Sorry

Dear Kids,

I’m sorry. I have failed you. As a dad, my job is to try and make your lives as safe, secure, stable, happy and good as I can.

I’ve tried to be a good role model (even if I can be a tad grumpy at times, and despite having worked WAY too long hours for several years until around 7 years ago). I tried to teach you right from wrong, but still allow you to freedom to make your own decisions. I tried to create a safe space where you can be you and I tried to not constantly impose my will upon you, but to also listen to your point of view.

I suppose the varying tastes in music must mean that at least to some extent I have succeeded! 🙂 (Seriously, I don’t like RAP and I don’t think I ever will!)

I have tried to make the world a slightly better place for you, in so many different ways.

From where I stand, there are several threats I needed to protect you against.
The world isn’t a fair place, and I needed to teach you that you won’t get what you’re after simply by relying on it being fair, but that instead you need to learn to trust in your own abilities and go after your goals with everything you have.

I needed to keep you physically safe, warm and well fed, and that I have done until you became so independent that you could go off on your own to places, and even then, no matter what else happened, you could always return.

I needed to make you feel loved, and valued as a human being and I hope I have succeeded in this (though I suspect even if I did I wasn’t nearly as good at it as your mom).

People often refer to the pyramid of human survival, which starts at the very base level with food & water, warmth and shelter. Without those things we die, and I have provided you with those.

Now here’s the bad news: I thought I have succeeded in protecting you, at very least at the base level, but the reality appears to be that I have probably failed you.

See, our world, your world is under threat, grave threat. The very survival of your world as a host to human life is under threat. CO2 pollution is increasing and the Earth is warming faster than expected. At this stage, we’re looking at a 3 degree Celsius overall rise in temperature within your lifetimes and quite frankly the effects of that will be catastrophic.

The Arctic will soon be ice-free in summer. Australia is slowly turning into a dust-bowl and deserts in Africa are growing at an enormous rate. Here in the UK the air will be able to carry more water, resulting in heavier rains than ever before, destroying food crops and causing widespread flooding.

Food and water wars will become reality in a world where millions will face starvation.

And I am partly to blame. Yes, little old me. I carry part of the blame because I didn’t campaign hard enough against cars, against burning fossil fuels, against pollution. I carry part of the blame because once I didn’t believe there was anything wrong with burning as much fuel as I could afford to.

I carry part of the blame because I failed miserably in the campaign against greed. In fact, in the end good old human greed was such a powerful enemy it simply decimated us. Greed consumed our financial institutions, our corporations and eventually even our leaders.

See, campaigning to get people to burn less fuel would have resulted in less profits for the oil giants, and they spend enormous amounts of money on propaganda wars to ensure most people remain fooled. And they succeeded.

Despite enormous scientific evidence of global warming, there are still many who refuse to believe it, who instead choose to dismiss it as some fairy tale. They do that because we have lost the propaganda war.

Adolf Hitler once wrote something along the lines of “if you keep a lie simple enough and repeat it often enough, people WILL believe it”. That is exactly what the oil giants had done, and Hitler was proved correct in that theory, as most people believed it.

Even as I’m writing this, the oil giants are moving closer with plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, ironically only made possible due to the devastating ice-melt global warming already caused.

Our government is complicit, and has turned against the people it is meant to protect and is instead protecting the profits of large corporations. They are changing laws to take rights away from people, they are actively vilifying the poor, the infirm and the disabled. They are implementing “terror laws” which ironically are mostly used to spy on and terrorise their own citizens. They are reading all your email, eavesdropping on your phone calls and monitoring your web usage.

Greenpeace coined a slogan a long time ago: think global, act local. The idea was that if each of us only made small changes, together we could achieve enormous amounts. That strategy is absolutely true, but sadly there weren’t enough of us to really make a change.

Greed has won. The rich has it all and will punish you for trying to change that. Greed is killing our world. Large corporations need you to be good little consumers to maintain good profits.

Sorry kids. I’ve failed you.