Serving mom breakfast in bed. A walk to the local bakery. Nine holes of golf. Gifts galore. Each family has its own traditions for celebrating the love and hard work our moms contribute to the longevity of family life. One of my favorite things to do for my mom on Mother’s Day when I was young (and a slightly precocious one I admit) was to make a booklet of coupons which she could redeem to get me to do various chores around the house: one coupon for doing the dishes, one coupon for vacuuming the living room, etc. My mom put a mountain of time and effort into making our home a warm, loving, inviting place, and while doing chores was a fact of life for me, I wanted to assert that I was a willing helper…and I wanted to smooth things over for the times I whined.
Fast forward to 2009. This year, “greening” the home is getting a lot of play in the blogosphere around Mother’s Day. There are countless lists of green gifts you can buy your mother. But while organic chocolate and bathrobes spun from organic cotton might add creature comforts to your mom’s life that are less environmentally harmful, there is little discussion of the fact that simply heating, cooling, and powering a home harms the environment significantly. And not even a truckload of organic chocolate, unfortunately, will help matters…except to relieve the stress your mom would feel from realizing her house is crawling with brown energy made from dirty fossil fuels.
Even if your refrigerator is full of sustainable organic products, it’s also infested with brown energy. Even if your playlist is full of Al Gore’s podcasts, the power flowing through your stereo is dirty brown juice made by burning fossil fuels. Moms who make the switch to solar set a great example for their kids and help rid their homes of dirty brown energy.
As Mother’s Day approaches, I challenge all kids out there to make a coupon for their moms with this IOU: “If we go solar and stop using so much brown energy, I promise not to serve you a Lucky Charms omelet [et al.] in bed next Mother’s Day.”
