As part of the Letters to the Future project, which coincides with the Paris climate talks, we asked local dignitaries, including CL News & Politics Editor Kate Bradshaw, to offer their perspective on what out future is going to look like, which many say largely hinges on the climate action that's supposed to result from the upcoming summit in France.
Dear humans of the future,
This is paper, which I bet you don’t come across very often nowadays.
It comes from trees, or at least it did.
Neat, huh?
Since you are reading this, I guess it means we made it, as a species.
Go us.
I knew we could do it.
I was supposed to write to my children’s children’s children’s children’s children. But I never had them. The future was too uncertain and I didn’t want to bring someone onto the planet only to have her get stuck with rising seas, food instability, water scarcity and everything else associated with the environmental hellscape that humans of the present seem bent on creating right now. Also, I was afraid of what pregnancy would do to my waistline.
But other humans did make more humans, so I’m writing to you.
Here’s why.
At the moment, humans are in the process of spitting enough carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere to make the world’s average temperature go up very quickly while at the same time turning our oceans into an acidic stew that prevents little sea creatures from making their seashells.
We are doing this because we don’t like to walk places and we live and work in big boxes that are kept very cold so that humans can wear suits everywhere. Also, we let humans who don’t care about other humans be in charge.
But that will all change after Paris, where all of our leaders will talk about how to prevent the world from becoming a really tough place to live. Ask your history teacher about Mad Max.
Those leaders will come up with a list of ways to stop all of those gases from spewing out into our air. Power companies, the ones that make lots of money from blowing cold air on people who wear suits, will have new rules to abide by. They'll grumble at first because those new rules mean a little less money for them, but they will change eventually. They have to.
And humans will adjust, mostly.
They might not be able to stop the ocean from creeping in, so that’s why there’s so much flooding and a bunch of houses are underwater. But little sea creatures will still be able to make their shells, and crops will still grow. Because those humans who were born in the time between my life and yours weren’t perfect, but they were smart, and they figured it out.
Know why?
Because humans, silly and selfish as they may be at times, figure things out. It’s what they do and why you are here to
read this.
Love,
Kate Bradshaw
P.S. Please say hello to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for me.
Kate Bradshaw is CL’s News & Politics Editor
