The Fortune of Misfortune Learnings from the Climate Crisis

imagine a beach

the sun is shining not a single cloud in

the sky

you’re on a holiday and you’re about to

take your first lesson

of surfing until you look around and you

see

this hundreds of pieces

of plastic and trash in the water

on the pavement on the sand everywhere

the year is 2016 and i have decided to

go on a holiday to learn to surf in

morocco

little did i know that this place of

beauty and big waves

was actually also the victim of

disregard

and pollution on the very first day of

the surfing trip

i collected vast amounts of plastic

while being forbidden from the water due

to my self-incompetence or

the lack of it

i left the question in my mind

for a long time where did this plastic

come from

how are humans impacting

our planet negatively

these questions daunted me for a while

until i decided to

do something about it i read a lot of

books

i watched a lot of documentaries

listened to podcasts

i cried a lot

i decided to build a comparative data

model that was looking at one hand

at the environmental issues and the most

severe ones

as defined by science and on the other

hand

was looking into which were the most

funded

environmental projects out there trying

to find the correlation

i also decided to interview more than

300 people

asking them about their opinion on

climate change

yes in 2016 people had opinions about

climate change

the results were devastating

online offline on tv in my interviews

the discussions about climate change

were a mess

and more fundamentally the data was

showing that there was

not enough funding going towards the

most severe

environmental issues

after six months of these events i made

a decision

i decided to quit my job in finance i

decided to quit my city

and focus my efforts on addressing

climate change

on a more practical level this meant

that i was able to combine

passions of mind such as technology

science

accuracy and turn them into a job

my story is one of many fueled by sense

of urgency and realization

that have increased the populations of

people and businesses talking about

climate change

but it is one too few for what is at

stake which is why

today i would like to take you on a

non-biased and fact-filled journey that

tells the story of climate change

the story doesn’t start but heats up in

1895

then arrhenius a swedish physicist and

scientist

in chemic in chemistry decides to find a

new type of excitement

and for this the influence of co2

on the greenhouse effect

this is actually

an exercise that serves as a therapy

a therapy for him to overcome the

separation with his wife

a therapy that leads to a nobel prize

mind you

a year later the results of this study

come out and

are able to show that there is a

relationship between

atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration

and

temperature this might have been

the first step the first instance

when humans are able to tangibly take a

step

to address climate change

might have

but like in everything in life if you

don’t take the lesson the first time

life will shove in front of you further

circumstances to teach you

the same lesson again and again until

you decide to take an action

so is the story of humans and climate

change

arenas wasn’t alone in his effort to

define and quantify what climate change

was

he’s been followed by hundreds and

thousands of scientists

who have been able to complain

completely explain to us

what is this man-made climate change

yet the projected emissions ahead of us

look like this

until 2020

2020 was the year of pledges pledges

from countries such as japan

china with the net zero commitments

from the uk with the climate disclosures

mandates

the eu the green deal and joe biden

being elected as a president of the us

on the company side the list was endless

walmart nike starbucks and many many

more companies taking a stance

and a step to be tangibly part of the

solution towards a more sustainable

future

and

wow we might be thinking that we’re

already organizing the party to

celebrate

the effect of these pledges

let’s think about it are these pledges

enough

are we actually able to tangibly prepare

for the future

with them what planet took a deeper

breath in 2020

and received the new year’s gift of

seven percent reduction

we only saw a 0.01

temperature decrease in the projected

increase by 2050

meaning all the effort and all the

lockdowns and all the time that we all

humans spent

locked up at home actually let

still through the effects of

deforestation land degradation

to even more further development of

climate change

and on an economic level this meant that

the severity of natural disasters were

going to continue to develop

the supply chains were going to be

further disturbed

and the output of the economy as well as

the profits

were going to decrease

you cannot manage a life and a business

in a failing world

in simpler terms carbon neutrality and

pledges are simply not enough for us to

sustain

our existence as individuals and as

businesses and for those of the

countries

and companies that have understood this

today and are willing to go beyond the

pledges

there is a price the history has saved

them a win applies

in an economy that is going to be

dependent on sustainable solutions

but rather than focusing on future

scenarios maybe let’s look

at the data and what we can do today to

actually

respond today

we are on track to hit 2.1 to 3.1

degree temperature increase by 2100

with the current pledges and policies

that we have in place

we’re also facing three times

more plastic and trash in terms of waste

that would need to be managed

with a whopping 91 percent of plastic

not being recycled as of today

our biodiversity is declining there’s

data from the last 50 years that

shows that we have lost 68 percent

of the populations and from all the

birds that are on this planet

70 percent are domestic

while 30 are wild

if you put all of these issues together

our planet would look like this

looks beautiful right it takes time and

effort to digest all these data

but there’s a common denominator there

our planet is tied

and our planet is living and breeding

more difficult and more heavily these

days

a question comes and it remains

what step did you take to prepare for

the future

i want to take you back to this beach

where we were in the beginning

now this beach is using drones to

collect the plastic

this plastic goes into bins that are

able to recycle themselves

in the bins you can find worms that are

eating the plastic

and making it disappear

in the further distance you can see

solar panels and wind turbines

that are fueling now industries that

have previously been reliant on fossil

fuels

while the country where this beach is is

now using agroforestry and regenerative

agriculture

as well as the water as a natural source

of energy this is not a vision

this is the reality today a reality that

has been

shaped by people who know that the value

of sustainability is not only

environmental but also economical

and this is the reality in industries

old and

new

a question still comes and it remains

what step did you take today to prepare

for the future

before we answer this question i would

like to say something else

in the face of climate change we’re all

small a hurricane can destroy your house

a drought can destroy your livelihood

a flood can destroy your infrastructure

and your business but in all these

events

in all these instances we somehow

miraculously

are always able to recover and continue

with our businesses and with our lives

which is what makes us human

which is what makes us superhuman

and in this superpower is where the

solution for climate change lies

in this superpower we find something

crucial

climate change is not one issue it’s a

complex

group of issues and in the complexity we

find the solutions

because in the same way that we have

created the problem by millions and

billions of wrong decisions for the

planet

we find the solutions in the billions

and millions of right decisions for the

planet

today we’re given a chance as citizens

as businesses

to take a deed to take an action to take

a step

and yes today not tomorrow not in five

years not in 10

no pledges no promises

a step for reduction today

a question still comes and it remains

what step did you take today to prepare

for the future

you took the first step by being here

today now let’s all take the next one

there’s no plan b for the planet

you