Letters to the Future

Nobody was expecting the semi-collapse of Phoenix, though the city was, along with Tucson, already in trouble. Both cities were rationing water and battling ever-more tenacious wildfires. When a fierce dust storm knocked out Phoenix's electricity grid in June of 2040, and the air conditioning didn't come back on, ever, for many it was the last straw. It wasn't the first migration out of the city, but it was the largest.

What people weren't expecting, however, were the Homeland Security checkpoints around U.S. cities and between state borders, or the new laws that only permitted people with certain documents to travel. And, of course, the subsequent arrests, incarcerations, and deportations if those laws were not heeded.

But I write you, my child, before all this happened. I write to you from Paris, in November of 2015. I write to you one week from what many are saying is the most important climate summit in history. I write you in the hopes that I am wrong, because we all know there is a much better world possible and it's still in our grasp.

It's critical, I think, for you to understand where I am right now. Two weeks before the climate summit began, coordinated violent attacks across Paris dramatically altered the tone of the negotiations. The French government "cancelled" the marches, which were to be attended by varied international organizations that would put formidable grass roots pressure on participating nations. The government said they couldn't provide sufficient protection to the organizers, though the best protection for them—and for you, my child as we now see—would have been to embrace that more urgent conversation that demanded a better world.

The impacts of the Paris attacks spanned the globe. In the United States, for example, most politicians barked about military operations and let this critical moment for the climate fall to the wayside. The fires of xenophobia were fanned all the way to the upper-echelons of government, conflagrating all across the media landscape. Witnessing this rapid mobilization of the counterterrorism hawks just seemed to prove that, if that were the impetus, we could move just as forcefully to protect the climate. But, no. A slightly-reformed yet catastrophic "business as usual" strategy carried on; we guaranteed your frightening reality.

For the astute contemporary historians in 2050, they will see that the calls for more border militarization in 2015 had already been happening for some time. The U.S. military and Border Patrol were already preparing for what official documents called "mass migration" due to climate destabilization. That's why there are all the checkpoints now, on the I-10 between Tucson and Phoenix, entering Phoenix, entering California. I know you don't like them; we didn't like them either. As I sit in Paris right now in 2015, your future, I am deeply saddened to say, looks bleak.

But I have a feeling that I am wrong. Maybe I have overestimated the trends of the power structure, and underestimated the strength of the people. Maybe it's you, my beloved, that gives me hope. Maybe I see in your potential actions, in your imagination, in your creativity, and in your capability the seeds for a much happier world. It is clear that your vibrant generation will be forced to act. It will have to reach across these fortified borders, and refuse to submit to them. It will take this sort of unity. This is where I place my greatest hope.

My artist imagination dreams of a hopeful alternative if these leaders don't. I imagine a world in chaos and overwhelmed by major flooding, drought,  mega storms, and disastrous temperature changes affecting your food productions. But, I'm hopeful that the great scientific minds of your time along with the research done at Biosphere 2 has led NASA to create a Biosphere 3 on Mars with a livable environment for those of you left here on earth to continue life. 

Most importantly, that all of our mistakes in this time has created a greater consciousness for you to create a better world that is mindful of limited resources and is reminded of all the beautiful plants, animals and life on our planet that once existed. 

Dear little one, if you're reading this, they did it. And, if they did it, it changed everything.

You see, before the world came together to heal the planet, we acted like we were playing a zero sum game; like if "you" win, "I" lose; like everything has to be "us" vs "them"; like we're not all in this together. In other words, we acted like narcissistic idiots. But once we realized that we needed to work together to stop the mad march to planetary destruction, we started working together on all kinds of things.

We found a way to end poverty and make sure no child would ever go hungry. We built a new economic system from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. We eliminated racism. We built a world in which girls literally can do anything, in which women and men live and work together as true equals, in which all the "isms" and schisms that used to separate us don't anymore. We learned how to get along.

Dear little one, if you're reading this, they did it. And we made them.

We wrote and called and marched. We voted out the bums who put their own political and economic self-interest ahead of yours. We agreed to suck it up and change the way we live today so that you might live tomorrow, even if it was inconvenient and costly, and even if we weren't sure it would work. We agreed that it was worth a try—that you, my sweet, are worth it.

Dear little one, if you're reading this, you're welcome.

With much love,

Your great-great Nani

Sure, there were whipping dust storms that would occasionally ravage equipment and cause minor inconveniences for the scientists and doctors and astronauts on the surface. They'd have to spend a day or two rebuilding after, but they were already used to that. Honestly, at that point those blinding storms were already happening back home in Tucson, and in the Great Plains, and in Africa, Australia, China—I mean, you get it. I've told you about the Dust Bowl—this was different. It was more, and it was constant, and it was global. I would've never brought you into either world.

