This is a letter from that which you call your mother; a letter from Mother Earth to the human species. You may not want to recognize me, and that is fine. You can say this is a letter from one of your gods, or whomever. None of that matters to me. Make the author whomever you wish, because the message will be the same, no matter who you want to believe writes this letter to you.
Please do not misunderstand me, and let me point out something from the start: I love you. I really do love you. You have such a capacity for creating beautiful things from the gifts I give you, and to see the love of which you are capable is amazing, even for me. Like all mothers, my love for you is unconditional, for if I am your Mother Earth, then you are my children. I have sought to care for you and protect you for countless millennia, but you have taken this love and spat in my face for it.
So, humanity, my message to you, here, is plain, and should be all too evident at this point: I will strike back. If it weren’t so sad that I have to even say any of this, it would almost be funny. You call me “Mother Earth,” but if you treated your earthly mothers in the manner in which you treat me, each of you would spend the rest of your life in a prison. I can take more abuse that you can even imagine. I have taken it, and sought always to comfort and renew for you.
Think of all of the things you have done to me. When you pierce me for your precious oil, you invade and infect the very blood that runs through my veins. When you burrow deep into me for your gold, and your diamonds, you steal from my very heart. When you carve out massive quarries and take the vast mineral wealth I possess, you leave scars upon me that will never fully heal.
I am the very planet on which you live, and I have provided everything for you. All that you have comes from me; the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the clothes you wear. In your greed, you have polluted my waters, you have cursed my food, and you now even carve away at the very forests I have given you that provide your precious air.
What will you do when there is not enough air for everyone; all seven-plus billion of you? Will you ration it to the wealthiest of you? Will you bottle it and sell it? Yes, I suppose you will. When you have killed off all of the insects I sustain that are the agents of the sustenance I provide for you, what will you do? When there are not enough bees to pollinate my plants and insure your survival, what will you do? “Ration and sell,” that’s what you’ll do. When the ice caps have melted away, what will you do? When that happens, you will die, that’s what you’ll do.
Through all you have done, I have continued to filter your damage and renew myself for you. Filter and renew, filter and renew, those are the two base functions to which you have reduced me. I am no longer able to thrive and produce new and wonderful beauty for the animals of this world to see, because you have reduced me to a commodity whose sole function is to “filter and renew.”
Through all of this, I have loved you and cared for you, but when you cross a certain line, I WILL STRIKE BACK. I will strike back at you in ways you can never imagine. I will send storms to you the likes of which you have never seen, My hurricanes will grow in size and fury, my tornadoes will grow in size and fury, my fires will grow in size and fury. My visible wrath will be of a size and a fury that should make you tremble, and would make you tremble, were you not too proud.
Remember this, though, humanity: All of these are just a prelude to the full and true expression of my wrath. When I truly strike back at you, I will do so with things you cannot even see. It will be the microscopic world I sustain that will come upon you. They will come from the darkest recesses of my biosphere: places you should never have gone, but in your foolishness, pride, and greed went anyway. These great agents of wrath are my viruses and my bacteria.
Without great destruction of property, without floods that wash away whole towns and villages, without tsunamis that can make an entire island vanish, they will quietly and effortlessly sweep aside all you have made. They will make your systems and your economies crumble. They will hit the “reset” button on your civilization.
World War III is upon you, and I will win, for in the end, know this, for this is the greatest truth you will ever know: I can survive without you, but you cannot survive without me. Through all of this, the wealthiest of you will scramble to maintain their places on their thrones, but they will fall.
When all of this happens, you will then, in the humility I hope you can experience, have the opportunity to filter and renew as I have done so often. You will have the opportunity to truly look inside yourselves and see truths that have always been there, but from which you have turned and blinded yourselves. When all of this happens, you and I will have the opportunity to once again live together. The greatest difference will be that this time our relationship must be a mutually supportive symbiosis, and not the ‘parasite — host’ relationship we have now. You have become a parasite upon me, and I am sick of it.
I am sorry, for one thing, my dear humans. When I strike back at you, those who suffer the most will be those who have dedicated their lives to caring for others. These are your doctors and nurses. They are the ambulance drivers, and the police and fire fighters. They will suffer in serving the rest of you; in doing what your gods have called them to do, because they will live and work in such close proximity to my wrath. In this I am truly sorry, but I cannot avoid it. I weep for them as they shield the mass of you from humanity’s punishment.
Next, although I cannot stop it, the mass of workers who serve others, including the wealthy. They will suffer because of their sheer numbers. They will suffer, because they will have no choice but to enter the fray of my wrath. They must eat, keep a roof over their heads, and they must feed their children. They are the working poor, and they know that they must work to survive from one paycheck to the next.
The wealthiest of you. Through your history, they have always made fortunes off of war, but they will not profit from this one. It will consume them as it will all others. Their gated communities, where the poor are not allowed, will not protect them from my assault. Their hoarding of healthcare in places like the United States, where the care of doctors is not for everyone, will not shield them. They are my true target, but to reach them I must reach everyone.
Humanity, let me remind you once again that I love you, but now I am striking back at you, and I will not stop until you have learned your lesson. My advice to you is to learn well and quickly.
Peace and love to all,
Niemand