Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations allowed many people to breathe more easily as they no longer felt that their identity as Australians was built on the denial of the identity of the First Australians.
In the same way, it seems to me, our humanity, our “humankind-ness,” is diminished and abstracted by our destructive treatment of the natural world and the systems it supports. Climate change is the manifestation of this destruction, and is going to have a huge effect right here, in the south-west of Western Australia, which has been called a climate change ‘hotspot’. Scientists are predicting the demise of many species of plants and animals, as well as huge implications for farmers and food production.
At the same time, astro-kcosmologists search for planets which may be able to support life. They look for planets which circumnavigate a single sun, not a binary sun system, and which are in an area located at a distance ‘not too close, not too far away’ from their sun, an area they call the ‘Goldilocks Zone’. My work questions the logic of this search, and the false sense of optimism it creates.
