Mae-Wan Ho

Well, some people will say that there is no way to stop global warming, it’s already too late. However, there are plenty that we can do to ameliorate the effects of global warming or at least not make things get worse. For example, we have to cut down our consumption, cut down on waste, we have to invest in renewable energies right away and not waste anymore time. We have to consume locally, support local production and local consumption in both food and electricity -- in both food and energy. And in that way, we can save a lot of carbon emissions going into the atmosphere, plenty we can do. And we don’t actually have to depend on government action. We can do those things -- citizens themselves can do those things by themselves. We can do those a lot. We can tell the supermarkets to stop using so much plastic packaging. We can tell them not to waste food. We can tell them to source their products locally from farmers that are growing food around where you are living instead of having them shipped all the way across the world.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is a Reader in Biology at the UK’s Open University, where she researches and teaches the physics of organisms and sustainable systems.

Elisabet Sahtouris

Actually, we can’t stop global warming any more. As an evolution biologist I firmly believe that we cannot stop it any more. However, we can slow it down. And slowing it down is very important because we can buy some time by slowing it down and that will give us more time to prepare for this hot age coming on. Human beings have cut their teeth on ice ages, dozens of them throughout the history of humanity but we’ve never before faced a hot age. The earth however has done hot ages before. It may be that our poles completely melt, and if that happens we have huge sea level rises that are going to completely drown 13 of the largest cities in the world and countless other habitats. There will be too much water in the oceans and too little water on the land. And then we will have to get very creative, very clever about to deal with that problem, how to make fresh water out of salt water, how to deal with dry deserts because when the mountaintop ice melts, the glaciers, they don’t feed the rivers any more. And meanwhile we’re draining our aquifers so freshwater will be harder and harder to come by. Are we going to share what’s left? Are we going to cooperate with each other in developing ways of using catching rainfall and desalinizing water? Right now you can certainly be very conscious of the energy you use. You can use the cleanest energy possible. You can lobby in your local towns that the electricity that your local electric company buys come more and more from sustainable sources, renewable sources. You can investigate the alternatives, some of you will work on creating alternative energies. There’s so much you can do. You can watch how much you drive a car, walk when you can, bike when you can. Buy clothing from companies that are as energy efficient as possible and also eat as much local food as possible. All of these things will help to slow it down. Protest against the continuation of the oil age. Fight for clean energy, local energy, renewable energy. Look into the latest technologies. Get interested. Get interested in inventing new ways of coping with the hot age and surviving by caring and sharing with other humans.

Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolution biologist, a consultant to the international business community and the UN, and the author of Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution.

Angaangaq Lyberth

You know, Nancy, I spoke about the melting of the ice in my country for the first time at the United Nations in 1978. I remember receiving a standing ovation. And when I went home to my nation, Greenland, and told my family that I spoke at the United Nations about the melting of the ice, my father asked me: “Did they hear you?” I said, almost indignant: “But Dad, they gave me a standing ovation.” And then, very quietly, he asked again the same question: “But son, did they hear you?” And I had to tell him that I thought that they did not hear me. So I went back and talked again. Now, today, thirty years later, there is nothing you and I can do to stop global warming. The ice is going to carry on melting away. Now the matter is: who will live? Who will live, with a life worth living? We know that many wil perish. We know that many more will barely survive, with no life. Few will have a life worthy of living. I pray to the Great One and ask him again and pray again that you and me will be able to have a life worthy of living because, no matter what you and I do today, there is no way of returning. The ice will carry on melting until it’s ceased to exist. And, in fact, they say that in my country, Greenland, the land of the people will become a rose-garden. I’ve never seen a rose yet but I can hardly wait to see that one. That is my answer.

Angaangaq Lyberth is an elder and healer to his people in Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland.

