Concluding paragraphs to Latour's Gaia lecture series:
It is always the proud old injunction: “Go on! Go on!,” not toward a new earth, but toward an earth whose face must be renewed. You know that Christopher Columbus took his first name, “bearer of Christ,” very seriously, and that he was convinced that he was helping his God cross the Atlantic in the same way that the legendary Christopher had allowed the child Jesus to cross the river. No one can believe any longer that we have solid enough shoulders to bear such a weight. Rather, we should agree to put less weight on the back of what is bearing us across the ford of time, namely, Gaia.
As far as we may be from Captain Columbus’s spirit of conquest, perhaps we are nevertheless still like the thirsty sailors aboard his caravel, waiting day after day for the cry that the lookout will surely end up shouting some morning, from up in the crow’s nest: “Land ho! Land ho!”