Dear Future self,

By the year 2050 you’ll be about 50 years old. I hope that the world has very different mindset about the environment than it does right now. In class, it seems like 2040 is one of the dates that comes up over and over again as a necessary turning point for our future. If everything went accordingly, I hope you can still go to Nantucket in the summer and see the family house. It’s not threatened by the rising ocean levels yet but some people are saying the entire island could be gone in the next hundred years. I hope that you took action to reduce your own emissions and to advocate for environmental policy. I’ve gotten very good at learning about and talking about the environment but I know I can get better at actually helping it. I hope single-use plastic is a distant memory and that Loyola finally got a dishwasher. Most of all, I hope that you still have hope for the world moving forward. Helping the environment won’t stop with one generation–it needs to be a continuous effort that we improve every day.