Anne Hanson, Retired

I start my car and think of you wondering
how it was that, so long ago, we drove alone,
even at speeds that wasted our gas,Read more

Loren Petrich

Dear Future Generations, As I write this, I ask: can my fellow citizens of Planet Earth can develop renewable energy sources fast enough? That is a vital part of reducing carbon emissions, because it avoids forcing an awkward choice between …Read more

Heather Karlson (on behalf of kids in The Global Warming Express), Board Member, The Global Warming Express

I am submitting this letter on behalf of 12 elementary school students who are members of The Global Warming Express, a kids' based think tank on climate change (Lucia, Phoebe, Aiden, Mags, Liliana, Taylor, Tenzin, Asha, Spencer, Hawk, Haley, and …Read more

L. David Roper, Physicist

You probably find it difficult to believe that we used to drive cars in which we exploded a dangerous liquid, called gasoline or diesel, to propel it. It took us a long time to realize that using electrons to propel …Read more

Gifford Pinchot III

Dear Granddaughter, I love you and want you to have a happy life. When you are 73, as I am today, and have a granddaughter of your own, you will care about her. I know that you would be quite …Read more

Ashly Olson, Student

Dear future descendants, I hope you are reading this in some history book, or on some blog years and years from the ones I’m living in. The world I live in is something that only seems to drift towards the …Read more

Jose Guerrero, Graphic Designer & Web Developer

Dear future spawn of mine, Sorry about the predicament we put you in. I know sorry won't stop the dryer longer droughts or reclaim the billions of acres of arid wasteland. Sorry won't calm the maniacal fervor of the superstorms …Read more

Aisha Kahlil, Member of the Grammy Award-Winning Troupe Sweet Honey in the Rock

I am a water child. In Jamaica, the fishermen call me “the mermaid.” Dancing in the fresh waters in Jamaica of the river, sea and the blue lagoon, while watching the fishermen with their fresh catch from those crystal waters, …Read more

The Staff and Supporters of Clean Wisconsin, Environmental Advocates

Dear Earth, We do not know how you will look in the next 50 or 100 years … but our world leaders will have a hand in determining that in Paris next month. But we do know how you have …Read more

Lisa Neff, Journalist

Dear future, I wish you could know the magnificent world I know. I grew up in a place romanticized in fiction as Greentown and, as an adult, I lived on the rocky seacoast of New Hampshire, along the mighty Mississippi, …Read more

J.D. Gibaurd, Agent Provacateur

Can truth be told? The past, if it exists, is an algorithm you can’t decode. But there are things you should know. Understand: Numbers are. Before we learned to count ten fingers, Pi was, doing what it does, carving a …Read more

Beth Esser, Stay-At-Home Mom

Dear future family, As I write this I picture my two young children at a time in their own lives when they are older than I am now. They are enjoying life with their children and grandchildren (& maybe even …Read more

Leonard Sobczak, Real Estate

To the children of the future; We tried. I was heartened back then when President Jimmy Carter was promoting and modeling fuel conservation. I was horrified when President Ronald Reagan dispensed with that message and heralded the era of gas …Read more

Carol Talmage, Retired from Human Services

Dear future generations, On what we have done in the 20th century: Technology before wisdom, greed before love, wealth before compassion. Too much, too big – unless you have nothing. Oil spills, plastic pervades, species disappear. Climate changes, ice melts, …Read more

Donnell Alexander, Award-winning Writer, Filmmaker and Radio Producer

Good day, my beautiful bounty. It probably feels redundant to someone rockin’ in 2070, a year that’s gotta be wavy in ways I can’t imagine, but. … Your great, great-grandpappy is old school. And when my old-school ass thinks about …Read more

Pam Houston, Author and Essayist

Dear Future Inhabitants of the Earth, I was speaking with an environmental scientist friend of mine not too long ago and he said he felt extremely grim about the fate of the earth in the hundred-year frame, but quite optimistic …Read more

Alec Binyon, Business Owner, Poet

Binyon Family Survivors, I lived in a time of staggering arrogance, when humanity was mentally ill. Since we discovered oil, our numbers have multiplied seven fold, we've destroyed half of the world's forests, poisoned the oceans, and changed life on …Read more

Joy Horowitz, Journalist, Author, Teacher

Dear Future Ones. Tonight, I'm going to a City Council meeting in Torrance, Ca. to hear how residents are worried about the future of the Exxon Mobil refinery there. It blew up about six months ago. The explosion shook houses …Read more

Steven T. Jones, Activist and Former Editor, San Francisco Bay Guardian

Dear Future Descendants, Greetings from the year everything changed, 2015, when we finally started to avert the climate catastrophe that was headed your way. The change began right here in the United States, and it spread around the world with …Read more

Amanda (Retired), Former News & Review Columnist

8/1/23 Dear Great Grandniece Who Probably Won’t Be Named After Me, I knew your great, great, great, grandmother—loved her like the daughter I never had. She was alive, as I was, when President Trump decided midway through his second term …Read more

Jane Smiley, Author, Pulitzer Prize Winner

Dear Great-Great-Granddaughter, Do you remember your grandmother Veronica? I am writing to you on the very day that your grandmother Veronica turned 7 months old—she is my first grandchild, and she is your grandmother. That is how quickly time passes …Read more

Michael Pollan, Author, Journalist, Activist and Professor

Dear Future Family, I know you will not read this note until the turn of the century, but I want to explain what things were like back in 2015, before we figured out how to roll back climate change. As …Read more

Melinda Welsh, Editor

Dear Future Family, I know you’ve heard plenty about what happened in Paris in 2015. But I was alive back then, so I wanted you to hear it from me. First, some history: Somehow, a cloak of denial got dropped, …Read more

Annie Leonard, Creator of the Story of Stuff and Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

It’s hard to imagine writing to the granddaughter of my own daughter, but if you’re anything like her - strong, smart, occasionally a little stubborn - then I have no doubt the world is in good hands. By now your …Read more