Transcriber: 36- Thanh Tiền Reviewer: Anna Sobota
We can fix the climate crisis, the question is how?
I’d like to share with you what I learned from two years
of working on training material about the crisis.
I worked with the joint project
between Al Gore’s Climate Reality
and the Harvard Alumni for the Climate and the Environment,
and listening to 38 expert speakers, over 100 contributors,
while we developed links to 140 different solutions,
these are the things I learned
and I’d like to share two types of thoughts with you.
One is, what did we learn?
And the second is, how do we actually fix the crisis?
The first thing I learned is that I am woefully ignorant
and unfortunately,
most of us are ignorant about the solutions to the climate crisis.
In fact, in 2020, only 13 % of U.S. public corporations
reported that they have employees who understand
what to do about the climate crisis.
So let me share the four key lessons that we learned from this.
First, we can fix the climate crisis.
Now, why would I say that?
Because over half of us
have already disabled ourselves by telling ourselves we don’t matter,
we can’t make a change, it’s too late.
If we do nothing, we will get the absolute worst outcome.
Our parents and our grandparents
were faced with an almost insurmountable problem with World War II,
but regardless of how painful and expensive it was, they won the war.
And now it's our turn. We have to give up our excuses and get to work.
The second lesson is the system is the problem, not the people.
And we have a system that incentivizes people to destroy the earth.
Yes, my vision of abundance for everybody
is an absolute horror story for a few people,
and they will fight hard to preserve their profits and their privilege.
But capitalism can fix this.
We need to adjust two problems with capitalism.
First, companies don’t have to pay for the full cost of producing their products.
They can shift a lot of that over to society.
Second, very wealthy people can make large campaign contributions
and invest in disinformation to create artificial barriers
to capital going to where it creates the greatest value for society.
We need to adjust those two problems in capitalism,
we’ll get the money where it needs to be.
Third, we have the technology, and it’s more than affordable.
The Industrial Revolution was spurred on
by the ability to substitute capital for labor.
Well, now we have the opportunity
to substitute capital for energy and polluting processes.
And the world is awash with capital.
The fourth thing I learned
is that the answer is infrastructure and regenerative process.
Our infrastructure was built for obsolete technology,
and we have to replace that.
We have to fight the resistance
because people with investment in the old technologies
are going to get more profits off for those.
The way we fight that is we have to demand change.
We demand it in the marketplace by how we spend money
and we demand it on the streets.
So I'd like to tell you a story.
When I was nine years old,
I was very confused because I could walk out my front door,
go a few blocks, and, literally, be at a civil rights demonstration.
And it seemed to me like it was a bunch of rich, old white guys
trying to convince a bunch of poor and middle class people
that it was their fault that they couldn’t drink at a water fountain
that said, “Whites only”.
It was their fault that their schools weren’t very good.
It was their fault that they were very poor,
and it was their fault that they couldn’t vote.
But, they passed the civil rights legislation,
and while that’s an ongoing fight, it appears like we won one.
Then, I graduated from high school at area of Alabama, and I went to Harvard,
and that was really confusing.
And one more time I could go outside my door
and now, there was a Vietnam demonstration.
We won that. We ended the war, and that taught me another lesson.
And that lesson was that
we have to learn to speak truth to power.
A government can’t stand against its people
and the company cannot continue to operate without its employees.
To cause change, I’ve learned that sometimes I have to be willing
to march in the streets in order that my children don’t have to march to war.
So this picture of a termite hill
is here to illustrate nature’s law of the Little Big.
Nature will use very little things to create very big changes.
They say that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane
or something as small as an ant working together in a community
can change the whole landscape.
So what I’ve learned is,
I have to do my part to protect my home
and to work with others to protect their home.
For too long, we’ve accepted a lack of respect
for ourselves, for each other, and for the living Earth.
Lack of respect has become natural to us.
Well, when you consider something to be natural,
you give up your ability to change it -
that’s the fourth rule.
I must respect myself and require others to respect all living things
and the living Earth.
Respect means: “re-” to do something again,
“-spect” to inspect, to look at something closely;
to look at something closely again.
Our culture tells us it’s normal for people to die unnecessarily.
It's normal to pollute our rivers.
It’s normal to kill off nature’s diversity.
That we have to do these things and that we can’t share our abundance.
Well, that’s not acceptable to me.
I discovered that to make these changes, I have to change myself.
I have to create a new image of myself,
and I have to reject the timid image that my culture gives me.
So I have to cast off my culture mind
and learn to be the person I was born to be.
Everything that we do and say is a test by creation of what we are.
So for me, I will find the courage
to use the power within me in defense of life itself.