Our planet is an interaction of systems. Over geologic time many species have arisen and many species have passed into oblivion. Since, as far as we know, we are the first species that has the ability to dramatically effect the existence of every species that we have so far found in our exploration of the Earth's biosphere, the question of responsibility to maintain our own home, Terra, has arisen since we are capable of understanding that as a concept and taking steps that will directly impact the planets geosystem. But, before us, there were other natural disasters that have befallen the Earth.

And we are not the first species to dramatically shift the direction of the planet's biosphere. When bacteria arose, they dramatically changed the atmosphere of the planet, the chemical balance of the water and the air was changed...by life. When plants arose, when chlorophyll became an integral part of the biosphere, huge amounts of carbon were taken from the atmosphere and the waters and fixed in life processed organic molecules, deposited all over the planet. Then came invertebrates, breathing the oxygen created by the chlorophyll, and they began to evolve into larger and larger species, motile species that could swim great distances through the oceans and eat large amounts of the smaller life forms. Next, came the land plants and animals and the earth's surfaces were covered with life except in the very coldest places. The air became full of oxygen as plants in the seas and the oceans produced it in huge quantities and exhaled huge amounds of carbon dioxide for the plants to turn back into their own structures, building the forest and the swamps, the tundra, the grasslands, the bushes and the plants that can live off of only water out of the air. And the insects adapted and the cockroaches arose to chew on the woods, becoming termites. And they in turn changed the atmosphere of the planet, reintroducing methane into it where there had been none. And the land animals and plants thrived...except where an occassional meteor or comet might intersect Terra's path around Sol, the source of the energy that drove its fragile island of life in the great ocean of mostly empty space through which it revolved. And there were several cycles of stable enviroments that arose, eco-species complexes that thrived and dominated until some disaster befell them. Eventually, very recently in the history of our blue planet, a species arose that could direct these systems consciously, directly. And this was us...

And we, we gave voice to the beauty around us, to the complexity. We described it and dissected it and used it, unlike the life before, using a consciousness that we could find no equivalent to in the world we had awakened to. Our struggle to communicate with and exploit one another distracted us from that system, created over a billion years, us only paying attention when we needed to extract the millennia of millennia of millennia of knowledge and deposition of coal, the creation of oils and natural gasses that all the cycles of life had deposited before us for us to extract. And we extracted what we could from our own geosphere, learning what we could and ignoring what we did not understand...or could not exploit. But always seeking to find a sign from something else that we mattered, that we were important...

Maybe saving knowledge of our Earth is what we are here to do--to report on its condition and to shepherd it as best we can for as long as we can? Perhaps we are destined not to be on Terra all that long? But, whatever it is, it is an amazing thing to be riding the roller-coaster of the biocycle of Terra, all the Earth's species together, seemingly alone together in the immense universe that we now know is beyond our blue world.