100 Degrees: An environmentalist story

“And it used to snow every winter, Emma, every winter. Back then.”
“I don't believe you. I've never seen this 'snow' you keep talking about,” she said, weaving the quotation marks into her voice. “My teachers haven't even seen it. And some of them are your age.”
Mom chuckled. “I can imagine.” She sighed, and ruffled my hair. “The only reason I've ever seen snow is because when I was your age, my parents took me to a mountain top. That was the only place that snow still existed, back then.” She looked into space, as if she could see the scene, but far away. “But when Gramom was just about your age, it snowed every single winter. It was much colder then.”
I pouted, and slumped over on the couch. It seemed so exciting to have little flakes of ice swirling around you, all white and soft, and then that big blanket of millions of those flakes on the ground...just like in those old, old movies, where Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa were covered with that icy white blanket. I think there was one -- what was it called? -- Home Alone, that was it! Christmas with snow. Even a cold Christmas was impossible to imagine. A Christmas that wasn't just like springtime...
I wished I could see this “snow”. But mom said that there was none left at all anymore, not even on the mountain tops. She said that it disappeared completely about ten years after they went to the mountains.
“But how? If it was as wonderful and glorious and...especially...as irreplaceable as everyone said it was, then wouldn't anyone try to keep the world cool?”
She sighed again. “I think they did. But the people with the power, like the presidents and people in the government, well, most of them...just didn't care enough.”
Stupid. I thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid . Who would be stupid enough to think that we wouldn't care? That we wouldn't make a fuss about, well, I don't know, one of the world's greatest phenomena disappearing into thin air?
“Huh,” I said. It was all I could say. Nothing seemed to make sense about that snow. Mom put so much detail into her description of snow that I could start to believe it, but I still didn't like the idea that the people who were ruling our world -- our presidents, prime ministers, and, well, everyone else that really had a say in anything -- didn't care about something as huge as the disappearing of snow. Didn't they have enjoyment, too? Didn't they also love the snow? Or were they really just all business?
The next day at school, I came in, and having been elected as class president the day before, wrote on the board 9/8/2208. Why couldn't I just write '08? I thought. It's not like anyone thinks it's 2008.
* * *
WHO KNOWS? This could be the actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness scenario of a girl some 200 years from now. Do we want it to be? You decide. Your decision can make a difference if you try.