My Reasons

Browsing Google during an extended study break this evening, I found out about the earthfireice campaign to collect a million pledges from individuals and businesses to to take simple steps to cut their carbon emissions. As I took my (six) pledges, I created a small profile and stuck it up to a google map. I'm now a small green dot in Colchester (the only green dot in Colchester up on that particular map - if anyone'd like to make some promises and keep me company, it'd be great!)
Anyway - as I created the profile, I came to the 'spieling' part that usually annoys me senseless. But today, I realised something that's been at the back of my mind, wordless, for quite a while. A large part of my reasons for taking personal action against global climate change has less to do with the misery I know it will inflict on my own children (should I choose to have any) than on the misery I know it is already inflicting on 'other' species. I don't want to go into the myriad statistics on the numbers of species we can expect to lose from the direct and indirect effects of a drastically changed world. Instead, these are my reasons:

The feel of monsoon rain on hot Indian earth, smelling like gardens in heaven will smell like.
The feel of cold breeze, laden with the scent of lemon trees. The splash of a polar bear, the water running off its fur. Butterflies. Hedegehogs waking up on time. Seals. Forest peace. The dance and war of ocean storms. The sight of fields ripening under an autumn afternoon.
All of these are my reasons.

At the end of the day, the only reason I need is to look out of my window and find the sun shining off the leaves of spring trees to Know that it is the 'right' thing to do to bleed to death, trying.