Shawn Mendes gives an impassioned speech about the 'doom' of the climate crisis

Pickering, Ontario’s most famous son, Shawn Mendes, stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, just over a week after he made a splash with girlfriend Camila Cabello at the Met Gala and the VMAs, to talk about his passion for climate change activists, but also how the impending “doom” gets him down.

“We’ve basically grown up, my generation, going to school since we were like 5 basically being told that the earth is dying,” Shawn said after Colbert mentioned a recent poll states 56 per cent of young people agree with the statement “humanity is doomed.”

“So it’s only fair to be adults now and be feeling like yeah, it’s always been dying. It’s always been doomed.”

“The info is out there, you know?” he continued. “I think it’s terrifying because it feels like you’re just being consumed by the fear of it and what’s gonna happen. But the info is out there, the data is out there, there is research that tells us how to stop it and what we can do.”

“I empathize with the doom, I feel the doom, but you can’t give in to it.”

Colbert also held up a concert photograph taken of Shawn in Brazil in 2019, where he stopped the show to talk about climate change. He used green gaffer tape on the back of his guitar to spell out “climate action now.”

“In that particular photo, I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil,” he explained, “and there was crazy fires in the Amazon Rainforest at the time, and they were supposed to hold COP25 in Brazil, which is basically where world leaders get together to talk about how to solve climate change, and Brazil pulled out. And so the country was really kind of upset and angry, and there were demonstrations.”

“And it felt like there was a lot of anger and upset and they weren’t being heard like they should. I was playing in Sao Paulo that night and so we just did something simple like that and I remember I played the song, flipped my guitar around, and held it up into the sky. And I was standing there for this time that felt like 30 minutes but probably 4 minutes, and I was shaking. My whole body was shaking because it was standing for something bigger than myself. It was extremely important to be able to stand for that. I could feel the power of the stadium.”

“[It was] the loudest scream I think I’ve heard the entire tour.”

It was recently announced that the “Summer of Love” crooner is using his eponymous foundation to partner with Future Coalition’s Youth Climate Corps to support youth climate activists ahead of COP26. The Shawn Mendes Foundation will contribute to the Youth Climate Finance Alliance (YCFA), a US-wide outreach program that coordinates youth activists, to support young game changers working to combat the climate crisis.

He also spoke at length with Colbert about how funds from his upcoming world tour (stay tuned for dates announced later today!) will go toward The Wonder Grant recipients in each city his tour stops, and also to the Shawn Mendes Foundation.

“It's so interesting at a young age you can be so passionate about something, so pure and so good. It can take something kind of s****y as money to deter you from that. Being able to kind of fund a young person can change their entire life to being dedicated to helping the world," he said.

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