2023-12-12 14:40:06
While negotiations are slipping at COP28, Bertrand Piccard believes that we need to change our narrative strategy to achieve something. To accelerate decarbonization, according to the explorer and psychiatrist, we must discuss the economic profitability of sustainable investments and not the sacrifices they represent.
Present at the COP28 in Dubai, Bertrand Piccard notes that the “conflictual” relations which reign there until now are slowing down the negotiations, while we are already moving very slowly and that “the longer we wait, the more difficult the effort will be to achieve. accomplish”.
“Confrontation does not help, it has been a failure so far,” notes the president of the Solar Impulse foundation in an interview with RTS in the United Arab Emirates. For him, it is therefore absolutely necessary to find a “new narrative”, a new strategy to reduce resistance to climate action.
Explain that efficiency can be profitable
Bertrand Piccard believes that today we must “understand the fears and needs of those who do not think like us” and in particular the fear of losing a dominant position, jobs, markets or GDP points. And rather than going into confrontation, we must try to explain to them that “efficiency can be profitable”, that there are new industrial opportunities in environmental protection, that renewable energies are becoming less expensive than fossil energies.
For the Vaudois explorer and psychiatrist, constantly highlighting the notion of sacrifice when we talk regarding saving the climate is not a good strategy. “We will have the same result as in the first 27 COPs, that is to say resistance and rejection.” In his eyes, environmentalists are convinced that sacrifices must be made out of respect for nature and compassion for humanity, which is very respectable. But within the framework of the COP, “we need another language” if we want to accelerate decarbonization, that of economic profitability. It must be argued that energy efficiency can also generate new markets and profitable investments. “It’s not a sacrifice, it’s diversification, new businesses that we’re developing.”
We need another language if we want to accelerate decarbonization, that of economic profitability
Bertrand Piccard
For the man who successfully completed the first round-the-world balloon trip in 1999, it is a matter of showing how the economic model can evolve “by selling efficiency, by selling clean solutions rather than wasting with a quantity of consumption and production that has led us to the current environmental disaster. And it is with this realism that we will obtain a result.
“We must stop tackling as a priority everything that is difficult and expensive, because we will stumble. If the condition for decarbonizing the world is first to decarbonize aviation, we will never go further”, judges the environmentalist. According to him, we must start with the fruits found on the lowest branches, which can be picked easily and quickly. And to cite pell-mell the electrification of society, heat pumps, thermal heating, electric cars, the end of food and water waste. “When we talk regarding efficiency, it’s not simply putting LED bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs, it’s this whole vision, it’s doing more, better, while consuming much less.” With these fruits, “we will already decarbonize 43% before 2030,” he estimates. And only then will we tackle the harder-to-reach fruits, such as aviation or maritime transport.
Breaking out of ideological divides
Bertrand Piccard also deplores the blockages linked to ideological divisions. “The parties especially do not want to give votes to their competitors, when we should create an intersection of all areas where everyone has an advantage,” he advocates. “We must act together, there are still enough areas to argue and argue apart from the ecological transition which should be unifying and unifying.”
There are still enough areas to argue and argue apart from the ecological transition which should be unifying and unifying
Bertrand Piccard
According to him, all parties are necessary to move forward. Environmentalists for their activism in favor of the climate, but also socialists for being able to have fewer energy bills and thus help the most modest people in the ecological transition. We also need a center-right for entrepreneurship, for job creation, and we must also take into account the arguments of the far-right who want energy sovereignty.
The Vaudois believes that we will only achieve this energy sovereignty with renewable energies produced locally by local people, therefore by creating local profitability and not by importing oil from countries we do not want.
>> See the 7:30 p.m. topic on photovoltaics in the petromonarchies:
The United Arab Emirates cultivates the paradox of attachment to fossil fuels while investing massively in the photovoltaic industry / 7:30 p.m. / 2 min. / yesterday at 7:30 p.m.
Interview TV: Pascal Jeannerat
Web adaptation: Frédéric Boillat
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