dear future generations essay

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• School Education /

Write a Letter to Future Generations About The World you Hope They Inherit: Check Samples & Format

• Updated on  
• May 3, 2024

Reflecting on a future is always full of expectations. And what if the future holds hopes and dreams for the upcoming generations who will one day inherit the Earth? Everyone dreams of a world where people can live regardless of race, gender, or nationality and are treated with dignity and equality. A world powered by renewable energy where climate change is no longer a threat. A world where advancement in technology is used ethically to empower humanity rather than endanger it. Though today we are facing conflicts but believe in a world where people at present can build a world that is more peaceful tomorrow if paved with conscience, care, and collective action.

Let us delve into 3 samples of letter writing where we will be talking about all positive actions and changes that we can do today for the betterment of future generations about the world we hope they inherit. Further to help you more refer to the format and ideas that can be written more about it.

Master the art of essay writing with our blog on How to Write an Essay in English .

Table of Contents

• 1 Ideas and Points to Include in Letter to Future Generations About the World You Hope They Inherit
• 2 Sample 1: Write a Letter to Future Generations about the World you Hope they Inherit
• 3 Sample 2: Write a Letter to Future Generations About the World you Hope They Inherit
• 4 Sample 3: Write a Letter to Future Generations about the World you Hope they Inherit

Also Read: Essay on Labour Day

Ideas and Points to Include in Letter to Future Generations About the World You Hope They Inherit

Here are some ideas and points you could include in a letter to future generations:

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Sample 1: Write a Letter to Future Generations about the World you Hope they Inherit

Check out our Speech on Autism

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Sample 2: Write a Letter to Future Generations About the World you Hope They Inherit

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Sample 3: Write a Letter to Future Generations about the World you Hope they Inherit

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Ans: Here are the ideas to start a letter to the future generation: Start a letter to future generations with Dear Future Generation. Express your hopes and dreams for the world you wished for them to inherit. Moreover, share your vision, for equality, compassion, and sustainable development. 

Ans: I hope to give future generations a word that is free from violence, discrimination, destruction, and poverty. 

Ans: To write a letter to the future, raise your voice about the hopes, dreams, and guidance about the world you hope to live in. Also discuss the values, advances, and changes that you wish to see in the society for their future. 

Ans: The future generation will shape the destiny of the world. We must pave the path for the future generation through our actions, ethics, policies, and progress. It is important to understand that our today is their tomorrow.

Ans: The concept of future generation refers to our responsibility towards what we are building for our future. We must care for the planet and should create a world as well as remedies to all the problems throughout our past and in the present for an improved world for them. 

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Deepika Joshi

Deepika Joshi is an experienced content writer with expertise in creating educational and informative content. She has a year of experience writing content for speeches, essays, NCERT, study abroad and EdTech SaaS. Her strengths lie in conducting thorough research and ananlysis to provide accurate and up-to-date information to readers. She enjoys staying updated on new skills and knowledge, particulary in education domain. In her free time, she loves to read articles, and blogs with related to her field to further expand her expertise. In personal life, she loves creative writing and aspire to connect with innovative people who have fresh ideas to offer.

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What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?

Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Australian Catholic University

Disclosure statement

Michael Noetel receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Sport Australia. He is a Director of Effective Altruism Australia.

Australian Catholic University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Your great grandchildren are powerless in today’s society. As Oxford philosopher William MacAskill says:

They cannot vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t bargain or trade with us, so they have little representation in the market, And they can’t make their views heard directly: they can’t tweet, or write articles in newspapers, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.

But the things we do now influence them: for better or worse. We make laws that govern them, build infrastructure for them and take out loans for them to pay back. So what happens when we consider future generations while we make decisions today?

Review: What We Owe the Future – William MacAskill (OneWorld)

This is the key question in What We Owe the Future . It argues for what MacAskill calls longtermism: “the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.” He describes it as an extension of civil rights and women’s suffrage; as humanity marches on, we strive to consider a wider circle of people when making decisions about how to structure our societies.

MacAskill makes a compelling case that we should consider how to ensure a good future not only for our children’s children, but also the children of their children. In short, MacAskill argues that “future people count, there could be a lot of them, and we can make their lives go better.”

Read more: Friday essay: 'I feel my heart breaking today' – a climate scientist's path through grief towards hope

Future people count

It’s hard to feel for future people. We are bad enough at feeling for our future selves. As The Simpsons puts it: “That’s a problem for future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy.”

We all know we should protect our health for our own future. In a similar vein, MacAskill argues that we all “know” future people count.

