“I can speak of a man who knows that the world is not given by his parents but borrowed from his children, who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage not because he is duty bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children” Wendell Berry, Environmental Activist, 1971
Dear Future Generations: Sorry – Prince Ea
Lyrics:-
Dear Future Generations,
I think I speak for the rest of us when I say,
sorry, sorry we left you our mess of a planet.
Sorry that we were too caught up in our own doings to do something.
Sorry we listened to people who made excuses,
to do nothing.
I hope you forgive us,
we just didn’t realize how special the earth was,
like a marriage going wrong,
we didn’t know what we had until it was gone.
For example,
I’m guessing you probably know what is the Amazon Desert, right?
Well believe it or not,
it was once called once called the Amazon Rain Forest,
and there were billions of trees there,
and all of them gorgeous and just um..
Oh, you don’t know much about trees, do you?
Well let me tell you that trees are amazing,
and I mean, we literally breath the air
they are creating, and they clean up our pollution,
our carbon, store and purify water,
give us medicine that cures ours diseases, food that feeds us.
Which is why I am so sorry, to tell you that,
we burned them down.
Cut them down with brutal machines, horrific,
at a rate of 40 football fields every minute,
that’s 50% of all the trees in the world all gone
in the last 100 years.
Why? For this.
And that wouldn’t make me so sad,
if there weren’t so many pictures of leaves on it.
You know when I was a child,
I read how the Native Americans had such consideration,
for the planet that they felt responsible,
for how they left the land for the next 7 generations.
Which brings me great sorrow, because most of us today,
don’t even care about tomorrow.
So I’m sorry, I’m sorry that we put profit over people,
greed over need, the rule of gold above the golden rule.
I’m sorry we used nature as a credit card with no spending limit.
Over drafting animals to extinction,
stealing your chance to ever see their uniqueness,
or become friends with them.
Sorry we poison the ocean so much that you can’t even swim in them.
But most of all, i’m sorry about our mindset,
cause we had the nerve to call this destruction,
“Progress”.
Hey Fox News, if you don’t think climate change is a threat.
I dare you to interview the thousands of homeless people in Bangladesh,
see while you was in your penthouse nestled,
their homes were literally washed away
beneath their feet due to the rising sea levels,
and Sara Palin, you said that you love the smell of fossil fuels,
well I urge you to talk to the kids of Beijing
who are forced to wear pollution masks just to go to school.
See, you can ignore this, but the thing about truth is,
it can be denied, not avoided.
So I’m sorry future generation,
I’m sorry that our footprints became a sinkhole and not a garden.
I’m sorry that we paid so much attention to ISIS,
and very little how fast the ice is melting in the arctic.
I’m sorry we doomed you
and I’m sorry we didn’t find another planet in time to move to.
I am s…
You know what, cut the beat, I’m not sorry.
This future I do not accept it,
because an error does not become a mistake,
until you refuse to correct it.
We can redirect this, how?
Let me suggest that if a farmer sees a tree that is unhealthy,
they don’t look at the branches to diagnosis it,
they look at the root, so like that farmer,
we must look at the root,
and not to the branches of government,
not to the politicians run by corporations.
We are the root, we are the foundation, this generation,
it is up to us to take care of this planet.
It is our only home, we must globally warm our hearts
and change the climate of our souls
and realize that we are not apart from nature,
we are a part of nature.
And to betray nature is to betray us,
to save nature, is to save us.
Because whatever you’re fighting for:
Racism, Poverty, Feminism, Gay Rights,
or any type of Equality.
It won’t matter in the least,
because if we don’t all work together to save the environment,
we will be equally extinct.
Sorry.”
Guarding our Future World: How to Protect Future Generations:
Quality of life for children of the world in 2050 depends on our decisions today. The need for change in human development for them to lead happy lives has been debated for decades. The sustainability discourse started in the 1970s, and the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment and Development recognized intergenerational equity as central for policymaking that safeguards the future—this principle is now found in the constitutions of many countries. Its implementation through binding policy-making, however, is rare. One of the reasons for this may be the structural short-term nature of representative democracies. The World Commission on Environment and Development writes, “We borrow environmental capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. . . . We act as we do because we can get away with it: future generations do not vote; they have no political or financial power; they cannot challenge our decisions.”
Some countries have confronted this institutional shortcoming head on by creating a Guardian or Commissioner for Future Generations, independent voices for the long term that provide checks and balances over time. The Commissioners would have unrestrained access to the information behind policymaking; they respond to citizens’ concerns; and they publicly expose the long-term implications of current decisions.
Such guardians for future generations can protect any constitutional right or binding policy goal for the long term. In New Zealand the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is referred to as the Guardian of the Long View. There is still no such office in the European Union.