Fiftieth World Earth Day: from Apollo 8 to Covid-19

A famous photo taken by Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve in 1968 made the fragility of our planet evident to everyone, underlining how the Earth was truly something special and unique in the solar system. Two years later in the United States, following the great uproar caused by an environmental disaster that occurred in California, Earth Day came to life which, in that first edition, mobilized 20 million American citizens. Fifty years later, the Covid-19 pandemic is performing a function similar to that of the 1968 photograph, making us discover, not only the fragility of the Earth, but above all that of its human crew. In fact, as postulated in Boulding's "Cowboy and spacecraft" theory, Humanity travels on the same spaceship, our Planet. We are all passengers, but also pilots: everyone can and must do something so that the spaceship does not enter a wrong course. Among the countless articles written on this day we have selected a few, which you can read in the press review. Enjoy the reading !

Data