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