Dear 2044 Person,
Greetings!
I am writing to you to say "sorry"! When after 50 years you open this Time Capsule and examine its various environmentally relevant objects, I am very afraid that you will be living in an overcrowded world which is seriously damaged by pollution, and whose natural resources have largely been consumed by us who came before you. I am conscious of your disapproval as you look back on us who lived during the last half of the 20th Cenury. We must appear the worst generation ever because we had the opportunity and the means to prevent you inheriting the planet in such a state - yet we did too little, too late. We should have been so much more careful with our technology, so much more gentle with the environment, so much more kind to so many animals and plants, which for you are now, presumably, only museum fossils or video recordings. And we let down the tens of millions of people who wanted smaller families, by failing to make available rapidly enough the choices they deserved, resulting in far more competing human beings on the planet in your time than there might have been.
As for me, I was one of a minority who did our best (not enough perhaps) to stop it all happening. We kept warning everyone who would listen, though there were too few of them. Our culpability is less, though few can claim to be blameless. We wish you every possible success as you clean up and try to give all three - animals, plants and humans - a decent life, at least from now onwards.
Yours sincerely, 1994 - Eco-Person
PS Though fearing the worst, we plan and strive for the best. Even as we write, I and my co-signatories below are continuing the battle, on numerous fronts, to preserve this fragile earth and its diverse flora and fauna. We pledge ourselves never to despair, never to give in - for your sake. Our aim is to make you wonder why we ever made the above apology.