As you’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly aware that protecting you means more than ensuring your short-term safety. It also means ensuring that you’ll have a safe planet to live on.

Sent on by
Linda Hutchins-Knowles
Send Your Own Message

To my precious children,

The day you were born, it was love at first sight. As we cradled you in our arms, your dad and I vowed to do everything in our power to protect you and help you grow up strong and healthy.

At first, that meant concrete things, like researching the safest car seats, baby-proofing the house, and buying organic food. As you’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly aware that protecting you means more than ensuring your short-term safety. It also means ensuring that you’ll have a safe planet to live on.

Sometimes you wonder why I talk so much about climate change, why I bring you to lobby our Representatives, why we participate in climate marches and rallies. It’s because everything you depend on for survival—clean air, safe water, food security, peace and stability, protection from extreme weather—is threatened by the pollution and climate disruption caused by burning fossil fuels.

Here in California, we’re already experiencing severe drought, rising sea levels, and raging wildfires. And if humans continue to burn fossil fuels unabated, the future—your future—looks even bleaker.

But I’m not giving up hope. I’m doing everything in my power to help transition society onto a sustainable path. That means more than just reducing my own carbon footprint. It means speaking up, taking action, voting, mobilizing others, and demanding that our leaders implement policies that will drive a rapid and complete transition to clean energy.

We have all the technologies and policies (like putting a price on carbon) that we need to jettison fossil fuels and power our economies with clean, renewable energy instead. All that’s missing is the political will to implement them. And if you’re reading this thirty-five years from now, I hope that means that we found it!

For what’s at stake is more than just your survival. What’s at stake is the very survival of the human species, and countless other species. So I’m fighting for your future, for our future, and for the beautiful, fragile places I love—like Lake Tahoe and the redwood forests, the coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest. I hope they will still be here when you grow up—and that you and your grandchildren will have a habitable planet to live on.

Love always,
Your mom

Linda Hutchins-Knowles
San Jose, CA

Share on:
 
Send Your Own Message

More Messages to the Future

 

Isabelle minha querida neta!

Nossa vida só tem qualidade se tem natureza ao nosso redor.

 

Dear Tara,

I am sitting in a classroom thinking about you. Which is rare for me. I hope that our family has taken some initiative to do something about changing society instead of building robots and large houses.

 

Dear Chay and Kate,

Don’t ever let anyone tell you your actions don’t matter. Every single thing you do matters. You matter.

 

Dear future generations,

It’s never too late to make a difference. Our actions have very real consequences. We can educate ourselves, learn from our mistakes, and take action. We can hold companies like big oil and big plastic accountable for their negative impacts on the environment. We can educate ourselves and others about what causes climate change and what actions we as individuals can take to lower our carbon footprints.

 

Dear Evan,

What has most inspired me to act is wanting to be able to look you in the eye and say, “When I became aware of the existential threat of climate change, I did all I could.”  Despite my pessimism, I act in the hope it can make a difference for future generations and all the precious life on our fragile planet.

 

To the generation after mine,

But when you encounter that resistance–and you will, regularly–know that you must respond just how we have had to these past 50 years. With love, and sternness, and most of all, courage. Because that is what the resistance fears the most. We who came before you promise that we will do the same while we wait for you. Know that you will never be alone.

 

Dear Maddie,

Please know that I have tried very hard to be one of those people, to even make the smallest of changes in order to improve the world for you and your future.

 

Dear Me of Tomorrow,

I plan to plant more things this spring, as we do every year in our garden.

 

Dear Tomorrow,

My climate promise is to reduce electricity at home. I will turn off the TV and lights when I’m not in the room.

 

Dear girls,

I love you and I care deeply about your future.

 

Dear Tomorrow

I will become the change I wish to see in the world.

 

Dear Yasmine,

I tried to teach you of the importance of being satisfied with what you had within your hands.

View All Messages

Send Your Own Message