As I sit here writing this, only a few hours have passed since an asteroid the size of a four story house hurtled passed our little blue-green marble at a distance of 28000 kms or about 17000 miles. That is well within the orbit of our highest communications satellites.

Simultaneously (well, a little earlier really), a meteor entered the earth’s atmosphere resulting in widespread damage and some one thousand injured people in the Ural mountains.

Personally, I think we will find that these incidents are related.

It raises, however, a rather dire spectre. What if the next chunk of space flotsam does not pass us by, what if its motto is ‘Earth or dust’. We have no serious funds invested in protecting ourselves from this very real threat.

One only needs to look at the scar(r)ed surface of our closest companion – La Luna – to see that hits are frequent – speaking in geological ages.

In fact Gaia herself has ample scars resulting from the failure of near misses – a failed near miss is a hit – yes – I know – I am being facetious.

So, I propose, unless we wish to go the way of the dinosaurs, we all write to members of Parliament, Congress, Senate, Knesset, Bundestag, Upper House, Lower House etc ad infinitum, stating our desire, as lawfully registered and enfranchised constituents, to funnel some of the billions we spent on bailing out the big end of town to the protection of our species (and, incidentally, every other species on the planet, as well).

What say you, the great unwashed?