Happy Sagan Day!

Carl would have been 76 today. Light a rocket for the engaging and brilliant man who taught us we're all star stuff.

We humans have set foot on another world in a place called the Sea of Tranquility, an astonishing achievement for creatures such as we, whose earliest footsteps three and one-half million years old are preserved in the volcanic ash of east Africa. We have walked far. 

Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. We speak for earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring! Who Speaks for Earth

Carl spoke for Earth, and for the insight that beyond all our personal and cultural particularity we are still one species. He was a cosmopolitan.

We're at a crucial decision-point: will we choose the path of cooperation, mutuality, and hope? Or will we break the social contract, revert to a primitive and combative state of nature, and destroy ourselves over our selfish differences?

Carl hoped we'd lift the veil of destructive egoism and look to the future, to the stars, to our longest and deepest identity as children of light. We are billions, and we are one. Per aspera ad astra.