Mother's Day is to celebrate and remember our moms: those that gave birth to us and nutured us.
My mother is dead, killed by cancer. I know the hole her absence has left in my heart: a place where grief and mourning and pain live side by side with the joy and love and thankfulness of a child receiving everything I needed to live, without expectation of anything in return. I saw my mom slip away, from vibrant to deathbed, as the unthinkable fear became reality. It is a similiar emotion now when I think of our planet, literally cooking before our eyes. Though, now I am the one with the blood on my hands, our generation with the poison in the syringe.
The Earth is also our mother: it has given birth to us (whether you believe in evolution or creationism), and nutured all of us, giving us all that we need to live. And we are killing her, literally cooking her to death: a death of her species, a death of her oceans, and a death of her sustenance- her ability to feed 7 billion of us, which can only lead to mega- and giga-death of ourselves.
From that emotion of angst and frustration -- where I have seen the warning signs but have not done enough to stop the purulence -- now I beg you-who-have-also-seen, save our mother. Stop the ignorance and madness, rise above the Darwinian stupidity now upon us, and demand that we start saving Mother Earth now, start profoundly changing our energy economy, before it is too late. Doing what we have been doing is killing the planet. Do not despair or give up, for we can save our mother. Let's talk about what we can do differently...
I don't have a crystal ball, but whatever we have been doing, it is not enough. Whatever you are doing, do more, do smarter (please).
From my perspective, the "sane" people are not being nearly "adamant" enough. I'm not crazy about a negative/fear-based message, but IMHO it is more than appropriate at this point: at, near or past the tipping point. Certainly compared to the right wing denial, we need to communicate the (epochal) down side. See Connect the Dots.
Look, the world took action on shutting down nuclear power plants, only after it got the message that Fukushima brought: Nuclear energy is DANGEROUS. IMHO, we need to communicate precisely that, that the climate crisis is more dangerous than a nuclear meltdown. Scientists in their own way are respectively sounding the alarm, but it is not getting attention. It is up to us "activists" to sound that alarm that the world can hear.
We cannot expect Obama or other politicians to carry the leadership burden unless we give them the political capital, the mandate, to do so.
Here are my humble suggestions:
1) GET EDUCATED
- Read James Hansens's op-Ed in the NY Times and/or see his TED presentation - highly recommended
- Read the books on the Climate Crisis:
- 6 Degrees by Mark Lynas
- HOT by Mark Hertsgaard
- Our Choice by AL Gore
and many others
- Get trained to present on the Climate Crisis
2) CALL IT WHAT IT IS:
Start using more urgent language:
- Thermogeddon
- Thermal Hell
- American Sahara
- Global Heating or Global Roasting
3) DEMAND ENVIRONMENTAL ORGS WORK TOGETHER
- Urge your environmental group (Sierra Club, NRCD, Earth Day Network) join with 350.org and Climate Reality to work together to put the climate disaster on the front burner
4) REACH OUT POLITICALLY
- Contact your congresspeople and President Obama
- demand a carbon fee (per Hansen) or tax
- demand an end to oil subsidies (sign Sen. Frank's petition)
- demand investment in cleantech energy and jobs
- demand international leadership on climate change
- demand that the XL Pipeline be stopped,
- pressure Canada to stop tar sand extraction
5) REACH OUT PERSONALLY
- Talk to your friends and acquaintances
- Don't let climate deniers off the hook
- Join 350.org and coordinate more groups and people in action events