Charlotte's Letter

To the children of the future,

One of my favourite things to do is wander over to a natural area and breathe. To fill my lungs with fresh air, watch birds soaring through the sky, listen to the rustling of leaves. I hope you can do this. I hope there are still wild places that haven’t been bombarded by litter or invaded by houses or dried out from drought. I hope you get to experience the joy of watching dolphins playing in the waves, the awe of seeing a thousand year old tree, the serenity of climbing a mountain to find no evidence of people on the land below. I hope you enjoy the magic of snow and the snowman building and sledding that comes with it. I hope you don’t have to worry about whether your children and their children and people all around Earth will get to thrive in a world humans haven’t destroyed.

If not, I am sorry. I am sorry that profit came before all else, backwards ways refused to be changed, action wasn’t taken. I am sorry that those in power did not listen to the experts, did not believe the facts, did not care enough about the disaster to come and the disaster already here. I am sorry that I did not fight hard enough for my voice to be heard, that I did not think I could make a difference, that the needs of people now and those to come were overshadowed by the greedy desires of the wealthy. We had plenty of warning, plenty of opportunity to change for the better, but we did not.

As I am writing this, a news article has been released with scientists warning that we need to act now or it it too late. I hope, for all of us, that we do everything in our power to change the collision course the climate is currently on.