The 12 year old girl that silenced the world for 6 minutes

The 12 year old girl that silenced the world for 6 minutes!

Hello.I’m Severn Suzuki, speaking for E.C.O--The Environmental Children’s Organization.

We are a group of twelve or thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference.

V anessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me, we raised all the money to come here ourselves,to come five thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda, 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 V ancouver, 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 rainforests 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 am only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize,neither do you!

Y ou don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. Y ou don’t know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. Y ou 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 a desert.

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 or politicians —but really, you are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles—and all of you are somebody’s child.

I’m only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong, in fact, 30 million species strong, and borders and governments will never change that.

I’m only a child yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.

In my anger, I’m not blind; and in my fear, I’m not afraid of telling the world how I feel.

In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet northern countries were not sharing with the needy. Even we have more than enough. We are afraid to share, we are afraid to let go some of our wealth.

In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets. I used to go out for two days. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets, these were one child told us: “I wish I was rich, and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicines, shelter and love and affection.”

If a child on the street who has nothing, is willing to share, why are we who have everything still so greedy?

I can’t stop thinking that these are children, my own age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born. That I could be one of those children living in Favellas of Rio; I could be a child starving in Somalia, or victim of war in the Middle East or a begger in India.

I am only a child yet I know, if all the money spend on war was spend on finding environmental answers, ending poverty and finding treatings, what a wonderful place this earth will be!

At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, 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 that you tell us not to do?

Do not forget why you are attending these conferences! Who do you 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 alright.”“I t’s not the end of the world”“And we are 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: “Y ou are what you do, not what you say”. Well, what you do makes me cry at night. Y ou grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words.

Thank you.