My letter to the world

Dear who ever’s reading this,

How did we get to a point in life where we have to wear gas masks to survive? When did it become a norm to fight for food and survival? How did the books I've read every night about dystopian wasteland become my reality? How did the survival of the fittest become our lives? Those were all questions I think about daily as I fight for my survival and place in this dying world.

It was utterly ridiculous how I - no we as a world got to a point in life where these were the norms, where these gas masks were mandatory and where anarchy was all around us. Just ten years, just ten years ago we were living happy normal lives, where the ongoing climate crisis was simply a small voice in the back of our head. Nothing severe enough to catch our attention. And now we’re paying the price of our ignorance, for thinking this will never happen.

Once upon a time, I would be walking to work with my friend, a cup of coffee in hand, maybe we’ll stop to look at a cute dog or maybe to get a bagel. Then I’ll do the thing I truly love for hours before eating lunch while gossiping with friends, maybe while watching a cat compilation on my phone. Perhaps then I'll work on what I love for a bit longer before going home. Then I’ll relax for a bit with my cat before making dinner. Perhaps I’ll finish some leftover work and go to bed. And that would be a great day. Not a single thought of the climate crisis would grace my mind. Oh how great were those days. But those days were not now, there is no similarity between the past and present.

Now it looks a little more like, waking up at 3 am to check the inevitably empty store. Now it’s making sure my gas mask isn’t broken before I walk another mile just to get food so I won’t die. Maybe it’s me starving for the day because someone stole the leftover sandwich from yesterday. Or it’s me defending my water bottle with my life so I don’t die. Now it’s me crying as my cat passed away due to the pollution. Hey! It’s now me having to move for the fifth time this month with my backpack because the area I was in was simply too heavily polluted for my gas mask.  Or the fact that I’m the only person in my family still alive because all their gas masks and supplies ran out where they lived. It was that I had to pry a gas mask off of a dead man because mine was about to break. Now it’s the fact that I haven’t seen any colour besides, grey, black and brown for the past 5 years. Or the fact I simply forgot what music sounds like. And the funny thing is it’s our fault. It’s all our fault...

Half the population had died out and the other half were barely hanging on by a single thread. Now 90% of the globe was flooded and the icebergs were no more. Where are the polar bears? Well, they’re extinct! In today’s world, I would be laughed at and maybe sent to a physiatric ward for simply saying that I saw a bird while  I was walking home. Why? Because birds simply don’t exist anymore and neither does physiatric wards

The scientist says that in around 25 years the world would just simply combust, the ecosystem would collapse and humans would survive for barely 2 more years before going extinct. The funniest thing of all, people are actually listening this time. Only when they realized that hey this might actually affect them do they care. Perhaps if they had cared ten years ago we wouldn’t be here, fighting for the life of a dying planet. Maybe this was the earth way of getting their revenge, as if they were saying, oh is 100 years too long for you? Let me just *snap* hey look the earth is ending in 35! 

Now it’s us, a bunch of broke people on the earth because we simply couldn’t afford to be flown off into the moon, where it’s safe and where the danger of the planet combusting was at an awesome zero percent. 

So now it’s a bunch of broken people fighting a corrupt government who think it’s funny to toy with us like this. Tomorrow you’ll get to leave, pay your fee and you’ll get to leave. Free rations if you’d lisented, we’ll open up the military camps for you if you make it there. If you had listened all those years ago we WOULDN’t have to leave. We wouldn’t have to beg for food, we wouldn’t have to find military camps. If you  had listened to those who had an ounce of common sense we wouldn’t have to do these things.. If I had listened all those years ago I wouldn’t have to do these things.

So who’s fault really is it? The government for being ignorant, us for being ignorant, because it for sure wasn’t the people out there trying to make a change all those years ago, perhaps it’s all of our faults for not listening to the people who had a single ounce of common sense. 

Perhaps there was a timeline where the world had listened to the earth’s cries for help. Begging them to stop. Perhaps there was a world where we collectively grew a brain cell and thought, let’s stop abusing the earth. But what’s in the past is in the past. We made a decision and now we must pay for that decision. Even if it meant the end of humanity.

But goodbye world. I apologize on behalf of my species for causing your death. Am I bitter that this happened? Absolutely, but is it our ignorance that ultimately leads us to our demise? Yes. Tonight is my last day here in this universe. Perhaps I’ll find another world somewhere, where there’s still hope. But that world isn’t this one.

Sincerely, Me