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0:00
[MUSIC PLAYING]
0:05
DUNCAN STEWART: But I'm just saying that those people in the developing world that are suffering the most because of our greenhouse gas emissions-- but they have the least capacity to cope or to deal with the issues. So we have to realize that it's us are stealing their future, our emissions. And when I look at your generation, it's my generation that's stealing your future, because it's coming down on us very quick with climate change. Anyway, I've gone on too much talking.
0:34
I should have given you a quick answer to that. But sorry about that. DENISE: No, actually, this is perfect. You just answered quite a few questions all at once. [LAUGHTER] DUNCAN STEWART: Oh, no more questions then. [LAUGHTER] DENISE: For example, you mentioned already the biggest environmental threat today is actually climate change and, also, how you actually became an environmentalist. Like, you started out as an architect with focus on sustainability. And then you widened your focus.
1:00
Is that correct? DUNCAN STEWART: Yeah. And I suppose, in my student days, I was vice president of the Union of Students of Ireland. And I set up a group then called RAGE, Radical Action for Good Environment, in my student days. So that's going back a long time, because there were issues. But in those days, it wasn't climate change. When I was a student, I didn't know about climate change as a student. That science was only being recognized around that time.
1:26
But it is clear that, with plastics coming on the market-- and there are so many issues that were really serious environmental issues. And pollution levels were very high at the time, water pollution, air pollution. So I set up this group in college thinking it would spread around the country. But then I qualified, and it disappeared. So anyway, it goes back to my school days, anyway. DENISE: Actually, just to connect to that what you just said, what would you ask a student or why would
1:54
you ask a student to join the environmental sector? How would you convince young people, so to say? DUNCAN STEWART: I think it's essential that everybody joins. It's only through collaboration, Denise, that we're going to solve this problem, you know? Individually, we can do lots ourselves. And the problem is we're all acting too much as individuals. And we're like pawns for the slaughter basically as individuals. Because the big corporates, the big vested interests, the fossil fuel industry--
2:22
there's so much power on a government level, this will not happen. The only way is for your generation to rally together across the world. And I would say, even start here in this building. Because you're representing probably most of the staff here in this organization. And this is, what, 4% or 5% of all of the people working for Google are here in Dublin? So first is to spread the message, and form your own environmental group here, and take these issues, and say, look,
2:55
what can we do collectively? Because by doing things collectively, you have power. You can change things. You can spread message. You can network with all of the others across the world from here. We have all the networking skills. I'm in a room here of people that could be the game changers for climate change. And I really mean that. Because the only hope there is, is the young generation. It's not going to come from my generation. We're stuck in a status quo.
3:27
We've got locked in by a culture of consumption, and waste, and dependence on fossil fuels for transport, or heat, or power, our food. So it's not going to come from us. If you want to see climate change being addressed, it's your generation have to take the mantle. And it's only collectively you can do it. So I would start in this building. You can do an awful lot from here. And then you can spread from this. DENISE: So you say, the main approach to this would be actually to start networking,
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to connect with as many people as possible. Because from my own experience, what I can say is I'm seeing the problem. I'm hearing about it in the news Many people talk about it nowadays about climate change and what all goes wrong. But I think no one really knows what in detail they can do as an individual to make things better. And I can only assume that many people are actually waiting for others to solve the problem and maybe are looking to leadership, to governments,
4:34
to politicians and are waiting for a solution that is not coming. So, what would you suggest to young people, as individuals? What can we do, apart from networking? DUNCAN STEWART: Yes, of course. And it's a really important question. Well, look at how our greenhouse gas emissions, how we, everyone in this room-- we look at our transport. How much CO2 emissions are we creating in our transport? Have we switched to walking and cycling where possible, to public transport?
