So overall 2012 has indeed been a significant year in relation to our natural and social systems, but the irony is, none of these events seem to have made a dent in the minds of climate skeptics or gun lobbyists, as they continue to cling on to the same archaic paradigms. So what is the deeper problem? What is the systemic issue?

As young people, we write today with both grave concern and powerful hope. Unfortunately, our concerns are beginning to outweigh our hope more and more each day. We were raised in a world nearly 1 degree warmer than the pre-industrial average; where disruption of the climate system has become increasingly visible in the few years since we were young children.

Tuesday morning I woke up, opened the paper and saw a full page spread on plans to create massive End Pit Lakes, a process that involved filling the massive, visible from space, open pit mines created by tar sands extraction in Northern Alberta with tailings and water.

A federal government concerned about what's being passed along to the next generation would be a leader in global negotiations for a strong, binding agreement to cut carbon pollution, put in place domestic rules to make polluters pay, and focus on building clean energy infrastructure instead of doubling down on tar sands. Instead, it's doing just the opposite.

A new NASA study predicts massive ecological changes for Canada's Prairies and boreal regions by the year 2100. Those areas a...