Why We Need to Think Differently About Sustainability: Leyla Acaroglu at TEDxMelbourne

In 1989 something absolutely fundamental happened. She was 7 years old and it not only affected me, but it affected the entire planet. I remember when I first heard this I was sitting in the back seat of my friend's mom's car, she was driving and explaining to me that there is a giant Buble that covers the earth and protects us from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays and then she goes on to tell me how humans created this thing called cfc, they were creating these big holes and we were all going to die now, as you can see in my nice photo, I was petrified.

I literally thought I could imagine myself withering to a crisp, so when I was seven I decided to suggest some solutions to the problem. First I said we could erect giant umbrellas. I knew that, like they did in elementary schools, we could maneuver under the ones that apparently weren't going to work, so I offered to hide under the covers. No, that wasn't going to work either, we were all going to die. According to her, fortunately, after returning home I was shocked and had nightmares for weeks. I discovered that something was already in action 2 years earlier, in 1987, all the world leaders met and signed the Montreal protocol in 1989.

It came into force and meant that CFCs were basically eradicated from production in 95 and now Scientists say the hole in the ozone layer will recover by the end of the century. I

think

this is absolutely amazing and it has been claimed that the Montreal protocol is one of the most important and really effective given that people actually signed it and stuck to it. International regulation once, but the story of how we got to the hole in the ozone layer to begin with is even more fascinating and it begins with this man, Thomas Midgley, now he was quite well known at the beginning of the last century as an engineer and a chemist, he had two important inventions that had a profound impact on absolutely everything that exists on this planet, the first thing Thomas did was put lead in gasoline, good old Thomas, what a great idea, he fixed something called engine knock, he accidentally discovered that the Lead was the solution and he was really famous for a while, so much so that they put him in charge of another very, very important topic of the day and that was that refrigerators were still killing people.

Until 1920, refrigeration gases were completely toxic and because people had them in their homes and had the habit of filtering them, people were literally gassed to death in their homes, so Thomas was called in and put in charge of solving this problem and apparently it did. He did it in 3 days and what he came up with was Freon. Freon is an inert, colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas that he believed in so much that he stood up at the American Chemical Association's annual event to demonstrate how non-toxic the freon he inhaled was. a big puff of gas and held it for 30 seconds and then blew out a candle to prove it wasn't flammable either.

Freon was the first chlorofluorocarbon or also known as CFC and it was quite a seller, Thomas, so much so that CFCs ended up in hairsprays, refrigerators and a host of other consumer goods and now I

think

about this story and I wonder if Thomas I would have had a crystal ball or a time machine or that thing Doctor Who uses. I don't know that thing anyway, thanks. You, the Tartus, I didn't want to say it because I could have said it wrong, then it would have been bad anyway, so if Thomas had had one of those types of machines that I'm sure we would all like, then maybe he would have done the things. things

differently

because when these guys came along in the 1970s they discovered that Thomas's invention of CFCs was causing these holes in the ozone layer that threatened all life on Earth, as my friend's mother decided to tell me a way not appropriate for a child and Basically, they won the Nobel Prize and Thomas, well, let's say he doesn't appear much in the history books and what this teaches us or what it shows us now is that hindsight is brilliant and we look forward back and we wonder: how could he have done it? done that, but also that we must be very careful with the law of unintended consequences and this is basically when any decision of action or choice is made, there is the possibility of a positive, negative or perverse unwanted result and history is plagued of history. of unintended consequences cane toads in Australia are brilliant 1935 these 101 only 101 now there are a quarter of a billion anyway 101 cane toads were introduced to Australia to try to eradicate or fix the cane beetle that was killing the sugar cane in the far north Now in Queensland these guys decided they didn't really like cane beetles and preferred the cute little native frogs so they ate them all and that's the negative consequence and the perverse result is that they also They have these really poisonous glands that don't exist in Australia. had ever found and that's why, when the larger animals decided to eat them for dinner, they died.

