Forty years ago I graduated from this high school. I’m a proud member of the Miami High Class of 1982 and the Miami High family. Ours is the first school established in Miami Dade County. It has a rich, beautiful history that has grown alongside our city. So many people, many of them immigrants or, like me, sons of refugees, walked these halls as they journeyed to a better future. Today’s students continue on that path of learning as they grow to become our future leaders, the future of Miami.  But these students also have a tremendous challenge.

We spend our lives working to deliver them a better tomorrow, a promising education, family, and career. However, I worry about what Miami’s future is going to look like 40 years from now when students here now reach my age. And what future will the class of 2062 inherit from the class of 2022?

Like our school, most of our homes and communities were built in flat Miami at a time when no one expected that Miami’s geography and geology would make its residents so vulnerable to the rising seas. By the time I was in high school, our society knew that polluting carbon into the atmosphere would warm our planet, cause polar glaciers to melt and raise our seas. Unfortunately, in these past 40 years little has been done to truly tackle the amount of carbon we as a society pump in the atmosphere. And that has to stop.