Concern for future generations is common sense across diverse intellectual traditions […] When we dispose of radioactive waste, we don’t say, “Who cares if this poisons people centuries from now?” Similarly, few of us who care about climate change or pollution do so solely for the sake of people alive today. We build museums and parks and bridges that we hope will last for generations; we invest in schools and longterm scientific projects; we preserve paintings, traditions, languages; we protect beautiful places.

There could be a lot of future people

Future people count, and MacAskill counts those people. The sheer number of future people might make their wellbeing a key moral priority. According to MacAskill and others, humanity’s future could be vast : much, much more than the 8 billion alive today.

While it’s hard to feel the gravitas, our actions may affect a dizzying number of people. Even if we last just 1 million years, as long as the average mammal – and even if the global population fell to 1 billion people – then there would be 9.1 trillion people in the future.

We might struggle to care, because these numbers can be hard to feel . Our emotions don’t track well against large numbers. If I said a nuclear war would kill 500 million people, you might see that as a “huge problem”. If I instead said that the number is actually closer to 5 billion , it still feels like a “huge problem”. It does not emotionally feel 10 times worse. If we risk the trillions of people who could live in the future, that could be 1,000 times worse – but it doesn’t feel 1,000 times worse.

MacAskill does not argue we should give those people 1,000 times more concern than people alive today. Likewise, MacAskill does not say we should morally weight a person living a million years from now exactly the same as someone alive 10 or 100 years from now. Those distinctions won’t change what we can feasibly achieve now, given how hard change can be.

Instead, he shows if we care about future people at all, even those 100 years hence, we should simply be doing more . Fortunately, there are concrete things humanity can do.

Read more: Labor's climate change bill is set to become law – but 3 important measures are missing

We can make the lives of future people better

Another reason we struggle to be motivated by big problems is that they feel insurmountable. This is a particular concern with future generations. Does anything I do make a difference, or is it a drop in the bucket? How do we know what to do when the long-run effects are so uncertain ?

Even present-day problems can feel hard to tackle. At least for those problems we can get fast, reliable feedback on progress. Even with that advantage, we struggle. For the second year in a row, we did not make progress toward our sustainable development goals, like reducing war, poverty, and increasing growth. Globally, 4.3% of children still die before the age of five. COVID-19 has killed about 23 million people . Can we – and should we – justify focusing on future generations when we face these problems now?

MacAskill argues we can. Because the number of people is so large, he also argues we should. He identifies some areas where we could do things that protect the future while also helping people who are alive now. Many solutions are win-win.

For example, the current pandemic has shown that unforeseen events can have a devastating effect. Yet, despite the recent pandemic, many governments have done little to set up more robust systems that could prevent the next pandemic. MacAskill outlines ways in which those future pandemics could be worse.

Most worrying are the threats from engineered pathogens, which

[…] could be much more destructive than natural pathogens because they can be modified to have dangerous new properties. Could someone design a pathogen with maximum destructive power—something with the lethality of Ebola and the contagiousness of measles?

He gives examples, like militaries and terrorist groups, that have tried to engineer pathogens in the past.

The risk of an engineered pandemic wiping us all out in the next 100 years is between 0.1% and 3%, according to estimates laid out in the book.

That might sound low, but MacAskill argues we would not step on a plane if you were told “it ‘only’ had a one-in-a-thousand chance of crashing and killing everyone on board”. These threaten not only future generations, but people reading this – and everyone they know.

MacAskill outlines ways in which we might be able to prevent engineered pandemics, like researching better personal protective equipment, cheaper and faster diagnostics, better infrastructure, or better governance of synthetic biology. Doing so would help save the lives of people alive today, reduce the risk of technological stagnation and protect humanity’s future.

The same win-wins might apply to decarbonisation , safe development of artificial intelligence , reducing risks from nuclear war , and other threats to humanity.

Read more: Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals

Things you can do to protect future generations

Some “longtermist” issues, like climate change, are already firmly in the public consciousness. As a result, some may find MacAskill’s book “common sense”. Others may find the speculation about the far future pretty wild (like all possible views of the longterm future).

MacAskill strikes an accessible balance between anchoring the arguments to concrete examples, while making modest extrapolations into the future. He helps us see how “common sense” principles can lead to novel or neglected conclusions.

For example, if there is any moral weight on future people, then many common societal goals (like faster economic growth) are vastly less important than reducing risks of extinction (like nuclear non-proliferation). It makes humanity look like an “imprudent teenager”, with many years ahead, but more power than wisdom:

Even if you think [the risk of extinction] is only a one-in-a-thousand, the risk to humanity this century is still ten times higher than the risk of your dying this year in a car crash. If humanity is like a teenager, then she is one who speeds around blind corners, drunk, without wearing a seat belt.

