19 March 2050
Dear Future Generations,
Sorry. We didn’t get there in time. We were too late. Except we had time. We had time to change. Instead, we put it off, waiting for the miracle that never came to come and always reassuring ourselves with the phrase: we will do it tomorrow. Tomorrow never came. And I’m sorry to tell you that because of us and the destruction we caused, there won’t be many tomorrows left.
Sorry.
Sorry that in this mess of a world we left you, time is dwindling. I would say enjoy the time that remains – except that vast views are now block buildings, open air is clogged with chemicals, rushing rivers are furious floods and trees … Trees are gone.
Sorry that instead of seeing trees as graceful homes for now extinct species, we view them as nothing but paper; money. Great big money-making machines. A whole forest; trees originally laden with branches of bountiful blossoms become drenched in shimmering gold coins in our greedy, human eyes. So we chop them down, using ugly, looming machines to rip them apart at the rate of forty football pitches a minute, tearing down branches, digging desperately for any trace of riches whatsoever.
And what did we do with that money? I’ll tell you. We built cars; polluting the air mile by mile. We built factories, towering over masked faces, coughing and spluttering – emitting vast clouds of thick, dark pollution-chemicals filling the once clear air, coming over us like a suffocating blanket, draping itself over any clear sky. It’s warm. Too warm. Too hot – melting the ice caps.
Sorry. Sorry that the ice is no more. Sorry that the water is rising; lapping at our ankles now but it will surge. It will flood. It will take lives. Your lives. Sorry.
Sorry for draining the beauty of life from your eyes. Sorry for using the very earth as a personal credit card with no limit. Sorry that your view from your grey, block apartment consists of a polluted sky, concrete pavements and monstrous diggers, churning up any remaining blades of grass. Sorry that time slipped through our fingers.
Katie Skiffington, 13