I Hope...
“Because maybe, just maybe, if we “become the change we wish to see,” we really can change the world.”
Dear People of the Future,
My name is Lauren Scheller-Wolf. I’m fifteen. I don’t know anything about the future, of course, I don’t know what your lives are like; you’ve probably created things I could never have dreamed of. But I hope that the world you live in is better than the world we’re in right now.
I hope you’ve discovered a cheap, renewable, clean, form of energy. I hope you’ve realized how devastating it is on the environment to eat meat and animal products like eggs and milk. I hope you still have animals like gorillas and polar bears; that they haven’t disappeared due to deforestation and melting ice caps. I hope you’ve figured out a way to close the hole in the ozone layer. I hope that major cities all over the world aren’t underwater because of the rising oceans, while other cities all over the world are suffering from extreme drought due to global warming. I hope you’ve figured out a way to feed earth’s growing population, and I hope that air pollution hasn’t caused hundreds of thousands of people to suffer from asthma, lung damage, and respiratory ailments.
I hope all of these things, and most of all, I hope that my generation and previous generations have not damaged the world beyond repair. I hope that you, whoever you are, can still fix it, because this is the only world we have.
Gandhi said “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” and I hope my generation and future generations will realize this. I hope the people at the Paris climate talks will realize this. Because maybe, just maybe, if we “become the change we wish to see,” we really can change the world.
Love,
Lauren