5:03
Public transport is like 1/20 of the CO2 emissions of a car. And it takes up 1/30 of the road space. So when you think of gridlock on transport and all these issues, there's massive things we can do with transport. And it's a very big greenhouse gas emissions all over the world. And here in Ireland, it keeps rising every year. So transport is a key issue. I think the next one I'd look to is your homes. And many people in this room probably are renting. And that makes it very difficult,
5:36
because there's only so much you can do, because your landlord basically determines the performance of your home in terms of heat and power. But the more you can influence that change collectively to make sure that the energy performance of your home switches from fossil fuels to renewable energy and that the homes are upgraded-- our homes in Ireland are very poorly performing in energy terms. And I'm sure a lot of you are coming from countries here in this room where you're not used
6:05
to going into cold, damp houses with mildew, and dampness, and all the problems. And you probably think this is part of our religion or something. [LAUGHTER] All these molds forming on our walls and kinetic art or something, whatever it is. But I'm just saying, these are things because of our mild, humid environment here in Ireland. And I think that's an area that you're probably find difficulty, because a lot may be renting. But at the same time, collectively, you
6:34
could do an awful lot to get government to do more, to get landlords to act more responsibly, to get the message out about how poorly rental accommodation is in Dublin, for example. It's a clear message you can get out. There are two very key areas. Obviously, consumption, what we consume, anything to do with single-use, disposable plastic, especially, should be banned. That's something you just don't do. I just don't do it. For 5, or 6, 7 years, I haven't ever
7:06
bought a drinks container that's a single use. I just never do it. So I won't buy anything. But I think, collectively, you could do an awful lot in that by pulling together and saying, well, from now on, we want such that we don't want any of this. It's not just plastic, but that's the one that's probably doing the most damage. But everything from aluminum cans, to cups that are not recyclable-- there's a huge problem. And of course, compostable is good, but it's not very good.
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It's only on the half way. Prevention is the most important thing and reuse. Like, that's good. Take your water. There's a jug there that will be refilled and reused. These are the things we can do individually. But I still see probably the biggest benefit that you can do here is that you're in this unique situation that you can communicate with each other. You're all generally within a young age group. So you're able to look at your future and say, look, we want to protect our future.
8:12
So there's lots you can do. And of course, you could even set up a sustainable energy community in here, where you look at generating your own renewable energy. These are things you can do. You could have your own solar collectors somewhere. It doesn't have to be in this building, even. You could come together. Because collectively, you can do things. You can set up cooperatives, for example, energy cooperatives, food cooperatives. Because there's a lot of people in these building-- when
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you think, about 4,000, 5,000 people. There's a lot you can do with 4,000 or 5,000 people to actually collectively change things. Anyway, I'm just saying that great opportunities for you. DENISE: Yeah, thanks for giving concrete examples. Because that's something I'm often missing. Like, you are confronted with the problem but not have solutions. So this is really helpful. Thanks for that. Tell us a bit more about your "Eco Eye" series. What is that all about?
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DUNCAN STEWART: Well, "Eco Eye" is about it all aspects of environmental issues. It's mainly targeted at an Irish audience, because it's broadcast on RTE 1. But at the same time, the same principles apply anywhere in the world. So if I'm talking about climate change, if I'm talking about biodiversity issues, or circular economy-- for example, converting from the current take, make, dispose economy we're in to a circular economy, which is something-- now Europe is very keen that we all
9:39
change our culture in consumption, and production, and waste through the circular economy. So what I mean is there's anything to do with pollution issues. All our programs are about, obviously, factual, evidence-based science, peer-reviewed science. There's no fake news in our program. There's no Trump-type people in our program. Or there's no Brexit-type people, either. These are right wing think tanks that are propagating disinformation for vested, elite groups in society.
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And we have to be very conscious that the manipulation through the media is huge. So I'm very conscious that everything we do is based on evidence, fact, science. But it also then spends most of the time in our programs dealing with the solutions. So when you talked about the importance of solutions, our programs will always focus on the solutions. And also, that shows there are ways that we can change. We don't have to accept that climate change is going to destroy us.
10:42
It will know the way we're going. The trajectory on is disaster for your generation. And I'm talking about well before you're my age. You're going to see big impacts coming, shocks unless we change. And we can change. There's no reason we can't reverse the damage we've done with climate change. But we can minimize that damage. And we can see the opportunities that will arise in the transition to a green economy. That transition is going to generate hundreds of millions
11:18
of jobs, obviously, billions of jobs if you think globally across the planet as we make this transition to a zero-carbon society. That's huge opportunities waiting to be tapped. The later we leave them, the less opportunity. And obviously, if we don't address climate change in this decade, there's no hope. And I think I should say that again. We have this decade. And maybe I've just explained the reason. I've kind of gone into my talk now at this stage. But maybe I just come--
11:52
start really where I think-- where we now-- we have to think as one species. And I think even before we go into climate change, I think let's look at the big picture here for a minute. Human civilization has quadrupled over the last 100 years. Livestock has increased eightfold on this planet. Cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, and other forms of farmed animals for our food production, basically, have grown eightfold globally. Wildlife has collapsed. When I was your age or in college,
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populations of wildlife have plummeted. Mammals birds reptiles, amphibians invertebrates-- leave out all insects, because they're in a more severe category. But they've all dropped by 60% in population numbers. We're down to 40% of what was there in 1970 in terms of numbers. Basically, we have wiped out natural habitats. We've over-exploited. And climate change now is having severe impacts on biodiversity. Even artificial light, the damage it does to wildlife, is huge.
