My name is Ben Medd. I’m 12 years old and I’m a seventh-grader at the Friends School of Portland.

Almost everyone I know – my parents, my teachers, friends and family – as well as some politicians and newspapers all agree that climate change is a crisis. Yet none of them act like it.

Before I am my grandparents’ age, animals beloved from childhood picture books are predicted to go extinct. Is this what we, as a generation, want to be remembered for? The people who had the chance to save everything but didn’t because they were looking at their phones? Why are we ignoring our planet’s cries for help? This is why I’d like to thank Janet Mills for addressing climate change first in her inaugural statements.

I propose action! Action from all of us, including you, the newspaper. We need to treat climate change as a crisis. For instance, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, there were updates from that day on until the war was ended. I think that there should be an article every day about the status of climate change. We need reports on our progress. We need to know how we’re doing. The newspaper has a lot of power, and we should use that to our advantage to help save not just ourselves but the generations following.

The world is our home. If we can’t take care of our home, then who are we? This should be a defining moment for humans. We’re smart enough and strong enough. We can rise up and make a difference for everyone. Every little bit helps.

We need the mindset that we can do something and it will matter. There is still hope. We have 12 years to get our act together or else we’ll be led down a path of no return.

Ben Medd

Portland