Environmental damage on Earth seen from shuttle!

Sadly most people will not read this story and many who do will not care. Those of us who do care about the environment are labeled "tree-huggers". And cultural beliefs like those of the Native Americans that espouse living in harmony with nature are considered primitive. Hmmmm!


Environmental damage on Earth seen from shuttle on Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050804/ts_nm/space_shuttle_dc

Summary:

Commander Eileen Collins said astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread environmental destruction on Earth and warned on Thursday that greater care was needed to protect natural resources.

Her comments came as NASA pondered whether to send astronauts out on an extra spacewalk to repair additional heat-protection damage on the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation.

It's very widespread in some parts of the world," Collins said in a conversation from space with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used," said Collins, who was standing with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag and holding a colorful fan.

Collins, flying her fourth shuttle mission, said the view from space made clear that Earth's atmosphere must be protected, too.

"The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin," she said.

"We know that we don't have much air, we need to protect what we have."

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Summarized by Copernic Summarizer