There’s no Planet B
I am a river
I am a river. A few decades ago, many of us were completely filled with water and this allowed large amounts of fauna and flora to live within us. Furthermore, we protected and fed the people who lived on our banks.
However, the dark ages have been coming upon the pale blue dot that we call Earth, and brought what we most hate to see. Our stream friends and partners, from all over the world, that over mountains, plateaus and even plains have flowed , now, see over them the great invisible black cloud. These clouds are invisible because no one can actually see them, but we know that they are right above us, and we think that men also know it already.
So, the real questions are: What are these clouds? Why do men deny them?
The answers to these questions are quite clear and frightening…
Firstly, all rivers agree that these clouds represent, in a metaphorical way, everything that is evil in the world. Therefore, it will consume us eventually until death. From a more realistic point of view, for us, the trees, these invisible black clouds suspended in the air are the pollution caused by the human species, due to everyday actions such as driving cars instead of taking public transports, throwing rubbish on the ground or even dumping waste directly on us.
In answer to the second question, I think that human beings do not want to admit the harm they have caused in the last decades and on the other hand they do not want to alarm or scare humankind, because they are afraid of the reactions there might be.
Therefore, the human being, who needs us so much, has polluted the environment and caused climate change manifestations such as droughts, which for us, rivers, are fatal.
So, I just want to say that back then there were plenty of us, however, many of my river friends, who once saw the beautiful landscapes that this world offers, have been fading away, and, nowadays, most of them are dry and have stopped. It will happen the same thing to me one day, although I would like to see humankind unite repairing what it has done wrong.
Autor: João Castro, aluno da turma D do 11ºano
