Translator: TEDx Milano Translators Reviewer: Michele Gianella
We can all agree
that the established motto "Mors tua, vita mea"
is one of the most ridiculous sayings the human mind has ever come up with.
Mother Earth is telling us, rather she is screaming at us
that dealing
with the smallest, most fragile, and insignificant of its creatures
is not an act of goodness or heroism.
It is just pursuing
our own crass, cynical and short-term self-interest.
This applies to the wrongly named problem
of climate migrants.
Let's approach it from the point of view
of our crass, cynical and short-term self-interest.
But we must understand this self-interest.
You'll see something in this slide that is familiar to you,
we call it Europe.
But have you ever thought about how strange an idea this is?
All the continents are marked out along geographical barriers.
By that very standard, we are Asia.
We do not exist.
Yet we want to be a continent, indeed the Old Continent.
What is it that characterises us as different from Asia?
A culture, we may say,
that within its diversity holds a certain unity.
And without engaging in ridiculous talks of race,
a certain physiognomic homogeneity.
But then, what is the fundamental determinant of all this?
Why are we a unit?
Well, the determinant is the climate.
Europe is Europe, with its particular identity,
because of its peculiar climate.
And over this climatic peculiarity
our joint interest was founded.
But now things are changing.
This distinguishing climate of Europe -
I'm over-simplifying, but is somehow determined
by the influence of the Azores anticyclone.
Which is receding, increasingly giving way to the African anticyclone.
What does this mean?
It means that, if climate has been so decisive
in forging our identity, and our concerns,
a changing climate will also change these.
Will we lose our European identity?
No, we just make room for another one.
We will enter into the community of interests
of those whose lives are governed by the African anticyclone.
From this perspective
we can try to understand how we'll be affected
by those people who are driven away from their land
by a changing climate that makes it less and less fruitful.
But we must also understand what we are exactly talking about.
The accepted wisdom is that the poorer you are,
the more likely you are to emigrate -
and this is simply not true.
The poorest are held back
by what is technically called the "poverty trap".
They have so little,
their outlook is so short-term
that they never think about emigrating.
Their problem is to find enough rice in the next two hours.
And only when they start to become more secure
they do consider leaving, going far away to improve their lifestyle.
Well, those who have enough to consider making the journey
have at least a little bit of freedom of choice
and are the real migrants.
Well managed, they can also have
a positive role for themselves and their host countries -
but that's another story.
The problem is, climate change
affects the lives of those who cannot migrate.
Those who have to leave just because their field has dried up.
These are not migrants.
They are part of an enforced displacement of population.
And those who are forced into such a population movement
are of no use to themselves, or anyone else
as they also fall prey, vulnerabile as they are,
to crime, trafficking, terrorism, and fanaticism.
What part does the climate play?
We are used to hear
that a changing climate triggers the most extreme, violent phenomena
and has the biggest impact on our bodies.
Heat waves puts older people in trouble,
aerals - zones of incidence of some infectious diseases - are expanding.
Then we also hear
that violent climatic phenomena damage our infrastructure.
Hurricanes cause bridges to collapse, and so on.
But almost no one speaks
of the most devastating effect of climate change.
So, what is the greenhouse effect?
The greenhouse effect is the result of solar energy intake
that's trapped in our ecosystem and not radiated back into space.
There's a lot of it!
The actual amount was shared in another TED talk, about 10 years ago,
by a scientist, maybe a little controversial
but still from NASA: James Hansen.
It is the equivalent of 400,000 atomic bombs detonating every day.
And where is this energy funneled,
if not into our ecosystems, formed over the millennia?
It turns into disorder, it turns into unpredictability
And where the climate becomes unpredictable,
society can hardly handle it.
If I am a farmer, and I can't predict when it will rain,
I don't know when to sow.
But it's not just a rural problem.
If I manage the Milan water system,
and I don't know if it'll snow or not,
I have huge problems planning ahead.