Sabiha El-Zayat-Erbakan

Luckily this question already includes the answer what we have to do. I think that the key is to start with yourself and to look what you can change in your everyday life. Actually the methods and instruments for this are known. We all know that we should save more water and use renewable energy. But I think that in the end everything we can personally do leads to self restriction and the question we have is rather how we can find a motivation to accept this self restriction. And I think that we as religious persons can refer to sources which offer a concept for self restriction because by showing us our responsibility they can motivated us to act in the necessary way and help us to accept self restriction. Many, many examples of what we can do ourselves can be found in the book of Ulrich von Weizsäcker with the title "Faktor Vier" which says how we can achieve double efficiency with only half the energy. Here it is also clearly shown that we have the knowledge what we have to do. The question here is how can we translate the information and the knowledge into action. Maybe it would make sense for everybody who is involved to look what kind of resources every member of society has and to see how it can be used. And we should put aside the skepticism we have at the first moment just because the motivation comes from a religious background. We should rather look what kind of motivation there is to do something than paying attention to where it comes from.

Sabiha El-Zayat-Erbakan is the vice president of the German Society for Muslim Social Scientists and a founding member of the European Muslim Network.

Gladman Chibememe

It is a simple thing. It is a question of attitude change. Just change your attitude. From tomorrow onwards, you should avoid private transporting and resort to public transport. You should also change your attitude and try to ensure that you promote afforestation and discourage deforestation, encourage people to afforestate and reforestate, because forests are important, because they are the couple things, they are the ones that are important in trying to control the greenhouse effect. It is also important that we promote the use of environmental-friendly technology, technology that do not emit a lot of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. And in this case, if you do that or if we encourage humanity, our neighbors, our friends to do that, it actually means that we will be able to live in an environment where we don’t expect to have global warming. But, as long as we continue to use so many [privileges], as long as we continue to use private transport, then we are contributing indirectly and directly to global warming. So, it is a question of a person’s moral responsibility and individual responsibility, which you also extend to the social or to the society so that’s the society or the community have social responsibility. My experiences have been that local communities have taken individual responsibilities as individuals, but they have extended this experience to cover the whole community and a local forest has been protected and conserved at community level. A lot of afforestation and reforestation programs are being done at community level. And this is working. We need to upscale those initiatives in which forests are conserved, in which sustainable technology is being used at community level and this is really working and we have to try those, upscale those and we would able to have solution to the world. It is unfortunate that people think of big things all the time, but sometimes more things have positive results and they can contribute to development and the reduction of global warming within the [audio ends]

Gladman Chibememe runs the Chibememe Earth Healing Association, a non-profit organization focused on biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation in south-east Zimbabwe.

Avi Primor

Well, you just simply need to create a consciousness in the people. And this is possible. If you have a look at the Hollywood movies of the 1950s, you will notice that everyone was smoking everywhere. In the offices, at home, in the street, men and women. They drank alcohol and smoked. Some guy came home, and first thing was to get a whisky and to smoke a cigarette. Nowadays smoking is almost condemned. People are still smoking, but it is far from being socially acceptable. And on planes it is forbidden to smoke, in most public buildings, in restaurants, at least in America. And why? Because people realised that smoking will harm them. And this happened because some people really thought about all this and lead other people to realise this as well. They created a new opinion, a new public opinion, and thus they forced maybe not the tobacco producers but definitely the authorities to not really ban the smoking, but to limit it in public places. This is possible. Of course the authorities will not act on their own behalf concerning the climate, the global warming, the environment or the air pollution. It is about the money this would cost, and the authorities don´t want to have difficulties with the companies who will make less money when caring for the environment. That is why there needs to be pressure from below, because there will never be any pressure from the upper levels. The pressure needs to come from the population, they need to put pressure on the authorities, and the authorities will give in and will force the companies to follow the necessary steps.

