A couple of years ago, my brother and I co-produced Tomorrow, an animated short film about climate change. Recently, I forwarded the YouTube link to my son’s teacher, and asked her to share it with her colleagues. That led to one of the teachers inviting me to speak to some 11-year-olds about climate change.
The kids were genuinely interested, and asked lots of questions. They told me they were planning to set up a rooftop garden at the school, as plants absorb CO2.
I told them, that’s a great idea. Every rooftop garden will absorb some CO2. I then explained to them that every large fossil fuel power plant produces millions of tons of CO2 every year. The world has thousands of such plants, producing billions of tons of CO2 every year. So unless we can persuade governments to replace fossil fuel power with non-fossil fuel power, we simply won’t be able to solve the climate change problem.
I explained that lots of people think electric cars are the solution, but if a city gets its power from a fossil fuel power plant, electric cars in that city are indirectly burning fossil fuels.
I also explained that the non-fossil fuel options for producing electric power are solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power.
Solar does not produce power at night. To store solar energy in batteries overnight requires buying very expensive batteries, which is why cities don’t rely on solar power. (A note for grown-ups reading this: Solar and wind installations typically produce power only 30% of the time. Every utility which owns a large solar installation relies on fossil fuel power plants for backup power 70% of the time.
Wind is even worse than solar, because you might have weeks or months with little or no wind.
Hydro power won’t be built in densely populated countries like Bangladesh, because flooding a large area to make a reservoir would probably force 100,000 people to move, and is politically impossible.
So the only real option left is nuclear power. When they heard that, one of the kids gasped and asked, “Isn’t nuclear power dangerous?”
I explained that nuclear power is not particularly dangerous compared to fossil fuels. The Chernobyl accident was the worst nuclear accident that has ever happened. A UN report (for those who want to google it: “Chernobyl: The True Scale of the Accident,” published in 2005) concluded that the accident had killed 50 people immediately, and that the higher incidence of cancer in the region would probably kill approximately 4,000 people over the next few decades.
Pollution from burning fossil fuels kills millions of people every year (Google this if you don’t believe me). So even the worst nuclear accident in history killed a small fraction of the number of people killed by fossil fuel air pollution in just one typical year. Climate scientist Dr James Hansen did research on this and concluded that replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power would save lives (if you don’t believe me, google “James Hansen nuclear power saves lives Scientific American.”)
I also explained that in the Tomorrow film, Ratul led a movement demanding taxes on fossil fuels. He does not try to persuade people to buy electric cars or solar panels. Fossil fuel taxes will make businesses which produce a lot of CO2 (like air travel and generating electric power from fossil fuels) more expensive. If fossil fuels are taxed, people will buy electric cars, and governments will set up nuclear plants and solar installations with batteries.
I explained that if we really want to stop CO2 emissions, we should be spending as much time as we can trying to convince our fellow citizens that taxes on fossil fuels are necessary. Years ago, people accepted that tobacco should be taxed heavily. Now we need to convince people that fossil fuels should be taxed heavily.
I gave those kids a lot of information, but I don’t think they had difficulty understanding it. We underestimate kids; they are open minded, and want to learn. It is we adults who are fools; we continue to burn billions of tons of fossil fuels.
Kazi Zahin Hasan is a businessman living in Dhaka.
