Write an open letter to someone who doesn’t believe in and/or want to take action on climate change or think that it is important–a letter written directly from the writer’s point of view that shows/explains why they think it is so important to take action, being as specific and from the heart as possible.
Dear Friend,
It has been a struggle for me, to watch as you ignore the changes happening around yourself. You continue to claim that all is well and that nothing is changing, that everything is ordinary, but I must make it abundantly clear that is not the case. You claim it isn’t getting warmer in the summer, yet every year we continue to break new records for the hottest days or the most consecutive days with extreme heat. It may be true that these effects are only seen when looking over the country or even the globe as a whole but that does not invalidate their existence. We could look more locally, if that might be better in changing your mind, to the current issue of flooding in the Binghamton area. We experienced two floods, both of an intensity well above the average, in just over the last decade. Both floods were 100+ year floods, meaning they should occur on average once in a century, and we had two in less than twenty years. You could simply consider it a coincidence, it isn’t a stance I haven’t heard before, but seemingly irregular weather patterns are an indicator of a changing climate.
I understand you may not believe in climate change, but I must continue regardless. Even if you do not accept that change is happening, which is evidenced above and easily found through research to be true, I believe that you should still support efforts to mitigate change. Mitigation strategies intend to make climate change impact us as little as possible, so that even if things are changing globally we on a local level will have a relatively stable life. These changes aren’t massive and mainly consist of improvements on pre-existing infrastructure, as well as a few potential policy changes. I suppose what I mean to say is, if you already claim to not feel the effects of climate change and refuse to agree that it exists, wouldn’t you rather take action now to guarantee you feel no change? Or wait until the changes are obvious enough that it is too late to go back?
Thank you for reading this far,
A friend.