John Moorhead - Drawdown Switzerland and climate solutions | John Moorhead | TEDxArchivorum

well so entrenched within the community as in you know the president of drawdown switzerland so we really want to start by addressing what drawdown is um so in light of all that sorry that it cut off a minute short um john could you maybe um build on what we've just been seeing and elucidate a little bit more about what drawdown is and what it means yeah so uh as as catherine was explaining it's it's all about solutions um and a research effort that really started in 2014 um and the book that was published in 2017 that that she showed you uh it was basically the culmination of of all that research and it was published in 2017. so uh but since then uh the research continues and all the effort and the work uh with new research fellows that are looking at all the different solutions and we're adding to that research and catherine has gone on since then together with others to in march of 2020 wrote up a drawdown review all of this you can access on the drawdown website so the idea here is to show you some some resources so here we've got drawdown.org and um julian if you can just scroll down a little bit so we thought we'd try to shake things up and sort of do a multimedia presentation so we'll see how that goes uh and do interrupt if i i i do tend to ramble so uh so here you can see uh the list of all those different solutions uh and the figures that are in the scenarios are gigatons that are either reduced avoided or sequestered for that scenario and if you click on scenario two and again so that you can get the ranking what drawdown did is research and modeled all these solutions uh into the future so this is a super uh resource for for anybody to to basically understand at a very high level of course what are all those solutions because all of these um have impact in terms of uh in terms of climate and you can you can see those two scenarios and the scenario two uh corresponds to 1.5 degrees c uh warming so you'll see bigger numbers there um and and so uh what's also happened is that uh the book has now been translated in several languages and there was a recent conference at the beginning of this year where a lot more work was also presented julian apologies i'm always on yeah um can you explain why drawdown is so revolutionary for sustainability and why the climate solutions are much more than just about the climate right so uh um what's really exciting about uh the way the climate solutions were were researched is that the emphasis was really on um also looking at uh solutions uh in terms of all of their impacts uh not just on on climate and so uh what uh what drawdown found is that it's really a system of solutions uh that need to interact and uh just very recently a really important work was published which showed the links between drawdowns climate solutions to um to all of the sdgs and it has positive impacts we heard already just uh one on on education uh in the video um and so what they did and it sort of represented uh visually here is uh the impact on all the on all the uh sdgs so uh so that's what's really exciting about uh these client solutions is all the the positive benefits that they can they can they can have so uh not just on climate of course uh and the other the other aspect um i would say and the reason that this is much more than than just climate is that it really represents uh a vision of the world that we want uh uh with uh much less pollution of the air and so on and uh another resource resource i wanted to to share with you um and i don't know if you can go to the solutions project this is a fantastic uh resource and we're still at a very high level but i think this is a great uh draw so both drawdown.org and the solutionsproject.org provides some interesting tools that i just wanted to share with you so uh here's a map of the world and uh what um was was was jumped by mark jacobson at stanford with other researchers was basically to try to understand uh what the energy mix for 143 countries would look like if we were to go to 100 renewable so if you just click on uh perhaps poland uh poland's a good example uh so what they did is they they showed uh what the different renewable energies would be for in this case poland so you have onshore wind 45 percent it's a big part of it and so on uh and that's to get 100 renewable mix and if you scroll down and this is where you can see some of the other impacts you know uh decent work in terms of jobs uh created um and renewables have the great advantage of basically taking that that wind and that sun and converting it directly into energy which means that if you if you have a look at the energy demand it's it's drastically decreased because you don't need to do all the refining and the transportation and and so on of the um fossil fuels uh and then there are lots of other really important benefits of course uh in terms of health care cost savings we've been discussing a lot of like the i want to say macro level changes and quite large scale changes and i think a lot of these changes uh from drawdown uh aside from the individual ones uh it can be hard for individuals to think how they can enact them in their communities across the country but i know you've written a wonderful piece very recently about what people can do from the bottom up what are some easy bottom-up solutions that people can adopt into their daily life for example straight away to help mitigate climate change right so uh this this is one of them that we're just discussing now um so i