World Usbility Day 2023 Hamburg: Victor Lombardi

Summary

In this thought-provoking talk, a designer explores the urgent need for innovative communication strategies to address the climate crisis and its impact on future generations. Highlighting the potential for millions of deaths due to climate change by 2050, the speaker emphasizes the importance of legal protections for future generations and calls for designers to make climate issues more engaging and shareable. The concept of 'futur aside' is introduced as a new term to encapsulate the large-scale death caused by current actions, urging a shift in how we frame and communicate climate change for meaningful change.

Takeaways

• 😀 The speaker is a designer and product manager with decades of experience, currently based in Hamburg.
• 🌍 The focus of the talk is on climate change and its long-term impacts, particularly those that are not widely discussed.
• ⚠️ The speaker warns of disturbing topics, including the deaths that climate change could cause in the future.
• 🕰️ By 2060, there is hope that the world could solve the climate emergency, with clean renewable energy replacing fossil fuels.
• 🌡️ The World Health Organization estimates over five million deaths between 2030 and 2050 due to climate-related factors like heatwaves, storms, and diseases like malaria.
• 📝 A group of legal experts developed principles for protecting future generations' human rights, with a focus on how to manage hazardous waste and prevent future harm.
• 📉 The principles for protecting future generations have not gained significant visibility, despite their potential to influence international law.
• 🔌 The speaker emphasizes the need for more effective communication of important climate-related ideas, particularly through social media, which requires exciting, shareable, and engaging content.
• ⚰️ The concept of 'futurcide' is proposed to describe the act of knowingly causing deaths in the future due to current actions like fossil fuel usage.
• 🌊 A tool developed by Climate Central visualizes the potential impacts of sea-level rise on specific neighborhoods, highlighting the risk to homes and livelihoods if global temperatures continue to rise.
• 💡 The speaker believes that design and usability skills are critical for communicating complex climate change issues and engaging the public to make meaningful change.

Q & A

What is the focus of this talk?

The talk focuses on the intersection of climate change, human rights, and design thinking. The speaker explores how design can make climate change-related legal and scientific concepts more accessible and impactful, while also addressing the future human toll of climate change.

Why is it difficult to discuss the impacts of climate change, according to the speaker?

The speaker believes discussing the impacts of climate change is challenging because it involves uncomfortable topics such as death and the destruction caused by climate change, which can be disturbing. Additionally, there is a need for significant design work to help reduce these impacts.

What does the speaker suggest is essential for addressing climate change deaths in the future?

The speaker suggests that new legal frameworks and innovative design approaches are essential to reduce climate change deaths. This includes making complex legal principles more accessible and ensuring that actions to prevent future deaths are communicated effectively.

How many people does the World Health Organization estimate will die from climate change between 2030 and 2050?

The World Health Organization estimates that over five million people could die between 2030 and 2050 due to climate change impacts such as heatwaves, forest fires, storms, and second-order effects like increased mosquito-borne diseases.

What is the 'Principles' document mentioned in the talk, and what does it aim to do?

The 'Principles' document is a set of guidelines created by legal experts to protect future generations' human rights in the face of climate change. It outlines obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of future generations, particularly concerning waste and hazardous substances.

Why does the speaker argue that the 'Principles' document is not widely known or accessible?

The speaker argues that the 'Principles' document is not widely known because its title is vague and the content is dense, making it difficult for people to engage with. Unlike other climate-related information that is more widely shared on social media, the 'Principles' lack a compelling and accessible format.

What is the role of design in climate change communication, according to the speaker?

The speaker believes that design plays a crucial role in making complex climate change-related information more usable. This involves not only improving accessibility but also creating more engaging, shareable, and emotionally impactful content that resonates with a wider audience.

What is the significance of the term 'futuraside' introduced in the talk?

'Futuraside' is a term coined by the speaker to describe the act of knowingly committing actions that will cause deaths in the future due to climate change. It combines the concept of future and large-scale death, and the speaker suggests it could be a term that sparks action and raises awareness about the consequences of current climate policies.

How did the speaker draw parallels between climate change and genocide?

The speaker draws a parallel between climate change and genocide by discussing the scale of potential deaths from climate change, which could be compared to the death toll of genocide. This comparison underscores the urgency of addressing climate change to prevent mass fatalities in the future.

What example does the speaker give of how climate change has already impacted human health?

The speaker provides the example of the heatwave in Europe in 2022, where 60,000 people died due to extreme temperatures exacerbated by climate change. This event highlights the direct link between climate change and mortality, emphasizing the need for more precise terminology to describe such climate-related deaths.