Today’s young people have a lot at stake in worldwide climate change negotiations. After all, they’ll inherit either a bleak future if we don’t take action, or a happy planet if we seize the opportunity to develop clean-energy solutions.

To stress the importance of decisions made by today’s leaders for our youth, the United Nations recently recruited young people from around the world to speak at climate talks in New York in September.

That reminded New York Times writer Andrew C. Revkin of a young person who stunned delegates with her passionate speech at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, when she was just 12 years old. That young person was David Suzuki and Tara Cullis’s daughter, Severn, who now has a master’s degree in ethno-ecology and lives with her husband and brand new baby on Haida Gwaii.

Mr. Revkin spoke to Severn about her experience 17 years ago and about the lessons for young people today. You can read that interview here.

And if you’d like to see for yourself how a 12-year-old made world leaders take notice, watch Severn’s speech: