At the end of every week, we’ll be posting words of wisdom from the climate-security field. Today, we have an old gem from Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.), Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command:

One of the things that struck me on my first day in space is that there is no blue sky. It’s something that every human lives with on Earth, but when you’re in space, you don’t see it. It looks like there’s nothing between you and the surface of the earth. And out beyond that, it looks like midnight, with only deep black and stars.

But when you look at the earth’s horizon, you see an incredibly beautiful, but very, very thin line. You can see a tiny rainbow of color. That thin line is our atmosphere. And the real fragility of our atmosphere is that there’s so little of it.

Quote found in: CNA, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. (2007).