Transcriber: Sanya Mathur Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
In 2019
I emitted roughly 16 metric tons of CO2 emissions
commuting into work.
And that is because my team and I work with state and regional governments
across three continents to develop tailor-made and cost-effective pathways
or options to reduce emissions drastically,
ideally looking at scenarios to eliminate all emissions.
And every time I fly I somewhat feel the eyes of generation Z
burning into my economy class seat.
Video conferencing has its limits
when it comes down to in-depth stakeholder consultations.
And I do love boats, but as a team we simply do not have the time.
And time is of the essence to save the planet.
I personally believe that momentum is shifting
in the fight against global warming, but we are definitely not moving at pace.
Will we go fast enough?
According to the latest report from UN Environment,
if the world had peaked its emissions in 2010,
we would have needed an annual emission reduction of just over 3%.
If the world could peak this year, we need an annual reduction of nearly 8%.
If we wait another five years, we're at 15% per year -
an annual emission reduction of 15%.
15% of the global emissions
is roughly the total annual emissions of the United States.
You can see the urgency, right?
So my team and I are aiming big.
Moving even one of the smallest states in our project,
Querétaro, the neighboring state to Mexico City,
with a population of just over 2 million people
could reduce emissions by 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 in just a decade.
With work on going simultaneously in 11 states across Latin America alone,
in Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina,
including megastates like São Paulo,
we are targeting tens of millions of metric tons of CO2 avoided in a decade
and hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO2 avoided by 2050.
One thing that became increasingly clear spending all that time on the ground,
talking to politicians, industry experts, civil society,
often in the proximity of the lungs of our planet, the Amazon,
is that we are not just witnessing a climate emergency,
we are also witnessing a biodiversity crisis, a water crisis, a resource crisis,
creating the perfect storm.
And in the eye of this storm is one constant:
waste.
Waste with a heavy cost of emissions,
overexploitation, inequality and biodiversity.
We have become a wasteful species,
and we have been living beyond our means for quite a while.
In fact, we have become wasting experts -
at wasting food, at wasting water, at wasting resources,
at choosing quick wins and sometimes just laziness over durability.
We seem to have disconnected from nature.
We seem to have forgotten that everything we use, eat, work with, play with
is only possible because of the resources our planet provides us with:
this mic, my shirt, your seat, this venue.
Our fast-paced urban lives do not even make us think twice,
as if everything we use actually derives from Amazon or Alibaba
rather than mother nature.
So to change course and tackle our climate, biodiversity and resource crises
and to reach the pace needed,
we have to cut out waste from everything we do, invent and legislate.
And change is possible.
Study after study has proven it.
A lot of the solutions are already there.
New, cleaner and more efficient technologies
are no longer a futuristic hope.
A lot of the policy change needed has already been suggested.
We are seeing momentum shifting,
perhaps too slowly, but with more engaged consumers,
with schoolchildren showing they care on the streets
and corporate sustainability finally moving
from a PR practice into engineering.
Yet, is our way of thinking and living and consuming
truly evolving with it?
Because sometimes I feel we haven't learned a thing.
So let's take a look at some small yet practical examples to prove this.
Firstly, plastic straws.
We have a public outcry against them
but only to replace them with equally wasteful paper straws.
Is timber not a precious resource then?
Would not using a straw at all really make any difference to how most of us live?
Secondly, reusable water bottles.
They're great.
They're without any doubt an improvement on the status quo,
but not if we own 10 of them each.
They're so fashionable, every brand is forcing one onto you,
every corporate event is giving one away.
Even more absurd, they're often packaged in a single-use carton box.
Similarly, banning plastic bags is much needed,
but have we really learned from the past
if we each own 20 tote bags,
if we use our supermarket "bag for life" to put the trash out later that day?
More recently, my social media has been suggesting startups
that are selling you something in return for a tree: a bracelet, a t-shirt.
And by all means, if you want a bracelet, get a bracelet.
If you need a t-shirt, get a t-shirt.
