“If we do not see ourselves as part of nature, we are going to continue exploiting it.” This has been one of the conclusions of the third Readers’ Debate of La Vanguardia, which has dealt with one of the great problems that we are currently experiencing throughout the world, climate change. Three experts from different fields have presented their different points of view and have proposed some solutions to try to reduce this problem.
All participants have agreed that just taking small actions does not solve the problem and that media noise is needed from large communication companies to provide visibility and political intervention in areas such as education.
The three participants are part of the La Vanguardia Readers Network: Carme Molist, farmer and rancher, who portrays her surroundings with her camera and whose photographs have reached National Geographic; Jordi Bigues, “artivist”, who was one of the founders of Greenpeace Spain and author of several books on climate change; and, finally, connected from Chile, Andrés Kogan Valderrama, sociologist expert in Education for Sustainable Development and correspondent reader of La Vanguardia. All of them have presented their opinions and experiences together with the debate moderator, Carlota Garcia Lorenzo.
“This sector is greatly affected by the fact that we have had no rain for three years and that means we do not have spring or autumn crops.”
“We need colder winters, they are necessary for crops and pests and, in summer, these heat waves have never been experienced before.”
“Cows tolerate cold better than heat and suffer heat stress, production and fertility decrease, and mortality increases.”
“There is a lot of concern since this climate change is accelerating a lot, especially in the waters, where there are no reserves, which means that it will not be possible to grow crops in these places either.”
“Now there are more torrential rains, but they are not taken advantage of, before there were rains from the east that now do not reach the interior.”
“We noticed that what happens in the summers, the fires, had never been seen before and the winters are not very cold.”
“We have to adapt, if we continue the same we will have to take measures and change the type of farms that are now free. In the 70s the cows needed to be outdoors and now that they are outdoors it is a problem because of these hot summers” .
“Beef cattle resist the cold in winter, but such high temperatures affect them greatly and it is being considered to close the farms again and air-condition them so that they do not suffer this heat stress.”
“We environmentalists used to seem like we were gardeners who in a privileged Europe cared about the environment, as if we were bricklayers.”
“We were considered revolutionaries when really what we were doing was ringing the bell of what was happening and the most unfortunate thing is that we were right.”
“Regarding the story that Carme Molist has made, I am not only irritated by the fact that it is bad news, but also by the fact that we ecologists were right and that we had warned, together with the scientific community, that the situation of human life was going to lose one of the qualities we had: living in a very favorable environment.
“Before you could talk about change and it could have a positive aspect, but it doesn’t have that in any sphere of Western life.”
“Packaging continues to rise and less and less is recycled, even in the 26,000 bins in Barcelona, ??it is not recycled.”
“We complain that immigrants arrive, but we forget that cultivation can no longer be done on their lands because the drought makes it unfeasible and impossible and the only alternative they have is to try to reach Europe.”
“Many people believe that the 3Rs are the 3Rs of recycling, but they really are: reduction, reuse and, if there is no other option, recycling, it has to be the third option and not the first.”
“We are convinced that the climate crisis goes hand in hand with the waste crisis, due to the large amount of waste that we are not able to reduce, especially plastics.”
“There is a lack of political will that is diluted by other apparent priorities that exist, which make us forget the underlying solutions that could avoid the most serious effects of the climate crisis, because the effects already exist, it is not the future, it is the present that must be faced.”
“I would like to offer a formula to solve the climate crisis, CRC: calculate, reduce and compensate, if we followed this formula, we could solve the crisis.”
“When I wrote the book X a good climate, I discovered that we generate a lot of waste, especially gas, secondly waste itself and, thirdly, electricity.”
“We must see these tasks as playing sports, playing sports is beneficial for everyone from all points of view, in one way or another we must understand the fight against climate change as a sport, as an activity that has many benefits for human life and individual life.
“That there are presidents who say that climate change is an invention of the Chinese, as Javier Milei suggests in Argentina, seems horrifying to me for the Latin American scenario.”
“There are people in Chile who still have land without water and water without land, Chile is completely deregulated.”
“This year we are in a new process but now in reverse, we are in a process mainly led by the extreme right in Chile, which is the one that has had the most seats to write the new constitution.”
“They are not even able to talk about sustainable development in the new proposed Constitution of Chile, but rather they talk about the environment being subordinated to the economic development of the country.”
“There is a challenge in almost all countries, but different policies also have to change.”
“The economic system and human action are what have generated the current situation on a global level; there must be coordination between countries, states and communities.”
“Education is fundamental, sustainability has to be present from childhood, it has to be central, it cannot be something specific like a workshop, it has to be present in all subjects and break paradigms.”
“Until we see ourselves as part of nature, we are going to continue exploiting it.”
“We think that climate change does not affect us because of this very anthropocentric idea that we are not part of and do not depend on nature”