we did a list of uh i did a list of seven uh and then um antoinette vermilie uh who i love to work with as well she's a fantastic leader in the climate space uh she jumped in and she said well i'm gonna add uh you know since you came up with a list of seven let's have a week program where you can see uh the things that you can do to start preparing all those uh climate actions so uh here's some of them so this you know walk-in cycle eat more plant-based foods uh refuse single-use plastic uh and so on and so if you if you scroll scroll down you can you can see the uh antoinette basically adding uh a seven-day program around that uh those different actions that that you can have an important theme for me in terms of climate action is dematerialization which is a fancy word for for basically saying uh let's uh let's have experiences much more than owning stuff and one of those aspects that uh i was really interested to to read to this there's a lot of um psycho and psychosocial research that shows that uh actually we get much more happiness out of experiences than uh then stuff so uh that brand new car that you buy uh in fact uh the experiences uh are the ones that will survive the not the fact that you have a new car that'll that'll wear off quite quickly so uh and and that theme i i guess is also very much in in these whole ideas of let's walk more let's cycle more let's not just get into a car let's share and so on so that we need much less materials for for experiences that don't really don't require them at all so let's enjoy nature and so those aspects really i think um you know are much less impactful on the on the environment and they're very easy for all of us to do so i'm struck by the the days of the week sentiment at the end which seems so straightforward just oh on one day of the week just don't eat me just for one day or another day of the week just use your bike and it's those little changes that make huge differences and i saw another another um link that was set in that article about using different search engines which people don't think about because honestly like no one really has an emotional attachment to a search engine it just sort of provides you information um and yeah it's either google or bing really but um i know that you're you're a fan of ecosia yeah i'm also a big fan when i and that's what i mean it's like no one has an emotional attachment to a search engine yeah i do because i know what your closure does so could could you explain a little bit about accosure as well yeah so um so i do you have the the cozy search engine um there so uh this is this is fantastic uh and um it's uh it's it's it's it's something that can you imagine a search engine that plants trees i mean we should all be using uh ecosia for for our searches so um that's a super and that's something you can do immediately switch to ecosia and uh start planting trees you know they've already had 119 million trees planted so so that's that's another one that's you know it's really is really uh it's a no-brainer so um they're moving away perhaps from um less like easy solutions um um more on like a macro scale again you wrote a really interesting article recently where again you bifurcate between the education sector and the finance sector and that for you in order to really save the planet we need to be focusing on these sectors specifically and great changes needs to happen so i guess could you start by explaining like education what what changes do we need to see in the education sector for sustainability yeah so um well first of all uh there's uh about 250 million like kids that are out of school um i mean this is a huge human tragedy and uh we really need to get as many of those kids uh into school and uh being able to uh complete both primary and secondary education uh that's that's huge because those kids are are just not getting access to quality education at all and so that's a huge gap the other one is the one billion odd kids that are in school they need to and they have been you know the the youth movement uh has been tremendous um before covid i believe the last number we had was seven million kids on strike um so it was really growing growing growing and that needs to continue but what they what kids need at school is is to have access to information they need to be empowered about all these climate solutions which we've been talking about and typically those things though are are aspects because because of the very interdisciplinary cross-cutting nature of solutions uh it's they're everywhere right and curricula tend to take time to evolve so in the meantime there are some you know some some fantastic initiatives such as the climate project and eco schools and one that i've had the privilege of working with uh john and antoinette and vermillion bringing to uh to fruition which is the carbon-free campus now a lot of people tell me look there's no point it's too late if you're talking about kids because uh they're not the they're not the problem right they're part of the solution but by the time they're 20 or 30 it's going to be too late right well i'd say uh yes maybe but actually kids are a huge uh influence on on us parents and so imagine them coming back from school and uh you know saying why the hell do we drive all the time everywhere uh and and uh you know why do we eat so much meat and so on so it's really uh you know empowering kids with with the best information and research on the different solutions that that this is really also uh all about um so yeah that's that's the the education piece if if