From the Earth to the Moon: A Graduation Keynote for Sustainability Leaders

[This is an abridged version of a keynote speech delivered by Johnny O'Neill Meehan at The Cambridge Union, University of Cambridge on July 20th 2019].

Ladies & Gentlemen, Honoured Guests, Classmates, Members of this University, Friends and Families,

Today we celebrate the remarkable achievement of graduating with a Masters Degree in Leadership for Sustainability from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. When we entered the University of Cambridge in 2016 this was the leading research university in the European Union, and I am glad to say as we were honoured with our degrees in Senate House, that this is still the case in 2019.

I am honoured and privileged to have been asked to deliver the keynote speech on this auspicious occasion here this evening at The Cambridge Union.

We are such a diverse and international group of people from every populated continent of the globe. We have come together with common purpose, to do the type of work that is necessary over the coming decade as we lead for sustainability in our own countries to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Using the motto of the European Union, “we are united in diversity” and this is our global ode to joy today.

The theme for this evening is Fly Me to The Moon, because uniquely, today July 20th 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing by Apollo 11, when the Eagle spacecraft touched down in what is called The Sea of Tranquility. I am going to speak about the significance of that event, how it has echoed down the years, and recently found new meaning as we seek to return to the Moon when we are also trying to save the Earth. Indeed, one could argue that we want to go back to 1969, a time when the future had so much possibility. Some people in the room today remember where they were at that moment in time. Many of us were not even born, including myself, but we grew up with this remarkable story.

The urgent call to action to get to the Moon first, was in a time of great existential threat but from a Cold War rather than a global heating emergency. The driving vision came from John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States of America, and son of County Wexford in Ireland. In 1962 he delivered a stirring speech in front of many students, some perhaps not unlike ourselves, at a University football stadium in the U.S. He said:

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.

We Choose to go to the Moon

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win”

In framing this adventure President Kennedy spoke to our best impulses. At that time people were amazed by the power of his rhetoric, the urgency of the endeavour, while other Americans were startled by the cost of undertaking this national mission.

The Apollo programme, which went beyond the Apollo 11 mission, sent 12 men to the Moon. Yet some 400,000 people, women and men of all backgrounds, were involved in some way in that work, and the cost was 4.4% of the United States GDP. In preparation, Apollo astronauts spent a combined 38,000 hours training in simulators.

Today in our work as sustainability masters we often talk of needing 10,000 hours of practice to be a master. Then, as leaders we are constantly challenged to bring others along with us, and in our work we need to prepare the case for change and argue the issue of cost for doing the right things now for the benefit of all.

In the Apollo programme there was much complexity and no margin for error. As one of the flight directors commented: “they would give us an error and we’d handle it, they’d give us another, then there’d be two and we’d struggle a bit”. In order to be ready to cope with uncertainty and complexity, the astronauts had to study hard, to understand the science, to be able to conduct their own research and experiments when they were alone on the Moon, which all made them more resilient because things would go wrong. Yet, simulations were no substitute for experience. One of the most unanticipated discoveries was that "soil" on the moon is orange, perhaps like cheese after all, but it is not actually living soil but molten drops of lava spewed from an ancient volcano [credit: BBC]. We also discovered that the Moon had volcanoes, and moon-quakes, and was in fact (on deeper analysis) made of the same stuff as the Earth. These things were not predicted in the test labs at home before going to the Moon.

Perhaps there is a lesson there for us too, that we need more real-life experience of the realities of sustainability and of our world outside of our Cambridge laboratory, where many of the greatest scientists in history did their work. We are on the light side of our Moon today, but we will need to go to the dark side too if we are to learn about the whole. We must use what we have learned for the benefit of all and continue to learn through experience.

