounting sense of panic. Time, he was convinced, was rapidly
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