Cait's Letter

To my four children, young adults starting out in life,

I hear you. How hopeless you feel for the future, and how let down you are by the complacency of my generation and all your elders. You feel overwhelmed by the scale of the climate crisis, and feel powerless to change it.

It is hard for you to perceive your own nascent generational power, the potential for your positive climate activism, when we have barely demonstrated our own to you.

I share you fears more than you know. I don’t want to leave you facing catastrophe after I’ve gone.

So I promise you now that I am going to act urgently to tackle the climate crisis. I will stop being distracted by daily life from becoming active in our joint fight for your future. I will stop telling myself that my diligent recycling efforts are enough, that my electric car is enough, that flying less is enough. I will stop telling myself that remembering to take my reusable bags to the shops is enough, nor is using biodegradable detergent or rejecting single-use plastic bottles. I need to step up, to shout out, to proactively lobby all those individual people with power and influence to commit to immediate, climate-saving actions. I need to lobby hard, as if my life depends on them hearing me. Because it does. And so do yours.

I will prove to you that I have heard you, and that you can trust me to react with urgency and energy.

Love mum xxxx