Why John F Kennedy’s amazing words should inspire us today – Angus Robertson

Former US President John F Kennedy famously pledged to send humans to the Moon and take other actions “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. Today’s world should keep such words in mind as it seeks to protect humanity from climate change, writes Angus Robertson.

In recent days we have been treated to amazing coverage of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

Not only have the TV documentaries and movies been a treat, but the BBC podcast “13 minutes”, covering the last minutes of the Apollo 11 mission before touchdown, is compulsory listening.

I was born in 1969 a few months just after the landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, so don’t remember the excitement of the time, but a few years later one of the US astronauts caused a buzz when I was at Hope Cottage nursery school in Causeway-side.

Understandably, my memory as a young nipper is pretty hazy but I know rocks brought from the Moon were being passed around and the adults talked about the whole event being historic.

Now, 50 years on, the next space frontier being discussed is Mars.

In truth, however, our bigger challenge is closer to home, namely our own planet Earth. Climate change is literally an existential challenge.

We must get behind the campaign to protect the Earth in the same way as President Kennedy rallied support with his speech: “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 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, and the others, too.”