Dear Great Barrier Reef,
I have known you, or rather about you, my entire life. I have not met you, nor have I even been within a thousand miles of you. For some reason, though, I feel drawn to you; I feel an innate need to protect you ever since the days of my youth. This sense of longing and wonder does not apply simply to an underwater ecosystem in the Coral Sea. Mother Nature, as I have come to know, does not always stay in a perfect little glass enclosure. The years have shown me repeatedly that animals, trees, and plants do not stay—no matter how much you love them or think that their existence is a world away, someone else's problem.
Looking at the trees and sky around you in wonder activates a protective relationship with nature, one that is somewhat mutually exclusive. I scratch your back from picking up trash and recycling, nature scratches my back by creating oxygen to, you know, breathe. There is an endless cycle of need that is established by this connection—a need that is only fulfilled by taking care of and protecting the environment in which we reside.
In recent years, it has become more evident that the times are changing when it comes to the environment. From front covers of magazines plastered with stranded polar bears out on the ice to tusks having to be dyed pink in an attempt to save them from poaching and the black market, there has to be a line where humanity stops. Whether that line is after all species of rhinos are extinct or when food chain after food chain is broken down because of depopulation, it is up to us to foster the protection of the natural world. We cannot allow ourselves to be the generation that killed the environment altogether; that cannot be our calling card.
I guess this is not in as much a letter to you, Great Barrier Reef, as it is a letter to Mother Nature in general—the fleeting, flighty, ever volatile shell of herself that she has become. It saddens me to know that this was not of your own doing—a conscious decision to turn against yourself. To the wonders of the world that have gone too soon before you, I am sorry. To those that will come after you in a steady succession, I am sorry. And to you, Mother Nature, I am not to sure what to say. There is no amount of "I am sorry"s that I could say for humanity that will turn back time. At times we have made steps to help preserve you, but at many others we as an species have unintentionally ruined you. I can only hope that as time goes on, we, as a population, do more and more for the environment in an attempt to save you.
Sincerely,
A Terrified Global Citizen