The day the great Antarctic ice sheet finally shattered was the day people started making plans. Not all people, mind you, just those who could afford to make plans. Sea levels rose and people moved inland. Everyone continued to drive cars and the corporate entities that produced our "goods" continued their rate of consumption as if no land mass had slipped into the ocean at all—no people, no homes, no entire cities had just slipped away. Back in the Sonoran desert, it seemed we were two hundred miles away from Atlantis as great civilizations and vacation destinations just simply stopped existing, and the beach crept closer past Yuma.

Those that could pooled money into rockets and resources—like a rideshare to space that was part luxury cruise, part lifeboat. Of the billion that left, the billion that died from various meteorological cataclysms and the two billion that just plain starved, Earth began to thin out. Those of us who remained had to huddle together in cities and cling to some semblance of community and normalcy, but the overwhelming sense of abandonment and worthlessness permeated every interaction. Every face said the same thing: "I was beat before and I'm still beat." Simply put, we were stranded at home.

At that point, the Martians began to seem less and less human. It's safe to say they had thoroughly divested all assets in the old planet. Life then began to play out like of every episode of "Ancient Aliens" I'd ever seen: the lowly, primitive Earthlings being subject to edicts handed down from heavenly extraterrestrial beings. We were being looked down on still, though they couldn't see us at all. They didn't need us anymore, really, aside from the occasional care package they requested be sent out to them—mostly leftover luxury items like liquor and cigars. There was just enough infrastructure left to send packages and big celebrity names—relics of the former society—gave just enough incentive, though they never sent anything back to us.

The willing servants here on Earth did abide these requests for a while, though it began to feel like the whole world had become embargo-era Cuba, and Mars was, well, I think you know who Mars was. Eventually we just stopped responding to the alien demands.

It was strange, though, when we all realized new TV and movies would all but cease to exist. No one kept up with Kardashians, and I doubt you even understand what that means, which is a relief in some ways. The radio stations were commandeered by the community, and the concept of pop music grew more peculiar as people grew to prefer singing in small groups, over drinks—a bit comfort in a pit of uncertainty. Modern folk songs were the old world's hits, and even those earworms that seemed trite and inane back before were a welcome reminder of everything now gone.

Although many of the best botanists were recruited on the red planet, we lived with the indigenous tribes who knew what to do with the land and crops available and the good salt-of-the-earth farmers. Once they weren't bound to federal subsidies for corn syrup, farming more or less returned to the way it was done for thousands of years before industrialization. Crops were rotated, plants grew in their native regions. It didn't seem like much at the time because it was all we knew to do to provide for those left.

However, once communities existed tightly in those bones of former major cities, people stopped driving. It was easier to bike, and gas was hard to come by once the drills stopped drilling. People also stopped demanding bananas and mangoes year round and that makes a big difference mentally as much as it does ecologically. People who lived in the old world with less did much better in the new world.

Most of us were armed, despite what many leftover bleeding hearts would have preferred, but the reality was that we were no longer at the top of the food chain and desperation in any species is a dangerous motivator. Plus, who could blame the ones who pushed back against old power structures that struggled to keep a grasp on their post. The way authority used to work no longer made sense in this world, and some people needed to be reminded. I'm glad you'll never know what that system felt like.

I'd like to believe the ones that left Earth all those years ago now are doing well. I'd like to think they survived, despite living in a world where their egos were no longer valid currency. The lesser folks, the laborers, the admirers were all back on Earth. Who knows how the Martians got anything done. Communication systems haven't been maintained and, honestly, who cares.

The thing is, it doesn't really matter anymore what goes on on Mars. From those violent storms and rising tides, you can see every day that the weather overall has begun to stabilize here. Things are growing again, and the oppressive uselessness that led to a clinical depression felt by many in the old world has been replaced by trades that hint at purpose and place in society. Heck, people are cobblers again. You get to grow in a society where we've learned to repair and create. It'll still take time for the landfills to biodegrade and the garbage islands in the Atlantic to dissipate, but we're working on it now that we have food figured out.

Though some worry the progress we've made might inevitably lead to an alien invasion—a return of the Martians—all we can do is hope they've run out of gas. That they're stranded.

You see, I never thought I'd have a child before. Forty years ago, when all of this started, I'd have called someone absurd for even suggesting it. I had spent so many years adhered to a bleak misanthropy, and I knew what happened would inevitably happen. For me, it was only a matter of time, but I was only part right.

