He is one of the producers of Letters Live - it is an amazing charitable event, bringing the stories of so many to all of us. So grateful for the time he and his team give to this event.

I think the same thing, he walked off awful fast. I admire that he showed genuine feeling

Thank you for sharing this.

If we the human race wish to survive, We all must change the error of our ways And live our lives respectful of the clime, Where moderation in all things prevails. For this amazing planet where we dwell Is soon to be consumed by Nature's wrath: Her patience at an end, her health unwell, She takes revenge by taking us to task. With floods, relentless drought and hurricanes, Tsunamis, earthquakes, storms and forest fires She sends a warning: 'No more fossil fuels Or Mother Earth will lose her fight to live'. Us earthbound mortals listen and take heed: Transfer to sun and wind and cease the greed.

Amazing comment.

Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow A hill and a valley, a view to the sea These things are not yours to destroy as you want to A gift given once For eternity A song I remember vividly from primary school in the '90s... I have no words for humanity's negligence, by those with the power to effect change at least, over the decades since.

Al Gore was worried mightily about it and he still is.

Jay Inslee the current governor of Washington state was paying attention to climate in the 90s

I remember worrying about this in high school, in 1973. And being, in effect, patted on the head and told that I was young and foolish and worried about things that weren't going to happen. But then my family started recycling everything in the 1980's My Grandparents, at least, didn't see it as such a stretch, they had to do something similar in WWII, and sometimes they'd get the words mixed up, calling the piled-up cans and bottles "salvage" instead of "recycling." And I felt hope. I remember, in the 1990's, how politicians started warning us that our children would curse us if we wrecked the economy with too much regulation, and ran up a budget deficit with too many programs for pollution reduction. And I did fear what younger generations would think of me, but I figured I had to do right by them anyway and never mind if they understood, so I kept on supporting ecological concerns though many people I knew stopped doing so. And I remember the 90's, when I started making a lot more conscious choices for the ecology, like avoiding car travel as much as possible, buying organic food, and not purchasing synthetic fabric clothes. It concerned me that corporations now paid some researchers to claim to debunk climate change and some journalists to take what other climate scientists said and twist it to sound like they were debunking it. Because they wanted the right to pollute. But I thought I only had to worry about a few powerful rich people. I remember, in the 2000's, when some people found political advantage in claiming that those who wanted to halt climate change really wanted to destroy America. And I saw many people close to me start to believe them. And now I not only had to worry about the rich and powerful, but average people deceived into actively mistrusting me because I still spoke of climate change. And I still looked for ways to diminish my carbon footprint, but I was running out of things within my reach as an individual. I remember, in the 2010's, that by then climate change had completely become politically polarized. Right-wing friends who had previously loved "God's Country" (untouched nature) to their vary marrow, who considered themselves "conservationists", who looked at "blind progress for progress's sake" with a suspicious eye, now becoming convinced that anything that Democrats wanted had to be not just wrong, but evil, that America needed the right to pollute in order to remain the leader of the Free World, and that pollution-regulation was socialism in action (never mind that historically the worst polluters in the world were the Soviet Union, and that they told their own citizens that the ecology movement was western propaganda.) And I started to hear the first reports that it was too late to prevent climate change, we could now only mitigate it. On the first day of 2020 my right-wing friends sent out mocking lists of all of the things that we eco-freaks had predicted would happen by the 20's that they said hadn't happened. What struck me is that some of them actually had--that they themselves complained about the refugees clamoring at the border and the price of food going up--but they could no longer make the cognitive connection. And then the pandemic hit, and most of the world's population had nothing to do but sit at home and feel scared. Way too many spent that time falling down rabbit holes online while day-drinking. And now the anti-ecology fervor reached the point of mass-hysteria. The harm that everyone can see around us, caused by climate change, is now attributed to satanism and an evil conspiracy of people actively trying to wipe out most of the human race. I have watched, one by one, every single source of accurate information closed off as "corrupted" to a critical mass of people. And the crisis is upon us now. I feel so utterly helpless!

I was worried about it in the 70s. That's why I chose not to have children. I guess the dad in the letter forgot about that.

One thing we must remember, though, that the future always has been and allways will be unknown. We tend to cling to what we see and asume now, but everything may end up totally different. From a mother of four, living through 7 decades.

@@elsekorsbk4715 Oh yes about culture change and innovation: Everything we do have some temporary ”complete power” over using cheap energy and labor, and now robotics, is totally unpredictable what will happen on some scales! But I am thinking about local communities and natural bounds. These are not driven by energy at all but by caring and householding. We lost almost all of that and it is clear not much is done about it in time. It is already 30 years too late, here in south Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular.

Then we must hope, that we did a good job raising these kids of ours - greetings from Denmark

@@elsekorsbk4715 Too late, they have no experience of anything but a consumer society with winners and loosers. They will not be able to cater for what is lost now and they cannot even care about what is lost: It is no lived experience for them! Somehow surviving in local communities is what we prepare for.

Same here 😔. Others call it depression, I call it desperation about the state the world is in. Have a virtual hug!

@@nikebordom 🤗

Bliss, bliss, bliss. It must be bliss to miss that huge of a point.

Tell that to your grandchildren.

How would you know? You can't even punctuate.

My daughter and her partner are actors, although not famous like Ben, and I have become very adept at distinguishing acting from genuine feelings. Believe me, he meant every word, and felt it deeply......