To All Whom It May Concern (and this should concern all of you),
The world has changed immensely from the time I was born until the time I am writing this letter to you all. I don’t fear the new changes that will happen over the course of the next few decades, for I will be old enough to know how to withstand radical changes. But I am cautious that the truly important changes will be too slow to transpire, or be non-existent completely. There will always be new phones and new gadgets, but a healthy planet is not something I can promise you, and that is what worries me.
Beautiful places we could have made memories in might not even be more than a footnote in a geography book by the time you read this. And for that, I am sorry. I am sorry that we could not usher in a new of respect and love for the environment strong enough to withstand the perceived “drawbacks” of doing so. I will never admit defeat while I still breathe, but the uphill battle against the current oligarchy we live under needs to be multi-generational. Every generation has their fighters, and at this moment I can’t claim to be close the front line. But I have done my best to stay informed and vigilant in an era inundated by misinformation and intentional deceit. In your present day if there are still avenues for like-minded individuals to discuss alternative viewpoints that stray from the mainstream narrative, then I still have hope for subsequent generations.
For you stats-hungry types, I urge you to check out a few metrics and compare them with current data, accurate as of early November 2017. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have reached 406.94 parts per million, the highest amount in over 650,000 years. 16 of our 17 warmest years ever have occurred since 2001. Some of these basic figures were put together by NASA (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, just in case this organization is dissolved by the time you read this.) How’s the ozone hole doing? With any luck, this question comes across as peculiar since hopefully ‘the ozone layer having a hole in it’ has not been an issue for many years now. As of typing, the hole in the ozone layer is already the smallest it has been since 1988. There are plenty of alarming statistics, but there is no need for excessive doom and gloom when there are countless committed individuals out there working to fix the root causes of many of these issues. Positivity and working for your fellow human to protect the environment rather than squeeze profit out of it is somewhat of a hard sell for many in this society. This is where the focus should be, I know you’re capable of blessing this movement with your contributions!
I hope you are not stressing about the uncontrollable factors that shape parts of your life. But I also hope you are relentless about changing the controllable factors, both for your own sake as well as the planet and your fellow human. Change often comes from the will of many people, this is true, but that movement is often started by a single person changing something important within one other person, and so on.
Mother Nature desperately needs our help; by the time you read this, I hope we as a species have done enough to facilitate future generations in carrying on this pinnacle task. Thank you.
