Let’s imagine for a minute that, during the course of a routine X-ray, your family doctor discovers a mass on your mother’s lung. From other tests, the doctor feels strongly the tumor is cancerous; in fact, he gives malignancy a 98 percent chance, but only surgery will allow him to be certain. You advocate strongly for surgery, but your brother is not so sure. What if, he posits, we put Mom through this pain, spend tons of money, and the tumor is benign? To comfort her, he hands her a cigarette.
If this sounds like crazy talk, imagine another mother: Mother Earth. Mother Earth is sick — her fires, hurricanes, floods, coral die-offs, melting ice caps, thawing permafrost and record-breaking heat are symptoms of serious disease. Experts say there’s a 98 percent certainty our Mother’s problem is human-caused global warming. Healing voices are many and loud, but the “brothers” won’t listen. Instead, they feed her “cigarettes” — an oil well here, a coal mine there, a razed forest and a gas-guzzling SUV everywhere.
Mother is telling us loud and clear that our carbon-spewing, devil-may-care lifestyle is leading to destruction. But this is where the analogy ends. Because when all is said and done, Mother Earth will survive. It is we who will suffer.
Want to fight the “brothers”? Go to www.citizensclimatelobby.org, and be part of the solution.
Marjorie McCloy, Salt Lake City