Children of Summer, 2050
Grandpa, we learned why it’s hot all year long.
The world is an oven because you did wrong.
There is no more winter, and you helped it go.
In your day (the books say) it was green everywhere.
It’s brown now— earth’s hot, dry, and bare.
We students are now prisoners indoors each day.
They’ve taken our summer vacation away.
Fifty degrees C outside, too hot to play, therefore
outside’s not allowed— we enjoy it no more.
But back to your mess, my grandfather dear.
You were wasteful and reckless and shed not a tear
for these fires, and extinctions, and rainforests gone.
The trees and the bees: these are no more. None!
You deforested, desertified, polluted, overpopulated
as mountains of litter and waste accumulated.
“Not true,” said your oilmen and climate deniers,
as our forests burned away in multiple fires.
Greenland then melted; sea levels were heightened.
You failed to conserve; you were unenlightened.
You plundered our pristine, limited ecology,
and long overdue is your generation’s apology.
By embracing earth science and S T E M
we’ll reduce our consumption and undo your mayhem.
We’re committed to Mother Earth’s restoration,
not creating disaster for a future generation.
Though cooped up all year like prisoners in jail,
we’ll restore earth’s ecology. We must not fail!
We youth are attempting to rebalance our earth.
It’s a fight to survive, for all that we’re worth.
With logic and reason, Grandpa, we’ll repair
Our forests and oceans, our soil and our air.
For the love of our planet we’ll forestall its slow death.
For the life of our planet we’ll give it new breath.
Four seasons per year we’ll restore and revive.
We’ll help it self-heal, rejuvenate, and survive.
We’ll be the good stewards you all failed to be,
So our kids can have summers, happy and free.
Will Walsh