This morning I was going round my usual round of news on Google News, when I came across an article about children raising their voices at Copenhagen. In it was prominently featured a (then) 12-year old Canadian girl called Severn Suzuki who gave the most amazing speech at a climate conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
I was pretty flabbergasted, not so much because I didn’t even know there was a conference of world leaders to discuss environmental issues as early as 1992, but the power of her speech is so moving, you’d think it ought to have made an impact on the then world leaders. Sadly we all know how bad the 90’s turned out to be, from an environmental perspective I mean.
To give you an idea, here’s a video of her speech 17 years ago:
And she didn’t stop there, 19 years on, she’s still fighting for environmental issues. I found this wonderful video of a presentation she did 3 years ago at a conference on Water Preservation in Vancouver island, and some of the points she brings up are issues I’d not even heard before. It’s about an hour long, but well worth watching:
We need more people like this to raise awareness of issues that really matter, and listening to her talking, I felt an echo of one of my previous posts. Yes it’s important to have governments decide on important policy changes to preserve our environment, but really, at the end of the day, it’s down to us to make our living sustainable, to be aware of the ways we consume and consume, the way we buy things and throw them away. I don’t know enough to be someone like that but I keep myself informed so that I can at least make sure my daughter is raised in the best possible environment to safeguard her future.