But don't get one to plant that tree, just plant that tree.
So are we yet again just being wasteful with another resource?
Are we simply solving one issue by creating another one?
And I get it, it's confusing.
As time and time again we have been told, as long as we recycle, it's good enough.
We have been lectured to ditch one product over another,
to ditch one material over another;
in industries, to ditch one chemical over another,
only to be told that the substitute
is equally harming our planet in some way or form.
We have been led to believe that resource substitution
combined with recycling makes it all okay,
hardly ever questioning whether we can avoid something altogether.
Where we need lights, let's switch to more efficient LEDs;
where we don't, let's switch them off.
When we package our products, let's choose the resources wisely
but only after we try to eliminate the packaging altogether.
So now on to my, perhaps, favorite example -
business cards.
With more than 5 billion people owning a mobile phone,
why are they still commonplace?
I did a very unempirical
and, some would say, statistically insignificant test
on myself deciding to stop using business cards over a year ago.
And or me, 2019 saw more business opportunities than ever,
more connections, more invitations to speak.
Just connect through your mobile phone,
through LinkedIn,
even better, slide directly into somebody's DMs.
The reality is, you don't need business cards when you own a mobile phone.
Will letting go of business cards change anything about our way of life?
And now I can see some of you thinking: This guy's pretty naive.
He's advocating to save our planet
getting rid of business cards as opposed to flying less.
And if that's the case, you might have misunderstood.
What I'm advocating is minimization at the core of our economy,
of our way of life.
The act of reducing something to the least possible amount.
Putting our finite planet back at the core of our economy.
So indeed, I am not telling you not to fly.
I'm not telling you to stop gifting over the holiday period.
And I'm not telling you to give up on the life progression
our ancestors have fought for.
But I'm challenging you to cut waste from your life in every shape or form.
I'm challenging you to practice this mindset of minimization,
whether you're a consumer, a business executive, or a legislator.
As a consumer, by letting go of anything
that has no real value on your life.
As a business exec, by choosing efficiency and minimization
above simply replacing one material that caught the public eye with another,
by choosing minimization as the driver of your profitability.
And thirdly, as a legislator, by incentivizing, financing,
and subsidizing minimization and durability
so it becomes equitable for all.
So as a token of this mindset,
I am challenging you to let go of your business cards today,
as we spread minimization across the globe
and make it a cornerstone of the education of our kids.
Let me tell you, often the solution does not have to be revolutionary.
Surely if business class flyers can receive "normal cutlery,"
we can also cut out the single-use cutlery in economy class.
We are ingenious enough by now to get naked,
and I mean zero waste products right into our living room
without the needless wasted resources for its packaging.
Look, the challenge is huge.
And nowadays we see the impacts of global warming continuously.
The devastating fires in California, Siberia, Australia are fresh in our minds.
In fact, some of these fires are still burning as we stand here today.
But I'm a realistic optimist.
We have achieved so much already
that often gets lost amongst the daily floods of negativity.
We have reduced the proportion of the world's population
living in extreme poverty by more than 75% in the last four decades.
In fact, every day over the last decade,
170,000 people were lifted out of extreme poverty a day.
We have started to turn the tide against AIDS
and come close to eradicating other diseases like polio.
We have and are still conquering space.
So let's not underestimate the power of us as a kind,
and genuinely believe that we can stop being a wasteful species.
Cutting waste from our life in every shape or form will increase our happiness,
make for more efficient and profitable businesses,
ease the pressure on our planet,
and go a long way in addressing
the climate, biodiversity, resource crises.
So in conclusion, next time somebody asks you or tweets you:
What is it we can do?
Whether in the context of the climate emergency,
preserving the Amazon rainforest, tackling plastic pollution,
regardless of where in the world you are,
regardless of the level of economic development,
regardless of whether you're speaking to a consumer,
a business exec, or a legislator,
you can fall back on one simple and universal answer:
cut waste in every sense of the word.
Thank you.
(Applause)