‘This is the only home we have’

Love of nature leads climate activists to defend Mother Earth on Mother’s Day

As we celebrate mothers on Mother’s Day, many believe that gratitude should extend to Mother Earth — a sacred source that sustains life on this blue planet.

For many, the signs of climate imbalance are clear — floods, drought, earthquakes, great storms — and the Earth’s resources are being used far too quickly, placing the planet’s health — and human health — in danger.

Those are some of the reasons that fire up advocates and activists who represent groups like the Sierra Club, 350.org and Food and Water Watch.

Activist Jennifer Siskind has worked herself, “to the bone for the past four years to ban fracking waste in Connecticut,” she said.

Siskind said in an email she does it for her children, 20- and 21-yearsold, citing “rule number one: Never mess with Mama Bear.”

After the state legislature failed to pass a fracking waste ban in 2014, Siskind has worked with local leaders and citizens across the state to pass the best protections available through local town ordinances, she said.

“It’s been non-stop presentations, emails, meetings with activists,” said Siskind. “A majority of the citizens who have stepped up to help have been mothers and grandmothers, and some extraordinary men.”

As of today, Connecticut has 17 towns with local ordinances passed, and there is active organizing by citizens and championing by local leaders in more than 40 others, according to Siskind.

“My own mother has fracking wells 2,000 feet from her bedroom window, so I am well aware of health risks Connecticut families will have if this toxic, radioactive fracking waste is brought here,” Siskind said.

Siskind pointed out that radioactive radium in fracking wastes is a known of cause breast cancer and is linked to childhood leukemia, she said.

Many believe more is needed to help Mother Nature and are turning out in droves.

There have been enormous turnouts at political marches, drawing tens of thousands of women, men and children, including the recent March for Science and the Climate Change March. Those events had “many women spearheading a lot of the action,” said Jaime Ullinger, assistant professor of anthropology at Quinnipiac University.

“A lot of women are getting involved in environmental movements and are finding a voice,” Ulinger said.

No matter the gender, men and women are on equal footing when it comes to sharing and nurturing both feminine and masculine energies, she added.

Hamden activist Melinda Tuhus has helped organize against fossil fuel infrastructure, specifically the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline,she said.

Tuhus is “generally against fracked gas pipelines and other infrastructure, in Connecticut and elsewhere,” she said.

“I rally, march, and go to jail in defense of Mother Earth because this is the only home we have and I can’t stand to see it desecrated,” Tuhus said in an email.

People need “to recognize that humans are not separate from Earth, that we can’t exist without this beautiful, wondrous planet and that instead of destroying it, we could instead celebrate it,” said the New Haven grandmother.

“It makes me worry more about what awaits my grown children and especially my 4-year-old granddaughter — and all children — since we’re seeing severe climate impacts already around the world,” Tuhus said.

For animal lover Martha Klein, chairwoman of the Connecticut Chapter of Sierra Club, all things nature bring out her passion to defend its natural resources.

Klein invests her time “to protect what I love,” by engaging in legislative advocacy, testifying at public hearings, organizing grassroots opposition to local dirty energy projects, and challenging the political complacency which allows industry profits to override human well-being, she said in an email.

The Sierra Club leads rallies and marches in defense of a safe climate and an immediate transition to 100 percent renewable energy.

“It’s all our jobs as sons and daughters of Mother Earth to make sure she’s taken care of, “said Rich Wrigley, a Sierra Club volunteer. “Just as it’s our opportunity to take care of our mothers on Mother’s Day.”