Is This The World We Want To Leave Behind?

You can't really separate caring for the children of the world from caring for the world, Mother Earth. Today we are systematically destroying the same world that our children will need to live on.



Millennium Development Goal #4: REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY.


Here's a nice pair of links to get you started on understanding what our children will face:


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/10/01/science/20071002_ARCTIC_GRAPHIC.html#first

http://unfccc.int/2860.php/



The first link shows the rapid and unprecedented loss of ocean ice at the north pole during the summer of 2007; the second link shows what the United Nations and thousands of other organizations are trying to do to prevent further degradation of the planet.


You would think that most people in our society are opposed to killing children, but isn't that what we are doing, with our rampant disregard for the destruction of the world systems that sustain life, along with our rampant commitment to more of everything, more population, more economic 'growth', more consumption of goods, more collateral damage?


Gee, maybe we can all take a spaceship and go live on Mars. Here's a poem about the perennial human need to escape the consequences of our collective actions:



The Floating Island

(We have a need to realize the remotest place as the happiest. As we heedlessly change the climate on earth, we dream of colonizing Mars.)

In Lydia there is a certain lake
Amid the mountains standing blue and high;
And at its middle does an island make
The iris of a giant eye;

Along the shore do men and women stand
And to the water spirits daily call:
Until, in answer, rises up the land,
Floating in the sky above them all.

Come now, they cry, let us our joy complete;
Leave now your melancholy and your fears,
Come to the island in our little boat,
And we will rise and live among the stars.