Letter: The Younger Generations Might Learn from Our Experience

Published on: 28 Apr, 2025
Updated on: 30 Apr, 2025

From John Ferns

In response to: Who Has The Spine to Tackle the Environmental Challenge?

David Roberts’ observations will strike a chord with anyone who has lived long enough to remember the richness of the natural world — and to feel its absence now.

The vanishing insects, the quieter dawn chorus, the disappearance of hedgehogs, newts and toads — these aren’t statistics to us, they’re lived experience. And what’s hardest to grasp is how quickly this slow decay has been absorbed as the new normal.

For those of us in our later years, and I’m an octogenarian, perhaps our role now is to bear witness. We may not be out marching or drafting policies, but we carry memory — and that has value. We can speak up, remind others what once was, and gently but firmly challenge the complacency that has settled in. Our years give us perspective, and if we speak with clarity and conviction, perhaps people will listen.

Ultimately, it will be the younger generations who must find new ways forward — and it may be that they are already more awake to the crisis than many of our own contemporaries ever were. But we can still encourage, support and amplify that awakening. If we care deeply — and we do — we must keep showing it, not in anger, but in quiet persistence and moral clarity.

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