While 175 nations were signing the Paris Climate treaty in New York on Earth Day, Friday 22nd April 2016, Tim Flannery was the keynote speaker of the first Aspiring Conversations, “Cool It: dealing with climate change”, with Suzi Kerr and Veronika Meduna.
Click here for my comprehensive notes of the event.
What can your business or organisation take from it?
Climate change is happening and we are better off taking this into account.
Climate change is not a destination. It is a process. Our actions -or non actions- decide on the tempo of the change.
The hope is: we understand clearly now that there is a problem and we know what tools and what paths we can take.
Good news is: We are at the peak of emissions. Half of energy investments last year were in solar and wind energy.
If we take a good look at what we do wrong now, we give ourselves permission to be creative and innovate.
Adapting to change
Today is a turn. The Paris climate agreement signed today is saving us from the worst. There is hope but we are so late, change has already happened so we need to think about adapting to it.
Here in the mountains, the snow cover thickness is forecast to be 90% of what it is now in 2040 so there is only minor change for ski resorts until then.
There will be however 50% more rain in winter and spring and at the same time, there will be more dry days. This means heavier and more damaging storms, more floods as well as more droughts. How do we adapt to that?
Click here to read more about “How Climate Change affects our region”. We need to acknowledge the change so we can think about how to manage it.
Reducing emissions
While many innovations aiming at capturing CO2 from the atmosphere are on their way, reducing emissions is the best start.
Electric cars are a huge opportunity.
Planting trees is definitely part of the solution with lots of co-benefits.
It is great that governments will help with appropriate regulations. Yet it is down to private initiatives to act now.
Eco-consulting 