[...] For more than forty years, the view of the Earth from space has been the unofficial logo of the enviromental movement – featured on countless T-shirts, pins, and bumper stickers. It is the thing that we are supposed to protect at U.N. Climate conferences, and that we are called upon to «save» every Earth Day, as if it were and endangered species, or a starving child far away, or a pet in need of our ministrations. And that idea may be just as dangerous as the Baconian fantasy of the earth as a machine for us to master, since it still leaves us (literally) on top.

   When we marvel at that blue marble in all its delicacy and frailty, and resolve to save the planet, we cast ourselves in a very spesific role. That role is of a parent, the parent of the earth. But the opposite is the case. It is we humans who are fragile and vulnerable and the earth that is hearty and powerful, and holds us in its hands. In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely. That knowledge should inform all we do [...]

- Naomi Klein