And, if this summer has taught me anything, I am content (because I have to be) living in this limbo, this seemingly endless waiting for the opportunity to change, when really the opportunity exists within our very selves all along.

Quero que você beba água pura, coma alimentos sem agrotóxicos e que sua casinha branca com varanda, seja voltada para o leste, onde o sol vai nascer.

I now feel less overwhelmed and powerless, and I am determined to fight for our planet and your future.

I am doing everything I can because I want the footprint that I leave behind to be my feet in the sand on a beach and not a carbon one.

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.

Maybe you heard about bats? Bats, the carriers of this disease that spread among us like wild fire. I love bats. When I was your age today, sitting in the evening on the back terrace of your grandparent’s home in Ibiza, hundreds of bats would play, dance and sing among the trees.

If there’s one thing young people have learned while quarantining, it’s that Gen Z holds so much power and is capable of a lot more than we think. We’ve created a community that has united us all and started to bring about change for the good of our futures. Now, with the help of Gen Z (and of course, people of all ages), we have the power to save our home, the Earth.

I hope that when we look back on these years,  you’ll see that humanity can be good. That we joined together and fixed it because of we don’t, who will?

Lucie, I love you more than you could ever know and I hope that my promises help contribute to a better world for you and inspire you to take action as well as you grow into the amazing adult I know you will be.