Saving Ourselves From Ourselves

so i’m clearly

a baby boomer and baby boomers were the

first

tv generation so i grew up with the

golden age of television

50s 60s and into the 70s

and that also means the golden age of

television advertising and all those

great

early commercials that rattle around our

brain with all the different jingles we

can’t get out of our mind

but the one that has stuck with me and

the one that is relevant to this talk

today about climate change

is the v8 commercial oh i could have had

a v8

now the underlying power of that

commercial is the aha moment

oh i could have done something

differently or ah

an insight a new way of looking at the

world

so when i go ah i could have had a v8

and i’m on stage

talking around the world as i have been

or

just in conversation people understand

that

so i had my v8 moment about seven years

ago about

global warming which has led to the

climate crisis today

and more on that in just a minute but to

roll back

as a youth i was part of the first earth

day

and it made great sense to me reduce

reuse recycle

so i immediately started doing that but

in the 70s and then into the 80s

it was so difficult to recycle you had

to drive to some place it was only open

a couple of days a week and you had to

drop everything off and

separate it all out and it went into

dumpster-like things and

i kept understanding what this is such a

if this is such a

big important thing why is it so

difficult why are people paying

attention

and of course i knew that that that um

that

climate change had never happened some

homo sapiens had been on the planet

before so we had no

memory we had no recollection we had no

model but still

it seemed to me clear and of course into

the 21st century

sea level was rising category 4

5 storms unprecedented

historical droughts and floods so of

course

we were having this climate change going

on

so come back to that seven years ago

when i had that aha moment

i was guest lecturer and futurist in

residence at the wrinkling college of

art and design

so i was guest lecturing in the classes

and i guest lectured a number of times

at the head of

environmental studies and is in climate

change classes

and so i said to him i said tim let’s

write a book and he said great

and i said but first of all tell me what

you think

the cause of global warming is and right

away he said

siloed thinking as in we don’t know the

consequences of the actions that we take

we’re in the silo of actions without the

consequences

and it was a v8 moment it was my god

i get it we are the problem

we are the cause anthropogenic global

warming

that changed how i looked at the climate

crisis

i did a lot of research and sure i’d

known to have a high mileage

car and to do recycling but i didn’t

know that my

favorite meal let’s say a quarter pound

cheeseburger at a restaurant

caused six pounds of co2 to go in the

atmosphere

a half pound with fries is 12 pounds i

didn’t know that

i didn’t know that it took dozens of

gallons of water

fresh water to make a t-shirt i would

buy

impulsively and that some of that water

was not reclaimable

so i went on this i went on this big

journey of research

and i realized the average american is

responsible

for 16 tons of co2 into the atmosphere

every year 16 tons now the average

on the planetary level is four tons

including us

so i immediately said i’ve got to drop

tonnage

you know so so that is what i’ve been

trying to do

but it was that aha moment that made me

realize

that anthropogenic warming is a cause

for the climate crisis number one

that we are the problem and that

therefore we shouldn’t be saying

save the planet you know help sign a

petition let me save the planet or even

worse checking into hotel room and you

go to the bathroom and they say

please help us save the planet by not

doing your laundry

i mean come on right

so what climate change is about is not

saving the planet the planet is going to

be fine

it’s been around for three and a half

billion years gonna be around for

another three and a half billion more

years until the sun blows up

what we have to do to face the climate

crisis

is save ourselves from ourselves

we have to connect our actions to the

consequences

and by the way saving ourselves from

ourselves

sounds a lot more manageable than trying

to save a whole planet the only planet

that we know

so saving ourselves from ourselves means

that

we’ve caused the problem so we are the

solution and we can be the solution

so we have to act with urgency and i’ve

been acting with urgency

and compassion and forgiveness and

and active research ever since that aha

moment

that the cause of climate change is

siloed thinking

and the disconnection of our actions to

our consequences

of the planet