It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the disconnect between those who are comfortable and the suffering of those affected by environmental destruction.
Evo Morales highlights the issue of environmental neglect by contrasting the comfortable living conditions of people in wealthy, air-conditioned spaces with the dire circumstances faced by families in impoverished regions like Bolivia. He calls for empathy and a recognition of our responsibility towards those suffering from the consequences of our policies, urging a shift in perspective to foster greater awareness and action against environmental degradation.
In practice
In a speech on climate awareness, use this quote to illustrate the disparity between privilege and suffering.
Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city.
The peoples of the Andes believe in the concept of 'living well' instead of wanting to 'live better' by consuming more, regardless of the cost to our neighbors and our environment.
I don't know lots of things but I know this: next year when spring flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to drown in the shimmering miles of it.
For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.
Man must be able to escape civilization if he is to survive. Some of his greatest needs are for refuges and retreats where he can recapture for a day or a week the primitive conditions of life.
And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together.
If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
I go to the mountains for an adventure and each time I pray I will get up and down again.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.