The reality of climate change | David Puttnam | TEDxDublin

Jemma's kept me a great leader and she's right the film industry is the most wonderful wonderful industry to deal in and one of the reasons it's wonderful is there is no such thing as it can't be done obviously the financial constraints other constraint but your job is to deliver something that works in the audience so the subtext in a sense of what I want to talk about this morning is that it is not impossible what I'm gonna lay out is tough difficult but not at all impossible my subject will be climate change climate change and my object next 15 minutes is to get you as justifiably angry as I possibly can so please please please do not expect a lot of jokes or loss because I I wish I had them I really do also I would urge you the example if I can offer go online afterwards check my sources check my references double-check that I'm not trying to fill you with unnecessary fears or concerns or amusing the wrong metaphor so I'm I really sincerely hope I belong now the first obvious question is what is a section Aryan X film producer doing on the stage talking about climate change well the great thing is I do have a little bit of form seven years ago to my great good fortune really I chaired the committee parliamentary committee they'll put through Parliament the world's first climate change act setting fixed targets carbon targets and binding targets that Britain is today forced to deal with or find a way around so I do a bit of history I'm very proud of what I did I'm very proud of the people I've worked with most important of all I got the opportunity for a year to interrogate and take evidence from people from around the world from China the United States everybody so we became as it could be pretty pretty damn expert also worth mentioning that we got this bill through with remarkably little resistance cross-party so one of the very good things 2007 was that here was a bill the world's first climate change bill which people took real pleasure in it being the world's first with a say remarkable lack of unpleasantness and and controversy I want to ask you to develop your anger through an for prisons really economic health environmental sustainability and leadership I should say leadership or the lack of it so I'm going to kick off per me with the economic listen to this it may sound like very odd sound to put on an image of a slave ship and that's what it was this is the design of a ship of how many slaves you could cross the Atlantic with and maximize the profits of the slave owners the one of the great arguments two hundred years ago a little over two hundred years ago against the abolition of slavery was an economic argument it was claimed that 25% of the UK's economic activity was entirely related to slavery and the benefits derived in the UK from slavery twenty five percent and therefore it would be hopelessly uh neck anomic to abolish slavery and William Wilberforce and those who support him had to deal with that argument for twenty years twenty years in the end they did manage to win it and a lot of that energy got transferred into a new form of energy but it's still energy what the slaves were were providing the energy that drove the British economy and the Industrial Revolution brought a new form of energy but what was important was the new form of energy was built around innovation once the weren't slaves to rely on once the one this cheap appear apparently plentiful form of energy they had to develop new forms of energy and the slave owners many of them hopefully helped went out of business and a new group of mill owners were not the greatest people in the world but Britain economy far from tanking which it's what had been predicted grew as never before the development of the Industrial Revolution literally was bound up in the surge of innovation and confidence that led for the abolition of slavery so the economic argument that the kept slavery on the statute books for years with demolished within 30 years I just would like to hold as I say hold that thought what they were actually doing was engaged in a disregard for human suffering at the in the pursuit of profit that cards going to turn up at least twice more now through the prism of Health last month this extraordinary man died he was the Surgeon General United States from 69 to 72 very brave man he took on the tobacco companies and it was he who pushed through the very first warning that warning on packs of cigarettes um he was they managed the lobby in order to get rid of him he was got rid of by the Nixon administration in 1972 he continued the whole the rest of his life to argue the same case but they got shot of him in 1997 Congress 25 years later Congress called the leading figures in the tobacco industry to give evidence about the impacts of tobacco now these guys have had 25 years of medical evidence on their desks they knew exactly the situation here thanks to YouTube is what they say let me begin my questioning on the matter of whether or not nicotine is addictive let me ask you first I'd like to go down the row whether each of you believes that nicotine is not addictive I heard virtually all of them touch on it just yes or no do you believe nicotine is not addictive I believe nicotine is not addictive yes mr. Johnson congressman cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definitions of the dictionaries no toxic we'll take that as a no and again time is short if you can just I think each of you believe nicotine is not addictive we just would like to have this for the record I don't believe that nicotine or our products are addictive I believe that is not addictive I believe that nicotine is not addictive I believe nicotine is not addictive and I do believe that nicotine is odor so nine years after a second Surgeon General and unequivocally showed that nicotine was addictive these lunatics were still claiming it wasn't they've now kind of given up trying to persuade us they've moved their wares to the third world without pushing cigarettes where they can in Philippines and anywhere else this is a classic example of the impact of deniability thousands and thousands and thousands of people died because they clung on to this notion that was no causal link with the phrase there was no proven causal link between cigarettes and lung cancer thousands of people died this man Ralph Nader check him out saved my life he also saved the life of hundreds of thousands of other people he fought for 20 years with General Motors for the installation of seat belts in cars he had amazing amount of evidence General Motors only thought him they also blackmailed him they followed him they did everything possible to discredit him to the point the senator Bobby Kennedy required General Motors Chairman to come to the Congress and personally apologize to mr. Nader for what they done to him he saved thousands of lives in the face of the denial of the automobile industry that seatbelts were valuable so these are two more examples of organizations disregarding human suffering in the pursuit of profit I had a bad car crash in Italy three years ago I would not be here there's no question about that I would not be here but for Ralph Nader come the next one environmental sustainability this is a tough one I think that as human beings we are not unlike gerbils we're kind of great at the fight-or-flight thing we're great when we