Our biases toward present, local problems are strong, so connecting emotionally with the ideas can be hard. But MacAskill makes a compelling case for longtermism through clear stories and good metaphors. He answers many questions I had about safeguarding the future. Will the future be good or bad? Would it really matter if humanity ended? And, importantly, is there anything I can actually do?

The short answer is yes, there is. Things you might already do help, like minimising your carbon footprint – but MacAskill argues “other things you can do are radically more impactful”. For example, reducing your meat consumption would address climate change, but donating money to the world’s most effective climate charities might be far more effective.

Beyond donations, three other personal decisions seem particularly high impact to me: political activism, spreading good ideas, and having children […] But by far the most important decision you will make, in terms of your lifetime impact, is your choice of career.

MacAskill points to a range of resources – many of which he founded – that guide people in these areas. For those who might have flexibility in their career, MacAskill founded 80,000 Hours , which helps people find impactful, satisfying careers. For those trying to donate more impactfully, he founded Giving What We Can. And, for spreading good ideas, he started a social movement called Effective Altruism .

Longtermism is one of those good ideas. It helps us better place our present in humanity’s bigger story. It’s humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We can enjoy life now and safeguard the future for our great grandchildren. MasAskill clearly shows that we owe it to them.

• Climate change
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• Future generations
• Effective altruism
• longtermism

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Prince Ea—the stage name of American rapper, spoken word artist, and civil rights activist Richard Williams from St. Louis— has done it again. Just in time for Earth Day, he  launched one of the most powerful videos I have ever seen about mitigating climate change -- in the first 48 hours, it had over 29 million views . This apology to future generations for the harm we have caused our planet has an incredibly profound and poignant message that we should all pay attention to.    

The purpose of the video is to raise awareness about the alarming rates of deforestation and the reckless destruction of our environment for which we are ALL responsible. Most importantly, this video serves as a platform to inspire citizens of the world to take IMMEDIATE action to stop climate change. How? by protecting threatened forests through the  Stand for Trees campaign .

Stand for Trees is an online initiative created by the amazing environmental NGO  Code REDD . It offers a tangible way for the general public to take direct action to combat climate change through crowd-funding the protection of threatened forests. Learn more here . 

THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! I don’t know about you, but I am tired of hearing about the imminent catastrophe that climate change is going to cause, without being given any solutions or tangible ways that I can personally make a difference. I’m tired of waiting for the gatekeepers who hold all of the power to fix this terrifying problem, but won’t because they are influenced by special interest groups to say and do nothing. I’m tired of relying on slow moving systems and bureaucracies that are risking our future by taking their sweet time to address the dangerous effects of climate change. What I really love about this video and this campaign is that it reminded me that WE THE PEOPLE have the power to make a difference. Something we really shouldn’t forget.

Wildlife and eco hero Mike Korchinsky is the  genius behind the Stand for Trees campaign and  Wildlife Works , an amazing company that protects threatened forests by making them more valuable alive than dead (see below for more information). Korchinsky articulates the power of this campaign perfectly:  “The Stand for Trees campaign was designed to put the power to save forests in the hands of the people to whom the future matters most: young people.”

So, last month, Prince Ea traveled to Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to witness firsthand the horrors of tropical deforestation. He also visited some of the pioneering forest conservation projects that were developed by Wildlife Works. They demonstrate a successful and innovative way to stop deforestation by rewarding forest communities who conserve their forests. THIS IS BRILLIANT. The Wildlife Works projects that Prince Ea visited represent two of twelve forest conservation projects participating in the new Stand for Trees campaign. 

I had the honor of interviewing Prince Ea earlier this week to get his perspective on this incredible video and the powerful message he is sending to the world:  

What was your inspiration to do a video on Climate Change and the role of forests?

Prince Ea: When Wildlife Works reached out to me, and told me what was going on, I did research and dove into the literature. What I found was some very shocking information that truly inspired me to want to inform the masses about this subject.  You know, there are very detrimental processes that are reaching a tipping point and people need to be made aware, so that was the initial inspiration. I just felt like I wanted to be a voice.  

As you were researching information about the looming catastrophic effects of climate change, what facts stood out and shocked you the most?

Prince Ea: Number one, I didn’t know that deforestation contributed more to CO2 emissions than ALL of the transportation sectors combined. That’s startling. Another salient point was, the destruction of the trees in and of itself. 40 football fields every 60 seconds. That’s shocking to anybody.

What do you want people to know most about climate change and the role of forests and what do you hope people will  do with this information?

Prince Ea: I want people to know that we are affecting the climate, and yes the climate has been warmer at periods of times, yes there’s been more carbon in the atmosphere, but since the Industrial Revolution we have been pumping so much so fast that we can’t really control what’s going to happen. THIS is the issue. I want people to know and learn about environmental responsibility, I want people to change their relationship to the environment. Like I put in the song, to realize we’re not apart from nature, we are a part of nature. And to really just change our hearts. That’s what I want people to do with the information.

What do you hope to achieve with this video?

Prince Ea: I want people to become aware, simply put. It was a piece to spread awareness and to get people involved. To actively take steps to stop the destruction of the forests. So that we can actually bring mainstream attention to the issue.

I heard that you visited the Wildlife Works REDD+ projects in Kenya and the DRC. Can you tell me about your journey, what it was like to see deforestation first hand and how forest communities are protecting their forests for the benefit of all of humanity and biodiversity?

Prince Ea: That’s a big question right there. What I did see was, innovation. For Wildlife Works to essentially make trees more valuable alive than dead, to provide that incentive is great. It’s an innovative measure, an innovative step that I’m glad we’re taking. And we need to take more steps in that direction. It’s a beautiful thing. My journey was incredible and I had a lot of great experiences. It was worldview altering, it was life changing. I made some friends, met a bunch of good people and it was truly a once in a lifetime experience. The whole journey was beautiful and I can’t even express what it meant to me in words.

Is there anything else you want to say?

Prince Ea: I want people to not only see the video, but to take action . I want people who see the video to take that extra step. But to also take that step internally. That’s the real way that we’re ever going to change the world, is if we look inside. If every individual looks inside. That’s the only way that the world is going to really change and evolve. We can change laws, we can do this and do that on the outside, and those are great and necessary. But for me, I’m an artist, that wants to touch the root. And in the song I talk about how the root is the people. And the root of the person is a human heart. I want to touch people’s hearts with my words, and let things take their course after that. 

I can’t thank you enough, Prince Ea, for all of the incredible work that you do and for taking the time to share this journey with all of the global citizens out there. We need more voices like yours in the world. Protecting our environment is such a critically important task and I honestly believe that it is the single most important cause of our generation. As Prince Ea states in the video,

“it is up to us to take care of this planet, it is our only home. To betray nature is to betray us. To save nature is to save us. Because whatever you’re fighting for, racism or poverty. Feminism, gay rights or any type of equality. It won’t matter in the least. Because if we don’t all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct.”

On this Earth Day, I encourage you to stand up for our environment global citizens, and to Stand for Trees. To do your part to save our planet. Nothing matters more. I’ll leave you all with this:

A wise man once said: “when the rivers have all dried up and the trees are all cut down, man will then realize… that he will not be able to eat money.” 

About Prince Ea

Activist, spoken word artist and viral sensation with millions of fans, Prince Ea’s thought-provoking pieces deliver important social messages with wit, passion, and hard-hitting punch lines to inspire positive change.

In late 2009, Prince Ea, upset at the present state of the music industry, decided to form a movement named “Make ‘SMART’ Cool,” where SMART is short for Sophisticating Minds And Revolutionizing Thought. The movement attempts to promote intelligence to everyone, everywhere and integrate it with hip-hop without discrimination or preference.

Along with Prince Ea’s internet success, he has also been featured in both national and local publications including Huffington Post, CBS, FOX, Yahoo Music, VIBE Magazine and DISCOVER Magazine. His spoken word pieces have been featured nationwide in various publications and talk shows including the Queen Latifah Show and the Blaze with Glenn Beck. His alias, Prince Ea, is derived from Sumerian mythology, “The Prince of the Earth.”

About Wildlife Works

Wildlife Works protects threatened forests, including the wildlife that inhabits them by providing forest communities with a transformative sustainable development path. Since 1997, the company has worked with communities in developing countries to help them manage their transition away from forest destruction towards sustainable economic development utilizing job creation as a core conservation strategy. In 2010, Wildlife Works delivered the world’s first REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) VERs (Verified Emission Reductions) from its pioneering REDD+ project in Kenya.

REDD+ places a value on standing forests as a key element in mitigating climate change and sells that value to progressive corporate leaders who are committed to reducing the carbon footprint of their organizations on a voluntary basis.  Wildlife Works protects 1.24 million acres of forest in Kenya and the DRC mitigating approximately 7 million tons of carbon emissions annually.

About Stand for Trees

Stand for Trees is a first of its kind consumer campaign that uses the power of social media and crowd-funding to enable everyone to take real and effective action to reduce deforestation and curb climate change. Through an innovative mobile web solution, individuals can now purchase ‘Stand For Trees Certificates’ – high quality, REDD+ verified carbon credits – to help communities protect endangered forests and wildlife by supporting sustainable livelihoods. The campaign was founded by Code REDD.

Defend the Planet

Activist Prince Ea Has A Message To Future Generations: Sorry

April 22, 2015

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Dear Future Generations: Sorry

By Prince Ea

Richard Williams aka ‘Prince Ea’ reflects in his powerful and ecocritical spoken-word-poem on a dystopian future of our world, which was destroyed by environmental pollution, the devastating deforestation of the rainforests and exhausted consumerism. The speaker apologises in front of the ‘future generation’ for not taking responsibility for the planet’s biodiversity – for putting profit over people and nature. Finally, the voice offers a paradigm shift, outlining and demanding to stop climate change and the destruction of nature by saving water, practising ethical consumerism and reducing our carbon footprint to save our world.

The spoken-word-poem is suitable for interdisciplinary teaching with the subject of Biology and Geography or a cross-curricular project on environmental awareness. As the poem is used as an advert, teachers might discuss product placement with their pupils.

Poetry · United States · 2015

Critical edition

Williams, Richard. "Dear Future Generations: Sorry." YouTube , Prince Ea, 20. April 2015. 6 min., Website

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In favour of this entry.

• Addresses current affairs
• Charged with meaning
• Intercultural perspectives
• Interdisciplinary or cross-curricular teaching
• Silenced voices
• Students can identify with the text

Recommended for these classrooms

• Years 9–10 (Realschule)
• Years 11–12 (Grundkurs)
• Years 11–12 (Leistungskurs)

Berufsbildende Schule

Online resources.

• YouTube: "Dear Future Generations: Sorry" (2016) by Prince Ea
• Lyrics: "Dear Future Generations: Sorry" (2016) by Prince Ea
• Homepage: Prince Ea
• Book listing on buchhandel.de
• Book listing on openlibrary.org

Suitable for discussing these topics

Anglophone societies.

• Equality and inequality
• Globalisation

Coming of Age

• Becoming an active member of society

Current affairs

• Fridays for Future
• Advertising
• Ethical consumerism

History and politics

• Demanding change

Science and Environment

• Climate change
• Experiencing nature
• Plants and animals
• Saving and recycling resources
• Weather and climate

A Message to My Next Generation

You will shine and you will achieve whatever you want if you keep working hard and dreaming more.

Don't let anybody destroy your peace of mind. You are on the right path to pursue your dreams. You have to be ready to do whatever you are interested in.  You are the hero of your family, society, community and your country.

Try to be proactive, self starter, quick learner and self motivator and don't have the fear of taking risk.

If you want to touch the sky, you have to accept that you may fall down so many times.

Regardless of how much people and your community interfere, be like stone in front of them and convince them with your ego and words.

Furthermore, be an inspiration to their children and add your name on the top of the real heroes for freedom of thoughts and humanity.

Keep motivating yourself, try thousands of ways and come up with the best version of yourself. Don't be disappointed when none of them work. You are not the only one who suffers, there are thousands more who suffer even more than you but they didn't quit, they started struggling even harder.

Dear my next generation, keep educating yourself and focus on your studies and find learning opportunities, don't follow peoples' negative thoughts and beliefs nor the culture instead inspire others to follow you and be a role model to your society, fellow classmates and colleagues.

TRY TO SPREAD HUMANITY AND UNITY AMONG OTHERS.

Don't lose hope, be as smart and as patient that nothing stops you from what you wish to achieve.

YOU ARE UNIQUE IN THE WAY YOU ARE.

You are lucky more than you think, just believe in yourself everything will come to you in the right time.

KEEP STRUGGLING AND SHINING! 

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A Letter to Future Generations

Posted 11th July 2020 by Rebecca Freitag

Dear children and grandchildren,

Can you imagine that back when I was a young woman, many people failed to think that one day you too would like to live well on our planet? That we were destroying our own quality of life by poisoning our soil, the air, the rivers, and threatening the complete eradication of countless plants and animals? That we produced things only to throw them away or even burn them? That we spent most of our lifetimes doing activities that made us unhappy? This world was absurd. It made us humans and our planet sick.

A virus, of all things, put an end to this madness. It interrupted our noisy, hectic, self-centred lives.

Within a few weeks our lives changed dramatically. We were barely allowed to leave our homes. Every day the number of casualties shot up; I feared for the lives of my grandparents, for the health of my friends. Income for survival was falling away; many of us were without a job. “The Future” became a great unknown that frightened us.

And yet we found ourselves in a comparatively privileged situation.

It was the first serious crisis that I had experienced so tangibly. But instead of remaining in a state of shock, many of us felt that it was the long-awaited opportunity for a new beginning. It was as if someone had pressed the stop button of our world. When I looked out of my window, I no longer saw cars, but children playing. Instead of exhaust fumes I breathed fresh, clear spring air. In this time of silence not only the air became clearer, but also our thoughts. “What was really important in life?”

Simply pressing “play again” was no longer an option. As we said then, no more “business as usual”. We began a new chapter in our history. And we saw how the impossible was made possible.

Only a few months before, we saw how politicians had smiled tiredly at the young generation’s loud clamour for greater climate protection and for more sustainability, and how they responded with ineffective measures. It was now apparent that the previous excuses for failing to provide a sustainable future, and dogmas on what could never be done, were invalidated.

They say that a crisis reveals true character. This crisis revealed that the good outweighed the bad. It revealed how we humans could help each other, hold together, and this gave us courage and cheered us up. On the sidewalk every morning I read the joke of the day, in the windows hung rainbow pictures painted by children, in the bus the passengers clapped for the bus driver, and for our older neighbours we younger ones went shopping.

The long-desired turnaround had come. With the energy of the many people who yearned for a positive and safe future, we were able to prove that a future free of crisis is a sustainable future by itself.

What at first seemed like a temporary aid programme was gradually turning into a trend: we helped local farmers with their harvest, and provided any missing products ourselves; companies sourced their materials and resources from nearby regions…

In short, we relocalised our supply needs, established trust and identity, rediscovered local and seasonal food plants and traditional knowledge, and created a resilient and sustainable local value chain.

Governments wanted to get the collapsing economy up and running quickly with economic stimulus programmes. But this was the long-awaited chance to tie those billions of Euros and Dollars to future-oriented (i.e. sustainable) criteria and thereby assist companies in the transformation. Traditional paths and dependencies that had been damaging to society at large could thus be left behind more quickly – because sustainable investment proved to be a crisis-proof and future-proof investment.

However, this perspective was not something that could be taken for granted. Can you imagine that many politicians played environmental protection off against economic development instead of putting them together? They suggested postponing the much-needed coal phase-out and the European Green Deal. But finally – and thanks to a lot of insistence from the people – the elected representatives opted for the most logical path: sustainable investments.

Aside from the many sufferings it brought us, the virus had the merit of removing the unnecessary and making us focus on the essential. We valued what had seemed unimportant to us for too long: community spirit, solidarity and honest care. We longed for exercise and recreation in nature. We realised that a lot of business travel could be digitally substituted. We understood that we had prioritised and valued the wrong things in our lives – and put our minds together to find ways to correct that in our society.

Ideas such as shorter working hours, universal basic income, and the circular economy fell on open ears. Instead of GDP, measuring the contribution to the well-being of society and the planet was called for.

As you see, the journey into the new sustainable world which makes your life possible has not been a walk in the park. Often, we feared that this crisis may also lead us on a path to an even more gloomy world. I am glad to say we had so many committed, courageous and positive human beings out there who have never stopped to believe in your future, the future of humanity. Several decades earlier, my parents’ generation saw with the fall of the Berlin Wall that many small changes could bring about a profound change.

In this spirit, we used the crisis as an opportunity to make a fresh start into a sustainable world. The world in which I see my grey hair, laughter lines and happy grandchildren today. The new world in which the planet and we humans are healthy.

It is my wish that you do not take our present good life for granted and that you work for a future that will also give your grandchildren a good life.

Your mother and grandmother Rebecca

Photo by Iudaeorum – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88937814

Posted 11th July 2020

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People promising to take action on climate change

Dear future generations,.

I am sorry that we were all too caught up in our own doings to do anything to help our earth. We didn’t know what we had until it was gone. I’m sorry about the polluted oceans, flooding cities and the unbreathable air. I’m done being sorry because an error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. This future I do not accept it. This generation is where we start to make a difference. We must take care of the earth today because it is our only home. This generation must realize we are not apart from nature but rather a part of nature. To betray nature is to betray us; to save nature is to save us. I plan to start now. Otherwise, there is no way to be certain there will be a future generation to write to. We need to work together and look beyond the issues that divide us, because at the end of the day, if we don’t work together to save our environment, we will all be equally extinct.

More Messages to the Future

To my children,

I am working with 350.org on shutting down the coal and unconventional gas industries in our country because I cannot think of a more direct way to protect you, the food, water and biodiversity we all love and rely on.

Dear Nolan, Patrick, Cullen and Gabriel,

This Mother’s Day I am again thinking of my grandsons future and what I am doing to change the world if only by a small fraction.

Dear Matthew, Sam, and Sophie,

There is a promise in the Bible: ‘I shall restore the years that the locusts have eaten’ and that points to a promise of complete healing and restoration. But until that comes I intend to do my best to ‘save the planet’ in whatever way I can, and I encourage you to do the same.

Dear Future Me,

I promise that I will change my behavior to benefit our trees.

Dear Nova and Remi,

I wish for you both that another kind of life has been discovered, one of peace, moderation and concern for all life.

Dear fantastic,

We as the human race are smarter than this struggle at hand and need to rise above large corporate interests and confusion on this topic.

Dear girls,

I love you and I care deeply about your future.

Dear future me,

I am 19 years old, and I am angry.

Dear Grown up Alton and Dot,

The most important thing in my life is you, which means that as your mom – I am doing my very best to make sure that when you read this letter, Earth is a cleaner and safer place for you and your children.

Dear Tomorrow,

I will work to restore the wetlands.

Dear Zhengqing Gao,

Fortunately, you didn’t get injured while the wildfire burned your school.

To my Beloved Future Children,

Be fearless – do not be afraid to talk to each other and do not be afraid to fail.

Send Your Own Message

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Dear Future Generations: Sorry

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“Dear Future Generations: Sorry” is a poem working within the literary context of the environmental movement. Rachel Carson’s renowned book Silent Spring (1962) is credited with launching the environmental movement. However, the book begins with an epigraph from a poem by John Keats, a prominent English poet who wrote in the period of the Romantics (1800-1850). The Romantic poets often wrote about nature as an ideal; however, today, Prince Ea reflects that nature is no longer a beautiful, idyllic scene. While nature and the environment remain a muse and a source of poetic inspiration for the poet, the poem also shares an urgent warning and touches on the deep political quandary of 21st century Environmentalism. In “Dear Future Generations: Sorry,” Prince Ea invokes nature to sound an alarm for his readers that if humanity does not change, nature will cease to exist and so will all the organisms that depend on nature to live–including humans.

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Dear Future Generations: Sorry

Mari Jørstad provides support for Facing the Anthropocene, a project under the Ethics and Environmental Policy program area. She is originally from Norway and spent a decade in Canada, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in art & art history and political science and an MA in religion before coming to Duke to work toward a PhD studying the Hebrew Bible.

The Limits of Utopia

Fifty years ago, the architect Peter Blake questioned everything he thought he knew about modern building.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic ’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.

Some 50 years ago, the architect and writer Peter Blake put himself on trial in the pages of The Atlantic . In a dramatic monologue equal parts polemic and confession, he pled guilty to having once upheld what he had come to see as the false precepts of architectural modernism: the insistence that a building’s design should express its function; the utopian faith in urban planning, giant public-housing towers, and prefabricated houses; even the presumption that cities—in new costumes of glass, steel, and concrete—would be the sites of an improved future civilization. A modernist by training, Blake believed that the movement had failed to produce either a more beautiful or a more equitable world in the postwar decades—and this failure necessitated a reconsideration of modernism’s basic tenets. Did form really follow function, or was that just a shibboleth? “The premises upon which we have almost literally built our world are crumbling,” he wrote, “and our superstructure is crumbling with them.”

The disillusionment had set in gradually. Blake, originally Blach, was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in Berlin. Following the rise of National Socialism, he, his mother, and his father all separately made their way to the United States; the Nazis eventually murdered many of their family members and neighbors. Before deploying in the war, Blake apprenticed as an architect in Philadelphia and began freelancing for Architectural Forum . In New York, the magazine’s headquarters, he became acquainted with the avant-garde: not just architects but painters, writers, furniture designers, and more.

Already there was grumbling about modernism. In 1948, responding to a takedown of the movement by The New Yorker ’s architecture critic, Lewis Mumford, the young Blake sat on a Museum of Modern Art panel posing the question “What is happening to modern architecture?” A number of luminaries (all men) presented their case, but the report published in the museum’s bulletin concluded that the problem “remained unsolved.”

The issue became even more pressing in the next two decades as cities embraced programs of “urban renewal.” City officials, attracted by a veneer of novelty and efficiency, turned to modernist structures as a way to rehabilitate deteriorating low-income tracts of land—neighborhoods to which Black tenants were steadily relegated as the postwar federal government focused on subsidizing home ownership for white citizens. Public-housing projects, built on slum land that planners cleared using federal money, became avatars of modern design. (See the “tower in a park” units that became one of the prime targets of Blake’s 1974 polemic.)

After the war, criticism of modernism festered. Mumford found the modernists cold and impersonal; their buildings were too much like machines, neglecting “the feelings, the sentiments, and the interests of the person who was to occupy” them, he wrote . In 1961, Jane Jacobs, Blake’s former colleague at Architectural Forum , accused misguided planners of alienating cities from their “everyday diversity of uses and users” in The Death and Life of Great American Cities . Her field-upheaving book became the bible for skeptics of urban uniformity. “Does anyone suppose,” she wrote, “that, in real life, answers to any of the great questions that worry us today are going to come out of homogeneous settlements?”

In his 1974 essay for The Atlantic , Blake echoed Jacobs’s preference for density—and especially her disdain for the wide-open plazas that typically accompanied modern corporate skyscrapers. “The one sure way to kill cities,” he wrote, “is to turn their ground floors into great, spacious expanses of nothing.” But he also went further than Jacobs. In the essay’s final section, he wondered whether cities themselves were necessary to the future of humanity. In wealthy countries, he pointed out, developing technologies were rendering “many face-to-face communications unnecessary.” This wasn’t the world he was sure he desired, but in atoning for his generation’s sins, he pushed himself to the rhetorical limit:

Pretty soon the majority of Americans, and of people in other, industrialized nations, will be living in vast suburban tracts … our old downtown areas will become tourist attractions, probably operated by Walt Disney Enterprises, and kept much cleaner and safer and prettier by the Disney people than our present bureaucracies maintain them now.

His hypothetical became only more feverish:

They will become quaint historic sites, like Siena and Carcassonne and the mad castles of Ludwig of Bavaria, visited by suburbanites on package tours conducted by tape-recorded tourist guides. Rockefeller Center and other beauty spots will be viewed as quaint shrines erected by earlier and more primitive civilizations; and the only housing in these vacation spots will be Hilton Hotels or Howard Johnson’s Motor Inns, plus a few ghettos containing workers needed to clean the sidewalks and change the light bulbs.

Blake’s assault on modernism coincided with New York City’s economy teetering on the edge of collapse. The city had indebted itself precariously for years to balance the budget, but its then-mayor, Abe Beame, was running the city’s credit further into the ground with a spree of short-term borrowing. In November 1974, soon after The Atlantic published Blake’s essay, Beame announced the largest round of city-employee layoffs since the Great Depression .

Remarkably, Beame found time to personally respond to Blake. In a letter published in The Atlantic ’s November 1974 issue , he expressed exasperation with several of Blake’s arguments. But Beame saved his greatest ire for Blake’s broader pessimism about cities. Electronic technology would never fully replace face-to-face communication, Beame knew from the regular walks he took around his neighborhood. “You can’t get that kind of human contact and enrichment out of a tube!”

Blake’s essay reflected the panicked condition of New York; it also marked the frenzied peak of a decades-long critique of modernism. In the years that followed, the movement’s shortcomings were deployed to justify the demolition of welfare programs, city planning, and (in the most literal sense) public housing . In his attempt to resuscitate New York’s economy, Beame’s successor, Ed Koch, poured money into private development, subsidizing the construction of luxury apartment buildings and corporate high-rises, some of which became New York’s classically “postmodern” structures .

More recently, some politicians in New York State have been debating legislation they hope will spark a construction boom akin to that of the modernist postwar decades; one recent bill proposes the creation of a “social housing” authority that would prioritize affordable units. In New York City, the linked crises of housing and homelessness are as pressing as ever, and many of the questions Blake and Jacobs wrestled with remain: Is more housing supply the way out? If so, who will build it? If private developers, can Americans trust them with our tax dollars?

Lingering as well is the question contained in the arc of Blake’s career: What does one find after turning away from the vision of an ideal city? In a memoir near the end of his life, Blake wrote fondly, if apprehensively, of the political idealism of the 1930s and 1940s, reserving his criticism for the excesses of corporate capitalism (to which some modern architects, he believed, had fallen prey) and authoritarianism (which he had come to see, in postwar-liberal fashion, as a symptom of idealism itself). By the end of his career, Blake was more than prepared to forfeit the dream of a perfectly built world in favor of reality’s chaotic and diverse one. He often invoked this paraphrase of Mumford: “Life is really more interesting than utopia.”