Image: Thomas Tolkien/Flickr

Earth Day is being marked this week in communities all across Canada. In two weeks, heartfelt cards will be sent to mothers everywhere in celebration of Mother’s Day. What would it take for millions of Canadians to spend the next two weeks, between Earth Day and Mother’s Day doing something to slow environmental destruction on Mother Earth/Mother Nature?

While the powers behind the Merchants of Doubt are being exposed, mothers everywhere are sounding the alarm about the need for action in response to the climate crisis.

Chai Jing is a Chinese mother who was terrified when her new baby developed a respiratory illness. Her daughter’s illness led her to investigate what was wrong with the air. Her video Under the Dome was seen by 175 million people before it was taken down by Chinese censors. You can watch a translated version here.

Naomi Klein’s pregnancy spurred her to write This Changes Everything. It was thinking of life on this planet and how the planets capacity for regeneration was being strained that inspired her worldwide bestseller.

In this video voiced by Julia Roberts, Mother Nature declares that she does not need us. But that we need her…

Given that reality, why not take up the Earth Day to Mother’s Day challenge?

Every morning when you wake up you begin to make decisions about how you will go through your day. All you have to do for the challenge is to rethink three of those decisions: what you eat, what you wear, how you transport yourself.

Eat more vegetables than meat.

Stop shopping for clothing. The planet cannot afford to replenish the resources to create another million cotton T-shirts.

Walk. Take transit. Bike. Use an electric car.  

If you’re ready for more, consider this:

What if all the women in Canada followed the example of the women in Iceland who went on strike in 1975 in their fight for gender equality? What if all mothers in Canada demanded that their children would still be able to drink clean water and breathe clean air and live in an environment protected from the ravages of cancerous economic growth?

What if we didn’t look away? What if we faced our biggest fears the way we did when faced with the Depression, the Second World War? The threat of nuclear annihilation?

The climate crisis is bigger than all of those. Combined.

Please don’t look away.

As Carl Sagan said: “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something.”

Image: Thomas Tolkien/Flickr