Dear Mister Prime Minister and all those it may concern,
My name is Amelia Penney-Crocker, I’m 14 years old and I live in Halifax Nova Scotia. I’m one of the many kids who strike from school on Fridays to protest climate change. But it’s easy for you in Ottawa to ignore the angry voices from Halifax, so I’m putting my voice in this letter and I’m sending this letter to you. But I don’t think I’ll be able to contain all my thoughts about the Climate Crisis in one letter. So I’m going to write you a letter every week, a weekly reminder of the price of your inaction. And I will highly encourage other children to start writing to all levels of government as much as they can until you cannot ignore our voices.
Let me begin my first letter with a little story. I was talking about Climate Change with an older friend of mine, when a younger friend of mine, age nine, asked what we were talking about. We told her as gently as we could about some of the facts and estimates of Climate Catastrophe that we had been discussing. My nine year old friend is very smart and she knows a lot about climate change, but she didn’t know that we had such limited time to stop this crises (A year at most to reverse our deadly actions proved in a paper by Johan Rockström). My nine year old friend looked at me in shock and sadness and said six words I will never forget.
“What about my hopes and dreams?”
Adults tell children to think big, to dream of what we can do when we grow up. My nine year old friend is brilliant, kind and talented, she has big hopes and dreams and I know that she can accomplish them. But I don’t know that you will let her accomplish them. Inaction on climate change is saying you don’t care about my nine year old friend’s hopes and dreams. Inaction on climate change is saying you don’t care about the hopes and dreams of thousands and thousands of kids. Inaction on climate change is a crime against humanity. When my nine year old friend said, “What about all my hopes and dreams,” she was saying that she didn’t have faith that her government would fix this and provide her a safe, reliable future that she would depend on and not be scared of.
Justin Trudeau, you have kids don’t you? If your kid told you that she didn’t have faith you were letting her have a safe future, what would you do? If your kid looked at your small action on climate change and said, “What about my hopes and dreams?”, what would you do?
I ask you to consider my question over the next week, and know that in a week you’ll be getting another letter from me about the Climate Crisis. I will not let you forget what is at stake. This is in your hands and the hands of other world leaders. Don’t let us down.
I hope you are having a wonderful day!
Amelia Penney-Crocker