I must speak of a mother we all know.  She has many children, and is still young and fertile with children not yet born.  She nurtures them with everything they need to live and grow.  Her resources appear abundant and, ever generous; he keeps no "essentials" from them.

 

She is vibrantly alive with natural beauty, joy and harmony- the source of life for all her offspring.  She has suckled them at her breast, and nourished them through life under her protective wing.  She supplies them with water, food, air, comfortable temperatures, basic essential, endless mysteries to discover, breath taking vacations, answers to the cure for thousands of diseases, unconditional love and experiential education.

 

Yet her children take her for granted.

 

They live a frivolous life in self-chosen ignorance of her gifts, with an endless focus on materialistic accomplishments regardless of the methods used. This selfish attitude has caused her great suffering. Now she has a disease, yet her children are slow to respond.

 

In fact, they contribute to her disease because they are too apathetic to learn about it and change their behaviors.  Ironically, this apathy and lack of responsibility for their mother may result in the destruction of their entire family; a tragic situation.

 

She cries acid tears caused by nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide generated by her children; 67 percent from smokestacks, 22 percent from cars, an unknown percentage from the trees that fall each day, and an unspeakably gross amount of careless chemical spills.

 

 

In fact, one third of her water is so contaminated that 10 million of her children die a year from the very water that once gave them life.  Her body is crippled from the endless and wasteful taking of her fossil fuel.  Three times more energy is used at power plants before it reaches the homes of her children, despite the fact that she has supplied them with more effective and gentile alternatives for creating more abundant amount of energy than they will ever need!

 

Scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA reported back in 1991 that the hole in her upper atmosphere, above Antarctica, was larger than the continental United States! 

 

CNN reported in 1995 that this hole had grown to twice the size of Europe and, sadly, the chlorofluorocarbons for aerosol sprays, autos, air conditioners, and the burning of Styrofoam and other nonbiodegradables would not show full effect of their assault until the year 2000. It's nearly 2008 by the way.

 

Her children must act NOW by supporting solutions to stop the mass extinction of species and rain forests, soil erosion, ozone depletion and acidification of water.  They must end their apathy and educate themselves about their mother's disease, support pollution taxes on 'money hungry' industries, recycle-recycle-recycle, boycott heartless earth-destroying acts . . . and run the politician who don't care about our mother out of office!

 

by Fawn (written as a young single mom in 1996 for a newspaper I used to write a regular weekly column in)