Blue and Green Pearl

John Shuttleworth from a 1975 interview in Mother Earth News(interesting read)

But once you take a giant step back, shake off all your cultural myths, and look at the earth wholistically from the vantage point of space My God! You can see all kinds of trends washing over the face of the planet for all sorts of reasons.

Look at it! It's beautiful! And it has a life of its own. With or without man, the earth is born it lives and it dies. Once it cools as it spins there in space and once the spark of life flickers into being on its surface, hundreds of thousands of species rise and fall on its face. Continents appear and disappear. Volcanoes erupt. Forests creep across the land. The sun pours energy on this lovely blue and green pearl floating in the incredible black void of nothing. Cool rains sweep over its oceans and islands. The earth is gently wrapped with a constantly renewed cloak of plants and animals and its fragile beauty is showcased by an ever changing, swirling veil of opaque, transparent, and translucent atmosphere. Could any planet be more delightful?.

And now, amidst the incredibly complex but self regulating operation of this perfect gem, we see man arising. Alone of all the plants and all the animals on the earth's surface, he can collectively look at himself. And he does and in that first instant of self examination, his brain of which he is so proud deceives him.

"I am something special," man tells himself. "I will prove it by conquering nature." But as one of his number is later to observe, "Nature is always passive. It, therefore, can never be defeated. It can only be destroyed."

And as the destruction goes on, man's brain deceives him again and again. With imaginary lines that divide the planet's lands and waters into territories, nations, and states. With concepts of "right", "wrong", "wealth", "yours", "mine", "money". Always, above all else, "money".