This essay was written by a wonderful young woman, Carlyle Howard, who has the courage to imagine that we can have a bright environmental future if we act now. If a 7th grader can understand this, why can't adults?

I HAVE A DREAM

By Carlyle Howard

I have a dream. And in my dream the world is beautiful. The grass is green, fertilizer-free. The sky is blue and safe from air pollution. Look at the Chesapeake Bay and it is rich of plants and animals. Schools of fish, plenty of oysters to filter the water, and crustaceans just bouncing around everywhere. The world is clean. This dream will never come true unless the people of society start to care. I want change. I want reform. I want people to care about their environment. If every family replaces one light bulb with an energy saving light bulb, we could save $600 million dollars in energy costs a year.* Now let me ask you this; is it that difficult to change one light bulb? An environmentalist once said, "As time moves on, people will eventually start to fight wars over territory where there is fresh water to drink." If we, the people of today, keep on living as we are, there is no question that this is what things will come to. I don’t want my great, great, grandchildren to live in a dark, dirty and filthy world. Global warming is increasing. Scientists predict that within 15 years the Mediterranean Sea will be so hot due to global warming it will be unbearable to swim in. If the government paid as much attention to the problems in our environment as much as they do to the latest news in the middle east then maybe we would have already gotten a head start in this long journey to reform the earth, back to how it was when it was once given to us. We’re ruining this world, if we know how we started this problem then we should know how to solve it.