What I didn't know is that, like the time you fell off the swingset and sprained your ankle, the new world was young and pliable—able to bounce back in ways no one expected. I had you because I had hope and I hope this letter gives you some too, or at least some perspective.

History was always told through written word by the victors and, at least for you and I, this is the reality of the past and a glimpse of a possible future, and guess what? We won.

As I write this letter to the future, delegations from the nations of our world are gathering to consider a global agreement on steps we can finally take to rein in the looming disaster of global warming. But at this convocation and beyond, will we have the courage for boldness, for choosing people and the planet over short-term profits for the few? The people's movement is urging the delegates in advance to remember that the opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity—just going along with the flow. After all, even a dead fish can go with the flow, and if the delegates don't dare to swim against the corporate current, we're all dead.

So did we have the courage to start doing what has to be done? Hello ... anyone there?

Fertilizer was always one of the biggest culprits for two reasons: it's made from fossil fuels, and when you spread it on fields and it gets wet, it turns into nitrous oxide, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Slowly, we convinced the policy makers to instead give subsidies to farmers for every increment of carbon they sequestered in the soil. Over time, we began to organize our agriculture so that it could heal the planet, feed us and tackle climate change. This began with shifting our food system from its reliance on oil, which is the central fact of industrial agriculture (not just machinery, but pesticides and fertilizers are all oil-based technologies), back to a reliance on solar energy: photosynthesis.

Carbon farming was one of the most hopeful things going on at that time in climate change research. We discovered that plants secrete sugars into the soil to feed the microbes they depend on, in the process putting carbon into the soil. This process of sequestering carbon at the same time improved the fertility and water-holding capacity of the soil. We began relying on the sun—on photosynthesis—rather than on fossil fuels to feed ourselves. We learned that there are non-zero-sum ways we could feed ourselves AND heal the earth. That was just one of the big changes we made toward the sustainable food system you are lucky enough to take for granted.

As I learned to fly in gliders, then small aircraft, then military jets, I always had the secure feeling that the atmosphere was the infinite "long delirious burning blue" of Magee's poem, even though of all people, I well knew about space and its nearness. It seemed impossible to believe that with just a little more power and a little more bravery, I couldn't continue to climb higher and higher on "laughter-silvered wings." My life was a celebration of the infinite gift of sky, atmosphere, and flight.

But what I saw in the first minutes of entering space, following that violent, life-changing rocket-ride, shocked me.

If you look at Earth's atmosphere from orbit, you can see it "on edge"—gazing towards the horizon, with the black of space above and the gentle curve of the yes-it's-round planet below. And what you see is the most exquisite, luminous, delicate glow of a layered azure haze holding the Earth like an ethereal eggshell. "That's it?!" I thought. The entire sky—MY endless sky—was only a paper-thin, blue wrapping of the planet, and looking as tentative as frost.

And this is the truth. Our Earth's atmosphere is fragile and shockingly tiny—maybe 4 percent of the planet's volume. Of all the life we know about, only one species has the responsibility to protect that precious blue planet-wrap. I hope we did, and I hope you do.

Your ancestor,

Stephen K. Robinson

Apologies too about the oceans, and I know this must have been particularly hard on you since you've always been a seafaring race, but since you're primarily vegetarian, I don't imagine that the extinction of fish would have much affected you. And if, out of some nostalgia for the sea that can't be fully satisfied by whatever hardtack may have survived us, try jellyfish. They'll be about the only thing out there now, but I'm told they can be quite palatable, if not exactly mouth-watering, when prepared with sage and onions. Do you have sage and onions? But forgive me: of course you do. You're an agrarian tribe at heart, though in our day we certainly did introduce you to city life, didn't we? Bright lights, big city, right? At least you don't have to worry about abattoirs, piggeries, feed lots, bovine intestinal gases and the like—or, for that matter, the ozone layer, which would have been long gone by the time you started walking on two legs. Does that bother you? The UV rays, I mean? But no, you're a nocturnal tribe anyway, right?

Anyway, I just want to wish you all the best in your endeavors on this big blind rock hurtling through space. My advice? Stay out of the laboratory. Live simply. And, whatever you do, please—I beg you—don't start up a stock exchange.

With Best Wishes,

T.C. Boyle

P.S. In writing you this missive, I am, I suppose, being guardedly optimistic that you will have figured out how to decode this ape language I'm employing here—especially given the vast libraries we left you when the last of us breathed his last.  

