Sophie Franklin's Letter

To my children,

A good person told me once that it was no good trying to encourage politicians to think about the climate emergency. That the only way to make a difference was for us all to do what we can, in our own corners.

I am told that if we demonstrate, the Government will listen to us and act accordingly. Big Corporations and Governments have known about the Climate Crisis to come and we have demonstrated in the street for decades, but it’s no longer enough.

The terrifying signs are here - more storms, more extreme weather events, ice caps melting, extinctions, an exponential loss of biodiversity - and so many of the simple everyday things we take for granted are already changing. In traffic choked cities and towns, trees planted in square of concrete struggle to thrive; birds have taken to singing at night –the only time they can make themselves heard.

My hope for you, and for your children, is that in a few years’ time, when our environment has been given the space and time it needs to breathe again and to recover, that trees will thrive wherever they’re planted, that the birds will once again sing in daylight.

And I believe we will look back on these dark days, realise how close we came to disaster, to losing everything, and thank god we acted, that we came out of our corners, pulled together .

I read "The future we choose" by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, while I was on holiday, and they give lots of good reasons why and how we can save the planet, but they do stress we all have to get involved.
So, please, let's start straight away while there is time.