Recently I spent a few evenings watching a retrospective about the Apollo 11 mission. Seeing the events unfold, with the benefit of the backstory and a great deal of editorial embellishment, I was quite surprised to revisit something I had personally experienced through the lens of time and I found that it was quite different from my recollection. I don’t mean the event itself—the commitment and years of effort on a prodigious scale to send three men to the moon’s surface. Rather, iI was made newly aware that my countrymen and I were not the only ones cheering and hoping for the success of the mission. For one moment, possibly one of very few in the history of our planet, everyone, regardless of nationality, race, religion or political persuasion had focused their thoughts and indeed prayers, on this singular human achievement.

Although it was an American mission, people all over the world listened by radio, watched television, scanned the skies and gathered together in support of these three men, and it was not with national pride but relief, joy and unbridled excitement that we all cheered for them when they safely landed and set foot on the moon. For a moment, nations and our differences did not matter. Human kind cheered at this astonishing accomplishment. If you’ll forgive the lame joke, there was no dark side to this outpouring of energy, and I was in a way shocked that I did not realize the degree to which people everywhere put aside their national pride and pre-occupying issues to wish the astronauts Godspeed and goodwill. In fact, I am pressed to think of any other event in my lifetime that comes close to engendering the same ‘supranational’ spirit.

Reflecting on this moment I began to wonder what exactly it was that inspired this transcendent moment of globalism in the best sense of that word. It was an amazing feat to be sure—only now looking back it is clear just how perilous and chancy it truly was despite the focus of so many engineers, scientists and technicians over so many years. Today we are confronted with challenges far greater, and unarguably of far more direct and imminent threat to the welfare of the human race. Yet, humanity’s exponentially greater grasp of science, and technology and our vast global resources are not deployed; they are largely idle in the face of these existential threats. Why?

Fifty years ago, humans left this planet. We summoned unprecedented intelligence and resources to prove we could slip these bounds, but we cannot even agree to spend a fraction of that effort to preserve this earth on which we live. While politicians argue over the semantics of global warming, climate change and such--anyone with a shred of common sense can see that globally our forest lands are shrinking, our food resources are diminishing, our weather patterns are growing more severe and our seas are rising.

We can and will argue forever over the causes—but the changes are real and growing. Only a global effort of monumental proportion can possibly alter the course. We have shown it is possible to galvanize an effort of the scale required—in that moment when we put aside our nationalities and all of the other differences that so often divide us and celebrated humanity’s leap into the stars. Each of us has responsibility, to ask for—in fact to demand of our leaders, local and national that they place the fate of our planet, our future and our children’s inheritance above all other issues. All men and women share this same concern, we are all in the same lifeboat.