David Peat

Re-envisioning the Planet 155cern aspects of our daily living that our grandparents’ generation tookfor granted but which we have now come to question.The nineteenth century had been a time of vast horizons andempty spaces. Question marks could still be found on maps, and newlands were being opened to explorers and settlers. Over a century agopeople believed that the earth and its resources were unlimited. Therewere always new materials to be developed and new energy resourcesto be exploited. There would always be something for everyone. Untilthe Industrial Revolution when machines acted to amplify human actions,a lifetime of human labor and effort had only a small impact onthe earth. It was natural to believe that the human race would persistforever. Thinkers like Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw even believed thathumanity was climbing onward and upward toward the age of the Superman.All this changed during the twentieth century. The human raceexperienced the hubris of its earlier pride and arrogance. This changeis symbolized by two remarkable images that have etched themselvesdeeply into our collective unconscious: a mushroom cloud and a blueball in space. Both were the result of advances in science and technology.Both subverted our boast that humanity was capable of unlimitedadvance and progress.The first, the mushroom cloud, stands for the atomic bomb andthe generations of nuclear weapons that followed. For over half a centurythe world lived under the shadow of this cloud. During that periodthe Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set its symbolic nuclear clock onits masthead with the hands pointing at five minutes to midnight, indicatingthat the human race stood on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.Although a generation of American children was taught thenuclear drill of “duck and cover,” scientists were soon pointing out thefutility of the various emergency measures that had been set in place.The immediate effect of explosions and radiation was bad enough, butwhat came afterward would be far worse. As Soviet premier NikitaKhrushchev put it, after a nuclear war the living will envy the dead.Nuclear explosions would create vast dust clouds in the upper atmosphereso thick they would block out the sun’s light and heat for yearsto come. A nuclear winter, a period of cold so profound and unremit-