This is written by Linda Hutchins-Knowles, San José, California:
If you’re like me, you probably spend a quite a bit of time protecting the safety and ensuring the well being of your child. We research the safest car seats, prepare the healthiest foods, and provide the best education we can for our kids. What about ensuring they have the safest possible planet to live on?
Many of us can feel so overwhelmed by all the daily to-do’s of parenting and working that it’s hard to find ways to tackle an issue as huge as climate change.
Yet I am convinced that there is no more vital issue confronting our children’s future than the escalating crisis of climate disruption — and that if we want our kids and grandkids simply to survive, let alone thrive, we need to ensure that they have a safe planet to live on.
Everything our children depend on for survival — clean air, adequate water, food security, peace and stability, and protection from extreme weather events — is threatened by rapidly approaching tipping points that, if reached, will spin the life-support systems of this planet irrevocably out of control.
That is why I am taking time out from my busy life as a working mom of two young children and traveling 3000 miles to New York City to take part in the most massive mobilization for climate action in history—the People’s Climate March.
On September 21 — the eve of a vital UN summit on the climate crisis, I will be marching with the Moms Clean Air Force and hundreds of thousands of other concerned citizens, raising our voices with the urgent plea that world leaders take unprecedented bold action to mitigate climate change — while we still can.
Imagine what could happen if all concerned parents joined forces to shift the debate in this country from whether or not climate change is actually happening to what we are going to DO about it. Who else is going to advocate for our children’s futures? If not us, who? If not now, when?
The motto of the march is: “To change everything, it’s going to take everyone.” Let’s all join the fight of— and for — our lives.