The Green Zone

From EDA Co-Founder, Ina Pockrass

As I was feted this Mother’s Day by my wonderful adult children and most thoughtful husband, I was struck by a twinge of sadness.  Of course we should honor our Mothers, the ones who gave us life, nurtured, sacrificed and supported us, but why don’t we also honor the Earth this day?  After all, without the Earth’s largesse, sacrifice and support, our Mothers, their Mothers, and all the Mothers that ever were, would not be here.

As humans, it’s easy to think of our lives as being very important. And important they are, but in the scheme of things, we are all here for the planetary equivalent of a blink.  Or, as a spiritual teacher I know said:  “Whether we live to be 8 or 80, we’re all just here for a weekend; some of us get a long weekend and others a short one, but a weekend it is.”  The Earth on the other hand, has been around for about 4.5 billion years, or about 90 million human lifetimes.  And, for nearly all of this time, the Earth has generally flourished, leaving aside a few asteroids.

But we humans, who have always depended on Mother Earth’s bounty for our survival, have made a real mess of things in just the last 200 years.   The industrial revolution, which has us digging deep inside the Earth’s crust for the fuel to power our cars, cell phones and way of life, has wreaked havoc on every planetary system.

So instead of honoring this Mother of all Mothers on Mothers’ Day, we mindlessly toss our trash on her beaches, make a real mess of her air, carelessly knock down her forests, and squander resources that took her millions of years to create.  What Mother would let her children get away with that?