Many thanks to new VB contributor Lois, for alerting us to this video and the write up below. Ed
“If you don’t know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it.”
These were words spoken by 12 year old Severn Suzuki at the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro. Suzuki spoke to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development for seven minutes about her fears for the earth, its environment and the world to be inherited by her children.
She reflects that, as a child, she is told to respect others, not to hurt and to share what she has.
She wonders if the world of adults still follows these rules. Her father always told her that ‘you are what you do, not what you say’.
She then goes on to say that what we do (as a global community) makes her cry at night.
A recent interview with Suzuki appeared in Guernica Magazine http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/979/intergenerational/.
April 22nd is Earth Day, http://www.earthday.net/ which has been running for nearly 40 years, in order to celebrate the birth of the modern environmental movement.
Its aims are to help us all make a difference where we can and focus our attention on local, national and international environmental issues.
The words of Severn Suzuki still hit home hard today, 17 years on, perhaps even more so now than ever before. As she put it so well, ‘You grown-ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words’
A transcript of her moving speech can be found online
