Name: [CC] Severn Cullis-Suzuki - Speech at the Rio Earth Summit
Uploaded: 2017-01-05T14:29:56.000Z
Duration: 6 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O.

- the Environmental Children's Organization.

We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds

Vanessa 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.

Losing my future is not like losing an election

I am here to speak for all generations to come.

I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children

I am here to speak for the countless animals

dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.

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.

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 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'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 fix the holes in our ozone layer.

You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream.

You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct.

that once grew where there is now 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 someone'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 am not blind, and in my fear,

I am not afraid to tell the world how I feel.

we buy and throw away, buy and throw away,

and yet northern countries will not share with the needy.

we are afraid to share, we are afraid to let go some of our wealth.

we have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets.

Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked

when we spent some time with some children living on the streets.

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 the Favellas of Rio;

a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India.

was spent on finding environmetal answers,

what a wonderful place this earth would be!

to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures,

Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?

Do not forget why you're attending these conferences,

You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in.

Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying,

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.

please make your actions reflect your words.

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[CC] Severn Cullis-Suzuki - Speech at the Rio Earth Summit

tremendous

realize

mess

poverty