Here, if it happens to us, to the extent that it happens now,
we can still fix it.
But if it happens to a farmer in Burkina Faso
then the problem is no longer economic.
A failed harvest, for a farmer in Valpadana
can bring about economic losses -
but he's probably insured, maybe the local government will help.
For the farmer from Burkina Faso
it's the difference between sending their children to school or not.
And then it becomes a human rights problem.
We understand how a person under such a pressure
with her future prospects
and families basic needs at risk
can fall prey to migration, fanaticism
destabilisation of all kinds.
Is this in the future? Unfortunately no, It's happening now.
It's already happening in areas
with a fragile ecosystem
superimposed onto a fragile society.
It's happening in the islands, that are yelling out in despair.
The Maldives are putting aside a portion of the proceeds from tourism
to buy another island in the future.
It's happening in the river deltas, that are becoming salinised.
It's happening in the Arctic.
The Arctic populations are all becoming desperate.
They are losing their culture's distinctive traits.
Which turned them to alcoholism, to suicide.
It's happening in the mountains, which are particularly vulnerable.
And then it's happening right in front of us.
The place where it is happening most visibly, at the moment,
is right in front of us.
Just a short stretch of sea separates us from it.
Italy stretches out between the two shores of the Mediterranean
like a kind of bridge.
Let me show you a map of part of northern Africa.
It consists mostly of desert that has been desert for a long time.
In these deserts, as we learned this morning,
are populations
that have found a way of life
that's compatible with that stingy ecosystem.
But in this area there is not only the desert.
An area is also there that roughly coincides with the Sahel,
where desertification is taking place.
If we compare these two areas -
the desert and desertification zone,
in objective terms
the ​​desertification zone is still a bit more generous,
still a bit richer, than the desert.
But in this ​​desertification zone
the cycles of nature are no longer dependable on.
There is a chaotic, unregulated climate
and the inhabitants can no longer sustain themselves.
Look where it is,
and notice that it matches
the areas where hunger and conflicts show up the most,
the areas most afflicted by the dynamics of terrorism,
the areas most afflicted by illicit trafficking of all kinds -
arms, money, drugs, human beings.
And take a look at where nine out of ten migrants come from -
those who are creating a bit of a crisis for us right now.
If that's the current reality,
where Italy, in its front line role,
is poised to set a standard,
but we must not think that the problem ends there.
I'll show you two photos.
One is a map.
In this map you can see the glaciers of Hindu Kush, Himalayas, and Pamir.
These will eventually melt.
I have no time to explain why, but they will not melt gradually,
proportional to the rise in temperature.
At a certain point there will be a collapse.
At some point, the glaciers in this zone will break down.
OK, you may say - but why should we Italians care?
Well, the fact is, every time an element is lost
from this delicate equilibrium of the biosphere,
we don't just lose it and its physical beauty.
Its function is also lost, the part it plays
in maintaining the balance of the whole system.
Glaciers perform many functions: one of these should interests us a lot.
They regulate the ordered outflow of water downstream.
Local rivers have their source in those glaciers.
They irrigate plains where one billion and four hundred million people live.
If the glaciers break down here, in a monsoon area - especially in the south,
the situation in the valleys suddenly changes
from one in which, during the drought,
the melting glaciers supply the river with water
into a disastrous oscillation between drought and flooding.
Agriculture and the whole infrastructure is thrown off balance and much more.
One billion and four hundred million people.
We started to get in trouble with 380,000 people coming here.
It all adds up to this.
The mountains are very fragile ecosystems,
where very vulnerable people live.
OK, but they are not so much..
No no, 22% of the land will be affected and the 913,000,000 people who live there.
If they set in motion ...
And then the other image shows a flooded subway in New York.
Rising sea levels is a very controversial issue.
It's not clear how bad it will be.
But now scientists -
you may have heard
that a recent report by the United Nations Panel
believe it is quite plausible
that levels will rise by 1,5 metres by the end of this century.
