As you’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly aware that protecting you means more than ensuring your short-term safety. It also means ensuring that you’ll have a safe planet to live on.

Sent on

May 8, 2016

Linda Hutchins-Knowles

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To my precious children,

The day you were born, it was love at first sight. As we cradled you in our arms, your dad and I vowed to do everything in our power to protect you and help you grow up strong and healthy.

At first, that meant concrete things, like researching the safest car seats, baby-proofing the house, and buying organic food. As you’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly aware that protecting you means more than ensuring your short-term safety. It also means ensuring that you’ll have a safe planet to live on.

Sometimes you wonder why I talk so much about climate change, why I bring you to lobby our Representatives, why we participate in climate marches and rallies. It’s because everything you depend on for survival—clean air, safe water, food security, peace and stability, protection from extreme weather—is threatened by the pollution and climate disruption caused by burning fossil fuels.

Here in California, we’re already experiencing severe drought, rising sea levels, and raging wildfires. And if humans continue to burn fossil fuels unabated, the future—your future—looks even bleaker.

But I’m not giving up hope. I’m doing everything in my power to help transition society onto a sustainable path. That means more than just reducing my own carbon footprint. It means speaking up, taking action, voting, mobilizing others, and demanding that our leaders implement policies that will drive a rapid and complete transition to clean energy.

We have all the technologies and policies (like putting a price on carbon) that we need to jettison fossil fuels and power our economies with clean, renewable energy instead. All that’s missing is the political will to implement them. And if you’re reading this thirty-five years from now, I hope that means that we found it!

For what’s at stake is more than just your survival. What’s at stake is the very survival of the human species, and countless other species. So I’m fighting for your future, for our future, and for the beautiful, fragile places I love—like Lake Tahoe and the redwood forests, the coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest. I hope they will still be here when you grow up—and that you and your grandchildren will have a habitable planet to live on.

Love always,
Your mom

Linda Hutchins-Knowles
San Jose, CA

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More Messages to the Future

Dear Children and Grandchildren,

I see a world full of hope fueled by the desire for change.

AMORI MIEI EMMA DOMINGA E MAMMA AURELIE

Mamma e Papà cercano insieme sempre di darti il meglio però anche tu dovrai fare la tua parte nel mondo.

My Dear Grandchildren,

In writing this letter to you, I am searching for ways to make my connection and commitment to you more present in my current experience

Dear X—, Dear A—,

As with our struggles to eliminate police brutality, as with hate crimes, so it is with climate change – there are actually a lot of people out there who care.

Dear Rowan and Anaka,

If we could talk, I would not be able to bear your gaze as you ask: How could you, the people in a position to change the course of climate change, fail to act?

Dear Grandchildren,

I hope we can pass on a better place to live so that my grandchildren and their future children can enjoy the beauty of nature that our wonderful God has given us.

Paz e bem

Vivamos a vida com intensidade, Não nos importando a localidade.

Dear Madeleine,

First of all I hope we succeeded in our dream that yours is a better world than the world of 2021. Today, the forests are burning, the sea levels are rising and wild weather is everywhere. But we are working hard and I’m confident we will succeed.

Dear Nolan, Patrick, Cullen and Gabriel,

This Mother’s Day I am again thinking of my grandsons future and what I am doing to change the world if only by a small fraction.

Dear Future Today,

Here in California we’re starting to recognize our climate changing the natural world around us.

Oh My Lovely Faizan,

I love you my son. You are waking up now. Hopefully tomorrow, more of us will, too.

Dear tomorrow,

Unfortunately, our selfishness and excessive greed have closed our eyes to the well-being of the planet, and it has suffered the consequences.

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