I'm using one of the blessings of liberty right now my freedom of speech to tell you guys who make the laws that the very ground you stand on the house you live in the children you tuck in at night are all in immediate catastrophic danger.” Promote the general welfare Where's the General welfare in strip-mining toxic pesticides industrial solvents being dumped into rivers killing everything Domestic Tranquility Ever sleep in a forest that's being clear-cut You'd be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. 'A more perfect union While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want and other people live in subway tunnels Where's the justice of that Kids right here in America go to be hungry every night while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. It was a whole lot worse because of huge worldwide climatic changes caused by. Just recently I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. Animals are becoming extinct right now in my lifetime. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. 'I've also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside like it's done for hundreds of thousands of years. Waterfalls and mountains thermal pools surrounded by sand like white sugar. There are so many awesome beautiful tings in it. 'I mean I've seen a lot of the world the only world we have. But what you need to know what the world needs to know is that we're really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic was than anyone has ever imagined. 'There's a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint.

I put the speech down picked up the microphone and came out from behind the podium. I looked down at my notes and all the little black words blurred together on the page. I heard coughing and shifting in the audience. 'But everything mankind' - I frowned - 'personkind has accomplished has had a price. We've even created new kinds of people, like me. And we've harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormous super-jets. I'm here because the human race has become more powerful than ever.

'I'm here to testify about things I've seen and experienced myself. “Thank you for inviting me here today ' I said my voice sounding nothing like me.

Last Breath by Rachel Caine