Julia's Letter

To my grandson Hugo,

I hope when you look back on your childhood you remember

A bee disappearing into a speckled foxglove flower;
Squirrels chasing each other through the apple blossom;
Fox cubs playing in the long grass, vixen watching on;
Damselflies swooping over the pond, iridescent blue.

If you cannot remember any of these things, it will be because countries and governments and those with influence put short term goals, votes and personal ambition first. It will be because not enough companies decided to take action and make the changes necessary, prioritising profit instead. It will be because not enough individuals recognised they had a part to play and decided to live their lives as they always had, because that was easier.

I hope when you get to school you study history and how humanity narrowly averted disaster by pulling back from the brink just in time in the early 2020s. I hope you study geography and how the fires, floods and other disasters happening all around the world at that time, sent terrible warnings that humanity was sowing the seeds of its own and the natural world's destruction. I hope you study biology and realise how many species were lost during this time of collective blindness.

Above all, I hope you are living a life where there is still a natural world left to appreciate and enjoy.

At this moment in time, that is all I have left: hope.

Your loving grandmother