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And all of that artificial light has only happened in the last 100 years. And artificial light is absolutely amplifying the problems of all the other things. But climate change is probably the biggest issue that wildlife has got to face. But in that time, insects have dropped by over 80%. Pollinators, all the kind of basic engine of our food supply, of our whole sustenance, of air pollution, purifying air, purifying water, controlling disease, climate change sequestration--
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everything is dependent on our ecosystems and their services. And we're hammering them. And that's going to play out with massive problems over the next decade. And the problem isn't just that it's growing. It's accelerating. And the last time the rate of loss of species happened on this only living planet that we know-- the last time it happened at that rate it is happening now is 55 million years ago.
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It's shocking. And I'm living at this time. It's my generation has created this problem. And we have to remedy this. And now we look at climate change. We've altered the atmosphere. Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are now 410 parts per million. For 800,000 years, they ranged between 180 and 280 parts per million. We're now 46% above the highest it was in 800,000 years. The last time emissions were at the level they are now was somewhere between 3 and 5 million years ago.
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All of that has been created by one species. And it's from energy-related CO2. Basically, you've got four sources of energy, fossil fuels. You have oil. You have gas. You have coal. And you have peat. And we have a lot of peat in our turf, basically. And those four fuels, and especially coal and peat, would be the highest-- but oil, because it's the most used fuel for transport and for all other uses-- they have altered the atmosphere. That together with the plundering of the rainforests--
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and we see it now in the Amazon and the problems there, how serious it is, and with cement manufacture. And generally, they're the sources of CO2, carbon dioxide. But then on top of that, you've got methane. You have nitrous oxide from cattle, from animals. And in Ireland, we have cattle numbers of 7 million cattle in this country. So our greenhouse gas emissions from cattle is huge. It's exceptionally high. And farmers can't make a living out of cattle.
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So farmers need to diversify to other forms of farming that will get them a better income. But these are the sort of problems that we have across the world. And I'm just saying, these are the big issues. So if you take all of those greenhouse gas emissions, energy-related CO2 would be 2/3, if not 70%, of that. Then you have deforestation. And then you've got cement and many other smaller sources. But we have to get off fossil fuel. We have to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
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And every time we buy a car, we lock in a massive amount of emissions over the life of that car. The average car in Ireland creates four tons of CO2 every year, four to five tons of CO2 every year. Just think of the weight of that-- gone up into the atmosphere for 500 years, doing damage for at least 500 years. So when we buy something, we have to be conscious of the damage over the life of that product. For example, if somebody puts an oil boiler in their homes
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here in Ireland, that oil boiler will be there running for 20 years. Effectively, that's going to be like 40 tons of CO2 that's going to be emitting from that boiler over its life, 40 tons into the atmosphere. We have to understand that consumption, where we buy things, every product we buy, the carbon intensity of products. We should be looking for that. It should be labeled on everything. We should be able to read how much it is. At the moment, it's not.
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Because we're not regulating big companies and products so that we know the damage it does. So this is the issue. And of course, the problem with it now is we've seen a 1.1 rise in global mean surface temperature between 1750, pre-industrial times, and now. But over 50% happened in the last 30 years of that. And it's accelerating. And global emissions are rising by over 2% per year. So we have a massive problem. And Ireland is no good, either. Ireland is the laggards of Europe.
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I'm ashamed to say it. A lot of people here are from different countries. But you're living in the worst country in Europe regarding greenhouse gas emissions. We are consuming at a massive rate in Ireland. And our greenhouse gas emissions are very high. A lot of it is because of our agriculture, our exports of beef and dairy produce, of course. But if we leave that even out of it, our transport emissions are very high. Our carbon emissions from our homes and older buildings are very high.