In fact, they are known to kill crocodiles and because of this they have no known predators, their population has skyrocketed and as we speak right now there is literally an army of cans. toads marching from the top of Australia down and soon they will be here in Victoria, hopefully not anyway. The French ruled Vietnam during this time there was a rat infestation and the French government at the time decided that they would offer a reward for the rats as a way to try to encourage people to kill them to eliminate the rat infestation. This worked with incredible success at first, but pretty soon the people who were making money from this ran out of rats, so what did they do?

Rat farms. Hey, I love clever thinking. This is brilliant. Innovation is basically rat farms and they kept collecting the money very quickly. The government realized this and stopped paying money for rat tails, meaning the financial incentive disappeared. What are you doing? You let your rats go so that the rat population increases again. Many interventions happen all the time and recently when governments are trying to address problems such as air pollution from car emissions, they implement incentives to try to control or influence people's behavior. Mexico City, for example, wanted to reduce air pollution problems in their homes. congestion, so what they did was say well, cars can only run on specific days and that's why they were trying to encourage civilians to basically carpool, public transportation possibly even cycling didn't work at all because people just I would go and bring other cars that had the licenses for the days they wanted to drive so suddenly there was an increase in car ownership, an increase in car driving and an increase in pollution because those second cars were practically bombs, so To say the least, and that's why they didn't have the right catalyst. converters and the next thing you know, air pollution increases.

All of this shows us that good intentions can often result in much bigger problems and this is a really big problem when we are trying to solve serious global problems, be it poverty, deforestation, climate change, when we do not understand the consequences of decisions. that we take Even in our own lives I mean, I just think about all the times I've been to family events, I said that that four other people on Chinese Whispers have come to like at the time. I realize I'm in trouble and no one is talking to me. These kinds of unintended consequences of the decisions we make every day, but when we make big decisions, when governments and institutions make decisions, they have a dramatic flow. effects it is like a domino effect or a domino effect and there is a case that occurred recently and that was when the European Union was trying to address the issue of over dependence on oil, they decided to introduce legislation to encourage the use of Biofuels are now essentially fuels that can be used in cars like any other synthetic fuel, but they are made from biological resources, so they usually come from food crops, like wheat and corn, and after a few years it seemed like this was really successful, so They raised the target to 10%, but what really happened was that researchers began to wonder why there was suddenly not much food available on the world food market (staple food sources) and realized that something was happening. called a technical term indirect land juice shifting, but basically that meant that farmers who used to grow a large percentage of the staple foods for the world going to many emerging economies where people were suffering from food shortages suddenly left the market because people realized that it was much more economically viable to sell their corn and Maze for biofuel to Europe than to Africa for food, so we had a global food shortage and that is the negative result.

The perverse thing is that people not only transferred the lands they already cultivated, but also began clearing large areas of rainforest. Because there was an incredible incentive, we lost thousands of acres. The amount is unknown, but basically this Direct Control had net environmental losses and that is totally unsustainable, which is the area I work in in case you haven't figured it out. By now, and how I became incredibly almost irritatingly passionate about

sustainability

was 10, 10 years ago. It wasn't when I was seven that was just traumatizing. G could say I had some arguments about it, but that was 10 years ago.

I was studying design, product design, I'm in design school and I'm in engineering 101 and my lovely old professor comes in and says, "Okay, everyone, let's learn about this thing called Gaia Theory." That is, everything in nature is interconnected, so as a designer, you will probably make decisions about materials or processes that will have important impacts on the planet and that you probably already know about. I thought, of course, no one had told me this before. Am I supposed to make decisions? I don't want to hurt people on the planet. Oh my god, this is too much. all these possible environmental decorative outcomes of the choices that I, as a simple designer, was going to make, I turned to my class and said, oh my gosh, what are we guys going to do?

