This Sunday on December 13,2oo9 I came across an article in Kids Only magazine/newspaper.It was about a girl named Severn Suzuki. When she was 12 years old --In 1992-- she made a speech that explained to us the importance of saving the world. Here is the speech she made according to Kids Only magazine:
Hello I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O - The Environmental Childrens Organisation.We are a group of twelve and thirteen year olds from Canada trying to make a difference : Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me.We raised money ourselves to come six thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda, I am fighting for my future!
Loosing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for the generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for countless animals dying across the planet because they have nowhere left to go. We cannot afford to be not heard. I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air now because I don't know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver with my dad until we found out that the fish full of cancers.
And we hear animals and plants going extinct everyday--vanishing forever. In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals , jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry about these little things when you were my age?
All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I am only a child and I don't have all the solutions and I want you to realise that neither do you! You don't know how to fix the holes in the ozone. You don't know how to bring salmon up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back animals who are already extinct. And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there are now deserts. If you don't know how to fix it, PLEASE stop breaking it!
Here,you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organizers, reporters and even politicians. But really you are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles and all of you are somebody's child. I am only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, 5 billion strong, in fact, 30 billion species strong! And we all share the same air, water and soil and borders and governments will never change that! ...
I was moved by her speech. I know that we are just kids but we could also make a difference.
