The child climate activist of the 1990s
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Long before Greta Thunberg, there was 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki, the girl who stood in front of world leaders and implored them to take action to save our environment. Speaking at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro, Severn caught the attention of the media with her passion and anger. Severn has been speaking to Phil Marzouk about her feelings then and how they’ve changed over the intervening decades.
Photo: Severn Cullis-Suzuki (2nd left) and her friends at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Courtesy of Severn Cullis-Suzuki.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Phil Marzuke. |
| 0:46.0 | What we want! |
| 0:48.0 | We want to justice! |
| 0:49.0 | What do we want to do we want to do now? |
| 0:51.0 | Young people protesting about the climate is a regular feature of current global news, |
| 0:55.8 | and at the forefront of this is Greta Tunberg. |
| 0:58.8 | Net Zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah, net zero, blah, blah, blah, climate neutral. |
| 1:04.8 | Blah, blah, blah, blah. |
| 1:05.8 | They've now had 30 years of blah, blah, blah, and where has that led us? |
| 1:10.0 | But in June 1992, there was another girl speaking to world leaders about the environment. |
| 1:15.2 | I am here to speak for all generations to come. |
| 1:19.6 | I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. |
| 1:26.6 | I'm here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere |
| 1:32.0 | left to go. |
| 1:34.0 | In my anger I am not blind and in my fear I am not afraid of telling the world how I feel. |
| 1:40.0 | Southern Kullis Suzuki, then 12 years old, was speaking at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, |
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