Make Our Planet Great Again - Thoughts from COP23 Bonn 2017

Working for an NGO, I had the opportunity to participate in this year's Climate Change Conference in my home country. I was really excited and tried preparing myself as good as possible. I surely did my research on the Conference's program. As my accreditation allowed me to attend Bonn Zone only, I focused on events over there. My expectations were pretty much set. I wanted results. And I wanted an answer to the question that bothers me ever since I started focusing on Climate Change issues:

how can we make our planet great again?

Since the Kyoto Protocol has been established, we (still) created a tremendous environment full of GHG emissions, at the same time aiming for sufficient decreases in GHG emissions by inventing and using new, better technologies, increased efficiency and further mitigation approaches and processes. At the same time - around the beginning of the 90s - we experienced an overall increase in economic growth through, of course, better technologies, increased efficiency and other innovative processes linked to production. Profit maximization, cost minimization and mass production have been the center of our most Western economies ever since; which might be absolutely rational considering our consumption needs. Encountering an on-going globalization, in fact, international trade and international supply chains, how this might affect our very graceful and only environment on earth?

Knowing the current status quo and different economic situations in different regions, the least I expected was to attend interesting and crucial events/panels/discussions that would focus on the relationship between climate change and economics. Whilst most events focused more on governance and presenting different actors that compile and are responsible for financing e.g. energy efficiency, I truly missed the focus on actual adaptation and also discussions about the influence of both political and economic regimes/paradigms that, in my opinion, have a greater negative impact on climate change than anything else.

There is no doubt that our today's society is either directly or indirectly linked to this nuisance; simply because we have the (unrealistic) impression that it might be possible to satisfy our diverse needs through consumption, maybe indefinitely. Rationally speaking, I doubt that it is necessary to buy a new IPhone every 365 days, or 1.5 years. I also highly doubt it is useful to buy a whole trolley full of processed and boxed food only to throw half of it away because it might be given to some of us having nonrestrictive access to food. I am aware that this does not account for every single member of our society. However, non of our today's practices and lifestyles has been questioned on a reasonable level, so that it would be influential. At least, it has not been in the center of any discussions I have attended at the Climate Change Conference.

So during my three days of running from event to event and browsing through the halls full of motivated NGOs, Research Institutes, Universities and other actors, I have not found anyone who addressed the status quo itself and indicated that we might need different changes than we are currently discussing. The problem has its root on a complete different level. So my intake from the Conference is that we simply need behavioral changes. We need to change our very own perspectives on consumption, the value of material and immaterial goods, nature and accept that the current state of our system must not be the alma mater that allows us to stop questioning business as usual behavior. So before I go to the next Conference, next year in Warsaw, I might focus more on small solutions and how they might be scaled up. Because we really have to make our planet great again!

But how can we make our planet great again?

to be continued...