January 28, 2017

This letter is a request to protect our future to all politicians, government representatives and employees, businesses and nonprofit organizations and individuals.

I want to live to the year 2050. If I live to the year 2050, I will be 98. My son will be 62—three years younger than I am now. If I live to 2050 I will be one of a projected world population of anywhere from 8.5 billion to 9.7 billion humans living on this planet. Other than me, who will those people be and where will they be living? If we don’t work to prevent it, many of them will be migrants without homes who have left behind places devastated by war and environmental change; some will be trying to settle or will have already settled in the newly warmed north. These great numbers of people--both migrants and those who have sustained themselves in place in Maine and throughout the world--will be putting an even larger burden on the ecosystems and social systems of the world. I can’t imagine any way that their lives will be the same as ours are now if we allow the current President to continue destroying our government. I can imagine ways their lives could be better.

I ask all of you to please vote and work against destruction of access to healthcare throughout the United States and the world.Please protect our immigration system. Please work to return viability to the EPA, USDA, The National Parks Service, NOAA, NASA and all other agencies that have kept the US and the State of Maine among the best places in the world to live.

Please continue to work for the future we can’t yet see and make it the best possible future.

I want to be able to hope that my son and his possible children will live in a world of fairness and beauty in 2050; a world that is better than it is now; not one where 9.7 billion people struggle to survive in a ruined place where people are devalued.

Please share my hope. Work with and for us all and don’t ever stop.

Sincerely,

Joanne Hedou

Belfast, Maine