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Power generation is changing. Power generation is the one area. We now produce 36% of our electricity from renewables. 90% of that is from wind energy. We have a target to reach by 2030 of 70%. And we should meet that. I think we will meet that target. Because wind energy in Ireland is huge. It's incredible. It's now the most cost-effective form of energy. So nuclear power is no longer a competitive fuel. Wind energy has now outpaced it. Solar is coming very fast.
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We're not the ideal country for solar. There's a lot of people in this room that could benefit more from solar than in Ireland. But we still can, even though we're in northern latitude. The more north we go, the less solar radiation. And especially in the winter, we get less when we really need the solar energy more. But we still have great capacity. We have massive opportunity with biogas, anaerobic digestion through biogas. We have ocean energy resources waiting to be tapped,
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wave energy, floating wind turbines, all sorts of things coming down the track. So the solutions are there. The opportunities are there. But as long as we stick with fossil fuel and get locked into a lifestyle of dependence on fossil fuel, there's no hope for us. So we have to say, every time we use something that's fossil fuel or anything that is going to be a source of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, we have to act differently to what we have done in the past.
20:56
And that's the really important message that needs to get out. And of course, there's huge vested interests out there pushing these technologies. We know about the fossil fuel industry and how they fund right wing think tanks and deniers across the world in trying to discredit the science of climate change, as the tobacco industry did back in the 1960s-- all about trying to basically create a sense of doubt about climate change. But we know the science is incredibly firm.
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And we know we're on a trajectory now of not 2 degrees and certainly not 1 and 1/2 degrees where we really have to be. 2 degrees is now going to be nearly impossible to achieve.
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1 and 1/2 degrees we could even achieve if we did a massive transformation in this decade. We're on a trajectory now of between 3 and 1/2, 4 degrees, 5, could even be 7 degrees. And this is all based on the latest United Nations reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. There were three special reports that came out over the last two years. The UNEP latest report stating that, if we want to hold globally to 1.5 degrees global mean surface temperature--
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which, by the way, is shockingly worse than it is now. But that's what we really have to do in my view. Because 2 degrees is dangerous climate change. And when you get to 2 degrees, it's going to get worse. So we have to hold to that. But the carbon budget that's left for this century, the global carbon budget that remains will be used up within the next eight to 10 years the way we're going. So if we want to tackle this, we have these eight to 10 years to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
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by what I regard as 70%. Europe is talking about 55% now. The European Commission, the European Parliament there-- was it yesterday-- announced a climate emergency. Now, they have to put real action to that. Because it's easy to say, climate emergency. Ireland introduced a climate emergency-- our government did-- about six months ago. But there's no emergency. Nothing ever happened. It's just rhetoric. It's easy-to-say words. It has to be applied in real actions.
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But I think Europe is setting that standard now. And obviously, we have problems in the US with the US now pulling out of the Paris Agreement in 2015. This is serious. They're the worst carbon emitters in the world. Collectively, over the history of the US, the amount of CO2 emitted by the US into the atmosphere that's up there now two in damage-- per person, they're the highest. But they have Australia. You've got Canada, very, very high. And of course, Saudi Arabia would
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be off the scale in terms of the amount of emissions. And of course, I think I should say, it's the rich of the world are doing most of the damage. The wealthier you are-- basically, for the more greenhouse gas emissions. I'll give you an example of where it really shows up so badly. Those celebrities are businesses that have private jets. We know that greenhouse gas emissions from air travel is incredibly high, and it's rising very rapidly and that we're going to have to change
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our international transport. Because aircraft are not delivering the solutions. It's all talk by airlines and about carbon offsetting, which is a joke. It's a complete con job. We have to realize that that's all PR to keep people comfortable with flying. But it's not just that the average commercial flight is bad. An accumulation of people fly more than once a year-- many flights-- we have to take all of this into account. But if you've got a private jet laid out
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with Jacuzzis, and luxury bedrooms, and all of the lovely luxuries of that, the difference in a private jet can be up to 40 times CO2 emissions of the average commercial flight for the same distance traveled, 40 times. These are all science, by the way. This is all proven in science. I'm just saying that we have to realize that there are free riders on this planet creating massive amount of greenhouse gas emissions. And there are many people in this planet contributing very, very little.
