A Letter from the Future: The Longing of a Starving Man

The late afternoon sun cast crimson rays upon the parched earth, cracked like the skin of the elderly. The air was thick and suffocating, so that every breath became a heavy labor. In a small, pitch-dark room with not a whisper of breeze, a man lay curled on a simple bed. His body was gaunt, his sunken eyes staring blankly into nothingness. On the table sat a glass of water with only a few drops remaining, but he dared not drink. He knew that if he drank it now, tonight would bring a burning thirst that nothing could quench.

His name was Arjun, a resident of the world of the year 2070. But this story is not distant fiction. It is an urgent warning from the near future, one that Venerable Thích Chân Quang mentioned in a dharma talk on protecting the ecological environment. It is the letter Arjun wrote to the present world—a world where the Arctic ice had not yet fully melted, where forests still cast their cooling shade, and where people still carelessly ran their air conditioners and rode motorcycles that spewed black smoke into the sky.

"I am suffering from severe kidney disease," Arjun wrote in a trembling hand, "because of the lack of drinking water. I should drink eight glasses of water each day, but now I am allowed only half a glass. My kidneys have failed, and I am waiting for death to come slowly."

In that letter, Arjun described a society turned completely upside down. Women shaved their heads bald—not for fashion or religion, but because there was no longer any water to wash their hair. The flush toilet had become a historical relic. Everyone had to go out to the fields, but the land had been paved over with concrete and dense construction. To find an open space among the towering buildings packed shoulder to shoulder, people had to hire a service or travel far, crossing barren, dust-choked lands.

"There is no such thing as spraying water to wash a car," Arjun continued, his words full of despair. "Bathing is a luxury. We only use oil paper to wipe the sweat and dirt from our bodies. The forests have vanished; everything lies bare. People simply wait for death to come to them, little by little."

Two years earlier, scientists had predicted that the Arctic ice would take another fifty years to melt completely. But the reality was far more brutal: it could vanish entirely this year or the next. The warming of the earth does not unfold slowly, as people imagine—it arrives like a storm, sweeping away every hope. When water sources run dry, agriculture collapses. Food disappears. And then, the animal nature within human beings reveals itself. Wars break out not over ideology, but over the struggle for the last rivers and the few patches of land that still hold moisture.

Arjun recalled heartbreaking images from Africa, where children, starving and parched, chewed on wood and ate cow dung to fill their empty bellies. This is not a horror film. This is the future if we do not act. "If there is no food, the Dharma cannot be sustained," Venerable Chân Quang emphasized. When people are starving and war and chaos reign, how can there be peace to practice? Who will be left to spread the Buddha's teachings (Dharma)?

The letter ended with a heartfelt plea: "Look into the mirror. The culprits who are burning the earth are us. Every liter of gasoline poured into our vehicles, every switch we flip on, every second of wasted energy—we are killing ourselves and our descendants."

After reading the letter, the modern reader feels their heart tighten. They look around their comfortable home: the air conditioner humming away, the motorcycle parked outside the door, the electronic devices glowing through the night. They realize that today's comfort is being paid for with tomorrow's destruction. The rich consume the most, but the poor suffer the consequences first. And when the poor are all gone, the rich will have no one left to serve, to trade with, to exist alongside.

The Meaning of the Story:

The story "A Letter from the Year 2070" clearly illustrates the devastating consequences of destroying the ecological environment through global warming. Its core moral lesson is this: protecting the environment is not only a social responsibility but also a duty of every Buddhist disciple, arising from compassion for all beings and for humanity. Humans are the only species capable of destroying the ecosystem, but we are also the species with enough wisdom and spiritual depth to heal it. Conserving energy, reducing consumption, and living simply are not forms of hardship. They are acts of love, protecting life for ourselves and for future generations. If we do not act now—if we do not "do something"—we will push humanity toward the edge of extinction with our own hands.

Compiled from a dharma talk by Venerable Thích Chân Quang