Dear Future President of the United States,

Undoubtedly, you will soon have your plate chock full of problems that need attention. Right next to your peas and carrots, you find a war, foreign relations, a busted economy, civil rights issues, race relations, poverty, population explosion, illegal drug use and crime. Squeezed into the middle of this messy plate is climate change.

It would be easy to use the traditional trick: spread out this problem so it looks smaller, or push it under your peas. After all, the rest of the issues on your plate are also pretty important, and, as a leader, one must prioritize. Yet, before you fix your attention elsewhere, I urge you to reconsider. Climate change should be at the forefront of your attention; as a world leader, you should care about investing in a sustainable future.

Now, don’t get disgusted just yet; I am certainly not harping that you become an avid environmentalist or nagging you to care about the polar bears that are so pathetically sinking into the Arctic on the quickly-disappearing ice.   Push aside, for the moment, the focal predicament that the earth’s temperature is rising, and ignore the ecological imbalance that will follow a feverish earth (species extinction, agricultural instability, you have heard it all before).

Despite the main problems, climate change is a many-armed monster that clings onto everything else on your plate: foreign relations, the economy, poverty, you name it. Therefore, by careful powers of deduction, it seems you should care very much whether or not we are invested in practical solutions that curb the consequences of climate change, whether you claim yourself a polar-bear-loving-environmentalist or not. You should care, it seems, because caring about climate change means you care about your whole plate, too.

But why? What will happen if we pushed this monster under our peas?

Scene: Our Unsustainable Future, Not Invested In Global Warming Solutions. Take one. The temperature goes up. Hurricane Katrina-like disasters repeat. Environmental injustice ensues when only the wealthy can afford protection and gas. The poor population pays for the overuse of resources by the rich. Nationally and globally, the canyon between the rich and the poor widens. Nationally, this causes the canyon between races to deepen. Globally, this affects our relations with other countries. Third-world population can do nothing else but have more babies to help put food on the table and survive, as they lack other resources. Population expands. We cannot produce enough food to feed the earth’s growing population, as our traditional crops cannot adapt to the altered climate and rain patterns. And, in the midst of this madness, we are desperately tearing off every mountain top within our borders, searching for the coal we are so dependent on (when, ironically, those tree-covered mountain tops are our last hope to sink some of the carbon we are emitting).

Doesn’t look like a great future to you, does it?

Simply put, climate change is no longer only the environmentalist’s problem. It is everyone’s problem because it will certainly affect everyone; therefore, finding solutions should be everyone’s concern, and yours most of all. You are the leader of tomorrow and you have power to prevent that dreadful scene from playing out.

A good leader recognizes when mistakes are made and takes immediate action to reverse the damage, even if it the problem is so huge that, at the time, seems like attempting to climb Mount Everest in only flip-flops. This persistence to fix a mistake, this determination to do the right thing for ourselves and our posterity, is called courage, and that is what we need out of you, our leaders.

The thing is, we are not in flip flops. We face Everest with all the necessary tools, all the cans of beans and oxygen masks and pairs of gloves we need. Unless you have spent that last few decades on Pluto, you have heard the buzz about geothermal power, wind turbines, hybrid cars, efficient lightbulbs, efficient buildings, recycling and every other piece of technology that allows us to consume less and emit less. We have the knowledge. We just need the courage, and that comes from you.

We are in a delicate situation, so please handle with care. Anything you do or don’t do today will surely affect our circumstances tomorrow and one hundred years from now.   Thus, we must invest in a sustainable future. We must harvest clean energy. We must design our buildings efficiently. We must promote “green collar” jobs that provide job opportunities in a booming green economy. We must seek solutions.

Solutions are profitable and practical. If you truly are a leader, a sustainable future is, conclusively, your only good option.

Sincerely,
Lauren Adler