FOR MEMBERS


JOINRENEWJOIN

Give a Gift Membership
  

This Month in The Planetary Report

Get access to this issue and back issues of the Planetary Report and participate in online discussions with other members. Join today!

Special information about membership login.

Members Please Log In

User Name

Password


Not a Member?

Join   Renew

The cover of Volume Volume XXVIII, Number Number 4
From The Editor

We've all done it at some time, just for fun—written our address to include our name, street, city, state, and country, then extended it to planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe. You might think such a perspective is the result of the Space Age and the realization that we could walk on other worlds, with our planet just one stopping place on the journey. The impulse goes back, however, at least to a famous 19th-century naturalist who inscribed his address in a journal as "John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe."

As Muir discovered, people can be mindless about how they use Earth and its resources, not thinking or understanding that a single species, such as Homo sapiens, can be powerful enough to alter a world. From the new perspective of space, we now watch the polar caps retreat, see spring arrive earlier each year, and record a steady warming of Earth's climate.

In this special issue, we address directly how humanity is changing this planet -- and how we must monitor these changes. Ironically, just as scientists reach a long-sought consensus on climate change, some governments have scaled back their plans to observe Earth from space. This is now an issue for The Planetary Society, with our unique way of seeing Earth as one planet among many.

In The Planetary Society, we identify with the impulse to see ourselves as inhabitants of a planet, not just of a building on a street. The protection of our home planet is the responsibility of all those who live here, and we must take the utmost care of our home world.

—Charlene M. Anderson

Planet Earth Special Issue
with Guest Editor Charles F. Kennel

Features

Earth Is, After All, a Planet
by Charles F. Kennel and Louis D. Friedman

The Earth's Changing Environment as Seen From Space
by Michael D. King

Connecting Policy and Science: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
by Richard C. J. Somerville

As Riders on the Earth Together: Monitoring Our Changing Planet
by Berrien Moore III


This special issue of The Planetary Report was sponsored in part by Northrop Grumman Corporation.

Thank you, Northrop Grumman!