Welcome to the Anthropocene, a period of geological time defined by the impacts of humanity
as humans have a far greater impact on our planet than most of us realise. In many ways we've become
a geological superpower. We move more earth, soil and sediment than all the natural processes put
together as we start to destroy our beautiful planet. We have made enough concrete to cover
the whole world in a layer two millimetres thick and that does include the oceans. Wwe have made
300 million tonnes of plastic every single year that end up in our oceans, in our fish and even
in our own blood. There's a plastic bag that was found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench seven
kilometers deep in the north west Pacific. The only shame is it did not have Walmart or Tesco's on it.
But hang on a minute, not everybody is guilty of this rape of our beautiful planet. I'll give you
an example: 50% of the lifestyle carbon emissions are generated by just the 10% richest in our global
society. While the poorest 50% generate less than 10% of those emissions. It's even
worse if we think about money. There are, let me do it, nine billionaires that own the same wealth as
the bottom 3.9 billion people; half the world. I'll repeat that, just nine people. You can already hear
the fossil fuel lobbyists and the climate change denies whispering in your ear going 'It's too
expensive to go net zero. It's too expensive to save the planet.' So what do those hard-nosed
economists say? Well, it costs us 20% of world GDP by 2050 and just think how large the global economy
will be then. The infrastructure changes needed will cost us less than 1% of world GDP
and the Down Draw Project [Project Drawdown] that's brought together all the potential solutions has shown that
decarbonizing in the most effective way possible we could save 46 trillion
dollars because of all the win-wins that will occur so if you hear those whispers kill that myth
now. So dealing with our environmental crisis will require governments, corporations and individuals
all to work together. Governments need to regulate, enforce, tax, subsidise and most importantly lead.
So what should governments do? What is on my wish list of things that they should be thinking of?
Support renewable energy - no brainer there. Tax fossil fuel use. Cut fossil fuel investment and
subsidies. Global subsidies over the last 10 years have averaged about a half a trillion
dollars per year for us to have fossil fuels when we're trying to get rid of them.
They can support walking, cycling, electric cars, public transport and my favourite, trains.
I just tweeted to actually say 'Just imagine if you had a US that had a high-speed train network
at bullet speed trains across the whole country, you wouldn't need to fly anywhere.'
We have the scientists, we have the experts, we have the community groups, we have the
justice leaders, we have Indigenous peoples, we have the business leaders,
we have the entrepreneurs to save our planet from ourselves for ourselves.
What we lack are politicians with a long-term vision and a commitment to make our planet safer,
healthier, wealthier places for everyone, not just the few, the very rich few.