Climate change, endangered animals, pollution, melting sea ice, smog, disappearing forests ... It's easy to let all these things get us down. It's sad to see how humans are knowingly damaging the earth. We know what we need to do to protect the environment, yet often these issues get pushed aside for profits, convenience and political reasons.
Some children find all this very depressing. What difference can I make anyway? We might as well just give up. If the planet will be damaged so badly in the next 50 years, what does a 10- or 12-year-old have to look forward to?
But all of us can make a difference, and we shouldn't let all the bad news discourage us from trying to correct the climate change problem. There are no easy answers to the earth's environmental problems. But there's one thing that gives me hope - human ingenuity - which has helped us conquer global problems in the past.
My 81-year-old father is visiting Hong Kong from Canada this week. He's very interested in the history of Hong Kong, and how a city as grand and successful as Hong Kong could grow out of a few fishing villages in such a short time. He's impressed by the ingenuity of the Chinese people in building their country.
That same creative spirit has come to the rescue before.
Look at some of the great technological achievements we've made. Humans wanted to communicate with each other over long distances, so we invented telephones and the internet. We wanted to see what was on the moon so we designed a way to fly there, and come back alive.