One small step for Man, one giant leap for Mankind

But let us reflect about the day itself July 20th 1969 when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. We all know what he said because his message was simple and yet profound: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. We all know it, because one of us humans had left a footprint on another world and this fact left an indelible imprint on our minds. About the same time, Dr. Jacob Bronowski of the University of Cambridge was researching the programme he called The Ascent of Man, where he had traced hominid footprints of the earliest ancestors of Man to a river valley in East Africa. These were some 2.5 million years old. We had indeed walked far, from the Earth to the Moon. Neil Armstrong’s words, like Kennedy’s only 7 years before, inspired the hopes and imagination of not only all Americans, but all the peoples of the world. We were united in our diversity.

In our work as sustainability leaders it is perhaps important to recognise that every journey begins with small steps, and we will need patience in our work and in our lives when we feel we are not making the giant leaps all of the time.

In going to the Moon, perhaps the biggest and most unanticipated effect has been the development of a collective consciousness of humanity who are part of a living Earth, this home of ours that the scientist Carl Sagan called “the pale blue dot” so tiny and vulnerable and alone in the infinite cosmos. When the Apollo astronauts went to the Moon, they described the initial awe but also the emptiness, loneliness, and nothingness of the place. They had gone all that way, on the back of the combined efforts of a nation, to spend a few hours and collect some rocks, plant a flag, or later still to even swing a golf club (this last activity probably motivated the sitting President of the United States to return there). As the astronauts walked about on the surface of the Moon, with heads down scanning the dust and rocks, there was nothing really all that interesting, because nothing was alive. Yet looking up at the rising of the Earth over the Moon's horizon, they were struck by the almighty beauty and majesty of our home planet, and experienced what has been called "The Overview Effect" a cognitive shift in awareness despite being alone in the void of space. If you happen to watch interviews on YouTube with these ageing adventurers they still speak with great emotion of feeling a oneness with the Earth and of the need to protect and cherish it. Astronauts became environmentalists, even the President of America Richard Nixon, not well-remembered today, signed into law in 1970 one of the most radical pieces of legislation in the U.S., the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA for short) which set the standard for other nations around the world.

But, and this is a big but, we have problems today in 2019 which have been caused or been amplified exponentially in the last 50 years since the Moon landing, whether we are talking about the carbon problem or the plastic problem or the loss of nature. This is our reality, despite Neil Armstrong’s words, or the earlier Earth Rise picture by Apollo 8, the NEPA Act, or the combined hopes and dreams of a better tomorrow of the 3 billion people alive at that time. In the intervening years, the world has suffered from the intermittent insanities of lunatics and wars and great injustices have gone on. For sure, technology evolved rapidly but this was not the kind of new epoch or giant leap envisaged by Neil Armstrong or other hopeful commentators and progressives. We fell backwards, captured by the gravitational pull of our baser instincts.

However, I believe that we can go on another adventure that recaptures the spirit and ingenuity of Apollo, because those astronauts and everyone who worked to put them on the Moon were just people too. They had courage and tenacity, what has been called "the right stuff" which is what I believe we all have too, from the first CISL Cohort up to us in Cohort 7 and beyond.

More optimistically still, The Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole wrote this morning about the afterglow from Apollo: "In the stories humanity has always told itself, there is forever the same goal, forever the same locus of desire: home. The going out is all so much prelude to the coming back".

So when you all return to your homes after our time together in Cambridge I hope you create an afterglow in each of your communities.

Carl Sagan begged the question, who speaks for Earth? I put it to you all here today and especially the children in the room that we all speak for the Earth and in our work we must speak up and speak out every-day. Our Moon-shot as a diverse and united people is to work with others to restore the Garden of Eden and do it not just for the almost 8 billion people alive today, but for all life on Earth. We must lead by serving the Earth. That is our Moon-shot. That is our purpose.

Should we ever doubt what we few can do to change the world, I think the words of the famous American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead are appropriate, she said:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has”

We choose to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals

We choose to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals in the coming decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win.

I will close with one last quote in our own community, from our friend Sheikha Shamma whose words were inscribed on the wall at The Moller Institute at Churchill College on Thursday:

“It is our collective duty to lead responsibly to create a better world for future generations”.

Thank-you.