i can summarize it that way in your opinion then how would you rate the level of education um on you know surrounding climate change at the moment well uh really largely uh insufficient um and uh much more needs to be done and uh i think that uh uh you know this these uh these voluntary programs so for instance drawdown also has a drawdown learn um so i think there's there's many many different ways that uh that you can you can bring this these themes into into school it doesn't necessarily have to be in uh you know changing the curricula per se because those things can take time but these uh these voluntary programs of of campuses wanting to get to net zero and uh and so on i think our are our uh you know super super partners for schools that uh i mean obviously the very much is the case is that teachers and uh what i've come across when i've talked about project drawdown uh at different schools is uh they're they're they are super super enthusiastic and really excited and want want more so it's really it's an open door that uh that we're knocking on i would say so uh so we need to to do more of that i'm seeing some questions coming in but i just wanted to finish with the second component to that article that you've written about the finance sector so yeah i'll elaborate on the financial changes that you and drawdown think really need to happen very soon right so uh so uh margot also referred to this and spoke about the the externalities and and so on and uh what uh what i've what i've noticed what i've been looking at now now that i work for the climate endowment fund and the the idea of the climate endowment fund if i can summarize it that way is to move uh to help the process of moving those trillions that are invested in fossil fuels cement chemicals uh etc and to move them into what's now being called alternative but need to be mainstream asap those those investments that do no harm that pollute much less that are much less carbon intensive uh and so you know that links back to uh you know what we were talking about uh at the beginning when we were looking at the co-benefits in terms of health and so on and so forth so there's been there was a great study done by the imf that showed that fossil fuels basically had 5.3 trillion dollars of subsidies now they stretch the definition of subsidies to include impacts on health that society is paying for but that fossil fuels are so so that's really part of the solution is to price those externalities and internalize them and have the polluters pay right but that has has gone way too slowly and the point the drawdown makes actually is that all these solutions because there's no carbon price in drawdown are economically viable so so we need to help accelerate uh that that process so renewables are accelerating faster and faster plant-based foods are the next ones that are going to be coming very quickly uh but i think what we can do uh all of us is uh and that's sort of coming back to the overall theme is to find out what those solutions are uh talk to and explain them to um to our to our friends and colleagues um and in a very positive way you know not i think that's another important thing that that comes across very much in drawdown and which i've kind of learned the hard way rather than say it sounds silly but rather than say eat less meat try saying why don't you eat more plant-based foods the effect is the same but turning it around that way i think is very positive and and you know talk about all the benefits the millions of lives right now for instance our meat intensive diet means that uh 11 million lives are lost every year prematurely so those are things that i think can turn around positively in terms of how a plant-based diet protects your your health we're now getting some questions in that i want to pass on for you the first one is asked by mia and it says can you please expand on how you are encouraging local swiss companies to adhere to project drawdown and can you maybe share some examples with us yeah so uh what what we're doing at um at drawdown switzerland uh right now is uh our focus is not um uh necessarily swiss local businesses what what we what uh what we're seeking to do is to uh bring drawdown to switzerland uh if you will and uh switzerland back to drawdown so right now what we're also doing is we're um together with um swiss uh universities and institutions we're discussing um doing projects uh that uh will also be part of uh drawdown europe research association uh so uh there's uh i was i looked at uh the original drawdown book of 2014 and out of all the research fellows i could only found and find one that was based in switzerland we need many more researchers that are working on drawdown solutions and and so on so that's uh that's an important area of uh focus and uh in the in the near future um we're we're going to be um i hope making some uh announcements also in that in that sense um so that's sort of what the focus of our work here in um with drawdown switzerland and it's also raising awareness of course on what the different solutions and the different resources are uh for example uh drawdown uh the book has been translated into french and german two of our national languages and it's the latest drawdown review was translated into french and spanish and so it's becoming increasingly international and multilingual

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 559

Keywords: Climate Change, Ecology, English, Global Issues, Sustainability, TEDxTalks

Id: PgRJnflCOhM

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021