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So the differences are huge. And it's something that we need to be aware of. And of course, those that are being allowed to emit large are the ones that are going to be the ones that will block any change. They want to be able to do what they're doing. So anyone can run around here at the moment. So I'm sorry about that. But this is the truth. This is the facts. These are the things all of you need to know about. Because your future is being threatened by these emissions.
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DENISE: Thank you, Duncan. Of course, this is all very shocking to hear. But I always like to look at things from a positive mode and like to point out the key takeaways. And what I heard and what I was reading in between the lines is basically what we have to do is to completely rethink and redesign the ways we provide food, shelter, and energy to an ever-growing population. It has to be changed at the very core. DUNCAN STEWART: As you say, Denise, it's fundamental what we have to change.
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There's no room now for just tweaking at the edges. We have to make fundamental changes in our lifestyle, in our consumption patterns, in our use of energy. And we have to know that there's going to be massive investments required, capital investments required, to make the transformation. I'll give you an example of how big this is. If we take all our homes in Ireland, 1.8 million homes, to bring those up to the level that has to be, if you like, fit for purpose for the challenges
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ahead in this century, the cost is going to be in and around $60 billion euros to do that. That's just our homes. What about all our office buildings, our schools, our hospitals, our shopping centers? All of this has to transform. And along with our transport, we have to get away from the private car. Even the electric isn't great. Obviously, it's a big difference. The average car and the gas guzzlers, the ones that are really consuming diesel and petrol,
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doing massive damage, we have to stop this. In my view, they should be banned. We shouldn't be able to buy-- and if we do buy those fossil fuel cars knowing they're going to lock in-- when I say 4 to 5 tons per year, that means it's over 60 to 75 tons. That's the average car in Ireland over a 15-year lifespan. That's what they're going to emit. We have to say, at the point of purchase, there should be something that either prevents it or that creates a situation where
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there's a very high tax on it. And that tax then is ring fenced to go into subsidizing public transport, cycling, better facilities for walking. The money needs to go into the sustainable option. And cars are a major part of the problem. Cars do not give us, even electric cars, or even hydrogen cars, or biogas cars-- these are all good. They're much better. They're, like, one third of the emissions of the average car. But the dependence on the primary mode of transport being the car--
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the cars become only for really those special occasions, in my view, where you really need a car, or for people that have disability, or people in rural areas that it's very difficult for them. In other words, we have to move our whole lifestyles, basically, and how we travel. How do we travel abroad, especially when people are now depending on getting abroad, because their families are abroad? Or we're now very much a globalized society. But if we don't address air travel fundamentally,
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we're not going to address climate change. So these are the issues that I think we need to wake up to.
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DENISE: Now that we talked a little bit about what an individual can do, my next question would be, what do you think Google as a company can do to drive positive change at scale? DUNCAN STEWART: Well, I think Google is a great organization for being the game changer. If I was to stand back and say, I'm in a room here of people that could be the ones that make a huge difference-- because across your whole organization of 100,000 people in that order--
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all like you, all look into your future, all really good people wanting a future that will be sustainable, and that will flourish for you, and that you can rear families, and all the rest-- you can do massive across-- first of all, within your own organization here-- to bring everybody into the same way of thinking on this issue, to run little conversation groups on this issue, break into groups on different aspects of it, look for real solutions, how you can spread this
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across your own organization, how maybe then you could influence the organization itself. Because remember, everyone across the world, those 100,000 people, whichever country they're in, they're all going to be impacted very seriously by climate change in the next 10, 20, 30 years. I don't think we'll get to 2040 without major collapses. I don't think that we will. I'm not saying we will. But the risks are getting very, very high. And what we're not adding to these risks
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are the big feedback loops, the melting of the permafrost, the methane hydrates in our oceans, the loss of floating ice in the Arctic, and the whole effect of the absorption of solar into the oceans. I haven't mentioned the oceans, by the way, in my talk. We've been talking about the atmosphere, but we've damaged the oceans. If we look at what we've done to the oceans, we've warmed the oceans. We've altered the currents of the oceans. But we've also acidified the oceans, because about a third
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of the greenhouse gas emissions that we've pumped into the atmosphere have been absorbed into our oceans. And we're acidifying the oceans at a massive rate. We won't have corals on this planet in 2030 anywhere the way we're going. Corals will be wiped out. They're already going through massive stress. But most fish species, the whole ecosystems in our oceans, are being disrupted. So we have to realize, we know the melt rate, too, of the Arctic, and the Greenland ice sheet,
