Your Mother

T.M. Hoy

“Apres mo, le deluge.”
Louis XIV.

Some monsters have kidnapped youf fothér. She's bound and
‘gagged, lying naked on a cold, concrete fioor. They are taking tums
raping her. They laugh at her moans, at the blood dripping from the
'wounds they've infiicted by beating her.

Eventually they tire of trying to outdo each ofher in sexual perversity.
They decide to get down to business.

First, they strap her down to a gumey and cut out valuable organs,
being careful to keep her alive. They strip off some of her skin, cut oft
her ears, gouge out her eyes, leaving her bleeding and mutiiated. They
ignore her screams as just so much meaningless noise.

Having taken everything of value they wanted, they're stil not done
torturing her. They inject poisons that cause agony in her veins, force
‘open her mouth and pour in pesticides.

‘As a final insult, they bury here alive in toxic waste and garbage, and
walk away nonchalantly, pleased with their day’s work.

“This is what we've done to our mother — the biosphere, that intricate,
tightly interconnected web of beings that sustains us and gives us lfe.

Through greed, viciousness, and uncaring stupidity we have
murdered the great family of living things of which we are one small part.
/And we have forgotten, or purposely ignore the fact that what affects one:
of us affects us all

Between catastrophic climate change and human toxicity and
destruction of the environment, ecological collapse is imminent — no
more than 15 t0 20 years away.

‘Worse still, it is inevitable. Unless human sources of pollution are
radically curtailed immediately (which we know will not happen) nature's.
living systems will simply dissolve; they are aiready well on their way.

This is not a “wake-up calf"or strident demand for action. Its far too
late for that. The scale, the enormity of what we've done is scarcely
imaginable. The earth is in her death throes - at least, a world that will
support us. Consider for a moment the desolation we've inflicted upon
nature, and what this folly has produced.

Take industrial agriculture, for instance. Tens of billions of tons of
pesticides. herbicides and other lethal chemicals are poured into the land
of tons more of petrochemicals (mainly fertilizers) add their deadly load
1o the soil, with terrible effects. Few people realize or care that soil is a
living thing; aerated by worms, enlivened by microorganisms, fertile only
because of the contribution of these tiny beings. Pesticides and
fertilizers destroy soil and humans are unable to replace it at anywhere
near the scale with which it's being destroyed. Thus, soil erosion has
become a teifying problem — hundreds of thousands of square miles of
farmiand are lost each year 10 i, resulting in massive desertification.
Scarcity of fertile farmiand creates famines, food riots and wars.

“This murderous chemical assault on lfe seeps into aquifers,
poisoning groundwater, and then pours out nto rivers, and thence into
the seas, kiling everything it encounters along the way. There are now
over 400 “dead zones” (where nothing can live) in the oceans, some as
large as continents, caused by pesticide runoft

And industrial agriculture produces dazens of such horrors; from
animal cruelty and disease in factory farming to the wipeout of 3 World
farmers and economies due to 1* World agribusiness dumping of
subsidized commodities, like com and wheat.

O consider the effects of industrial manufacturing and its related
activities of mining, oil and petrochemical production and energy
generation. In every industry, the extraction process is aimost always.
oxic (andlor homifically destructive to nature), produces toxic wastes,
and the end product itself is most often poisonous as well

‘There are the grotesque effects of plastics, slowly killing us with
PCB's, phenyls, phthalates, endocrine disruptors and carcinogens. Yet
its most destructive aspect s the way it's choking the ife out of ocean
creatures and birds consuming piastic garbage. On land, plastics leach
dioxin (among the most deadly chericals known to man and that's
saying something) into the soil via dumps, and into water supplies.

‘Then there are the effects of mining operations and metal processing
wastes, such as the unspeakable pracice of ‘mountain-top removal”
mining for coal that s laying waste to parts of the South Easte U.S.
Mercury poisoning and pollution, are the resultof the buring of that coal
for electricity.

1t goes on and on.

There's the collapse of food chains in the ocean. Fish populations.
have crashed from over-fishing, made worse by the massive plankton
die-off of over 30% in the last 50 years from the heating of the seas from
industial wastes, oi spills and pollution. Plankton s the foundation of
the entire oceanic food chain. The Deepwater Horizon spill, which
basically kiled off sea life in much of the Gulf of Mexico, was merely one
of thousands of oil spills that occur every year (though less dramaticall).
In shor, the seas are being rendered lfeless.

There's the (quietl ignored) crisis of rban and suburban spraw; the
burying of the landscape under concrete and asphalt, paving vast
regions for auto and truck traffic. And allof the side effects of this.
“development — natural habitat destruction, deforestation, the staggering
load of pollutants and dangerous wastes produced by cars, ciies and
“average consumers." Half the world (3.5 bilion people) Iive in cltes,
and the numbers are rising. The garbage dumps alone produced by this
urbanization pose a health crisis of monstrous proportions.

“Then there are the effects of nuclear waste from thousands of nuclear
reactors (impossible to safely store for the 100,000-year haif-ives of their
radioactive elements), and that far more dangerous waste from nuciear
‘weapon production and storage. There are the wastes from biological
and chemical weapon stockpiles. There are the wastes from
phamaceutical manufacturing and the foxicity of the “products’
themselves.

Consider the entire process of producing chemicais for thousands of
industries — paints, “cleansers,” electronics, technology in all its guises,
‘spewing countless tons of toxins onto earth, sea and sky. This is not to
‘mention the toxic impact of those industries’ use of these chemicals.

Can the sudden, catastrophic increase in cancer and immune system
diseases over the last 40 years, be attributed to any other source? We.
eat, drink and breathe these poisons every single day.

There is the specter of “Peak Oil" haunting industrial civilization.
Offically passed in 2006, as announced by o and energy
spokespersons at the Intemational Energy Agency, “peak oif" means that
just as our demand for ofl continues to skyrocket, supplies are rapidly
being depleted. The cheap, easy to get, high-quality cil is gone. From
here on out, oil extraction gets dirtier, more destructive of nature, more
expensive, difficult and dangerous. And, we depend on it utterly.
Petroleum-based nitrates and chemicals for farming as fuel for land, sea
and air transport, in millions of consumer products - like the endless
uses of plastics, in medicines, in cosmetics, even in food itself. It will be
gone within 25 years, fitasts that long. There are no adequate
substitutes, and we will ravage the earth further in pursuit of the last
precious drops.

Dwarfing the impact of the crises in this far-too brief list, we must face
the catastrophes that are accompanying climate change. Forget the
thetoric and the political screaming matches; whether man-made or not,
0 one is arguing about the fact that the climate IS changing; the oceans
and earth ARE heating up, and the consequences are too dreadful for
aimost anyone to bear to examine closely

Like the simple, hideous fact that in less than 30 years, over 80% of
the Himalayan glaciers wil be gone. These glaciers are responsible for
the monsoon cycle that waters Asia, and are the source of al e great
rivers - the Yangtze, the Ganges, the Mekong (just to name three out of
‘millions), that Asia depends on for drinking and agricultural water. Will
Asia be without water in a generation? Yes. Lack of clean water causes
‘wars, hundreds of millions of ilnesses and needless deaths. The
atrocious conflict in Darfur, Sudan, is a drought-induced war. Imagine
that sort of vicious fighting spread across the world's largest land mass!

/And, there's worse. Islands sinking beneath the rising seas and
coastal cties inundated (over 30% of major urban areas willsuffer
severe damage from rising sea levels. New York, London, Tokyo, Los
Angeles ~ these and thousands more will slowly drown over the next two
decades. This will be accompanied by increasingly violent, extreme
weather, harsher droughts and floods, more intense and frequent
hurricanes, tomadoes and 5o on, driving human, animal and plant
populations further over the brink into mortal crises.

Everywhere you care to look, the ecological systems we rely on for
survival are dying.
The species vital to human health and life, and that are indicators of
the health of the air, water and soll are dying offin massive numbers

Bats, which keep insect populations in check, are threatened by
extinction from an exotic fungus of unknown origin. Bird species, crucial
for keeping down crop pests and for keeping plant populations healthy.
are being wiped out by pollution and climate change. Half of the bee
populations studied, vital for agriculture and plant poliination in nature.
have decreased by 96% in the last three years! Snake species, which
keep rodent populations (and thus diseases) down, are vanishing. Frog
‘species — who are the “canaries in the mine” for earth, are disappearing,
wiped out by contaminated water and habitat loss. These are the plants
‘and animals we depend on for our survival and we are massacring the.

The end of the whole, evil mess is clearly in sight. Butno one is.
slowing down. In fact, the process is speeding up as the 3" World
industrializes. As difficult as it is to believe and as insane as it obviously
s, the Socio-economic system controling the planet s racing to murder
every last living thing in its absurd quest for *profi” (as if money was.
anything other than a man-made symbol, of no value beyond human
exchanges), and worshipping its cult of growthdevelopment at any cost.
Itis a system that seeks to exploit every existing bit of nature, were it
possible; every inch of arable land pianted with bio-engineered crops,
every habitable acre covered by buildings and subdivisions, every
mountain containing metals reduced to ore and siag, every forest
reduced to timber, every able-bodies person in bondage to corporations
(excepting corporate shareholders, of course), their tabor churning out
*goods and services™ untl there is nothing left but a barren, poisonous
wasteland, dead rivers and oceans and empty, lethal skies.

Those that oppose this evil design become targets of military force or
police/security attacks. To try and impede the machine from devouring
nature and enslaving the masses is to eam the ttle terrorist’, an
Orwellian mutiation of language, as the corporations and govemments
who crush ife and create terror, falsely accuse their opponents — using
fear as a weapon.

“The machine will die, but it will ot die quietly. Industrial civiization s
about to be swept away, and it wil take the natural world along with it

We were the last generation that was able to do anything about it and
we just sat there and played with our fucking toys. And to think we.
fancied ourselves as "environmentalists!” Hal

Twish | could change t. | wish that with all my heart. Butl can't No
one can

So terribly, terribly sad, to witness the death of a planet; indeed, be:
the cause of its demise.

Soget angry. Fight the good fight, in spite of it all. Pick your targets
and make every shot count.

All | can do is do my best, regardiess. South Chicago ABC
You do the same. @& ZooDisto
A vobr

omewood, L 60430