There are plenty of examples in the past and today of how transformative steps can be accomplished. In 1831, engineer Thomas Hawksley established the first safe public water supply in Nottingham, which in turn improved public health significantly. Today in Norway, a new scheme of tax incentives and deposit/return facilities ensures that 97 per cent of all plastic bottles are being recycled. It is this kind of achievements we have to aspire to, if we want to avoid that humanity is falling over the precipice.
In the first talk, Alan Simpson focused on the
damaging impact of the aviation, the automobile and fossil fuel industries. If
we want to confront the climate crisis successfully, everything has to change
radically including our way of thinking. The radical is the only reasonable!
Importantly, it is not the poor who have to pay for climate change adjustments.
It is the rich with their much larger carbon footprints, who will have to provide
the required finance and change their behaviour.
The way we produce food is crucial when confronting
the climate crisis. Instead of a global system based on fossil fuel fertilizers
and dominated by a few large corporations, we need to find novel ways of how to
produce food. The problem is not growing enough food, the problem is how to
ensure that food is produced sustainably and locally.
If we want to avoid climate catastrophe, we need to
shift from fossil fuels to green, renewable energy sources. This is not simply
a technological issue. What is required is a fundamental change in social
relations of the production and distribution of energy. There are plenty of successful
examples, which demonstrate how this can be done. Whether it is hot water from a
disused, flooded coal mine in the Netherlands or local energy cooperatives in
Germany, alternatives are available.
Changing the way we move is key to transformative
change, shifting from cars to sustainable and collective forms of transport.
Paris shows the way of how it is possible to work towards a 15-minute city, in
which all the necessary shops and services are reachable
within a distance of no more than 15 minutes of sustainable forms of transport.
Reducing carpark spaces, adding cycle lanes and improving public transport all have
an important role to play in this transformation.
Transforming local transport and the way we produce
and distribute energy is only one part of the story of how we need to
restructure our cities. To ensure that CO2 emissions are absorbed and to facilitate
general well-being, greening our cities is absolutely essential. The planting
of trees including fruit trees, rooftop gardens and forest belts around cities
such as it is currently planned in Madrid/Spain are all crucial steps in making
our cities more habitable, more enjoyable.
In order to achieve this transformation, we need to
move from individualism to collectivism. Mutual security implies security
against the climate crisis. We need to put back into earth more than we take
out. With a call for widespread collective, grassroots initiatives Alan Simpson
concluded his series of TED talks. Change is still possible, but it requires
the necessary will to do so, and it is here that the power of mobilisations
from below will be crucial.
Andreas Bieler
16 December 2022
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