Episode 7: Pale Blue Dot
E7.1 Rio to Ruin
E7.2 Mr Vice President
E7.3 Captain Planet
On Valentine’s Day, 1990, we humans received a love letter from space. NASA’s Voyager 1 probe, from its position somewhere out past Neptune, turned around and took a picture of Earth, gifting us the iconic image that planetary scientist Carl Sagan would dub the ‘pale blue dot’. In this episode, Emma and Chloe ask why, when the decade opened with such promise for our little speck of dust in space, we didn’t see the progress the 1990s promised when it came to environmental protection. They discuss the failure of global negotiations, the role of Emma’s favourite almost-president and environmental activist Al Gore, and why all of us promising to be ‘Planeteers’ wasn’t ever going to be enough.
Links
Lauren Rickards and Mark Howden, “Climate adaptation is not a far-off idea – it's here and it affects us all,” Sydney Morning Herald, 11 January 2020,
Captain Planet Excerpt, Turner Program Services and DIC Enterprises, 1990 - 1992
Al Gore Kyoto Excerpt, CSPAN, 1992
John Howard Address Excerpt, AustralianPolitics.com, 1997
George HW Bush, Rio Earth Summit Excerpt, AP Archives, 1992