As explored below, historians and scholars have often concluded that NASA’s multi-billion-dollar Apollo Program was at least one major catalyst for the acceleration and coalescing of these movements-a project that was itself based on human imagination. Indeed, the early origins of the contemporary planetary health concept actually encompassed these philosophies and can be traced to distinct, but overlapping movements-environmentalism, holistic/lifestyle medicine and public health with the planet in mind. This is a question of imagination: What kind of world we want to live in? We revisit the fundamental challenge offered by Pulitzer-Prize-winning microbiologist Rene Dubos and others in the afterglow of the Earthrise photo, and the inaugural Earth Day. We explore the ways in which the awe of Earthrise-and the contemporary science of creativity and studies of utopian thinking-might reinvigorate imagination, kindness and mutualism. They and their primary speakers were as concerned about value systems as they were about pollution-that we cannot hope to solve our problems without addressing the attitudes that created them in the first place. Through the inaugural Earth Day that followed, we are reminded that its early organizers were not constrained in how they defined the “environment”. We revisit the power of inspiration with the profound example of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo which galvanized a fledgling planetary health movement over 50 years ago. Here, we call to normalize more creative, mutualistic approaches-including the perspectives of traditional and indigenous cultures-to positively influence normative value systems. Too often, the dominant focus is on the “worst of human nature”, and devalues or neglects the importance of empathy, kindness, hope, love, creativity and mutual respect-the deeper values that unite, empower and refocus priorities of individuals and groups. However, solutions rarely confront the underlying value systems that created these interconnected problems, or the attitudes that perpetuate them. Our grandest challenges in the Anthropocene ultimately stem from human attitudes to each other and to our environment. At the same time, it emphasizes the integration of biological, psychological, social and cultural aspects of health in the modern environment. The concept of planetary health blurs the artificial lines between health at scales of person, place and planet.
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