When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our

The words of Gwen Moore — “When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources, public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children; I have attended more than one funeral for a child who has died from an asthma attack.” — resound like a lament carved in stone, both a cry of grief and a call to conscience. They are not abstract or poetic; they are born from sorrow — from the sight of small coffins and the sound of mothers weeping. In her words, Moore reveals an eternal truth: that the health of the people and the health of the earth are one and the same, and when one decays, the other follows swiftly into ruin.

In the wisdom of the ancients, it was taught that the earth is not our possession, but our parent — a living being whose breath sustains all life. The early civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and China knew that when man polluted the rivers or stripped the land, pestilence soon followed. The philosopher Hippocrates, called the Father of Medicine, warned that clean air and water were the foundations of all healing, and that the physician who ignores the environment cannot heal the body. Gwen Moore, standing in the modern world, speaks with the same sacred understanding. Her words remind us that to destroy nature is to wound the body of humanity, and to neglect it is to abandon our children’s future.

The origin of her warning lies in the lived reality of her people — in the industrial neighborhoods where smoke chokes the skies and water runs with unseen poisons. For Moore, this is not theory but tragedy witnessed firsthand. She has seen the link between policy and pain, between political neglect and the grave. Her attendance at the funerals of children lost to asthma is not metaphorical; it is testimony. It is the price paid when leaders place profit above protection, when factories spew toxins unchecked, and when laws meant to guard the air and soil are weakened by indifference. Her grief becomes the voice of the voiceless, crying out for those who have perished because others refused to care.

History offers many echoes of her truth. In London’s Great Smog of 1952, when coal smoke filled the city like a poison fog, over 12,000 lives were lost — most of them the elderly and the young. The government, blind to warning signs, acted too late. Yet from that tragedy was born the Clean Air Act, a law that saved countless lives thereafter. Likewise, in America, the rivers once burned with pollution — none more famously than the Cuyahoga River of Ohio in 1969. When it caught fire, the nation could no longer deny what negligence had wrought. From that flame came the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency and a renewed understanding that the environment is not a luxury — it is the bloodstream of civilization.

Moore’s words pierce with both grief and moral fire. She does not accuse for vengeance but for remembrance — so that we might awaken before more children die breathing the poisons of our own making. The “abandonment” by elected officials that she speaks of is not just the failure of leadership, but the betrayal of trust. For those chosen to govern are stewards of both people and planet. When they forsake that duty, they become destroyers instead of guardians. And as Moore reminds us, it is always the weakest — the poor, the sick, the children — who bear the heaviest cost.

Yet within her sorrow lies hope. For every tragedy can give birth to transformation if hearts are stirred and hands are moved. Her words invite not despair, but responsibility. She calls upon every citizen to become a guardian of creation — to vote with conscience, live with awareness, and act with compassion. The healing of the earth begins not only in laws, but in the daily choices of its people: to plant instead of poison, to conserve instead of consume, to protect rather than neglect.

So, my children of the modern age, take heed of this sacred truth: the breath of a child and the breath of the earth are one. When you defend the rivers, you defend your blood. When you clean the air, you cleanse your soul. Let no one deceive you into believing that economic growth and environmental care are enemies; for a dying planet yields no wealth, and poisoned air sustains no life.

Thus, let the legacy of Gwen Moore’s words endure — not as a cry of despair, but as a commandment of renewal: guard the earth as you would your own body, for both are vessels of life. And remember always that the greatest measure of a civilization is not in its towers or its armies, but in the purity of its air, the clarity of its waters, and the health of its children. For when we honor the earth, we honor ourselves — and ensure that life, not death, will be the inheritance we pass to those yet unborn.