Do we really know what can we do to stop climate change?
The Faculties of Sciences and of Biosciences have organized a colloquium – debate on “energy and climate change” in commemoration of the Day of the Women and the Girls in the Science. With a full capacity of the conference hall, the audience, formed mostly by students, has been able to enjoy of the presentations of three scientists of recognized prestige in their fields: Rosa Palacín Peiró, expert in batteries, Anna Pérez Català, expert in environmental communication, and Marta Torres Gunfaus, expert in climatic politics. The two first, besides, are Alumni of the UAB Faculty of Sciences.
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Despite the pieces of evidence, currently, the governments do not achieve reach an agreement to find and apply the solutions and strategies more valid and more suitable. These are, in board strokes, the conclusions that have been extracted from the colloquium-debate that took place in the conference hall of the building C last Wednesday, February 12th.
Dr. Rosa Palacín, a researcher of the Institute of Material Sciences of Barcelona (CSIC), opened the event speaking about electrical vehicles as the means of transport of the future. Despite the considerable advances in batteries, she also has pointed out that the “situation never is as simple as it seems”, alluding to how a system based only on the use of the batteries, especially the ones of lithium, is not viable neither sustainable. Many times, she stated, the batteries or the materials that conform them have to travel big distances from a country to another; from the point of extraction of the mineral until the point of usage going through the point of manufacture. Therefore, the process of manufacture and process of transport do not reduce as much as it would seem the footprint of carbon compared to the combustion vehicles, but they displace it of the places of usage, such as roads, to the places of manufacture. The solution according to Dr. Palacín would be to continue developing new batteries, especially based on elements little costly like sodium, although they are heavier, and continue developing recycling processes for the components of the batteries.
Marta Torres, the second speaker of the day, explained the current data on which effects can have the global warming and especially in the consequences of a global increase of temperature of 2ºC instead of 1.5ºC. The difference is, she stated, vast and will go from affect to nearly 8 million people to affect to 80 millions. The bad news are that the mistrust between countries after the Paris agreements (to keep to 1.5ºC degrees the increase) has caused that in the following meetings the countries explained what they can do individually and not conjointly and globally. They arrived to the conclusion that the average of global warming on a long-term basis will be situated in 3 degrees, with all the consequences this involves. Marta explained how the institutions as hers work to try to counsel and convince to the different countries that the need to have a conjoint vision of collaboration and mutual confidence.
Finally, Anna Pérez, in her speech by videoconference raised the question of whether really we are communicating well the global and individual implications of climate change. “We speak of generic things and numbers –she stated- that people do not care about because they see it as something abstract”. She showed with examples how the scientific data are not the most important when valuing or thinking on climate change, but other considerations and judgments, like the political ideology, take part with more weight when valuing a problematic. She also showed how press focuses the problematic, exclusively, talking about environment in the widest sense, what causes, according to Anna, that the message is not well conveyed since it does not exemplify with the direct and personal effects in a population or in a family, something that would generate more empathy towards the subject. Besides, she criticizes the fact that experts that appear on the media use too many technical words, which confuses people. The solution, she said, is to explain interesting stories that go beyond natural disasters or purely numerical reports.
The three speakers woke up the interest of the students in the audience. At the end, the attendants keep asking questions further of the planned hour, all of them regarding, largely, the usege of the batteries in the transport and in the failure of the public politics. It was a great end to an event that served to deepen in a serious subject that often, is treated in a very superficial way.
The following seminar on climate change will be the one of Yayo Herrero. She is an ecofeminist activist, who will come to the UAB the next March 3rd in the UAB Theatre. We expect you there!