Last night I was gazing at the bright sliver of tropic moon in the evening sky, reflecting on the fact that that moon, and somewhere on Earth a similar reflection of the sun upon it, have been in existence for nigh on three billion years, month in, month out. Our earliest ancestors witnessed the same new- ish moon and maybe wove religious mysteries around it.

And in only 250 years, give or take, we humans are managing to degrade and despoil this wonderful planet, pouring gunk (apologies for the sudden departure from more poetic language) into the atmosphere, heating the climate, melting the ice, and causing a mass extinction of scores of creatures, many of whom (like the fish in the sea) we depend upon, demolishing the huge tropical forests in favour of commercial crops, and destroying the fertility of the soil with long-term destructive fertilisers.

And to add insult to injury, we discover that a significant proportion of the population, in a massive exercise in lack of common sense and wishful thinking, think this is all “fake news”.

Maybe, if the $90 million demanded by Elon Musk for his proposed trip round the moon was instead the price of a bus fare, we could take the whole population of Earth on such a circular trip round the moon. In the loneliness and silence of the universe they might understand how small and how infinitely precious our planet is, and understand that to take such stupid short-term risks with it as we are doing threatens the lives and well-being of our grandchildren.