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and the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting now at a rate of six times what it was going back 20, 30 years ago. It's accelerating at a massive rate. Ireland is very exposed to the effects of this in the oceans. As the oceans warm, more evaporation into the oceans from the surface of our oceans, more energy generated by the heating up of the ocean surface, more intensive hurricanes. And as we saw in Ireland-- we saw hurricanes Ophelia two years ago coming up the North
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Atlantic from below the Azores up along our coast and the damage it did. That's only a taste of what's coming. We saw Hurricane Lorenzo this year threatening Ireland's coast. Ireland's coast is very, very vulnerable to climate change from storm surges and from these hurricanes that are coming. So we're not going to get to 2040 without major issues. And certainly by then, there will be hundreds of millions of migrants from climate-stressed regions of the world. I spent three or four days--
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I spent eight days altogether up in Paris summit in December, 2015. I came four days before my TV crew to learn as much as I could from scientists and then to talk to as many delegates from developing world countries to see what was happening. And I was shocked at what's coming, what's happening there now. And when you project what's happening now to what it's going to be like in 2030 and then 2040, we are facing massive problems, where hundreds of millions,
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if not billions, will have to migrate from areas that are no longer inhabitable, where there will be no possibility. It's not just sea level rise. It's all these other impacts of droughts, wildfires, heat waves, disease spread, all the things that are coming from climate change. And food production is being threatened. So we will see huge areas of the world, people abandoning where they're living, having to relocate. And they will go into their big cities and overcrowd their big cities.
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And there will be stress like there was in Syria. And we look at the whole issue in Syria. That came from 2 million people, young people, that had to flee from rural Syria into Damascus and into other cities. And that created conflicts in their own cities. And there was no jobs for these people. So we are facing a situation that, unless we address this, first of all, in our own emissions-- but then we also need to realize that we have to reach out to the developing world.
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And we need to bring them the right solutions. They need to leapfrog the mistakes we did. Ireland sending beef to China, farm the milk to the rich in China is not a solution. That is not a solution. That is an incredibly unsustainable thing to do that Ireland is doing. But we are focusing on the markets out there, exploiting these markets. We have to be showing people in the developed world the good solutions, the things that can be done that will be sustainable for them and for us.
35:43
We're in this together. We've only one atmosphere. And we have only one planet. DENISE: The last question I've got-- and it's actually not on here. This is just something that popped up in my mind when I listen to you-- is you mentioned PR that is basically saying, climate change is not all that bad. Because I can imagine that there are many, many people in the industry that have an interest that everything keeps going as it is because of money. How do you suggest to handle that with PR
36:12
like that going on and basically calming people down? DUNCAN STEWART: Yeah, you were talking about PR, Public Relations, and basically marketing products and marketing an ideology of disinformation. We're being manipulated by advertising. And every product wants to sell. It will always show the good things of its product, but it doesn't show the bad things. And of course, PR is greenwashing. It's manipulating people. It's dishonest in a way. Now, I'm not saying all PR is wrong, Denise.
36:49
I'm saying that PR people in PR can be doing really good, really important-- and a lot are doing good. But there is massive damage being done, basically conning people into consumption and into buying their products but not being honest about the damage their own products are doing, which could be, like, 100 times greater than the benefits that are being displayed on their products. And of course, advertising influences media. Radio, television, print media, but all social media
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depends on advertising. So we're being manipulated all the time by advertising. And you have to realize that this is a major issue. Because it's all the time coming at us, this advertising from PR companies, from marketing organizations, from big corporates trying to sell their products. And we can't be consuming as we are. It doesn't stack up with climate change. This idea of endless growth on a finite planet doesn't work. We are pushing growth, economic growth, GDP as the core issue.
38:00
We have to use other metrics for basically valuing our own countries and our societies. It has to be based on human well-being, and health, and happiness, and quality of life issues. It's not about consumption. And I think you're dead right. It's such a core issue. We have to be. And of course, right across all aspects of social media is advertising. And an awful lot are doing damage. So we have to be very conscious of it. And we have to be very conscious of the disinformation that's
38:37
going out through social media, the massive amount of disinformation that's feeding the most extreme right wing and other groups in the world. So there are big issues that need to be addressed. And I think here in Google, there's great opportunities for you to take these issues on. How many in the room here, by the way, are Irish, just generally, just to see, are we-- yeah. And how many would be European, anywhere in Europe? And how many non-European and non-Irish? Yeah OK.
