The Earth is humankind's body

Rudolf Steiner:  "...moral impulses, pervading human deeds and the whole of human life, are part and parcel of the course of nature. 

According to modern preconceptions there is something inexorable in the play of nature, indeed pleasantly inexorable for materialistic thinkers. They imagine that the Earth's course would be exactly the same were no human beings in existence; that whether they behave decently or not makes no fundamental difference or really alters anything. But that is not the case!

The all-essential causes of what happens on the Earth do not lie outside man; they lie within mankind. And if earthly consciousness is to expand to cosmic consciousness, humanity must realize that the Earth — not over short but over long stretches of time — is made in its own likeness, in the likeness of humanity itself. There is no better means of lulling man to sleep than to impress upon him that he has no share in the course taken by earth-existence. This narrows down human responsibility to the single individual, the single personality.

The truth is that the responsibility for the course of Earth-existence through ages of cosmic time lies with humanity. Everyone must feel himself to be a member of humanity, the Earth itself being the body for that humanity.

An individual may say to himself: For ten years I have given way to my passions, indulged my fancies and have thereby ruined my body. — With equal conviction he should be able to say: If earthly humanity follows impure moral impulses, then the body of the Earth will be different from what it would be were the moral impulses pure."

Source: http://888spiritualscience.blogspot.com.au/2007/09/new-esoteric-section-rules.html