Sustainability is important, but it can't be the goal. To sustain something means to keep it in the current state. And today's current state – uh, no; we don't want to live in today's current state with the kinds of fires and droughts and winds and hunger. No. But we don't let it to get worse. So, the first step is, yeah, let's not go any worse,
which means stop releasing all the carbon products into the atmosphere or into the land or into the ocean. When I say the current state is not sustainable, what do I mean by that, and how did we reach the current state? More waste is generated in the manufacturing and in the mining and in discarding and in lots of other activities. And it's fine if we had waste of the sort that nature has,
where the waste itself is valuable substances that can be reused by nature. What we need to do is stop making and using objects that create great harm to the planet. This means changing the way that we do things, changing the way we make things, changing our designs, making designs that – the stuff can be repairable and can last a long time without being thrown away, that can be upgraded without having to buy a new item.
It means changing a lot of things – not just the design, but the companies have to change their business models because today the business model is based upon the fact that we're going to sell a new product every few years: a new product, a new product, a new product. No. That's what leads to the waste and leads to the harm. What we need is to say we're going to sell a *system*. But meanwhile the current way of living is destroying the planet. So, we have to change that state – stop doing that,
but better than that, recover our former state. So, we have to also change and get rid of the harm that has already been done. You know – the climate scientists like to talk about atmospheric temperature: the average temperature of the world's atmosphere. The problem with that is that *doesn't mean anything*; they say – you know – if we went up two degrees Celsius from the temperature at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, then great harm will happen. Two degrees Celsius?
I mean, the temperature changes more than that every day, up and down, up and down. What does that mean? That's not very much. So, the problem here is the *meaningful statement* made by the climatologists. The climatologists are talking about the heat of the entire planet. And for them, two degrees is a huge amount; whereas we talk about the temperature every day and how it changes up and down more than two degrees. We have to heed what the climatologists are telling us. We have to stop this heating.
But let's not talk about degrees Celsius; let's talk about floods and windstorms and drought and hunger and fires – the *results* of climate change.