GLOBAL
WARMING AND THE FIRST WOMAN
According to
consensus of most earth scientists of all stripes, along with what our own
individual experience on earth is telling us humans, Global Warming is the very
most pressing threat we humans are facing.
Yet Global Warming didn’t even make it to the microphone in the
presidential debates between President Obama and Governor Romney. And our own
prime minister doesn’t believe there is such a thing as Global Warming.
The alpha males in charge of global finance
(and their token female cohorts) along with the world’s militaries are not
interested in Global Warming, either.
If push comes to shove and food and water are scarce for the rest of us,
well, they will have theirs. They think
they can depend on their own wealth to shelter them from climate change. The end
result is a conglomerate of ruling parties of men who consider the earth and its
treasures not as a living system, but as huge individual commodity fields that
are up for grabs. Bad news for all living things, especially children.
So what agencies presently exist anywhere that
can demand an immediate end to the constant degradation of the earth in pursuit
of oil, gas, coal, diamonds, uranium, etc.?
In my opinion, the only group large enough, and who can be angry enough
at the effect of Global Warming on children are women.
Yes, I realize not all women are mothers, but
all mothers are women and all women have or have had mothers. And yes, some of
my best friends are men and I have worked with wonderful men on environmental and
social issues who love this earth as most women do. But these enlightened men are in the
minority. There are too few of them. My
fear is that any change coming through the patriarchal institutions of
government, with mostly misogynist men still in charge, will be too late.
It is ordinary women who make this world go round;
who do most of the poo work both at home and abroad (paid work). And there are millions of us. The only thing
preventing us from rising up en mass and confronting the powerful men of this
world who make all of the decisions affecting Global Warming is we don’t think
we are strong enough. We have been taught
through religion, myth and custom that it is not women’s responsibility to make
the important decisions that could actually stop the slide of the earth into
oblivion.
I argue that it is our responsibility because
no other group is large enough, or angry enough about climate change to do
it. Besides, women created the human
race.
The study of
the origins of humans by those in Anthropology, Archeology, and Paleontology strongly
suggested that humans gradually evolved from ape men, or man apes (Peking man,
Java man, Neanderthal man, Homo erectus, etc.)
However as yet no creature has been found who would classify as the
missing link between Homo erectus (walking man) and Homo sapiens (thinking man).
So there has been a big hole in these theories.
But some geneticists from the University of California at Berkeley began
wondering if the recently mapped human genome might help.
In the 198 7
issue of NATURE magazine (the most prestigious science magazine in the world) appeared a paper written by three geneticists,
Rebecca L Cain, Mark Stoneking and Allen C. Wilson. The paper described their research using
samples of women’s DNA (mitochondrial DNA, only women have this) from various countries around the world (for
a history of this research written for lay people read IN SEARCH OF EVE by Michael
H. Brown). The geneticists came to the
conclusion that the first anatomically correct human (Homo sapiens) was born approximately
two hundred thousand years ago in Africa and was female.
When sexually
mature, this first human mother passed on her human genes to both sons and daughters
through her mitochondrial DNA. However
only her daughters could pass the human gene on. In this way, over a period of time, while
sons could not themselves pass on the human gene, they were also the beneficiaries
of the bigger brains their mothers gave them. But after the first little flurry in the
news, the geneticists findings just dropped from sight although they have been
repeated by other geneticists with more or less the same results. My point?
Ancestral women created the human race through our maternal DNA. Will the human race end with us? Climate change will kill most forms of life,
including our children. What to do?
Continued…
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