This morning I was going round my usual round of news on Google News, when I came across an article about children raising their voices at Copenhagen. In it was prominently featured a (then) 12-year old Canadian girl called Severn Suzuki who gave the most amazing speech at a climate conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

I was pretty flabbergasted, not so much because I didn’t even know there was a conference of world leaders to discuss environmental issues as early as 1992, but the power of her speech is so moving, you’d think it ought to have made an impact on the then world leaders. Sadly we all know how bad the 90′s turned out to be, from an environmental perspective I mean.

To give you an idea, here’s a video of her speech 17 years ago:

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