Name: Fortune Global Forum 2024: A Voice From The Future
Uploaded: 2024-11-11
Duration: 4 min 3 s
Description: Presenter: Salome Agbaroji, U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate (2023); Student, Harvard University

Presenter: Salome Agbaroji, U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate (2023); Student, Harvard University

Fortune Global Forum 2024: A Voice From The Future

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So world leaders today are gathering at COP 29 in Azerbaijan to take on the challenges of climate change. And alongside them are scores of young people who consider our changing climate. One of the most urgent issues of their generation, millions have rallied around the globe to press for action and hundreds are attending cops. So as they meet in Baku, we have a remarkable voice of the future with us. Here. Today, we have Harvard University student Salome Agbai and she served as a 2023 national youth poet, laureate of the United States. She is joining us to share her poem Oasis. It's a powerful vision of paradise where nature and humanity exist in perfect harmony where despite a challenging path, the poem suggests that we strive toward this ideal. Please welcome Salome to the stage. Have you heard of that place over the horizon that no one has seen? But everyone wants to go that place. They call oasis where the water runs clear, glittering bodies of endless blue trickling tributaries and springs, sustainers of life above and below it. Where the hawksbill turtles, Wade and the bluefin tuna swim without plastic nets around their necks. Have you heard of the oasis? Where the oaks and timbers grow green and lush from fertile black beading soil branches extending far beyond the imagination bearing full ripe fruit. Far as the eyes can see the oasis powered by its greens and streams and sunbeams. And at the end of day you see a million stars in the obsidian sky, ozone, unobstructed by carbon clouds. Nothing but crisp air inhalation and inexplicable Peace. Haven't you seen the kids beaming and full bellied boys and girls basking in equal opportunity and health plucking fruit from the foliage and laughing for its sweetness and abundance and innocence. Haven't you seen the people satisfied and sustained harvesting all of what they need but never anymore. Solidarity is the only language they speak. And in this language, there are no words for war, pillage and steel only. Thank you and peace and prosperity. If you heard of such a place, wouldn't you want to go? Even if the past was paved with uncertainty, tribulations, bottle caps and mishaps. And if I told you, you were just halfway there, would you fall to your knees amidst the deserted battleground, the wilting wilderness, the incinerated pages and piles of plastics, but definitely hot weathered rock, etching extinction into your waving white flag? No, we must go for every tree that must grow for every child that needs books, for every problem that needs a solution for every woman that deserves a quality. We must gear up and make it to that beautiful place that no one has seen. But everyone wants to go in our lives on our earth, that place we call oasis.