V's Version

It is a rare day when I can focus on our planet and my place in it for any extended period of time. Usually I am immersed in a quilt project (or on the website) and then I race around in my Cinderella housecleaning outfit and then I put on my Carpooler Chauffeur cap and then I take turns breathing deeply and speaking with forced calmness during hour after hour of homework. I make time to wear lingerie and gardening gloves (not usually at the same time!)

But I don't often get to sit - as a citizen - to listen to the really hard stuff that needs to be heard. Dani sent me Al Gore's opening statement about the climate crisis to Congress and it's 30 minutes long, for heaven's sake. Listening intently and with respect takes a kind of focus that is uncommon in this fast-paced go-go world (unless you are a political junkie with time on their hands - which I am not).

Al Gore says that 516,000 people emailed him in the last few days. He brought the stack of emails and my email was in that pile and I felt part of it. So I watched and I listened. He said that our son Pk is going to grow up and ask us one of either two questions:

1. "WHAT were you thinking, Mama and Dani?" (by not taking dramatic and direct action to stop the climate crisis)

or

2."How did you find the uncommon moral courage to rise above...and do what some said was impossible?"

I cringed thinking of Pk asking the first question and in my vision of that conversation I got defensive. "Hey! I tried! I kept asking you to bring your sandwich bags home so we could re-use them! I carpooled. I made you use cloth napkins at dinner- remember? We recycled, remember? And how about when I insisted that we couldn't drive all the way back down to Santa Cruz just so that you could get your forgotten backpack...."
What the heck am I doing?

Am I blaming his generation for believing the advertisers? Am I blaming them for my own complacency?

I appreciate more than I can ever say that Al Gore put forth *solutions*! He gave specific, realistic, comprehensive solutions. Now I have to go tell my representatives that I want them to back the solutions that regulate cars, coal and buildings. Let's ban inefficient incandescent light bulbs on a huge scale. Let's use our resources wisely. Let's shake *ourselves* out of complacency so that we don't have to answer that first question from the next generation.

Labels: citizen action global climate crisis mother children future solution Al Gore