On June 29, 2015, President of the UN General Assembly, Sam K. Kutesa, hosted the High-Level event on Climate Change at UN headquarters in New York. The event took place at the midway point between the COP20 in Lima last year and the upcoming COP21 in Paris, at which the international community is expected to deliver a new, ambitious, and universally binding climate agreement. The event included statements from activists, academics, community leaders, and other experts to provide political momentum toward COP21.
One speech in particular from the opening statements has garnered recognition: 15-year-old Indigenous environmental activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, from Boulder, Colorado USA, delivered an address about the necessity for faster movement on solving issues of climate change which has more than 210,000 views on Youtube and has been profiled for Rolling Stone Magazine. Martinez is the Youth Director of the organization Earth Guardians, an international environmental advocacy non-profit which aims to empower youths around the world in the fight against climate change. In his address, Martinez disparaged the fact that in the past 21 years of UN talks on climate change, almost no progress has been made in the way of international agreements or actions. “Climate change isn't an issue that is far off in the future,” he said. “It isn't solely affecting the ice caps and the poles or the sea level rise in our oceans. It's affecting us right here, right now, and will only continue to get worse.” He encouraged the assembly to “dream big” because “the survival of this generation and the continuation of the human race--that is what is at stake.”
Martinez spoke to the idea that the earth and its natural resources are a trust which must be protected for future generations and asserted that youth are powerful activists in the fight against climate change. Earth Guardians has been at the forefront of taking legal actions against state governments in the US, filing lawsuits against the governments under the auspices of land-trust legislation and the organization has held a variety of protests and days of action which have affirmed the importance of young people in the climate change movement. Above all, Martinez believes that we must change the way we think about the earth if we wish to curb climate change. “We see the Earth as something we can use, something we can take from — cut down the last forest, fish the last big fish in the ocean,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “There's a disconnect between the problem and the cause, because we don't want to admit to ourselves that we have created this catastrophe. To make that connection is tough. That's asking people to change the way they think. Which is tougher than asking people to change their light bulbs.”
