Amazing Message For Mankind

This is 12 year old Servern Cullis giving a speech at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Her powerful words serve as a reminder to humanity of how far we've fallen as a species, and as a call towards personal responsibility (partial transcript below).

"I'm here to speak for all generations to come. I'm here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I'm here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have no where left to go. I'm afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our ozone. I'm afraid to breathe the air 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. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct everyday 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 of 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'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 the salmon back up a dead stream. You don't now how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back the forest 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 government, business people, organizers, reporters, or politicians, but really you're mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and all of you are someone's child...

I am only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties, what a wonderful place this Earth would be. At school, even in Kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us 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 you tell us not to do!? Do not forget why you are attending these conferences, who you are doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying everything's going to be alright, 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. Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad always says you are what you do, not what you say. Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words."