Anna Langford's letter to The Age
Dear World Leaders,
I was nine when I first heard about climate change, and the idea scared me so much that I ran to my room and cried. My parents were arguing about it one night, and the "global warming" they were talking about that would melt the icecaps and flood the coastlines seized my whole little body in fear like I don't think I'd ever felt it before.
I could barely comprehend the sheer enormity of what they were talking about.
But surely if it was such a big problem, leaders would be doing something about it? I knew it was the job of big adults to fix problems like global warming, and if it was such an obviously urgent problem then they would surely be on top of it. That's the last time I can remember trusting governments to do the right thing.
When I was 15 I found a video of (Canadian environmentalist) Severn Cullis-Suzuki speaking at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit when she was 12. I was shocked by the fierce urgency in her young voice and the raw honesty of her words, and I couldn't believe the situation was much the same 20 years later. That year I became a climate activist. I've spent the past two years at rallies, marches and meetings because you leaders are not doing enough.
World Leaders, if you could see yourself now from the eyes of nine-year-old, you, a lot of you, would be sorely disappointed.
Do you know what it's like to be a young person now and have absolutely no faith in adults to plan for a safe future? Just once I would like to go to sleep without a tense feeling in my stomach, like there's a cord around it that clenches when I relax and don't think about the environment.
Since I was little my parents have taken me to see and fall in love with Earth's wild places. But when I visit a beautiful place now, I can't fully enjoy it without thinking: will this still be here in 20 years? Will this beach be flooded by rising sea levels?
The weird thing is, World Leaders, I'm a climate activist and I can't talk about climate change any more. I get a physical reaction to it – my body tenses in fear and I start to feel faint as the enormity of it is so overwhelming. Did you know that most of Australia will become uninhabitable and dead if catastrophic climate change happens? Places I love – Kakadu, the Daintree rainforest and the Victorian Alps. To think about a world without them cuts something raw inside me.
Please. Please, take climate action like it's never been taken before. We don't have any other option. If you leaders don't take urgent action, you'll be responsible for the worst thing humans have ever done to this planet.
This is a cry from the rest of the world – from climate refugees in the Pacific islands to children choking on smoke from the fires in Indonesia – demanding that you step up.
I hope you listen to what we are saying. Think back to when you were 10. Or imagine yourself now as a kid in Tuvalu, helping to build a sea wall to stop the ocean flooding your home; or in Beijing asking your mum what a night sky full of stars looks like, because you've never seen one through the smog. What would you think of yourself now?
Anna Langford, Yr 12.(Published by The Age in December 2015).
Former NHS staff member Pip Kelly now lives in Costa Rica. Her work encouraging that country's Government to embrace renewable energy appeared in ABC-TV's Foreign Correspondent on 30 November, 2015. The Sloths and Howler Monkeys are photographed in her back garden.(really!)