sense danger of jumping up looking around and spotting it in reacting we're good at it it's what's kept us on this planet will these years what we're terrible at terrible at is dealing with slow-burn issues issues that just get worse and worse and worse in the background on which on a day-to-day basis we can kind of put in the back of our minds and not get to engage with we are very very susceptible to what I would term slow slow burn issues now I'm a child of the 60s I was brought up with this mantra I believed it then I believe if anything more powerfully now basically unless you're prepared to become part of the answer you are by definition part of the problem and this is nowhere could this be more true than in the area of environmental susceptor sustainability I also think that Nelson Mandela as usual was right when he says that in order to solve these problems we can't just address them with our expectations we actually have to exceed our expectations all of you will know the notion that Earth the planet is finite but but if we all want to live in the way that the West lives we will require five planets five planets the under five planners let me make one very important point don't worry about the planet the planet is fine we're the problem the planet can live perfectly happy and will continue for billions of years to come very very happily without us it is we who the planet has probably fed up with and with good reason I might add now it's not that we didn't know about this this is a first edition of a book written 50 years ago over 50 years ago by Rachel Carson sunscreen we were warned fifty years ago but what we were doing was unsustainable we were warned that what we were doing was lethal to our own future as I say because it's been a slow burn issue we chose to nod make nice noises and ignore it Tom Friedman a couple of months ago this wonderful writer in The New York Times I think he's absolutely right when he says this how we make the transition to a stabilized and still prosperous relationship with the earth and each other is surely the story of our time bit more evidence the insurance industry know if you can read these these are the biggest most expensive disasters of 2012 the insurance industry is woken up and is really now beginning to take these issues very very seriously in fact last week so I say yeah they have been earlier this week the CEO of one of the world's biggest insurance companies Aviva said this and he is it's great that the industry is beginning to step up and say this try to imagine if you will an uninsurable world try and imagine an uninsurable environment for yourselves an insurable house is uninsurable anything the insurance company is saying very clearly insurance industry say very clearly unless we alter things they cannot remain in business in an affordable manner let's say the premiums will charge there will be forced to charge we won't possibly be able to pay now here's the challenge to you this also is exactly right we're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the very last generation certainly in the people in this hall to be able to do anything about it because if we continue to stick our heads on the ground if we continue to act like gerbils not like sensible long term people freaking into that we will undoubtedly face and even today won't be us the consequences this morning at breakfast through a couple of very young people with us it is our children and our children's children that will suffer we may just escape okay I will I'm 73 years old are certainly with unless I'm very unlucky get out look I will I will get off this I'll get off this planet you know I mean this be fair none of us are going to lose leave this place alive right we're at some point we're all going faceless but this is not a sustainable future and yet this is the actual reality of any number of cities in the world today why because we have an economic environment which is prepared last time I'll show it I promise you is prepared to proceed disregarding human suffering in the pursuit of profit we've been sucked into the belief that an economic system that we use and work with is the only possible way forward and in truth unless we alter the system it is the absolute certainty that it will see the end of us as a species maybe by the end of the century maybe beyond last point I want to make is about leadership this is self-evident the first step in solving a problem is to recognize that there is one now we don't have a bad record in this particular instance in 1961 I was newly married and my wife and I went to bed 11 1961 really really really not sure that there was going to be a tomorrow morning many of your parents many of your parents would have had the same experience we really didn't know this is the Cuban Missile Crisis we really didn't know if there was going to be a tomorrow and yet fortunately two statesmen decided to step back and do the right thing so we're back to Gemma's point human beings given the right circumstances given the right leadership given the right opportunities can do the right thing we don't have to be stupid people we can do the right thing and remember the anti-vietnam War protests which I was involved the Iraq war protests these people weren't wrong these people were not wrong they were actually right and subsequent events have proved them to be right so the notion that somehow action is ignored yes it may be but you also are in a position as I am to say actually I was there I was right I may have been ignored we may not stop the war what we want to do but I was right that's not a bad thing to begin to drift towards the elastase thinking I promise you last I was on Ted I did a talk on what would turn the duty of care I believe profoundly in the duty of care I think the phrase we kick about a lot duty of care to children duty of care of armed forces duty of care to the elderly we have a duty of care to each other I mean for overriding duty of care to future generations we have to start exercise again there is no other possible way we have to exercise a duty care we have to work out for ourselves what that really means to us what can we do this wonderful wonderful phrase of French and Brazil's there's some serious cycle in human events to some generations much is given of other generations much is expected this generation has a rendezvous with destiny I'm here to tell you this generation has an absolute rendezvous with destiny and just like the movie industry if you're prepared to accept that anything is possible then go out there and make it possible thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 595,785

Rating: 4.2066875 out of 5

Keywords: ted, International Affairs, Global Issues, History, TEDxTalks, Ireland, tedx talks, ted talks, tedx talk, Economics, Politics, English, ted talk, tedx, Climate Change, ted x

Id: SBjtO-0tbKU

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 01 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/fuobob]

This is a powerful talk.

"We're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change- and the last generation that can actually do something about it." -Gov. Jay Inslee, Washington State

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events.

To some generations much is given.

Of other generations much is expected.

This generation has a rendezvous with destiny."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936