Avi Primor is the former Israeli ambassador to Germany and the director of the Center for European Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

Simon Retallack

There are a number of things that people can do. I think the first thing is to appreciate your role in different arenas. I think as an elector, as a voter, as a consumer, as someone that uses energy in the home or in transport choices, we can each make a difference. First of all, I think we must all do our bit to encourage and put pressure on our politicians, our elected representatives to act, to take steps to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels which cause greenhouse gas emissions which causes climate change. And make the switch to clean, renewable forms of energy and use energy more efficiently. That means writing to politicians, telling them that you want to see action on this issue, telling them you won’t vote for them unless they take action on this issue. Wherever you see a politician asking for your vote, ask them, “What’s your plan to tackle climate change or global warming? What do you plan to do about it? Do you think that this is an important issue?” From there, I think, you can do all sorts of things at the community level to encourage action on this, to develop community forms of clean energy: wind turbine, biomass. And I think that we can do a lot as individuals in our homes, too, to take action to reduce our own contribution to the problem of global warming. We can put insulation in our roofs and our walls that dramatically cut the wastage of energy that happens and we can install efficient appliances, efficient energy light bulbs. We can take big actions, particularly by putting solar panels on our roofs or buying micro-wind turbines. We can buy increasingly our electricity from green energy suppliers. And in the transport sector, we can do a lot to ensure that we either choose public transport when traditionally we’ve used the car, or we bicycle, or we walk or if we have to use a car, we try to find -- I think we should buy the most efficient -- fuel efficient car. Increasingly they’re on the market now. You’ve got hybrid cars like the Prius which you can buy which use much less petrol than conventional cars, gasoline than conventional cars. And when we fly -- if we have to fly -- we can offset our emissions so that the contribution to CO2 that we’re responsible for is counteracted by investments in energy efficiency and in renewable energy projects, but also to avoid flying when we can. When you can take a train, take the train. Flying is the most carbon-intensive form of transport there is. And teleconference if you use – if you fly a lot for work. So take consciousness of your responsibility on this problem and take some action and encourage others to do so, too.

Simon Retallack is the lead researcher of the International Climate Change Taskforce, a unit of London’s Institute of Public Policy Research.

Kigge Hvid

Mainly it is important to understand the problems. That is if you really want to. So you simply have to understand. One way you could do so for the time being, is to watch the movie publicly known at the moment - made amongst others by Al Gore. So this is the first thing you can do. The next thing is of course to remember to turn off your electric lights and use a lid when boiling water etcetera. It is all small efforts saving energy. But these efforts do not have a large impact on the general situation. What really would make a difference was if you and others could try to influence government, corporations, organisations, institutions to think in new directions. This could be done by debates, movies, on the Internet etc. etc. It happens to be so that if every car in America could drive 12 km more on a liter of gas, then America would be independent of oil. This would mean a great difference in the situation between war and peace in the world. Another thing is, today cars can ride on ethanol. It is so today, that we are able to make cars that use completely different fuels and renewable fuels than we are used to. And thereby avoid pollution and avoid consummation of limited energy sources. So it is possible. It is solely a question doing so. Should this be done - then governments, car producers, electricity producers etc. etc have to be influenced to change. And this could happen. Another thing is Denmark, the little country I come from, is fourth largest supplier of wind energy. This means, that one of the things you can do in the USA is to influence your government and your representatives to ensure that the energy we use is renewable energy. In addition you also have to make sure that the question about CO2 discharge e.g. is also a question about legislation. When California decides that there no longer can be CO2 releases from cars, then California, because it is the state with the largest number of car purchasers in the world, then they change the legislation in USA all at once.

Kigge Hvid is the director of the non-profit network INDEX: Design To Improve Life.

Bill Joy

First I would recommend that everyone who’s concerned about global warming see Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and visit climatecrisis.net which is the website he mentions at the end of the film when he rolls a set of very simple things that everyone can do to cut their energy consumption. Set your thermostat back, drive less, buy a more energy efficient car, perhaps a hybrid, reduce, reuse, recycle, switch to more energy efficient light bulbs, turn off light bulbs you don’t need, set back your thermostat on your hot water heater and so on and so on. But probably the most important thing we can all do is through the political process support politicians to be elected who would support changing the policy to either advantage innovation or at least not disadvantage it. There are so many laws and policies on the book that benefit the incumbent ways of using oil, using coal. What we need is newer and renewable sources. And these things can be cheaper. I’m not talking about supporting taxes or raising money through having the government spend a lot more but what we need to do is to make sure that there is no disadvantage for the new technologies that are cleaner, renewable, more secure because they’re local and sustainable.

Bill Joy is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers.

