“We raised all the money to come here five thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you…”
“Hello, I’m Severn Suzuki, speaking for ECO – the Environmental Children’s Organization. We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds trying to make a difference: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money to come here five thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.”
“Coming up here today, I have no hidden agendas. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. 
I am here to speak for all 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 the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.”
“I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my Dad until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct every day – vanishing forever.”
“In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rain forests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry about these 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’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you…”
“You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now desert. If you don’t know how fix it, please stop breaking it!”
“At school even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us: not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect elders, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share – not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?”
“Do not forget why you are attending these conferences, who you’re doing this for – we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying ‘everything’s going to be all right’, ‘it’s not the end of the world’, and “we’re doing the best we can’. But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities?”
“My Dad always says, ‘You are what you do, not what you say.’ Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you. Please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you.”
This was a speech delivered at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 by twelve-year-old Severn Suzuki of Canada.
Does anyone remember this?
