Only last week a case in the United States, involved a child being born, who's father was dead prior to conception, the mother was a surrogate and the egg belonged to a donor - in effect the child was ownerless. The dead man's wife who had commisioned all this, could walk away from the child should she so choose and the state could do nothing about it - no one was legally responsible for this child. Taken to the extremes a child of mine could be born twenty, who knows, a hundred years after I have long be dead and buried. A child of mine could be a martian colonist for goodness sake, but there again perhaps that's what the scientists have in mind. Set against all that, the ozone hole is getting bigger, the polar caps are melting, freak waves are becoming to frequent to be regarded as freak anymore.
Forest fires rage across the planet and desertfication continues to spread.
Perhaps Mother Nature has had enough of us. Innocence, hope and happiness, replaced by worry, suspicion and guilt about what we have done and what we can do. That's why people supported the pertol blockade, why they protest at world bank meetings, why the jury didn't convict the GM Protestors and why we don't trust our politicians. Perhaps it was the momentary sight of my exhalation caught in the chill of the night or the faint smell of a bonfire lingering in the damp air that prompted me to note that summer had passed and that autumn had arrived. Either way being a child of the autumn, it was a marker that another year has gone by in life's great journey.