I watched an amazing, very hard hitting David Attenborough documentary called ‘A Life On Our Planet’ about the damage we are doing to our lovely Earth, and the animal species and plant species that are being lost daily, the swathes of forest being cut down, the fact that we are just take, take taking endlessly, depleting resource after resource.

It saddened me to learn that there are several ‘frozen zoos’ across the world and they are storing the DNA of hundreds of thousands of animals that are in very real danger of extinction in our lifetimes.

So many people doing everything they can

But you know what was positive about it? The fact that there are so many incredible people across the world that are doing everything they can to counteract the damage. They are saving animals, re-planting the rainforests, inventing amazing ocean clean up machines and organising enormous litter pick and recycling initiatives.

They are educating their communities, using social media to mobilise people across the globe, staging enormous, awareness-raising protests, taking world leaders to task and generally fighting so hard for their futures.

And why is their future so important to them? Because these amazing warriors are children and young people. They are the driving forces behind enormous community education efforts, wildlife rehabilitation programs, and rousing people from their apathy, denial or sheer ignorance.

One of the most famous of these is obviously Greta Thunberg. An absolute icon for young people, she has stood firm in the face of waves and waves of really quite sickening abuse from adults. Including Donald Trump. Imagine being so young and having a world leader of that level of fame attacking you and still pushing forward with your beliefs. It really is remarkable.

Young people are genuinely fearful for the lives on Planet Earth

But it’s sad that it’s the young people shouting the loudest about this. They are genuinely fearful for their lives on Planet Earth, and their children’s lives. But these future children are also our legacy, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, carrying on our genes and our names into an uncertain tomorrow.

We can still secure a future for our children

Although bleak, sad and worrying, the overall message from the program was that we can still secure a future on Earth for our children, there is hope, but only if we all act now and don’t just leave it to the children.

We need to help and support them in their efforts, look to how we can improve, choose renewable energy sources and cut down on our plastic use. Try not to waste food, plant more trees and plants, and if we can, donate to some of the amazing non-profit projects like One Tree Planted, which put 10 million trees into the ground just last year.

Parents and grandparents still have a responsibility to help our younger generations to fight this battle – we will be stronger and have a better chance of winning if we act together.