12 year old girl’s moving speech to the United Nations (16 years ago)

James Towner — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:42:10 +0000

I’m only 16 years late posting this story, but I have a good excuse, in 1992 I was 14 years old, probably hadn’t heard of this magical thing called the internet, and the environment was the last thing on my mind. Someone that did have the environment in mind at that time was 12 year old Severn Cullis-Suzuki and she delivered this powerful speech at the UN Earth Summit in 1992.

The speech is very idealistic, but I hope it moved some of the members to start making some positive changes in their countries and the world. Since 1992 we can all probably come up with many positive and negative changes that have happened. The world probably would be a better place if adults behaved in the same way they teach their kids to act.

So where is Severn now? According to this Wikipedia article she graduated from Yale in 2002, hosted a television program called Suzuki’s Nature Quest on the Discovery channel, launched an Internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project, in 2006 went back to grad school at the University of Victoria, and is still an active environmentalist.

Visit this link for interview of her by The Collage Foundation.

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Switch To Biofuel Crop Production Worsens Global Food Price Crisis.

James Towner — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:31:51 +0000

Very interesting article over at the guardian.co.uk about the global food price crisis and how one of the factors causing it is the switch from food crops to biofuel crops.

tens of thousands of farmers have switched from food to fuel production to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. Spurred by generous subsidies and an EU commitment to increase the use of biofuels to counter climate change, at least 8m hectares (20m acres) of maize, wheat, soya and other crops which once provided animal feed and food have been taken out of production in the US.

In addition, large areas of Brazil, Argentina, Canada and eastern Europe are diverting sugar cane, palm oil and soybean crops to biofuels. The result, exacerbated by energy price rises, speculation and shortages because of severe weather, has been big increases of all global food commodity prices.

Cameroon At least 24 people killed and 1,600 people arrested in February. Taxes slashed on food imports and public sector wages increased by 15%.

Indonesia 10,000 demonstrated outside the presidential palace in Jakarta after soya bean prices rose more than 50% in a month and more than 125% over the past year.

Egypt Seven people have died in fights or of exhaustion queuing for subsidised bread. Dairy products are up 20%, oil 40%.

Burkina Faso Riots in three towns after the government promised to control the price of food but failed.

Guinea Five anti-government riots over cost of living in past 18 months.

Pakistan Thousands of troops have been deployed to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. [Read More]

Here’s some alternative biofuels to consider; these Arizona groups make biodiesel from waste vegetable oil.

AZ BioDiesel

Amereco BioFuels Corp

Desert BioFuels

Dynomite BioFuels Co-Op

Grecycle

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12 year old girl’s moving speech to the United Nations (16 years ago)

Switch To Biofuel Crop Production Worsens Global Food Price Crisis.