To Kraków for the 2nd Carbon Footprint Summit. A nice idea which shows me where the social problems lie in persuading humanity to give a shit about the planet we live on...
The idea is great - bring together everyone that cares, to discuss what's needed to be done. Turning up at the venue, I was struck by the large number of young activists, full of fervour, and a business crowd that were there to talk about what's actually being done.
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| I came by train emitting 8.1kg of CO2; by car, would have been 29.6kg; plane 70.8kg. |
I had come all the way (an 03:20 alarm to catch the 04:56 train from Jeziorki via W-wa Zachodnia) mainly to hear Olga Malinkiewicz, co-founder and chief technology officer of Saule Technologies. Dr Malinkiewicz is famous for having invented a way to ink-jet print perovskite, a translucent crystal with photovoltaic properties, onto plastic film. The implications of this are huge. Unlike conventional silicon panels - heavy and clunky rectangular slabs - perovskite can be wrapped around irregular shapes, it can be applied to windows, it can even be applied to silicon panels boosting their combined efficiency. Looking at the potential, I believe that Dr Malinkiewicz will one day be seen as the greatest Polish scientist since Marie Curie-Skłodowska.
The event was organised along the greenest of principles. I am irked at going to a big conference and getting a visitor ID badge that's printed onto a sheet of laminated plastic and hung around one's neck on a lanyard with metal clasp, bearing the sponsors' logos. One day, and then all that waste... Here, the badges were made of recycled cardboard and suspended from a length of jute string. There were no programmes or brochures - again, a waste of resources. Instead, we have the programme in our phones. Signage at the event was hand-written on recycled cardboard, rather than printed on plastic and mounted on polyurethane.
The event felt like a mashup between a normal business conference, the sort of thing I'd go to two or three times a month before the pandemic, mixed with a trendy hippy-hipster happening. Girls dressed as butterflies wearing gasmasks would flutter around Making a Point. A jumble-sale of recycled clothes sat in one corner of the arena, between stands for Porsche and Ford. You could get composting starter kits and advice on recycling, or watch films about the damage being done to our planet by the meat industry. The volunteers who ran the event were friendly and earnest about the Cause. A Cause which is literally the life or death of our planet as a habitable ecosystem for humanity.
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| Note the recycled pallets and social distancing. Good stuff! |
The presentations and panels were generally interesting - good stuff about food waste, hydroponic plant production, green investment and capital markets, ESG reporting, the future of hydrogen, green redevelopment of buildings - very encouraging to hear so much positive messaging from businesses in Poland about the changes being made to hit ambitious decarbonisation goals ahead of deadlines. But where's Dr Olga?
After a while, it struck me that something wasn't right. I couldn't get online via my phone (I guess there wasn't enough bandwidth locally) but remembered from reading the programme at home online that Dr Malinkiewicz was due on at 11:40. That time came and went... there was instead an interesting panel with a lady from the United Nations and the deputy chairman of Grupa Azoty... I popped over to the Saule Technologies stand to ask a representative where his boss was. I was told that she was onsite, but that she'd already spoken - "Impossible - I've been here since the opening speech..." I asked one of the guys on the mixing desk. He didn't know either; he made a phone call. "She's already spoken..." It turns out that there were two conferences going on simultaneously! On was on the main stage, a conference in Polish (which I don't recall reading about online), while the international conference was tucked away in a small room a few corridors away from the arena, the signage for which was poor.
And so I'd missed the very speech I'd come for, even though I heard some compelling content from a series of interesting speakers. Yet the one thing that struck me most was the Extinction Rebellion stand (below). It was unmanned. The point that the environmental pressure group was making was "we don't talk to business because business is destroying our planet". Right on, man. Business also happens to be feeding, housing and clothing you. This Pol Pottist, neo-Kropotkinite movement is so utterly counterproductive. In refusing to hear what business is doing, Extinction Rebellion is painting itself into a corner, it is glueing itself to the asphalt. Extremists. How about coming up with an invention similar in significance to perovskite film instead?
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| A monologue from nobody. |
My key takeaways from the Carbon Footprint Summit - 1) It's all about changing the individual behaviour of billions of people - in particular the wealthiest two billion. Stop being greedy and focused on the acquisition of material possessions. Change your habits with the planet foremost in your mind. 2) Your carbon footprint is one thing, your water footprint is just as important. How much water do you literally piss away? Even by pushing the 'small flush' button on your WC, it's three litres of cleaned, potable water per wee, seven wees a day, that's 21 litres down the drain (with a full flush toilet, it's 42 litres a day). I'm smug here because for the past several years, I've been storing my urine, allowing it to ferment into ammonia, then using it as fertiliser (or mole deterrent) in the garden. But then I live in a house with a garden... 3) Business and activists need to be talking to each other non-stop about climate change. The danger of extremism can sparking counter-extremism, as is explained in this excellent piece from The Economist.
This time three years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia Platform 8 to reopen
This time four years ago:
Learning to fly (swan pics)
This time six years ago:
Scotland's answer to the Hoover Building
This time eight years ago:
In which I don't vote in the mayoral referendum, thus helping to save HG-W's job
This time nine years ago:
Gorgeous cars from Czechoslovakia
This time ten years ago:
Donald Tusk and Co. get re-elected
This time 11 years ago:
Poland's wonderful bread
This time 12 years ago:
An October Friday in Warsaw
That sounds like an excellent event - a pity that you missed such an important speaker, and after such an early start. It does show that innovations are still out there to be created. It's hard to imagine an event here in the UK, where we seem to be in a stand-off between tarmac-gluers and government inaction. Even where we have the technology, such as electrifying railways, we've been told to expect little investment until the 2030s. Because saving money after the pandemic is more important than saving our planet.
ReplyDelete@WHP
ReplyDeleteAnother 'Brexit benefit' is that the UK misses out on the EU Green Deal. Poland will be receiving €€€€ billions in grants and loans to roll out renewable energy and waste-reduction programmes (assuming the government behaves itself on Rule of Law etc).