Halfway across the galaxy, hidden from us by the miles and the dust and the hundreds of millions of stars, is a small, rocky planet orbiting its sun much like we do our own. It has no name, at least to its outsiders. I call it Pilfer because I can, and because it has stolen my heart.
Eons ago, while it was in its infancy, it was struck countless times by stellar debris, leaving it with scars and craters, and with the atoms and molecules that began to transform it. Perhaps, though there is no way to establish it as fact, it might have been visited by those from other planets far from its home solar system. Indeed, who is to say whether those visitors might have even come from a distant galaxy by means that no one can possibly fathom.
Slowly, life on Pilfer sprouted in endless variety so much that it could not really be measured. Over the countless millennia species died and others were born, a progression that was neither good nor bad, but simply a matter of ever-present change.
As the years passed, Pilfer’s rotation gave it day and night and it circled the star that gave it the warmth it needed to sustain all of its inhabitants. At some point, although none can be sure quite when, some of its inhabitants looked out past the trees and forests and beyond the hills and saw that something existed beyond the places where they ate and slept and spent their lives.
They saw, though clearly from a different perspective, the same things we see when we stare at the night sky. What they at first thought were fixed points of light they came to realize were stars very much like the one that they welcomed with every new day. Then, by way of imaginative genius and scientific breakthroughs, Pilfer’s most advanced residents were able to peer far into the distance, capturing light that left its source at the beginning of all things.
More importantly, though, they were also able to detect a multitude of satellites—planets—gravitationally bound to the stars that they had already catalogued and researched and placed into categories based on size, age and absolute brightness.
That’s when they saw us, there on the edge of the Orion Arm, on a spur between two of the major branches of the Milky Way’s distinctive spiral. And, with their instruments, they began to measure the chemicals that permeated our atmosphere. They measured the amount of water and ice that covered so much of our planet. They were even able to measure the amount of artificial light that rose from the surface.
For thousands of years they watched. There were always some changes because change is the only constant everywhere in the universe. But, for the most part, the data was always pretty much the same. Until it wasn’t.
In their surprise, their first thoughts were to question whether they, too, were undergoing such a rapid spike in carbon dioxide and methane, gasses that sped up warming on land and sea. They wondered why places on Earth that had for thousands of years been covered by sheets of heat-repelling ice were suddenly revealing what had been hidden far below. All of it, they found, mirrored a rise in light, in what they knew must be evidence of a growing population with needs and desires far different than those of just a century earlier.
So, the inhabitants of Pilfer looked at us and looked at themselves and they realized choices had been made on Earth that they had avoided. They had faced similar issues, but had not let them take precedence over that which was most important, the health of their planet. They had actually figured out a way to do what was clearly necessary in spite of the challenges and the naysayers. In the end, it was the easiest thing to do.
With every bold headline describing another climate warning, I glance up in no particular direction and imagine living on Pilfer, on a planet where an old stargazer wouldn’t be accused of being a hopeless idealist. But, even more, I imagine how great it would be if Pilfer was here.
Harold Meckler can be contacted at glusk@proton.me