“Can you not hear the voices in the fires?”

Cindy Forde is an activist, author and founder of Planetari, an organization aiming to enable children to be the stewards and innovators of a brighter future. Her children’s book ‘Bright New World’ will be published in 2022.

Here is her contribution to the Our World in Your Hands project.

I am too angry

To write to you as a friend.

Too furious to find diplomatic, reasonable words.

Too dismayed to think it possible at this 11th hour

That you might need kind persuasion, gentle coaxing

To hear the voice of Earth.

She’s shouting.

Howling at you!

And so am I, so are all of us

That you presume to represent.

Can you not hear the voices in the fires?

Can you not hear the voices in the floods?

Can you not hear the voices in the winds that rage; the wronged?

If you cannot hear Earth speaking

How can you speak in my name?

If you do not know what the heat means

What the empty, rising seas mean

What one million oblivion bound species mean

You do not know anything of use to me

Or to my children, or to your own.

We do not, then, share a language, you and I.

So how can I write to ask you to

Take care of our world?

Cindy Forde