An Apology To The People of 2100
Hello, lifeforms of the year 2100. I trust your technology has been successful in accessing this article, which was written in the year 2026.
By the time you read this, I will be long gone, bar a medical miracle. I hope my children are living in old age, and my grandson, too.
I fear for the life they will be experiencing, because it is evident that my generation has caused you many problems.
I want to apologise for this. Personally, I have tried my best to educate people about the devastating consequences of their actions, that you are now having to live with. But in truth, we are all to blame.
As I write this, there are some things we just can’t change. No matter how hard we try - the damage is already locked in. I feel helpless about this, and again, I apologise.
I know that sea levels will have risen, and that you will have lost a lot of coastline that we still enjoy in 2026. Low lying islands may have disappeared too. We certainly expect them to.
This will have caused many millions of people to relocate their homes, losing everything they had to escape to higher ground.
Our ‘extreme weather’ will be just ‘weather’ to you. It will be the norm to struggle through suffocating temperatures, navigating devastating wildfires, floods and droughts. To be honest, it is getting to be that way in 2026.
Excess deaths caused by human-accelerated climate change are already numbered in the many thousands during every heatwave. I dare not hazard a guess as to how many lives are being claimed by the weather in 2100.
Our greenhouse gas emissions have caused a global warming so deep and intense that its effects will be felt long after you depart the Earth yourselves, I’m afraid.
Here in 2026, we know that the oceans have soaked up 91% of the excess heat we have caused. Without that sponge, we would all be dead now.
There is some trade between the oceans and atmospheric heat, but the largest concern - and we know you are living with this - comes from the fact that warm oceans swell in size, and fuel terrifying storms.
The oceans will have also swollen because of the melting ice. I could talk for ages about how wondrous it was to see vast expanses of ice sheets and glaciers. Projections in 2026 lead me to believe that only half of them, at most, are still there in 2100.
We also expect the cold water from the melting Greenland ice sheet to change the behaviour of the AMOC current, so that Europe experiences extremely cold winters, and shorter crop growing seasons. This has probably already occurred as you read this.
You may discover images of warm water coral reefs, like the one above - magnificent colourful gardens of marine life once found in some of our oceans. I am sorry that you can not see these for yourselves any longer.
Everything else, as I write this, is still to play for. Our future choices may have made things even worse for you. Hopefully, we will have woken up to our destruction and ensured that you still have plenty to enjoy.
There are many good people on this planet in 2026. People who are trying to make a difference, to make the planet cleaner and greener, to protect all forms of life, and to ensure that the people of 2040, 2050, 2100 are not struggling through each day because of the vandalism of past generations.
After all, we are talking about the lives of our children and grandchildren, and many of us are going to have to live through challenging times ourselves, too.
But there are sadly many people who are making this progress difficult for us.
In writing this letter to the year 2100, I am honestly expecting that Artificial Intelligence - as we call it today - has taken control of the world’s systems.
People are scared in 2026 that the ‘machines’ might take over. In reality, it might be the best chance the human race, and all animal species, have of survival - if beings more intelligent than us are in charge.
But it probably hasn’t turned out that way. Certainly not smoothly, anyway.
I hope you do not suffer wars any more. There is a land over the sea from myself, called the United States of America - I don’t know if it still exists in 2100 - where the government actually has a Department of War, but not a Department of Peace. That says everything about the kind of people we have put in charge in 2026. That’s on us, sorry.
I hope you do not have to fight over essential resources like water. I hope that you have found a better, fairer way to live than to give power to politicians and allow them to dictate the distribution of wealth. I hope you have no need for money.
I hope you are not divided by primitive religions. I hope you look back with disgust at why people in 2026 killed THREE TRILLION animals each year for food and other purposes - when there were so many cruelty-free options we could have chosen instead.
I hope so many good things for you, because I know my generation has made so much of your life more difficult to navigate, certainly more difficult than the relative paradise we have enjoyed.
You are probably wondering WHY we have allowed things to get so bad, that we can’t reverse a lot of the damage.
That is a very good question, and it is not easy to answer.
It is not a lack of awareness, nor knowledge. We know what we are doing. That must sound callous to you. It does to me, too.
As a species we are slow to change, slow to adapt, slow to see the need, if it doesn’t directly affect ourselves. The year 2100 is a long way into the future, and matters not to most people. But 2030 is less than four years away, and most people don’t care about what happens then, either.
We live for today, because life is tough for most people. Getting through the day is a challenge and an achievement. It is made that way by the wealthy power-holders across the planet, who divert the blame to such unfortunate people as migrants.
Migration has, of course, taken place since the start of time. You will have witnessed much more than I have, however. Lands that have become too hot, too dry, unproductive - they will have been abandoned.
Those in power in 2026, who call for more burning of fossil fuels, and more animal agriculture, are creating the accelerated climate change and increased flow of migrants.
You wonder why people can’t see this? You wonder if people are stupid? Well, many of us certainly call them stupid, In reality, there is a lack of education, a lot of denial, endless misinformation, the desire to punch down and blame someone else for their own struggles. Like I said, for most people, it’s an achievement simply getting through the day.
Many of us also put our faith in the same technology we fear. AI will surely find a way to suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere…
I don’t seek to make excuses for the extremely difficult situations we have thrust upon you. But I can’t rationally explain why we have done what we have done.
The wealthy wanted more riches. That has been the same since the dawn of time. The disappointing thing is that the rest of us have allowed this to happen.
Every tree planted, every animal saved, every fraction of a degree of warming quashed, all makes life more bearable. I hope that those of us who act with love, empathy and positivity, have left a world for you to enjoy in 2100 - notwithstanding the damage we have already caused.
For this, I again apologise.
For your history books, let the record stand that a great number of us in 2026 did genuinely desire to save the lives of all species, now and in the future.
I hope we achieved some meaningful success.
Take good care of yourselves - and of future generations.
Mark Campbell