Message from Mother Earth

by Joan Hoffman, Founder of the SEJ Program

Large looming images of Mother Earth, as diverse as the bodies, hands, and communities of beings who created them, paraded down the streets of New York City during the World Climate March on September 21, 2014.  These giant maternal interpretations of the habitat which nourishes us and on which we depend, bobbed, twisted and turned as they passed, as if to observe all of  us with their very large eyes. Those eyes  were watchful, not coddling. They seemed to ask, dispassionately, if we, who are inextricably, if unwillingly, participants in matricide, the violation and destruction of our habitat, would find a way out.

Although the parade participants are a collection of the concerned, gathered to pressure the more powerful to push levers with impacts more significant than our individual actions and which would make it easier for individual actions to accumulate and become effective, we are also symbolic of the larger problem. We recycle and then forget to turn out the lights. We are required to work with computers whose data banks take enormous energy to cool and whose production damages both workers and the environment. We live in sprawling neighborhoods whose expensive structure was laid down long ago.

So too do the powerful face personal contradictions and structural traps.  Support for “green “ policies might lose  politicians a donor or an election.  Backing policies that cut warming by cutting consumption or use of fossil fuels could involve transitional costs that, without careful planning could  cause the loss of jobs for which those in power would be blamed.

We can make our economies and societies more sustainable, but the problems are not simple and will not be solved by sound bite analysis. We must strive to talk with and listen to one another, to exchange information and ideas, and to be willing to cooperate and collaborate. As we all know, this mandate is not easy to carry out.  May the haunting gaze of the Earth Mothers inspire each of us  to contribute however so we can, to continue to pressure those with power to make needed changes, and to pledge to join thoughtful discussion of whatever new arrangements those changes portend.