Andii Bowsher's Letter

To my grandchildren ,

As I write this, I am conscious of the struggle it has been to try to get enough people, governments and business leaders to take climate and environment seriously enough. I've been aware since about 1981 that there could be a problem with what we used to call 'greenhouse gases' insulating the world so that there'd be a build up of heat. I and others tried to respond to this knowledge: we gave up eating meat, we reduced or gave up personal cars, we tried to choose products that had a lower impact, we tried to encourage others to take it seriously. Instead we were mocked and marginalised.
I wonder whether I could have done more. I certainly got to the point where having made changes in my own life, it became evident that we needed a culture, a collective way of life, where doing the right thing by the planet and by other people, into the future, needed collective changes upheld by law and by investing resources and effort in the way that only governments can do. Yet big money deformed the social, global conversation to delay, delay and delay taking necessary action.
I fear now that it is too late to prevent the world's climate systems, weather patterns and biomes from harms that will make human life more difficult and impoverish most of us. I fear that the interests that have kept denying the need and delaying the mitigations needed will continue to carry too many people into a future more difficult and miserable than they comprehend. We have been failed by the people who should have shown true and courageous leadership. We needed lions but were led by donkeys (to borrow an image from world war I).
I fear that their remorse will be hard to live with.
I hope that we may yet find ways to keep the changes that are now baked into the biochemistry of the planet within margins that we can adapt to.
I hope that maybe we can help even now and even then, to make the world a better place, but we will do so struggling against an ever stronger current.