And I remember that the boy sitting next to me was like Lea. I don't know why you're scared, it happened a lot and, um, this is a direct quote. She said that none of these catastrophic environmental impacts will affect us in our lifetimes, so why should we care so much anyway? I left design school and went straight into

sustainability

school because I felt the weight of not knowing, and even though I didn't know about the law of unintended consequences, I really didn't want to be unintentionally responsible, even if I didn't know it. I didn't know it for causing harm somewhere else for creating making decisions that had impacts that were far beyond my intention as a human being as an individual and I ended up studying a lot about sustainability and having a drinking problem, just kidding, um and I found out I found out.

This incredible thing is that the world is made of incredibly complex and beautiful systems, in fact, systems are the underlying code of everything that exists on Earth, just look at how David Atenor has spent decades amusing and astounding us with how these intricate Little ecosystems of ants, fungi, and other things interrelate and basically create the basis for everything we love and respect on this planet. The systems are not just the big systems of how the climate is managed, they are not just the industrial systems of how we. everyone gets iPhones and other lovely technologies in inventions, it's not just these systems, it's all systems, it's our relationships, it's the things we hold dear, our families and our friends, all of these systems interrelate and unless we understand those systems and let's work within the limitations of For them, we now have unintended consequences, like I said, I work in sustainability, which is great because every time I tell someone they tend to walk away or ignore me, or try to justify what they do because They're worried that I'm going to do it. yell at them, which I don't normally do, just talk out loud most of the time anyway, if I could say three things about sustainability, this is what I would say, sustainability capability is about self-preservation, it's about of understanding and is about doing more with less permission.

I explain self-preservation because if you look at it we cannot deny the fact that we

need

three things to survive and that we

need

air, water and food, and nature has this incredible ability to provide us with those things, which is how we have managed to be so successful and how we manage to live on this planet now. I learned it at age seven because of the hole in the ozone layer and I learned it again at age 20 and I've spent the last 10 years discovering more and more about how we are absolutelyinterconnected with all the systems on this Earth, whether we like it or not, and that we need to understand those systems in order to sustain ourselves in the sense of nutrition, but also sustain the things that we hold dear, our friends and our families our communities the beauty of In this world, all those things are directly related and doing more with less is how we manage to achieve that we basically have an increasing population but not only that in emerging economies people are beginning to demand the same quality of life. life that we have experienced in Western cultures for years and rightly so, as more people demand the right to care and access to healthcare and all of these things, then we need to find really smart and innovative ways to do more with less. but with the best. about sustainability is that it is the most surprising catalyst for innovation.

There is no denying the fact that limitations are like honey to people's imagination. I don't know why I said honey, but bees, you know nature on a roll, so basically keep thinking about systems, they're all related, okay, basically, if we use sustainability as a criterion for innovation for innovative thinking, just like those Farmers in the French dominion of Vietnam managed to take advantage of With that intervention we have the ability to really evolve and solve some of these critical problems that we face, but unfortunately we are not taking advantage of this opportunity. Only 2.7% of all patents have something to do with the environment.

There is a great void in this opportunity. and like I said, 10 years ago I was in design school and I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I didn't just say the word, but that's what I wanted to be and I realized and that moment of understanding. I, as an individual, had this ability to absolutely influence the world, but that was not going to be at all what I knew or intended if I didn't agree to learn more, if I didn't agree to challenge myself to understand the complexity and the beauty. and the interrelationship of the things we all love and respect on this planet.

I think we desperately need to think

differently

about sustainability. I've spent the last 10 years working with designers, engineers, companies and anyone who will listen to me essentially about the opportunities that sustainability presents and seeing it as an opportunity and not a problem that everyone promotes. I think we need to think differently about sustainability, as Einstein said, you can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that got you there. In the beginning, and that's what we're doing now, we constantly used short-term thinking to layer simple solutions on top of simple solutions on complex problems, and at the end of the day what we're really doing is sustaining the unsustainable.

It doesn't matter if you know a store clerk or a CEO or anything else on this incredible planet we exist on. Sustainability is an opportunity, all we have to do is look at it differently, we have to think differently. different and we have to try to understand how we can all make decisions that have a positive consequence on the planet thanks