SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS Christophe Bisson

A CHICKEN CAN’T LAY A DUCK EGG. HOW COVID-19 CAN SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Book Review by

Christophe Bisson, Ph.D.

By Bernice Maxton-Lee (Former Director, Jane Goodall Institute, Singapore) and Graeme Maxton (Climate activist, economist, and best-selling author). This book is published by “Changemakers book” (2021), in the frame of the “Resetting Our Future” series.

THIS book has 2 parts: Part 1 “Trouble bubbling” where facts, and frightening statements enlighten the urgency of change. Part 2 “Got it! What now?” underpins authors’ philosophy to build a sustainable society, deal with the barriers of change and how to handle these obstacles.

They deem that it is not possible to reform the economic, political, and social systems of dominant countries to make them function in the interests of most people as “A chicken cannot lay a duck egg”. As others emphasized such as Noam Chomsky, the impact of climate change will completely overshadow the effects of Covid-19. They believe that there is no market-based solution to these problems. Therein, recycling, shopping responsibly, investments in wind farms will not be enough. In their opinion, only a people’s movement and structural reform will work, and Covid-19 as a result of humanity’s disregard for nature is an opportunity for a great reset.

Global warming is mainly due to how we produce energy and food. The key fact they use is that if greenhouses gases continue to rise at the current rate, we will reach a tipping point in the mid of 2030s (see UN survey). Hence, many parts of the world will become uninhabitable by the second half of the 21st century. The 2015 Paris climate accord will not change it. Based on these facts, greenhouses gases must be reduced by 60% in 2030 and at 0 in 2040. In addition, we need to change the way we grow food and stop deforestation. In the same vein, the MIT survey done in 1972 for the Club of Rome summitforeseeing the collapse of the society around 2040, has been recently updated which led to the same conclusion due to the over exploitation of resources on earth.

Authors enhance that we need regulations; if we want to have a sustainable system, we need to stop focusing on optimizing short term profits based on Milton’s Friedman law. In the neo liberal system, pollution has been construed as externality and led by colonial thinking.

Hence, governments need to intervene to protect nature and people. They posit that humanity has reached an impasse and must find a different way. They conclude that “Almost everyone on Earth needs to urgently change the way they live, whether they want to or not”.

In my opinion, there are rooms for discussions concerning the solutions they propose. For example, the power of technology, the use of data, artificial intelligence could help us to find some solutions or at least potentially help us (hopefully) not to fall in the precipice. As a demonstration, they wrote the book in 2020 and could not see the creation of a vaccine against covid19 in 1 year which previously was requiring 10 years. Furthermore, the recent creation of nuclear plant working with thorium is much safer than the conventional nuclear plant and it generates no CO2.

As they raise, the solution should be global and we need to have as golden rule “environment first”.

For the first time in the human history, we need to implement a globally sustainable and systemic approach, and urgently gather all our forces to act as one to stop climate change.

Christophe BISSON, Ph.D.

MSc Director of “International Strategy and Influence”, SKEMA.