We are entitled to inherit (and are responsible for passing along) a healthy and functioning planet.
That big idea is simply this: that the Earth is an ever-changing place, thanks largely to plate tectonics, the movement of the crust that is a function of the planet's hot interior.
All of this was enough to lure us into a rented Nissan Tiida for six days of adventure, without a functioning G.P.S., just a Lonely Planet guidebook and a Russian atlas, which, maddeningly, displayed our route over several pages, sometimes with bits missing.
The changes we need at this point to make the planet survive can be done through a functioning democracy, a much more agreeable way to have change happen.
According to this idea, which relates to James Lovelock's hypothesis of Gaia, each organism in this planet has a function in the overall sustainment of the planet as a whole.
It's one thing to create a relatively lifeless planet to mine and explore, but what about a functioning ecosystem full of plants, animals and people?
For example, the recent film "Avatar" (Avatar, 2010, directed by James Cameron) presents a vision of a planet that functions like a "super-organism".
For instance, the intension of 'the number of planets' is a function that, given a possible world w, returns a number the number of planets at w.
A bloated atmosphere may in turn have been a function of the way these planets formed, said Dr. David Nesvorny, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
This angular momentum is a function of the velocity of the planet around the sun and also a function of its distance from the center of the sun.
As Percy struggles to find the exit, he parachutes a phalanx of new characters into the story at the last minute, and the coincidences pile up disconcertingly; his tale begins to feel like one of those episodes of "Star Trek" in which an alien planet functions like a small town.
