Video: ‘Dear Matafele Peinem” by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

The most interesting part of the United Nations Climate Summit was not a speech by any of the world leaders in attendance, but a poem read by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a 26-year old mother from the Marshall Islands.

Jetnil-Kijiner’s poem, called “Dear Matafele Peinem,” addresses her daughter, promising to stop the global warming and rising waters that threaten the tiny Pacific Ocean island nation where they live. Climate change is not inevitable; we do have the power to stop it.