And the “left” is just as ineffective here. Yesterday Juan Cole jumped on the Kepler-22b announcement and tried to ride it as a hobby horse. He laments the lack of progress in Durban and states that getting excited about other planets isn’t worth it because we aren’t doing such a good job here.

But he misses a very important, vital, insight - until humans look at their surroundings as a planet, as a single object rolling through space, instead of identifying their local piece of land as “theirs” in some eternally unique fashion - until then all we’ll get is an mine-vs-them battle.

Cole also misses several other connections (such as the importance of planetary science in the development of climatology).