My name is Megan Tankeh and I am currently a senior at Terra Nova High School. When I was in 4th grade, I remember going to Peru and having the opportunity to explore the Amazon tropical rainforest. When my family and I arrived, we paddled across the Amazon river and stayed at a campsite surrounded by the towering trees above us. There was great amount of life surrounding us, from monkeys and elegant butterflies to guinea pigs the size of dogs. The fact of the matter was that this place was unlike any other and it was only a small fraction of the beauty of life that Earth has to offer.

However, I am worried about my future. I know that the beautiful rainforest I once saw may not exist for my children to see. We are using our planet's resources faster than we can replace them. According to a report from HSBC, at the rate which we are using oil, they predicted that we will run out by the year 2060. Resource depletion is becoming a consequence that my generation will have to live through.

Consequently, the impact of our carbon foot print is not invisible and can be seen from your front door. There are less trees, less biodiversity, less clean water, and more smog.

I cannot ask you to bring extinct species back to life or to change deserts back to forests, but I do ask that you consider the future of my generation. As people, we value the sanctity of life. Just as we value each other's lives, we should also value the life around us.


The Earth has so much to offer, but what can you say that you offered the Earth? At Terra Nova, my classmates and I participated in a beach clean up at Linda Mar beach, just a few minutes away. We found a surprising number of broken bottles, plastic bags, trash, and even bags of waste left from people's dogs. From only a few hours of cleaning up the beach, we were able to fill buckets of trash to throw away.

Just a simple activity such as cleaning up trash could be the difference of life and death for some organisms that reside at the beach. This is only one of thousands of ways to contribute to conserving our planet. There is a saying that goes, "Live simply so others can simply live." If we each reduce our emission of gas, oil, pollution, and waste, I believe we can sustain our Earth for thousands of years to come, but our mission starts today. We have one Earth to share, and I pledge to do my part to keep it clean, will you?

Megan Tankeh is a Terra Nova High School senior. This is the text of the speech she gave at the PBC "Chasing Mavericks" surf movie event.