Steven Greenleaf presentation at 2nd T & T Youth Forum on Climate Change, 4th August 2012.

1. Caribbean Institute of Sustainability
www.cisaction.org
info@cisaction.org
(868)-355-0323
Steven Greenleaf – Director
731-8001
slgreenleaf@gmail.com

2. Caribbean Institute of Sustainability
- Training and Education
Short courses, in house training
Sustainability and Environmental Issues
Green Building / Renewable Energy
Land and Resource Management
Sustainable Agriculture
- Consulting
- Policy development
- Capacity building of NGOs and Community groups

4. Why should Youth get involved?
Can Youth make a difference?

6. Environment is a part of many
development issues
Environment is a health issue, a children's
issue, a gender issue, a poverty issue, a
national security issue, an economic issue, and
very definitely a youth issue.

7. Some of the Big Topics We Face
• Population and carrying capacity
• Water
• Public Health
• Energy and Global politics
• Biodiversity
• Natural Capitalism
• Consumption 1 does not equal 6
• Climate Change

8. The global effects of population growth in Africa
What is the Earth’s carrying capacity?

9. Water
• Water wars
• Scarcity
• Climate change connections

11. Public Health
• T&T is a world capital of Lifestyle diseases -
Diabetes, hypertension, cancer
• Kids - 30 % of new students entering the T&T
education system are special needs
6,000 children per year
• Autism, ADHD, ADD

12. Energy and Global Politics
• Corporate Supremacy and the cost you pay
• The Military Industrial Complex
• Deterring Democracy
• Terrorism
• The Human Cost

13. • President of the United States (and former General of
the Army) Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell
Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex……. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper
meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery
of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so
that security and liberty may prosper together.”

14. The Highway of Death – Kuwait / Iraq

15. Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmandinejad inspecting uranium
enrichment centrifuges

16. Biodiversity
• Habitat loss, Global fisheries collapsing
• Livelihoods at risk
• Our genetic inheritance – Medicines
• Taxus Brevifolia – Pacific Yew - Taxol

19. Consumption
• Resource scarcity
• Oil wars
• Water wars?
• Current levels of consumption require at least 3
Earths to sustain.
• If people in developing nations raise their
consumption toward the levels of developed
nations the number moves up to 6 earths or
more.

22. Depletion of Natural Capital
• The Natural Capital of the Earth sustains our
health, and our businesses and provides
services like clean air and water that are of
enormous economic importance and are not
easily substituted.
• Ecosystem services and valuation of
ecosystem services
• Value of natural capital must be included in
economic planning and development planning

27. Climate Change
• 99% of the world's climate scientists and
Nobel Laureates agree
• It appears that the targets that the Kyoto
Protocol set for the maximum tolerable global
warming by 2025 may have already been
reached in 2010

28. Richard Muller, a professor of physics at the University of
California, Berkeley, and one of the most prominent
Climate Change skeptics now says he has made a "total
turnaround.“
He has become convinced that "the prior estimates of the
rate of warming were correct," and that humans are
"almost entirely the cause" of that warming. His teams’
analysis indicated that global warming is real — that
the average global land temperature has risen by 2.5
degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) since
1750, including 1.5 degrees F (0.9 degrees Celsius) in
the past 50 years.

31. A link between Climate Change and
Ozone depletion?
• In a study led by James G. Anderson of Harvard
University and published by the journal
Science, scientists reported that some storms send
water vapour miles into the stratosphere — which is
normally drier than a desert — and showed how such
events could rapidly set off ozone-destroying reactions
with chemicals that remain in the atmosphere from
CFCs, refrigerant gases that are now banned.
• The risk of ozone damage, scientists said, could
increase if global warming leads to more such storms.

32. Scared Yet?
Environmental issues are often seen as divisive
Right now there are opportunities for
environmental concerns and business to work
together for common benefit
Right now there are opportunities for
governments and communities and families to
work together

34. • Markets changing
• Green procurement and sustainable supply
chain requirements are coming
• New and different forms of environmental
regulation and litigation are coming
• The "Green Economy," is not something "Out
there," or "Maybe coming one day," it is here
now. We can lead, follow, or get out of the
way.

