There is NOTHING ironic about show choir… or the environment!

 (Q8) “A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children.” 

-        John James Audubon

 

Dear Mr. President

            It’s an honor to write to you, I’ve never written a letter to someone so important before. But I should clarify that ‘important’ isn’t the same as ‘respected.’ I may be a high school student and you might’ve just tossed this letter aside, but I’m already working on seven other copies of this that I plan to send to you biweekly! 

Now, the reason I, as the sole member of our school environmentalist club, is writing to you, is because of what you’ve done. Or rather, what you haven’t done. No one cares about the environment anymore! Our generation’s inspirations, our role models, have stopped caring and therefore influenced us not to as well. Look at Taylor Swift, facing no repercussions for the 8,293 tons of carbon emissions she releases annually with her private jet (which is 14 times the average American household yearly). Even your generation doesn’t care, look at how the leaders your age can’t bring themselves to be as great as their ‘great’ nations. Nations, including our own, contribute to the pollution created by meat products. James McWilliams (pg 965-967) ends off his piece with how theatrics will never measure up to true action, including in conversations about the environment, like how “[i]f you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmer’s market. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, become a vegetarian.” You can’t tell Americans you care when your actions show us otherwise.

The reason no one cares anymore is because you aren’t instilling enough public fear. Now I don’t condone the ‘ratting out your neighbors’ thing. We all know how that goes; I definitely do, especially after my APUSH class. But look at how other countries try to integrate little ways to force everyone to care. In Korea, if you don’t dispose of your trash properly, you have to pay up to 1 million won. If you don’t comply with the rules, you stick out and look odd. In my AP Psychology class we learned about how humans are social creatures, so sticking out negatively and not following authority is seen as a worthy excuse to ostracize someone. Because people hate being left out of the group, they will then be forced to do what everyone else does: care! And as you can tell, we kids (and even some adults) follow the influence of others. If you don’t act in a proper way, how can you expect any of us to care? ‘Do as I say and not as I do’ is so 17^th century. If people DO have fear, it’s for themselves. Joy Williams (pg 935-945) explains people’s fear… for themselves. She discusses how “[we] don’t want to think about it! It’s all so uncool. And you don’t want to feel guilty either. Guilt is uncool…[we’re] a little too late for Nature.” We only act for our selfish motives, but as a leader you should be guiding us instead of letting our hopelessness get the best of us!

Also, if you don’t care now, just as your forefathers didn’t, you’re screwing us younger kids all over. As John James Audubon says, “A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children.” You are setting us all up to deal with the consequences of your actions, which is just cruel. As Terry Tempest Williams (pg 927-934) details in The Clan of One-Breasted Women, I know that you aren’t the first ruler of government to screw everyone over. After all the bomb-testing in Nevada, Williams and her family have had to deal with completely avoidable cancers caused by radiation from the bombs. She is part of the new generation of “One-Breasted Women,” or women with mastectomies. It is totally possible for the new generation to have past environmental issues cause avoidable harm to them, as shown in Williams’s case and my own. What about your own kids, Mr. President? What kind of effect would this have on them? (Are you emotional yet? My AP Language teacher just taught us what pathos is.) You can’t keep doing this. Just because Williams and her family found inner peace with their situation doesn’t mean I will! 

All this to say, I want to achieve my dreams of being an astronaut not to find a new planet for us to rehabilitate and redestroy, but to bring more knowledge down to us to use for a greater tomorrow. I don’t want to come home from school tomorrow wearing a mask because even our air is poison alongside our pesticide-filled food and lead-filled water. I look foreword to a tomorrow where I can thrive and worry about if the distant future exists, rather than the oh-so-close future of tomorrow. I hope you work harder to save us so maybe you can run for another presidential term and I can have the choice to vote for you if you heed my message. Thank you!

Sincerely,

The ‘child you’re borrowing from’

 

I’m not sure how all my textbook sources ended up having “William” in their name but I think that’s pretty funny. Also please read this in as snobby of a voice as miss Rachel Berry of Glee: