Dear Editor,
Here we sit, comfortably debating what’s wrong—or even if something is wrong. Imagine being born into this world twenty, forty, or sixty years from now. People then will wish like hell that those alive today had acted differently....
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Dear Editor,
Here we sit, comfortably debating what’s wrong—or even if something is wrong. Imagine being born into this world twenty, forty, or sixty years from now. People then will wish like hell that those alive today had acted differently. They’ll wish we had cared enough about them to make meaningful changes while we still could. Instead, we sit idly or else busy, wasting every minute, contributing to the problems we leave behind.
It’s not just the damage we’re doing that’s unfair; it’s the resources we’re selfishly consuming. First-come-first-serve might work at a potluck, but not when it comes to the planet’s finite resources. Oil, minerals, clean water—these aren’t limitless. Yet we act as if they exist solely for us, here and now.
What if people in the future need these resources for something more critical than today’s economy—something we can’t even imagine? Our approach leaves them with scarcity and struggle. It’s an unspoken theft, a selfish legacy.
From their perspective, we’re the culprits who saw the writing on the wall and chose to ignore it. Every minute we waste debating or deferring action is another minute stolen from their chance at a livable future. As the warden declared in The Shawshank Redemption, we need to act now, “not tomorrow, not after breakfast—NOW!”
If we don’t, we fully deserve the legacy of being the people who didn’t. Or will we hide behind excuses, claiming it was just the way things were, that we were only following orders? The solutions you might so easily reject out of hand might just be something people living in the future will wish you would have given some thought before rejecting them or laughing at them.
Dan Nelson
Rollinsville