So, let's add on the 42% of the human population
dwelling along the coasts.
If the sea rises 1,5 metres there will be flooded areas.
But that's not the biggest problem.
Saltwater intrusion is worse.
Salt water gets into the soil and dehydrates it.
The Romans,
to make sure a defeated city would never rise up again,
poured sea salt on the fields.
And this is the effect it will have.
I see from your faces that my story has really depressed you.
(Laughter)
Is all lost? No, we can solve the problem.
And we can solve it
in our short-term, cynical and self-interested way.
How?
Well, by reminding ourselves that we are part of a whole.
This diagram you see here
has been developed by the Barilla foundation.
It shows two pyramids.
The first one, the food pyramid, is very well known.
It shows the proportion of every type of food we should be eating
to stay healthy.
So, a little red meat, a little more protein from other sources
and increasing amounts of fibre, vegetables, and so on.
It so happens, if we juxtapose this pyramid
over the pyramid showing the impact on the ecosystem
of the production of each category of food,
they match almost perfectly.
That is, the more a certain type of food
is consumed - in excess, I'm not vegetarian -
the more it damages both a person and the ecosystem.
Hmm, what a spectacular coincidence for the food sector!
Only, it's not a coincidence
and it's not just under the industry's control.
It is a paradigm of our relationship with the ecosystem
and you don't have to turn to otherworldly wisdom.
It is the result of co-evolution.
It's just normal for us to be completely healthy
when we are "tuned" with the system we are part of.
If you do not believe me, try it yourself.
Do a little exercise.
Make a pyramid of your personal transport.
You'll notice that the better your choice of transport
it is for your health, for your integral well-being,
for your social life, your pace of life,
the more sustainable it gets.
And this is a bit true in all areas.
But why am I telling you this?
Because this gives us a roadmap.
It gives us a rule.
What's really good for you, is good for the planet too.
Let's move on from the individual to the global, geostrategic view.
If the West, as if by magic, decided to eat according to this pyramid,
not only would we all be better off
but it would help to stop the polarisation of the world
between the one billion five hundred million people
who suffer from disease, due to poor or excessive nutrition,
and the 814 million people who go to bed hungry.
What does this all mean?
It means that sustainability and well-being
turn into social justice and redistribution.
Those resources, consumed in excess by some, are freed up
and become available to others.
A professor from Piacenza calculated exactly how much.
If every person registered as pathologically obese
by western health services
abstained from a single can of fizzy drink a day,
that would free up enough resources to feed 56 million people.
So, my individual well-being becomes sustainability,
sustainability becomes fairness, and fairness becomes peace,
because a world where all children have access to decent nutrition
is also a world that kicks sand in the face of Boko Haram, ISIS, etc.
And so I propose this equation, the Earth equation.
It seems very personal - my life in harmony with the planet;
but it is really a political choice.
We can apply this method.
These crescents you see dug in the ground are in Burkina Faso
and is a system by which we can recover
one hectare of desert for $130.
By doing this, what do we achieve?
We regenerate this land for agriculture.
and we also create a extraordinarily efficient carbon sink
as the vegetation grown back.
Not only that: we protect biodiversity.
We consolidate the water / salt balance
and reduce heat locally
as vegetation brings down the temperature
and re-start all the market, the business activity, etc.
In other words, we disrupt the trigger of fanatism,
the mechanism that feeds human trafficking and war.
You don't believe me?
This is the real result.
If we don't do this, what happens?
We leave these countries prey to instability,
so they can no longer cooperate in the recovery of the climate.
They are excluded from the communal battle
to maintain a climate that is still manageable.
But leaving them out in the cold,
none of us will have a manageable climate,
because these countries contribute
to manageable sustainably.
So what happens?
If we leave them to their own devices,
we create the future
that the IPCC and the UN panel described four days ago:
2040, the catastrophe.
It's just our own crass, cynical, selfish interests.
We must take care of the weakest and poorest.
Thank you.
(Applause)