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So we've got a good selection of people from all over the world here. That's great, really good. AUDIENCE: Hi, Duncan. Thanks so much for coming to talk to us. My name's Zara. I work in trust and safety in Google in research. To your point about advertising, you've touched on some areas of climate change like transport, for instance, and fossil fuels, which are now very widely accepted contributors. But there are some under-acknowledged players like fast fashion, which contributes
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like 10% of our global greenhouse of our carbon emissions. I think it's like the second biggest consumer of water. And then you've got meat and dairy, as well, which is the single biggest contributor globally to greenhouse gases. And these conversations, conversations around trying to eat less meat, trying to eat less dairy, trying to buy less fast fashion, or to buy from places which use much more sustainable practices, this isn't like transports, and carbon, and fossil fuels,
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where people accept that those are facts. Because people often seem more resistant to believe those stories when you tell them about fast fashion and those kinds of things. What's your opinion on those contributors to the climate problem, and how we can better raise awareness of those issues, and tackle those ones? DUNCAN STEWART: It's a very relevant question. And yes, because it's very relevant, when you talk about fashion and fast fashion, we have to realize that, when we buy anything,
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there's going to be carbon emissions. But some things have huge emissions. And most of these emissions are not accounted for. They're coming from countries, developing world countries, too, where they don't have the resources. And obviously, we have to respect that people livelihoods are at stake here. But fast fashion and the turnover of clothes-- I did a program on it about three years ago. And it is massive here in Ireland, especially with young people.
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And what's good, though-- if I answer that, there are some really good changes happening I see in schools now-- and so many different schools are reacting to this. There's environmental groups like ECO-UNESCO. There's the Irish Environmental Network, by the way, which I recommend any of you joining up with, which has all these environmental groups. But they're tackling this issue of fast fashion and consumption. So what I mean is there is some success that's happening in what you're saying.
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But you're absolutely right. And it is water, too. And a lot of that embodied water that goes into the manufacture of clothes is happening in developing world areas, where they're already stressed with climate change with water supply. So the local people-- it's big plantations that are creating the problems. And so you're absolutely right. This has to be tackled from its core. It's a very serious issue. And meat, of course-- and especially beef. If I'll give you an example, you've got beef.
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You have lamb, say, for example-- meat, say, pig meat. And you've got poultry, chickens. All of these create greenhouse gases. And the biggest one is beef. Beef is like 20 kilograms in Ireland for every kilogram of beef that you eat. So it's 20 times the CO2 gone up in the atmosphere for five hundred years for one meal. It's completely mad. If you compare that with, say, pig meat, it's probably half that. And if you compare it with, say, chicken meat, it's about a quarter of that.
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But we are consuming too much of all of these. And of course, these produce and awful lot of water. Again, I give the same example. And it's probably the same as, say, a typical garment. A kilogram of beef creates 15,000 liters of water. It basically consumes 15,000 liters of water. One cheap pair of, say, trousers or jeans-- these are shocking figures. But that's the real figures. So it's not just the greenhouse gas emissions. It's also the water issues. But again, we have to understand,
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that water isn't just taking it from people. It's taking it from wildlife, from insects, the ecosystems that badly need it. There's water stress issues now all over the world. And of course, the first to suffer is wildlife. And we have to understand, this is one of the big drivers. The consumption of all this production is driving these issues-- and very important question there. And it should be one that should be addressed here by all of you in this group.
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Because I think you could come up with good solutions to this. AUDIENCE: Hi, Duncan. Thank you so much for that. And my question is actually related to beef, as well. As you mentioned, the 7,000,000 cows we have in Ireland-- I also read via "Agriland" that we're importing enormous amounts of grain to feed our cows now. It's not just grass fed. That narrative has kind of been dispelled-- 32% increase from last year alone. My question is around actually the recent strikes.
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I walked past this week and saw these poor farmers who are working so hard to produce a product that has questionable health benefits at this stage-- is also unsustainable. But also, they can't afford to make a living. Last year alone, 120 million was given by the government to subsidize the farmers just so they can live. What do you think is stopping the government? Bear in mind, they've been doing this for decades. What's stopping them investing a real lump
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sum into helping them diversify, as you mentioned so that they can let go of this dystopian sustainable industry or at least most of them? DUNCAN STEWART: Yeah, first of all, you're absolutely right in what you say. And on top of that, an awful lot of those imports, our feedstock is coming from rainforest destruction. So you can multiply that by 10, basically, in terms of the damage if you really were to account for the damage. Because that's going in to plantations of soya and other things.
