Dear Mr. Prime Minister, and all those it way concern,
My name is Amelia Penney-Crocker, I’m 14 and I can’t vote.
You can put my letter down when you read that and say “If she can’t vote, she can’t put me in or take me out of power, and therefore I don’t need to listen to her.” But you would be wrong.
It is precisely because I cannot vote that you should listen to me. I do not have a say in the elections. I do not have a ballot to cast, and because of that, I may not have a future.
Climate change is the reason I write to you. I’ve been striking from school on Fridays to try to make a difference and now I’m making my voice heard in an even clearer way, by writing you letters that tell you exactly what I think. You are my Prime Minister, and you have a duty to protect my rights and my future. Climate action should be the single most important thing on the government’s agenda today and for the rest of the days until we are through this mess. With every decision you make you should consult the financial budget and the carbon budget*. You must ask yourself, not only “How will this affect the bottom line?” but also, “Will this take too much out of our carbon budget?” Just like the financial budget, we must make compromises with the carbon budget. We must choose what we want to spend our carbon budget on: emergency services such as ambulances, fire trucks and police cars or heating/cooling the provincial legislature when no one but the security guards are there, (I’d pick the emergency service vehicles personally). Obviously these things are not going to make or break the carbon budget, but they are small things that can make a difference. You need to keep the carbon budget in mind every time you make a decision, because every action has consequences, and you are in a position where your actions can have huge consequences.
*The carbon budget is the amount of CO2 we can afford to emit to stay within a manageable range of global warming.
I hope you are having a wonderful day!
Amelia Penney-Crocker