3rd Presentation : Severn Cullis’S speech on United State Conference on Environment and Development

Severn Cullis’S speech on United State Conference on Environment and Development in Rio De Janeiro , Brazil in 1992,

We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds come from Canada.  We raised all the money to come here today to make different, to tell you adults you must change your ways.

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, for the starving children around the world for the countless animals dying across this planet
I am afraid to go out in the sun and breathe air because of the air pollution and environment pollution.
I’m no longer to go fishing with my dad in Vancouver because few years ago we found the fish full of cancers
All this is happening before our eyes. 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.
* And you can’t bring back forests 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, brothers and sister - and all of you are somebody’s child.
I’m only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.
In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter. We make so much waste, we buy and throw away. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to share.
We were shocked when the children living on the streets told me that. “I wish I was rich and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, 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’m only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this earth would be!
At school, you teach us to behave in the world: not to fight with others, to respect others, 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’re attending these conferences; you are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in. My father always says “You are what you do, not what you say.” I challenge you; please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you