Today, 15 November 2022, the global population has officially reached 8 billion, according to the United Nations (UN). Also from that same source, it took 12 years for the global population to go from 7 billion to 8 billion. (The numbers are projected to reach 9 billion in 15 years, and that is with the prediction that the current rapid grow will slow down in the next decade). In the past several years, I remember often using the reference of “7 billion” and later “7+ billion” in terms of the global population – and now it hit a whole 8 billion! The great news on that is that in general, babies survive their infancies, childhood, and live to be adults, and adults tend to die at a much older age, and that many past diseases either have remedies or can be entirely avoided (often with vaccines). In other words, globally, we now live longer than ever – and that’s a great thing! The somber news is that the increase in global population is affecting the Earth (and us in it) in terms of the scarcity or overstretching of some of our natural resources. The other major consequence of the combined over-population and the scarcity of resources is how it impacts global warming and continues to put pressure on the “climate crisis”. Over-population is a global challenge that presses on many systems from the economy, to housing, to the health system, even social issues …, Not to mention, how this scarcity is affecting mostly developing countries already struggling. And there is another important element to all this: and that is pollution – air, water, and land pollution, are mostly caused by humans, and the more people there are, the more pollution we cause. Pollution can directly affect our quality of life and that of many of Earth’s species. And if there is anything harmful enough (in the air, water, or land) it can bring on more diseases, affect those with weaker systems or with health conditions, and even cause death. The terms “climate change” or “global warming” are issues we hear about daily, but when I was young in school the main term was “pollution”, and we learned about the “Three Rs”: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – that speaks mainly to water and land pollution, and especially to the situation in landfills and of garbage dumped in oceans. But just recently I read about a new three “Rs”, and they are the: “solutions that aim not only to ‘Reduce’, but also to ‘Repair’ and ‘Restore’ a sense of balance in the Earths’ natural environment”, and that call to action was written by Richard Garriott in the Summer 2022 edition of the Explorers Journal (the official quarterly of the Explorers Club). What a wonderful and important message that is and by the influential members of the Explorers Club, and although a sentiment many governments agree on world-wide, we need to put these three Rs into action and work very hard at them – now! We can say that solving the now 8-billion-over-population global issue is to have less babies, but the truth of the matter is that it’s an environmental issue and that is one that needs to be dealt with right now. Indirectly, there are many industries that are working on the issue: from within the food industry, such as Solar Foods, a biotechnology in Finland that are “Creating the future of sustainable food with an unlimited diversity of proteins”, to the global boom in the New Space sector, with countless start-ups researching and innovating on long-term crewed spaceflights and the human expansion in the solar system, and for us to be a “multiplanetary species”, a term mostly coined with Elon Musk. In the history of our existence, and only just relatively recently, we, humans, began journeying outside of Earth, and even that, not all that far, and not all that many (approximately 600 people went to space) – this, in contrast to the eight billion currently with their feet on the Earth. A lot of those who did experience spaceflight also experienced a cognitive shift of sort, the Overview Effect, and that is of seeing the Earth from a different perspective, from above, and realizing the preciousness of our planet. They learned a great lesson with their spaceflight, but we don’t all get to go to space. We are still very much Earthlings, and whether we get to venture outside of our nurturing planet in the future is just that, the future. For now, Earth is our home, and all its various ecosystems need to be protected and sustained for how nature intended it to be, so we can keep up and even thrive with a global population of eight-billion-and-counting. It can (and must) be done! “Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

Today, November 9, would have been Carl Sagan’s birthday. Sagan inspired so many of us, and although he sadly died in 1996 (he would have been 88 today), he continues to inspire a young generation of scientists and readers of all kinds with his popular science book – one of the most popular science books ever! – entitled: “Cosmos”, and many other books he's written. This is my copy of the book of Cosmos; I could have practically placed a sticky bookmark on every page! Sagan had a way of educating about the universe in a such an inspiring yet poetic way; there hasn’t really been any science communicator since able to teach with his voice and style of writing. Sagan has done so much in his career, and so much has been written about him that I will simply share the first paragraph from his Wiki page to introduce him: “[Carl Sagan was] an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect." Apart from highly recommending reading his books, I can only really share a few of his own quotes. There are so many to choose from and so many tug at the heart (how did he do that by merely speaking about science!), but these here are the three I will share, for the importance of their message and how powerful they are - today more than ever. “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." And the last one is a lot more than a quote, but one of his most shared pieces of writing, and one that goes with the photo here below, about the “Pale Blue Dot”: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, Apart from hd to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” A happy birthday to this wonderful human who keeps inspiring us, Carl Sagan.

At 90 years (and 205 days old, to be exact), William Shatner went to space and became the oldest person (male) in space. His experience left him, well, let's just say the opposite of speechless; upon landing from his suborbital flight with Blue Origin, he could not stop gushing about his experience up in space (to the Karman Line) to Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin. Shatner's words were heartfelt, passionate and emotional, including: "I hope I never recover, that I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it ... I am overwhelmed. I had no idea." "I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary, extraordinary." The full video here below. But just recently, with a new biography out by the Canadian actor, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, excerpts from his book became headlines and almost statements of contradictions to what he expressed just a year ago following his Blue Origin flight, with almost negative-sounding recollections of his experience in space, including: “It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.” “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.” What happened in that year on Earth since William Shatner experienced his flight to Space? Photo to the left: Earthrise (1968). Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders recalled, "When I looked up and saw the Earth coming up on this very stark, beat-up Moon horizon, I was immediately almost overcome with the thought, 'Here we came all this way to the Moon, and yet the most significant thing we’re seeing is our own home planet, the Earth.'" Men and women who go to space often experience the Overview Effect which is explained as: "The overwhelmingly beautiful sight of our Earth triggers a profound emotional response in most astronauts, leading to a cognitive shift, making them realize the global interconnectedness of all life and feel responsibility for the future of our planet... This experience has the attributes of self-transcendence and awe and is a remarkable example of a transformative experience." That's what William Shatner seemed to have experienced initially upon landing back on Earth, but why does he speak of "sadness" and "funeral" now a year later? Shatner includes these words in his biography: “I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.” And so, I believe that that is exactly what Shatner continues to speak of: the Overview Effect! Yes, Space is vicious, empty and cold, but also, yes, out tiny planet is very, very special, and the only home we've got! Shatner himself adds that [the space trip]: "...reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart." I have not read Shatner's book, and I have not been to space myself, so I can't speak for him, but I do sense his profound and powerful message, and ultimately, no matter how he saw Space (we would probably all see it differently), he did see Earth as a marvelously, beautiful, lively, nurturing planet - and that's the whole point: The Overview Effect. Maybe if more of us experienced such an overwhelming sense of being surrounded by the darkness and emptiness of Space, maybe we would all care and do more for each other, and our home: the Earth.