36. Ford, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, GM, Merced
es, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan,
Subaru, AEG, Siemens, TRW, Walmart, Home
Depot, Starbucks, Wells Fargo, Unilever, Dow
Honeywell, United
Technologies, Boeing, McDonalds, Nestle, Pro
ctor and Gamble, McDonnell Douglas, US
Department of
Defence, Nike, Puma, Adidas, Microsoft, Adob
e, BP, Sony, General Electric

37. Going Green is helping these companies to:
• Reduce the negative environmental impacts of their
business, making them better corporate citizens, and
improving their corporate image
• Gain competitive advantages over competitors
• Retain higher percentages of customers
• Become more innovative
• Better able to partner with other firms globally
• Better able to compete for public sector contracts
• Be able to access Green finance
• Become more resistant to litigation
• Be less susceptible to risk from changes in regulations

38. • Be better able to comply with OSH regulations
• Have healthier more productive employees who are
easier to retain
• Be more resistant to global market upheavals
• Deal with reduced uncertainty and risk from changing
business climate
• Become less dependent on suppliers and fluctuations
in the price of material inputs
• Become more resistant to challenges from policies
driven by Multi-lateral agreements and treaties
• Become better poised to adapt to the marketplace of
the future
While generating higher profits

39. Efficiency is the answer. The relentless pursuit
of efficiency solves the world's environmental
problems, and does is at a profit. Efficiency is
something everyone can agree on.

42. What can you do?

43. Read the founding works of the
Environmental Movement
• “Walden,” by Henry David Thoreau
• “Silent Spring,” by Rachel Carson
• “A Sand County Almanac,” by Aldo Leopold

44. Leaders
Teachers
Heroes

45. LEADERS
“We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the
candle that can guide us through that darkness to a
safe and sane future.” John F. Kennedy

46. LEADERS
• A woman once came to Mahatma Gandhi with her
little boy. She asked, "Mahatma-ji, tell my little boy to
stop eating sugar."
"Come back in three days," said Gandhi.
In three days the woman and the little boy returned
and Mahatma Gandhi said to the little boy, "Stop
eating sugar."
The woman asked, "Why was it necessary for us to
return only after three days for you to tell my little boy
that?"
The Mahatma replied: "Three days ago I had not
stopped eating sugar."

47. TEACHERS
• Alan Miller
• Jan Newton
“The power of an aroused public is
unbeatable.” Dr. Helen Caldicott

48. HEROES

49. Julia Butterfly Hill – Lived for 738 days in a redwood tree. Then
wrote a best selling book called, “The Legacy of Luna,” and
donated the proceeds to charity.

50. Maria Aguinda
Chevron in Orellana Province Ecuador -
$9,500,000,000.00 US lawsuit

52. What can you do?
• Live Green
• Build Green
• Speak
• Write
• Recycle
• Promote a loving and respectful future
• Be Disobedient when appropriate

53. “Civil Disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is
civil obedience…….Our problem is that people are
obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and
starvation and stupidity and war and cruelty.”
– Howard Zinn 1922-2010

54. “Non-cooperation with evil is as much
a duty as cooperation with good.”

55. My Personal Story –
Undergraduate depression and
Roberto Vargas

56. Local Wildlife and Landscape by
Stephen Broadbridge©

57. Caribbean Institute of Sustainability

58. Recommended Reading and Sources
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
©1999 Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company
ISBN 978-0-316-35316-8
The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
by Paul Hawken
©2010 Harper Collins
ISBN 978-0-887307041
*Note* Be sure to buy the 2010 edition which has significant revisions
over the original 1992 edition.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
©2002 North Point Press
ISBN 978-0-86547-587-8

59. Caribbean Institute of Sustainability
www.cisaction.org
info@cisaction.org
(868)-355-0323
Steven Greenleaf – Director
731-8001
slgreenleaf@gmail.com