The sending of vehicles and people into space from the 1960s onwards culminated in the eventual landing on the Moon's surface by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on board Apollo 11 in July 1969. This did much more than mark our break outside the Earth's atmosphere and signify our serious entry into space. We all shared in a profound alteration in our perceptions by looking back at planet Earth from space, seeing for the first time our Earth home from an objective distance. This new view of Earth has brought many important adjustments to our mind-set. We saw our Earth as a largely blue planet, unique in the solar system for its abundant water and marked excess of water coverage over bare land masses. It also stood out as a green planet, certainly unique in the solar system for its abundance of plant life, as well as possessing a hugely diverse community of animals that depended on these plants. To this day we remain uncertain whether any other object in space has evolved a living biodiversity. We may indeed be unique in the Universe.

The 1960s also hold for us all a striking coincidence, for in 1962 Rachel Carson published her dramatic and prophetic book Silent Spring, warning us of the possible catastrophic effects of the widespread contamination of our world ecosystems by human-engineered pollutants.