Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
when I was outside on uh my first
spacewalk I was on the dark side of the
world over the Indian Ocean and I shut
off all the lights in my suit to let my
eyes adjust and as I came south of
Australia in the darkness we drove
through the Southern Lights and and they
were like pouring underneath my feet and
you could see all the colors of it and I
mean I'd seen Aurora from on the surface
of the Earth but to be amongst them to
actually directly be part of that
interaction between the Sun and the
atmosphere and the magnetic field all
right there visually like like a prism
or a rainbow or something that was a
real reality check of How It's all
related and how the energy of the sun
and the protection of the atmosphere and
the focus of the magnetic field all work
together it really showed me that this
is a system this is a planetary system
this goes on all the time most of the
time though we just don't see it but
this is going on constantly all the time
how all those things work together from
orbit you get that type of perspective
you see the fact that this is a
complicated system that is subject to a
lot of influences that is going on all
the
time one of the influences that is
affecting Earth itself of course is uh
the beings that are living on it
volcanoes erupting but also the the
plant life and the animal life and over
the last 100 years I mean gosh our
numbers have have have rocketed until 7
billion of us are all simultaneously
exhaling and eating and turning on our
lights in our house and starting up the
engines in our cars obviously that has
an effect on the planet in amongst all
those other things happening you can see
some of those effects from space you can
see with your naked eye if you come
across Mexico City or Beijing the
pollution is visible from space it's
like a gray ugly smear on on the surface
of the world that is man-made local
climate change if you come across uh
Asia on my very first flight there was a
big Inland Sea the RLC um still a
relatively healthy body of water back in
the early 90s but over the last 20 years
because of agricultural policies and and
irrigation policies the AAL sea has gone
from being the fourth biggest sea on
Earth to being virtually non-existent
it's dried up and we did it on purpose
as a species we made a conscious
decision to allow the fourth biggest sea
in the world to turn into a little uh
stinking puddle what used to be a
shoreline is now empty sand and the
remains of the fertilizer that were that
were drained into that that sea for
decades we obviously changing the
climate at a global level the key is who
is going to be the person that's going
to decide to change something we can't
wait for some other person to change it
they don't have the imperative to do it
especially if there're someone that we
elected if we elected they're just our
representative and the real motivation
comes to each of us individually that's
who has to make the change you can't say
they or him or her or it it's us or me
or I that has to make the change and
it's it's not going to be perfect and
it's going to have to get a little bit
critical before people are truly going
to feel enough pain or enough
compunction to actually change what
they're doing and things are going to
get worse before they get better but uh
I'm confident this isn't the end of the
world this is just a problem that we're
facing that is going to change things uh
but we're going to have to figure out a
way to deal with
it I'm just uh got enough light yeah I'm
wondering if the Sun is setting on us
there we
can the sun is not only setting on
us