Houston we had a problem...

Hi, my name is Carter and together with my sister Olivia, we started our own nonprofit called One More Generation (OMG). We are writing to tell you about a problem we were facing back when we were just early teenagers. A problem that thanks to the foresight of some amazing people convening in Paris in 2015 we were eventually able to correct.

I remembered I had just watched the movie Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks which had a famous line "Houston, we have a problem…" When I think about the situation we were in, with the ever-increasing temperatures on the planet, our oceans becoming more and more acidic, and the constant devastation we were causing with all the oil spills that had happened in our lifetime already at that point… that is the phrase that came to mind… Houston, we have a problem.

Hi everyone, this is Olivia and we did have a problem, one that could no longer be ignored, and it was up to all of us to get involved and find the solution. As the number of inhabitants on our planet continued to grow at unsustainable rates, we were creating a problem that took each and every one of us to solve.

As we contemplate what our world will look like in 10, 20 or even 30 years from then, it scared us. Experts told us that we needed to keep carbon levels at 350ppm to maintain a healthy environment and we are already at 400ppm and that continued to climb. Population increases also continued to spiral out of control which only drove the numbers higher and higher.

There was another famous quote in the movie which equally expresses the situation we were in and that is… "Failure is not an option..." And that is so true. We needed to get it right and we needed to do it NOW! We needed everyone to devote all their energy in creating viable renewable energy sources and immediately start scaling back our dependency on fossil fuels, while getting a handle on the increase in population on the planet.

Thanks to the foresight and commitment of many caring people, we were able to finally get our house in order and avoid what was almost certain death to our planet. We are so grateful to all that forged ahead and created the change we needed and the change you deserve.