Susan George

Nancy Clemons is from Missouri, USA. So, I would say, Nancy Clemons, the best thing you can do is to get rid of George Bush and all of the people around him because it’s the United States that has refused to ratify even a measure as mild as the Kyoto protocol which is not going to stop global warming, but which was at least a recognition by a lot of states that they had to start doing something. And, the US isn’t even ready to do that small thing, saying Bush father and Bush son have both said, “Well, the American economy is not going to give way to any protocol, and we’re not going to sign this.” Well, the first thing is to change that political leadership because this is a leadership which does not understand the ecological measures to stop global warming would be the best economic investment that you could possibly make. It’s the dirty production, it’s the energy consuming production that is costly, and it’s costly in just purely economic terms as well as ecological ones. Well, the other thing may be, because Americans have a good sense of humor usually, I think something we can all do worldwide is to shame and ridicule the people who are polluting. This is a bit crude, but I have often dreamed of having a bunch of little stickers printed up, so that as I went by -- because I don’t have a car -- but as I would walk by parked cars, SUVs, for instance, hugely consuming automobiles, I could just put a little sticker on the car that would say “huge car, tiny – .” Well, you understand; it is a sexual allusion, you understand. And, I would do that to shame them but also to ridicule them. I think we have to get started laughing at these people, making them feel small, instead of feeling that they are grand and that they can lord it over everyone else because they have the bigger car, or they have a larger house to heat, or they are heating their houses as if it were high summer, and so on. This is -- individual measures can do some good, that’s true. We can try individually to help to contribute to a better planet. But, really the only way to do it finally is through organizing with others and ultimately organizing politically.

Susan George is the former vice president of ATTAC France, the chair of the planning board of Amsterdam’s Transnational institute and the author of Another World Is Possible if…

Michael P. Totten

There are three major things that can be done immediately. Number one is super efficiency in your own life, your institutions whether it's school, or work and your elected officials pushing them to implement additional incentives and removing subsidies that prevent super efficiency. What’s super efficiency? It’s now well within our technological means now and over the next 10 years to continuously improve both the way we build buildings, register buildings, manufacture appliances, manufacture vehicles, design smart cities, when you look at the enormous opportunities all these added up, they could cut in half the emissions that currently and are projected to be emitted this century at a tremendous monetary savings to our society. To just give one example, over the next 25 years, the world has just managed to build some 4,400 large power plants. Half of those could be eliminated by focusing on the efficiencies from the point or near the point of use, so that you are achieving the minimum amount of waste in the transmission, distribution and generation of that process. That would free up some 24 trillion dollars that would be spent over the lifetime of those 44 hundred power plants, 24 trillion dollars. To give you a very good example, 60 percent of all the electricity currently used in China and about the same amount in US is for motors. In China, they are mostly inefficient motors. They calculated in China that replacing those with the high efficiency models would save in excess of a 100 thousand Megawatts. That’s more than all the hydropower generated in China today at a cost of 1 penny per kilowatt hour delivered. By comparison, a new coal plant cost at least 5 cents to generate and that’s 10 cents to deliver to cities by Shanghai. Nuclear power plants are over 10 cents per kilowatt hour, hydro dams produce electricity over 5 cents kilowatt hours. So, we have an opportunity to get five to ten times of savings by putting in efficient motors as well as by extension efficient light appliances, efficient design with buildings. On the transportation side, Winning the Oil Endgame by Amory Lovins and his colleagues, where the oilendgames.org lays out for the US how we can achieve net savings of 70 billion dollars per year by moving to a ...

Michael P. Totten is a senior director of the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business and the co-founder of the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology in Washington DC.

Benson Venegas

Nancy, your question is very interesting. It start from a personal perspective, to find the answer. And I think there is where the answer is. The first point to change is how we, or you, change your behavior, your consumption behavior. For example, when you set the conditions of a change in behavior yourself first, then you're able to set example for others. And when you set example for others, then you can show people that energy efficiency can lower costs. And lower cost can be a way to benefit the environment. I think this is a very important consideration because normally, in our bills, in our energy bills, the environmental cost is not considered. So we as person, as individuals, that use energy on this planet, we need to be aware that there's environmental cost behind the use of the way we use energy. So, we have to be responsible in that sense, and try to save. For instance, let's use less airplane to travel. That's another way. Another example to change a behavior or change a pattern of consumption.

