Yelena Adams

My Witness Statement

As I looked around and saw the chaos, I felt hope drain away and I was suddenly refilled with adrenaline, my heart getting faster and faster, eyes burning, throat tight. Our boat was sinking and the life jackets were going to do fuck all because the water was burning through the ship, it was toxic and the screams all around told me swimming to safety was not an option, not that I could even swim that well. I thought how much I would rather drown right now than to be burnt by this acid water. I looked around at the strangers still aboard scrambling to save themselves, when the lady next me was struck by the mast, blood everywhere. I was suddenly envious, on second thought I said to myself I’ll take that option, a quick death, I never wanted anything more in my life. Actually, if I could have anything it would be for the world to have listened, to have paid attention when there was time, to have stopped destroying this world before it was too late. As the sun went down over the horizon I knew this would be my last day on Earth, May 8th 2099. I thought back on everything that got me to my last day. Had I done enough? Had I tried my best? Every day I worked to keep his legacy alive, to keep going even when there seemed like there was no hope. It happened just has he foretold. I read his work hundreds of times, watched hours of film, and he predicted it all. The world that I saw through his films seemed to me like something from a dream. I have never known an Earth so beautiful, so diverse. The animals so strange and wild, the forests a mesmerizing world of green, the oceans so alive. I wish I had been born earlier before everything was poisoned and suffocated. They say when the Amazon Rainforest dried out in 2037 there was surprisingly a small glimmer of hope as everyone started to pay attention to the destruction we humans were causing to this planet. The restrictions on food and fossil fuels helped for a while until the war, Climate Corruption as it is remembered. Those who did not care or maybe still did not believe in climate change fought hard against the changes, changes that may have helped pave the way to a sustainable future. The whole system came crumbling down and then the ecosystem had no chance. Fossil fuels burned once again and so did forests. The corrupt had their pockets fill with money as whole cities filled with the rising ocean. In 2045 when the permafrost thawed there was no going back. Then in 2050 the coral reefs became a thing of the past. Watching the films of him describing the beauty an abundance of the oceans always made me wonder how humans could destroy all of it. In 2069 when I was born food was incredibly scarce but my parents made do. They gave us everything they could so that we would have a chance to survive. The books and the films meant the most to me, to be able to see what had been, to know what this beautiful Earth once was. To watch him describe it all and show how amazing this world was filled me with hope that it will one day return to it’s former beauty once humans are gone. I wish I had known him. He spent a lifetime trying to save our beautiful Earth and it wasn’t enough. As I looked down at my heart-shaped locket I took one more look inside and saw his face looking back, my great, great, great grandfather. The inscription read David Frederick Attenborough - 8 May 1926. Then as the last of the screams disappeared into the thick atmosphere I looked up and saw No Life on Our Planet.