Poet Calls Out World Leaders in Stirring Speech on Climate Change

Jetnil-Kijiner was chosen from over 500 candidates to speak to the United Nations and “represent the voice of civil society.” She hails from the Marshall Islands, a nation comprised of 1,156 individual islands and islets in the northern Pacific Ocean which, as you can image, is particularly vulnerable in the face of climate change.

The 26-year-old poet addresses the assembly and then reads a poem she wrote for her daughter about the “race to save humanity.” She calls out “blindfolded bureaucracies” and and promises her daughter that: “No one’s drowning, baby/ No one’s moving/ No one’s losing their homeland/No one’s become a climate change refugee/Or should I say, no one else”

H/t Mother Jones