Apollo 8, this is Houston. It’s a good picture of the horizon. We can’t see many terrain features as yet. Apollo 8, Houston. We’re beginning to pick up a few craters, very dimly.
The whole thing is pretty bright. I was immediately moved to tears. My daughter said to me, why are you crying? I said, I’m not crying. I’m just humbled.
It was very cool because it was really big and you could lie underneath it and have photos where you pulled it. You come off the busy street and everyone just stops and there’s like a sense of stillness as it’s spinning around really slowly. I just felt really like proud in a weird way as well. All of your senses are involved. It was amazing.
You know, you come from normal life and then you get this little glimpse of something behind the door and then you walk into this amazing dark room. My name is Luke Jerram and I’m the artist behind the Gaia Earth artwork. Humanity has been staring at the moon for two hundred thousand years. The moon has inspired so much music and mythology and literature and every culture right around the world. Whereas it’s only been fifty years that humanity’s been able to see our planet, planet Earth from space as a blue marble floating in the blackness of space.
I was so mesmerized by it. It’s quite awe inspiring, really. That mixture of fragility and strength that is there. We were thinking about how small we were. And it felt like I’m on the moon and I’m looking at the earth.
It makes us wonder perhaps what we’re doing to our world, what it’ll be like for our children’s children. It’s probably the first time that my son has seen the world in that sort of context. He doesn’t understand yet, but he will one day. It makes you feel very small. I think we need to save the world.
I’m hoping when people come and see this Earth artwork, they’ll realize the beauty and the fragility of our planet. And that actually it’s our only home and we really have to look after it. We don’t have time to sit on our hands as our planet burns. For young people, climate change is bigger than election or reelection. It’s life or death.
It will take radical action to save us. It will take radical action to save us. It will take radical action to save us. Nature is one of the most exciting, amazing, and incredible things in the whole world.