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And we know about the problems with palm oil and all these other issues. But if we take the issue of agriculture, we know that 90% of cattle farmers cannot make a living out of cattle. They never will. And of course, in Europe, demand for beef is going down, being replaced by plant meat equivalents. So there's no future in cattle. Those farmers would diversify. They're good farmers. They want to be part of the solution. They understand in nature.
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They're dealing with weather and climate all the time. But they need the right policies from government. They're not getting the right policies. Why? Because it's the big exporters that make the decisions. They have the power. Food Wise 2025 is the farm policy. It was developed by the big beef and dairy exporters to suit their growing expansion of exports. And there is a lot of expansion in that area. But they're the ones that decide policy, basically. Government latch on to that.
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The Irish Farmers Association are a major part of the problem, because they're locked into a situation. Every cow that's slaughtered in Ireland, they get paid for. So a huge chunk of their funding comes from basically keeping more cattle and perpetuating the whole problem. So they don't really represent their farmers. These farmers who are represented by this organization are being misled. And the farmers know it now. So there is a big problem.
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But unless we get a situation where the farmers themselves come together and basically identify the solutions that are-- there because there are loads of solutions, where they could be making a much better living. You see, on top of cattle, when you have cattle on a grass field, it's probably the most inefficient way to produce nutrient besides all the environmental damage it does, and the runoff into rivers of nutrients, and obviously the problems of methane,
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and nitrous oxide, and ammonia, and all these other emissions. But the opportunities are huge there. And 90% of our farmland is grassland, because grass grows well in Ireland. We were originally a country. 90% of our land was forest originally if you go back 8,000 years. But we've cleared the forest. And obviously, Britain cleared a lot of our forest, too, when they were colonizing us. But if we look at the situation now, those farmers could diversify.
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The simplest thing for a lot of the farmers to do would be, if they got a guaranteed price for every ton of grass they produced-- I've shown this one of my "Eco Eye" programs-- and they got that guaranteed price for 15 years, say. And if that was switched to-- then, instead of cattle, it went to biogas to produce anaerobic digestion, into biogas for transport fuel. That would reduce an awful lot of our imports of diesel and petrol. We spend 6.5 billion every year on imports of fossil fuels
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into Ireland. We're the highest importers in Europe of fossil fuels per person. So we're seriously-- huge money drains out of our economy. It goes into corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia and places like that. It buys armaments. So we're very complicit in the problem with our fossil fuels besides the emissions we put out, in that our money is doing damage abroad. But those farmers could have a good livelihood. And they deserve a good livelihood. And rural Ireland depends on those farmers
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having a good livelihood. Because they're the backbone of rural Ireland. And we need these farmers. And we also need the young generation of farmers to see a future in farming. And they don't see a future. So they're abandoning farming. But the solutions are staring us in the face. That's one. Is grass going to biogas? And that would be slurry with it, of course. And that would be a very good solution to our transport situation, because that's a zero carbon fuel.
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It's better than electric in that sense at the moment. But if we-- OK-- DENISE: [INAUDIBLE] DUNCAN STEWART: Oh, sorry. I've gone off on a tangent. But there are a good solution there. Thank you. Sorry, I've gone off. AUDIENCE: Before I hand the mic back to Denise, one of the other guests wanted to call out that "Eco Eye" is available on YouTube, as well, which makes it a little bit more accessible to us. So thanks, Denise [INAUDIBLE]. DENISE: Thanks for mentioning that. Yeah.
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I'm sorry we have to-- DUNCAN STEWART: Thank you for being so patient, by the way, with me. I hope I didn't go on a rant here. I can tell you this, what I'm telling you is honest. I have a lot of experience of this. I've done a lot of research over-- I've produced 460 documentaries on environmental issues. So each of these have to be well researched. And this is a great opportunity to talk to a well-informed audience but also a very influential audience here.
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Your people can make a really big change on behalf of your generation. So thank you for giving me, and having the patience to listen, and to offer such good questions. Thank you.
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