Richard (Dr. R.L.Symonds)'s Letter

To my children and grandchildren and anyone else much younger,

At 78, I could well put my feet up and say that this climate thing is beyond me and I will be gone before it really hits us. But I have children and grandchildren and they will inherit what I and my friends and comrades have not yet been able to change. Its selfish, but I do not want them to blame me in their future, but to remember me as a fighter for our planet and our species. Prof. Brian Cox characteristically made the crucial point, which to me amounts to a religious statement. For all we know we are the only intelligence in the Universe, and possibly our planet bears the only life. This means to me that the Universe - which must be everything - has managed by chance through its natural laws, to create a glitch which allows entropy to reverse and produce life, and that through natural selection, has produced us as we are now. We may be the Universe’s intelligence. This is an enormous responsibility.The effect of billions of years are concentrated in the few decades in our future. If this light goes out, there may be only darkness.