I want you to continue to enjoy bright, beautiful, blue skies, gigantic shady trees, chirping birds, scampering squirrels, sparkling creeks and all that this amazing world has to offer!

So today, my strong and spunky girl, I promise you this: I will stay vigilant and flexible. I will spread the word.

To laugh at our efforts as they were on such a small scale, too small some would say to make a difference, and then smile when we think about the number families just like ours that did the same thing.

Last year most of the world’s reefs turned white at some point, but because it was underwater you and your friends didn’t see.

As a minister, I have preached that we are here to be of service to others and to be care takers of this wonderful planet that God has given us.

It seems silly to saddle yourself with guilt for something that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t want to do that. As of today, I don’t really feel guilty. I guess I just want to make sure I keep doing more, so that when you read this, and ask what I’ve done since then, I can still feel good about my efforts.

As consumers, it is our duty to protest and force companies to be greener and avoid environmental damage, whether they are from the food industry or from any other production industry. It’s about time we start thinking greener.

More than getting through a global pandemic that has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives around the world, our true feat is even larger: to secure our long-term health and the health of the ecosystems upon which we depend for life. To do that, we have to cut our emissions in half in the next ten years, and continue to reduce it beyond that. And to succeed in that, we need to fundamentally shift the way we do EVERYTHING.

We only have 11 years left until the damage done by climate change is irreversible.