Friends are working on genetic editing that will bring back the heath hen, a bird that went extinct almost 80 years ago. The last member of the species died in the woods just a few miles from my home. Did we succeed? Do you have heath hens, booming their mating calls across the sand plains that sustain them? If you do, it means that this idea of repair caught on in time, and that their habitat was restored, instead of being sold for yet more beachside mansions. It means that enough great minds turned away from the easy temptations of a career moving money from one rich person's account to another's, and instead became engineers and scientists dedicated to repairing and preserving this small blue marble, spinning in the velvet void.

We send out probes, looking for signs of life on other worlds. A possible spec of mold is exciting—press conference! News flash! Imagine if they found, say, a sparrow. President addresses the nation! And yet we fail to take note of the beauty of sparrows, their subtle hues and swift grace. We're profligate and reckless with all this abundant life, teeming and vivid, that sustains and inspires us.

We destroyed. You believed it was possible to repair.

Our damaging impact was caused by a combination of the sheer number of people, the types of technologies we used, and how much we consumed. We had to change in each area, and we did. We invented cleaner technologies to replace dirtier ones; this turned out to be the easiest part. When it came to population growth, we saw that wherever women had full education and strong legal rights, population growth stopped and the number of humans stabilized; thus justice was both good in itself and good for the planet.

The third aspect of the problem, our consumption levels, depended on our values, which are always encoded in our economic system. Capitalism was wrecking the biosphere and people's lives to the perceived benefit of very few; so we changed it. We charged ourselves the proper price for burning carbon; we enacted a progressive tax on all capital assets as well as incomes. With that money newly released to positive work, we paid ourselves a living wage to do ecological restoration, to feed ourselves, and to maintain the biosphere we knew you were going to need.

Those changes taken all together mean you live in a post-capitalist world: congratulations. I'm sure you are happier for it. Creating that new economic system was how we managed to dodge disaster and give you a healthy Earth. It was our best achievement, and because of it, we can look you in the eye and say, "Enjoy it, care for it, pass it on."

Mars

What is needed is a Green Global New Deal funded from public and private sources to begin saving the earth.

The mass movement will gain momentum, unfortunately, from repetitive climate disasters that require billions for infrastructure alone. Si, se puede, it can be done because there is no alternative. That's why producing affordable zero-emission cars is important in Hunters Point (the African-American center of San Francisco) and Boyle Heights (the heart of Los Angeles' Mexican-American community) and the barefoot Third World bloc representing a majority of the world's nation states. 

California Senate Pro Tem Kevin De León, a leader in the cause of environmental justice, has legislated a remarkable shift in environmental and budgetary priorities in the state where I reside. Call it the California Model. Current law now requires that environmental funding go both to reduction of carbon emissions and co-equal benefits for disadvantaged communities. During the four years beginning in 2014 the state will invest $120 billion on such a climate justice program from sources including the much-debated cap-and-trade program which brings in at least two or three billion annually along with revenue from tax reforms funded by Tom Steyer, the billionaire San Francisco investor who has made climate justice his passion. 

This model is being carried by California Gov. Jerry Brown's administration by a series of state-and-regional pacts with the goal of achieving a more stable climate. Almost alone, the governor is pursuing energy diplomacy with formal agreements with eleven U.S. states, and a growing list of major countries from China to Brazil to Germany. Call it the emerging Green Bloc. By Brown's conservative numbers, the Green Bloc represents 100 million people and a GDP of $4.5 trillion. But these numbers are low: by my estimate we are talking about 166 million people in states pursuing low-to no-carbon policies in American states with 262 Electoral College votes! Tea Party beware. 

But families busy living their lives are often unaware of the workings of governments and powers that create conflicts to help keep the systems running. Most of us dutifully worked for whosoever provided means for a satisfying life. 

Until one day, we saw the progress we supported was creating hazards that threatened our health; the health of the planet sustaining us was being weakened by exploitation of its fragile resources, creating wealth for the few through efforts of many working to exist.

Suddenly we understood that our existence on earth was threatened. We became alarmed that there would be no safe future here to sustain our children—that the children who followed through years ahead would not know the beauty and splendor of the earth that we have known.

I do not absolve myself or your forebears from blame if you have inherited an earth which may have become barren and unsafe. We were all to blame for exploiting the nurturing beauty of our earth. Surely there was greed, indifference, and blind denial to some degree in mostly everyone. And the few who had the wisdom to see what was happening were not listened to or believed.

With greatest regret, we send our humble wish for your forgiveness that we were not better stewards of the earth we left to you. We only hope you will be wiser, will learn from our mistakes, and do everything in your power to care for this wounded planet that holds you.

And may you always sleep safely.