This is an open letter to my kids and to all others in their
generation, and indeed to all creatures and plants of Earth.
I’m sorry. My generation and too many generations before us
didn’t appreciate what a special place our planet is, how precious the cargo it
carries and how fragile are the environments that support this living
cargo. We stripped the planet of the resources
it needs to be healthy. We altered the genetic
mix of plants, preventing the nourishment of the soil and to compensate for
this we dumped tons of fertilizers and pesticides. We now measure in hundreds
of square miles the size of the “dead zones” at the mouths of major rivers as
they carry these poisons into the oceans.
We stopped heating a healthy diet and to support the demand
for our unhealthy eating habits, we concentrated the animals needed to make those
foods, causing a concentration of wastes the further that depleted the land and
water’s ability to clean itself, and that flows into the rivers and aquifers
that we ourselves need to survive. We
pumped these animals full of hormones and antibiotics, so they would grow
faster but at a cost of the worsening health of the human population and the
very real threat of super bacteria that may well be the death knell of the human
race.
We built bigger and faster vehicles for personal
transportation and the byproducts of the fuel needed to power them is warming
our planet, destroying entire ecosystems and threatening all life forms on
Earth. And when we ran out of the fuel,
instead of creating better vehicles, we went to war to obtain the fuel from
other countries.
We enslave children to create the products they we buy, not
because they are superior to other products, but to be “cool,” so we can, for a
while at least, imagine that we are like some other human artificially inflated
in status because they can run faster or jump higher or throw harder than
others.
We have so mechanized all the apparatus that make all these
foods and products that people have flocked to the cities at rates that our
construction and infrastructure and services can’t support. We are crowding ourselves together so tightly
that our species, not having evolved for this type stress, is creating individuals
who vent the pressure of their sorry lives by killing dozens of others.
I apologize to all of your generation, Josh, Rhiannon, Ethan
and Azuranna. My generation, and those before
mine, screwed up our world. The heritage we leave you is a sad one.
I only hope that you can learn from our mistakes and, before
it’s too late, fix the mess we’ve made.
