Episode 7: Pale Blue Dot
E7.1 Rio to RuinE7.2 Mr Vice PresidentE7.3 Captain Planet
On Valentine’s Day, 1990, we humans received a love letter from space. NASA’s Voyager 1 probe, from its position somewhere out past Neptune, turned around and took a picture of Earth, gifting us the iconic image that planetary scientist Carl Sagan would dub the ‘pale blue dot’. In this episode, Emma and Chloe ask why, when the decade opened with such promise for our little speck of dust in space, we didn’t see the progress the 1990s promised when it came to environmental protection. They discuss the failure of global negotiations, the role of Emma’s favourite almost-president and environmental activist Al Gore, and why all of us promising to be ‘Planeteers’ wasn’t ever going to be enough.
LinksEllen Spears, Rethinking the American Environmental Movement post-1945 (especially Chapter 5, “Globalizing Environmentalism (1990-2000)”), Taylor and Francis, 2019, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203081693
“Voyager 1’s Pale Blue Dot,” NASA Solar System Exploration, https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-blue-dot/
Tom Griffiths, “The planet is alive: Radical histories for uncanny times,” Griffith Review 63, 2018, https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/planet-is-alive-radical-history/
Niels von Kohl (Producer), “The Earth Summit,” UNTV, 1992, https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/2078/2078993/
Clive Hamilton, “Australia hit its Kyoto target, but it was more a three-inch putt than a hole in one,” The Conversation, 16 July 2015, https://theconversation.com/australia-hit-its-kyoto-target-but-it-was-more-a-three-inch-putt-than-a-hole-in-one-44731
Marc Hudson, “A brief history of Al Gore’s climate missions to Australia,” The Conversation, 14 July 2017, https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-al-gores-climate-missions-to-australia-81023
Steven Bernstein, The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism, Columbia University Press, 2001, http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-compromise-of-liberal-environmentalism/9780231120364
Adam Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation, MacMillan, 2013, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865477742
Larissa Behrendt (Director), Maralinga Tjarutja, aired May 2020, https://iview.abc.net.au/show/maralinga-tjarutja
Tony Wright, Matthew Gledhill, Andrew McCathie and Andrew Byrne, “From the Archives 1995: World outrage as French prepare for bomb No 2,” The Herald, 6 September 1995, https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/from-the-archives-1995-world-outrage-as-french-prepare-for-bomb-no-2-20190830-p52mi9.html
Lauren Rickards and Mark Howden, “Climate adaptation is not a far-off idea – it's here and it affects us all,” Sydney Morning Herald, 11 January 2020, https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-adaptation-is-not-a-far-off-idea-it-s-here-and-it-affects-us-all-20200109-p53q7r.html
Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot, carlsagan.com, 1990Al Gore Kyoto Excerpt, CSPAN, 1992 John Howard Address Excerpt, AustralianPolitics.com, 1997George HW Bush, Rio Earth Summit Excerpt, AP Archives, 1992

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