A letter to the Earth
Dear the Earth,
Hi, Earth. How’s it going? I hear you’ve not been too well. Me neither. It must be something going around.
To be honest, it feels strange writing to you like this. I think that’s because, in a funny way, it almost feels like writing a letter to myself. We do have a lot in common, after all. You’re two-thirds water, so am I. Every part of me was once somewhere in your oceans, skies, rocks or living things. When I die, I will drift away again and scatter into a billion invisible places. You’ll keep on turning, light and dark, hot and cold. Will you remember me? Maybe somewhere, somehow.
Anyway, I digress. Really I wanted to write this letter because of the bloody awful state of things right now. I have to admit I kind of feel responsible as a member of my species and that it was time I came clean. You’ve been putting up with a lot lately, and there’s no denying that this is basically down to us humans. It’s pretty embarrassing really, because you’ve always been so very accommodating, and you simply don’t deserve to be treated this way. Ingratitude hardly begins to describe it.
What were we thinking, digging up your stores of carbon and burning them, over and again, until the air filled with poison and the climate began to change? Did we have some primal vendetta against the forests themselves, that we had to replace them with dust and howling wind? It’s hard to know what it was all for, when it didn’t even make us happy. Maybe it’s your fault, Earth, for allowing this freak of evolution. Why on Earth did you let loose on yourself this out-of-control chimpanzee offshoot? Surely you must have known it couldn’t end well.
But well, here we are, and there’s not much we can do about the past. It’s down to us now, with all due appreciation for your continued provision of air, water, food, and shelter. We can still sort this out and rein in the harm we’re doing, though I realise we don’t have a great track record with this. I know we’re more than pushing our luck, but I wanted to ask: could you please just bear with us a little longer? Even though we’ve done so much damage in such a short time, from our perspective we’re still struggling to get it together to do the right thing.
There are those that say that whatever happens, you’ll be OK. In some ways they’re right, and who knows what bizarre and outlandish creatures will swim, fly and creep across you millions of years from now, when we’re long since vanished. But between you and me, I think this is a pretty amazing time to be alive. How callous and cold would we be to throw it all away, the rich sweeps of life and the teeming cities, the tundras and the tropical forests, the icescapes and the mangroves, never mind the chance for our kids to experience this short magical spell too. No, there’s no more bleak, no more wrong view, than to say that this doesn’t matter and that we’re just a passing fad.
We owe you, Earth. I might only be one tiny little bit of you, but I promise you that I, at least, won’t go down without a fight.
With love,
Stuart
