Image from Earthjustice.org blog

This morning, I stumbled upon some excellent news in an article published in Earthjustice’s newsletter by Brian Smith, WA Moms Summit Mt. Rainier in Call for Green Energy. This past Saturday, July 17, 2010, four moms (yes, you read that, moms) climbed Washington state’s Mt. Rainier in a statement against the use of the highly polluting, coal.

Each of these mothers have children from ages 3 – 6! (Those kids have some awesome moms.) Talk about a breath of fresh air! This is exactly what I always imagined fortunate, educated moms to do: protect their children, and the future of their children.

How these great moms are protecting their children

Since the Reagan years, it’s become somewhat acceptable and even cliché to mock those who constructively take their time to make a statement for environmental (viz. human) health. In the meantime, it has become acceptable for moms to prepare their children for a good education before kindergarten, though everyone knows that this can amount to a tremendous load of pressure on kids. Yet, I never hear moms talk about how they and their children discussed environmental pollution, and what needs to be done as a family unit to minimize everyone’s contribution to it, or, what effects worsening air quality can have on their children’s ability to breath, and overall health in general.

Moms keeping it real

“Today, we demand that coal burning end in Washington,” said climber Genevieve Raymond. “The Governor’s plan to burn dirty coal for fifteen more years is unacceptable. The time to transition to clean energy is now.”

Climber Jennifer Williams said, “Every hour of every day, lax regulations allow poisonous mercury to be dumped onto the glaciers and dirty carbon into the atmosphere. Our children are counting on us to transition to renewable energy now.”

Leading by example

We don’t necessarily need to climb a mountain to get attention to our ambient environmental woes (i.e., poor air quality, dirty waterways, etc.). But, we can follow the lead that these courageous moms have taken. We can in our own neighborhoods, in front of court houses, and houses of legislature, even on the Brooklyn Bridge make a statement indicating our dissatisfaction with how the status-quo has managed our environmental problems. (Hint: Don’t blame the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA; whenever they’ve tried to do good for the public, special interests pressure congressional members, etc. to hobble the agency’s mandated motives to better our air quality, etc.)

It’s up to you and me, we’ve got to do it — demand better environmental quality; not just for us, but also for our children and posterity.

Join us,

Vivekan

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 9:40 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.