We do not know the value of water until the well is dry (Essay winner Group B)
My grandpa passed away just last week. His body could no longer fight the cancer which had spread from his lungs. He was a smoker for the best part of 50 years. Until the day he collapsed. Until the day he was told that his lungs were breeding small cell carcinoma. Until the day he was told that he would not see another new year. He never picked up another cigarette. After 50 years, he just stopped.
My grandpa had 50 years to quit and save his body, but he continued on until it became too late for change. Too late to change what he had become, too late to change what had been 50 years in the making and too late to change his fate.
My grandpa epitomises the thing I struggle to understand most about humankind; that we wait, too obsessed with our own lives to look around us, to consider the needs of others and the needs of our planet. And finally, as we recognise the problem, it is too late and we taste the bitter sense of failure. Most frustratingly, we do this again and again and again.
It is never easy to admit failure, to admit that you didn't do enough, but today I can see that, like my Pa I too have failed. I sit here at my computer while the world around me crumbles and I cannot hold back my despair, my anger but most of all my utter sadness at what we have done. All these thoughts beg the question - "where did we go so wrong?"
My name is Tom Taylor and I am now the CEO of World Wildlife Fund Australia. I write to you from the year 2038. This letter is the sum of all of my fears and hopes for my past, your future. I offer you two choices – to dismiss my words and continue down your own path or to heed my warning. I beg that you choose the latter.
We have never met, nor do I even know your name, but I need you to trust me and to trust my words. I am your chance to escape the inevitable, your chance to learn from what I have seen and so avert the same fate in your own lifetime.
I will tell you what has happened to our world, beginning with the trees. As communities of scientists and industrialists researched and built clean energy alternatives to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere, our single biggest source of oxygen was being felled and burnt at rapid rates. We failed as a society to see the big picture and focused instead on our immediate wants and needs.
You must ensure that deforestation and mass burning of virgin rainforest comes to an end. One cannot cut down trees one day and then wish them back the next. As a society you need to understand that the impacts you have on the environment are permanent and they are largely irreversible.
Our rainforests are more than trees and shrubs. In these environments live some of the most extensive and diverse ecosystems in the world. I cannot stress this enough to you and your generation – do not wait until it has become too late to do something real.
Now, let me take you from the forests to the seas. It was estimated in 2006 that if human beings did not drastically cut down the number of fish being pulled from the ocean each year, within five decades "all fish stocks around the world would collapse". They were wrong. It hasn't taken that long. A recent report now predicts that within 5 years, by the year 2043, all remaining fish stocks will be fished from the ocean. So people have panicked. Fish sales have dropped dramatically and whole fleets of fishing boats are idle on the shore, but it is too late. The enormous human led destruction of our marine environments is set to take down all marine life for good, regardless of last minute human action.
I presented on overfishing to my class as a teenager. Back then overfishing was just one of those issues learnt in passing, but for some reason it particularly concerned me and so, I wrote a letter to the Government of the time. The letter I received back assured me the "technologies of tomorrow will be able to fix what we have done today". And so no-one did anything about it. I didn't do anything about it.
All these years, humankind has heard these warnings, but only now have they done anything about it. All along we had the capacity to enact change; we just didn't have the will.
There are some 500,000 people living around the world who are wholly dependent on the fishing industry to live. There are millions more around the world who are dependent on the commercial or local fishing industries to maintain their livelihood. As fish stocks have rapidly declined, these people have lost all they have.
I remember back to the presentation I did at school. To finish I asked my classmates, "can you imagine an ocean without fish?" The kids laughed, as if it was the most preposterous suggestion they had heard. Yet here we are barely 30 years later and within five years our oceans will no longer hold the fish they have held for so many millions of years.
Finally let me take you from the seas to the rivers, the lifeblood of this nation. Water runs around its veins, feeding the towns and the cities, feeding the farms and the trees – or so it was once. The Mighty Murray is no more. A whole nation watched as its blood was drained, and did nothing about it. Politicians stood back and pointed the finger, and did nothing about it. The environmentalists threw their arms up, and did nothing about it.
There are other environmental issues that we face as humankind, but in my eyes, these are three of the most essential that you need to fix, in order to mend our hurting planet, our bruised nation, before it is too late.
How? How can you as an individual change the face of this nation so that you will never have to look out of your window to see what I have seen? It will take nothing less than a national effort and it will cost the people. It will not be easy I assure you of that, but it will be worth it, not just for you or your children, but for the children of the future, for those who are not yet born. For those, like me who you will never meet and never know, we are the ones who need you most.
Each Australian must help where they can; this is well and truly a national problem and therefore requires a national solution. Just as a small community works together, to support one another and to support the land, Australia must unite. Unite for the environment, unite for its future.
The Murray River for instance must become a federal issue – for I have seen what inaction has done. As a federal issue, you can report on the state of the Murray River, but also understand those who take substantial quantities from the Murray and develop strategies to ensure that the water goes where it is needed most, not just to who pays the most. The government needs to make the big decisions that will save our river for the people.
The environment needs to become a part of curriculum, and not just a subsection of Values Education. Most importantly however, this education must continue into higher education, including secondary schooling and then onto university and TAFE institutions. This change in curriculum will ensure that our young people will grow up with knowledge about the environment, and breed a passion for protecting our environment within our youth.
Remember back to the ozone problem, to the fires of Kuwait, to the millions of stories of compassion and humanity which pop up around the world each week. Each of these is testament to the fact that human beings care, that despite our selfishness and greed, we have the ability to stand up for one another, to stand up for what is right. Despite the mistakes we have made, each of us has a sense of humanity, buried deep into our hearts, and we care. If not for our environment, then at least for our children.
Today, I write to you with hope and the faith that you will harvest this collective humanity. I hope that you can learn from what has happened, what has been done so that it never happens again. I write to you with an image of my grandpa firmly in the back of my mind. A painful image of despair, failure and hopelessness.
I urge you now; do not wait for your fate to come to you. Do not wait until it is too late.
Regards,
