My DearTomorrow Letter to My Son
By: Billy Fetzner
Tags: Climate Action, Letters, Climate Crisis, Future, Climate Change

Photo taken by Author — My goal is to have this type of beauty for my son Jack for his entire life

Recently, I listened to the Crowdsourcing Sustainability podcast with Ryan Hagen where they interviewed Jill Kubit who created the Dear Tomorrow website where you are encouraged to write a letter to someone in the future and make a commitment to climate change action. This is what Jill writes on the website where you can send a letter to your future significant person:

Think of a person important in your life — your child, a friend, a family member or your future self. Imagine it is 2050 and they receive a letter from you written today. Your letter shares your thoughts about climate change and your promise to take bold climate action to ensure they have a safe and healthy world. Write that letter today. We will share your climate letter now and preserve it for the future.

I decided that I wanted to take this action and write a letter to my newborn son. He will be 30 in 2050, which is only a few years older than I am now. My hope is that he will be looking out his window into a much more sustainable world, and a world that still contains all of the beauty and wonder it holds today. If we do not make these bold climate actions, this will never happen. I am hopeful for the future, but I am making a commitment both in this letter and on this post to continue the fight for climate change.

Here is my letter to Jack:

Dear Jack, It is now the year 2050, you are 30 years old! Right now you are only a little over 5 weeks old, but you have truly changed my whole world. Your Mom and I always say that we thought we loved before you were born, but now that you have come into the world I we met you, our ability to love just expanded exponentially. Thus, I am writing you this letter for you to hopefully open in a world with a much brighter future and much more sustainable future than what we are looking at today. I am hopeful for all of the different movements that are taking place right now, and the many countries that are showing their commitment for a carbon neutral country by 2050, which I sincerely hope comes true. I know that we have the tools right now in 2020 to do so, but our leaders lack the motivation and support. This letter begins my commitment to continue to spread the word about climate change and raise more awareness on the climate crisis. I hope by 2050 so much has changed. I dream of a time where we are living in a sustainable world, free of fossil fuels and full of renewable energy sources and technology. You deserve that because you are so young, vulnerable, and you did nothing wrong to inherit this crazy world we are living in. I am also going to go a step further and not only commit to starting the blog on climate change, but also a commitment to join at least one climate action per year and to continue them for perpetuity. The world we live in now has so much hope for the future because we now have the technology to reverse climate change and begin “Drawdown”, we just need to implement those strategies. My hope is that we have surpassed the point of Drawdown and are looking to continue the sustainable practices in the future. The fight will always be real, and I am committing to fighting for this noble cause. I love you Jack, you deserve the best this beautiful world has to offer, not a destroyed world. Love, Dad

I highly, highly recommend that if this post resonated with you that you go to DearTomorrow.org and compose your own letter to that significant person in your life whether it be a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, cousin, students, etc. Write a letter to the future, tell them how you hope things are looking better then than they are right now, make a commitment to make that happen.