Forget climate Apocalypse. There's hope for our warming planet | Jelmer Mommers | TEDxMaastricht

good morning suppose you had to visualize an invisible problem suppose you wanted to tell the world about climate change with an image that was so clear everybody understood what was going on this has long been the solution of the mass media sad lonely polar bears and things melting ice sheets and glaciers and these are actually old stock photos that appear in media reports about global warming and they're all very threatening and if you add them all up you get something like this what do these images of climate change tell us this was one of the first questions I asked when I started writing about climate change as a journalist the central thing about these images and many stories in the media is that they show us climate change as the apocalypse they show us a world in which we don't belong because we can't live in these conditions and you know the story of apocalypse is really the oldest story in the book I'm sure you've heard some version of the story when you were young I remember hearing it while listening to Michael Jackson's earth song I was eight and I had a ghetto blaster and I played that record over and over again and it was very dramatic he sings about the crying earth and the weeping Shores and he repeats a few times over look what we've done to the world and I was impressed I wasn't too impressed this is me with my sister on a holiday I was a happy kid but the point is my point is you can't grow up without hearing about the end of the old one way or the other in fact it's everywhere around you you can go see the destruction of the world in any theater near you at any time whether it's x-man or Independence Day or the day after tomorrow or some other movie or show now of course when it comes to climate change politicians and activists will tell you that we have a little bit of time left to act we must act swiftly and decisively and if we don't well then we'll run ourselves off a cliff and so this is how many people respond to the story of climate change because the thing about the apocalypse is that you can't stop it this story the story I just showed you is so scary it's paralyzing and psychology tells us that when people are scared they find a way to ignore the issue it also tells us that scared people are less creative and less prone to action so we imagine our own destruction all the time but it's not getting us anywhere and the truth is there is no cliff millions of people are already suffering the consequences of climate change and they're suffering won't just magically disappear at some point along with the rest of life on Earth so not only is the story of climate change as the apocalypse counterproductive but it's also wrong and we need a better story one that doesn't make us feel hopeless and powerless and doomed and personally I believe that the media journalists like me have a huge responsibility in getting the story right because the way we talk about this issue determines our engagement it determines our future so let's get the story right I think it should be accurate it should be human and it should be hopeful first let's get accurate about the cause of global warming this shows you the sources of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution until a few years back now as you can see the US and Europe account for a little over half of all emissions now the story behind this chart is painful it's about colonialism exploitation tremendous injustice while exploiting others for our gain we started changing the climate forever and today China is the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases but if you look at the carbon footprint of consumers you'll see that the Americans and the Europeans are still way ahead of the Chinese so in the real story of climate change specific people are responsible mostly the wealthiest consumers the richest 10% of consumers emit almost half of all greenhouse gases think about that for a second not only have the rich accumulated most wealth and power they're also wrecking the planet like nobody else and so climate change is about us Western countries got rich while causing climate change and now rich consumers are causing more climate change and it's not just the super-rich although they are the undisputed champions of global warming think about your own holidays when I flew from Amsterdam to New York last full I put 20 times more carbon in the air than the average person in Mali in an entire year with just one holiday so climate change is about us it's about rich consumers causing more climate change now the next question of course is who will suffer the consequences well eventually everyone will suffer the consequence of global warming one way or the other but the rich will be able to adapt they'll buy their way out of trouble the poor of course have less options and so this map should be alarming it shows you the effects of climate change on food security climate change causes more droughts in regions that are already dry and so it will be harder especially in Africa to grow crops and get access to food and here is an even more revealing map I read about it in an essay by Naomi Klein the activist and author the pink area drawn on this map shows you the border of the desert it's a piece of land where less than 200 milliliters millimetres of rain falls each year it's habitable you can grow a few crops but life here is hard and these regions have seen conflict throughout history now it turns out that if you plot western drone attacks on the same map there's a remarkable pattern a great deal of Western military intervention is concentrated in these dry areas it's where people are fighting over oil and water and it's where people radicalize and join terrorist groups so the real story of climate change it's not it's not the end of the world it's violence it's what happens when a few people emit carbon and then a lot of people will know the consequences it's extreme horrific long-term widespread violence in the words of the writer Rebecca Solnit it's the few hurting the many and it's going on every day because we're still emitting carbon at a massive scale and the way things are developing now we're looking at 3 degrees of warming already and the truth is along with the temperatures we're turning up the amount of suffering on earth we're turning up the volume of existing problems and so unfortunately I'm not going to tell you that we can fix this that we can somehow solve climate change as if it were a mathematical equation but I can tell you this even on our warming planet there are reasons for hope because millions of people have started to end the age of fossil fuels to end the inequality of the current system and to end the violence and they've started they stopped asking what have we done to the world and they've started to heal the world which of course is another great Michael Jackson song over the last few years millions of people showed up on the streets and they had a tremendous impact when they showed up and they pressured politicians to make the right decisions and then when they returned to their homes and pushed for change all around them in their jobs in their schools in their cities these people changed the story they recognized that climate change is a form of violence caused by some and suffered by others and so when they showed up in Paris at the climate conference last year they demanded an end to the violence they demanded climate justice and the politicians listened a treaty was signed in Paris that was a huge step in the right direction it wasn't good enough but it recognized the needs of the most vulnerable people on earth and it's these people that made it possible they changed the story they created the room for political leaders to start moving and of course it's not just the people that call themselves activists it's not just the people that show up on the streets if many of us are part of this vast network of changemakers and even if you do a tiny thing for the climate whatever it may be however small it may be you're part of this network of people that is pushing for change and that is making the world a better place and we're getting help from the people working on clean technology just look at the cost of solar going down over time you know what the really cool thing about solar is when you invest in it you're also helping to end conflicts that started over oil and gas so you're helping to create peace this is peas energy and it's getting cheaper by the day now of course it's hard to see change like this taking place but we know from history that it can happen very quickly this is the Easter Parade in New York in 1900 almost all vehicles are horse-drawn carts this is the same parade only 13 years later almost all cars so we know that change can happen very quickly and just imagine what could happen to the rise of electric cars and batteries and other clean technologies you and I have never even heard of imagine our cities might change the fact is this is not a sad story it's a human story it's full of contradictions it hurts and it's wonderful it has progress and setbacks dread and joy climate change is not the end of the world it's a wake-up call to attain peace and justice and I know I know this story is not easy like sitting back and waiting for the apocalypse but when we talk about climate change this is the story worth telling you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 207,355

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Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Netherlands, Global Issues, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Sustainability

Id: gtu9GHhiK0o

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2016