Benson Venegas is a marine biologist and the executive director of Asociación ANAI, which implements sustainable development initiatives in Talamanca, Costa Rica.

Anuradha Mittal

Well, we can through our actions show others what to do about climate change. It is of course about reflection about our own lifestyle and making changes the way we live on this planet. But in addition to individual action that we take, which can range from questioning and changing our consumption patterns to questioning, “Do I really need to drive and have one car per person or the latest SUV or Hummer?” The other things that we need to do which is going to be very important and that is political action while composting, changing industrial agriculture, and the kind of food we eat is important. But, it’s also important to target politically on our leaders to change their policies because you and I can change and we need to change that. We have to focus on the local economy, that our food comes not from some faraway distant place which travels how many miles, thousands of miles to come on our table, but it is really also about questioning this insane trade system which allows for this food to travel. So, on one hand while we focus on building connections with say our farming community that we eat what is locally produced, but we also have to start putting pressure on the political leaders, those policy makers that they change the policies which are contributing to climate change and turn it into a climate justice issue, that we can no longer have governments which will go and fight wars for the sake of oil, that we as communities can say we do not want to depend on oil, that we want a different kind of agriculture where we do not have to again need gas and contribute to this climate change. So, both individual actions in our own life from composting to whatever are very significant, and then political action is very important.

Anuradha Mittal is the founder and director of The Oakland Institute and the former co-director of Food First: Institute for Food and Development Policy.

Helena Norberg-Hodge

I would argue that the first thing we need to do is to look at why global warming is happening. To really understand where the energy is going. In the last 20 years, the ecological footprint of people around the world but particularly the consumer culture that has grown up in modern cities--their ecological footprint has expanded exponentially. But actually, most people have not been aware of how or why that has happened. It's not that long ago that in the markets of Paris most of the food came from France. In the markets of England food came from England. It's not that long ago. But in the last 20 years, there's been a massive shift where all of our daily needs are coming from further and further away requiring more and more precious and polluting fossil fuels to manufacture them and to transport them and to package them. This exponential increase in CO2 emissions because of trade deregulation is one of the first things we need to address in order to reverse global warming. The possibilities of ending a swap in identical products actually means that we could take steps to reduce our energy consumption much more rapidly than most people think. Tragically in the media, what we tend to hear about is just the individual consumer. The average westerner is left to feel that it is because of their individual behavior that the world is about to collapse, that global warming is affecting the climate everywhere in the world. They are told that they should use fewer light bulbs, driver their car less, but there's no mention of the ways that we could reduce our CO2 emissions by reducing unnecessary, redundant trade. We need to do what we can as individuals, but I would argue that before you try to act as an individual connect with a community group to look at the community initiatives that are now planning what they call a "power down" or a reduction in their dependence on oil. Community--[Audio Ends].

Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization and the creator of the Ladakh Project.

Jerry Mander

Well, there are so many things you can do to stop global warming. It’s a question of what’s really going to effectively do it and I think there are several interlocking problems there. It’s not only right now the problem of global warming, but also the problem of the increasing loss of resources, the depletion of resources on the planet starting with oil, but also including many of the minerals and everyday resources. These two crises are together really leading to the same solutions which is to build a society that emphasizes instead of global and maximum consumption, local and less consumption; less and local. And that’s the ultimate solutions to the climate change and also the problems of peak oil and resource depletion are included in this concept of less and local. Now, as for what you can do, the beauty of this is that there are things you can do at home, by yourself, without any other body participating, or with your family participating, or with your friends participating. You can cut your energy consumption and your resource consumption easily and often and effectively. You can make decisions about becoming so-called carbon neutral, which means choosing very carefully the kinds of resources you use, and there are plenty of examples that you can find out about; literal organizations who are doing that work. And you can resource this very, very carefully so that there’s no waste, and all of those things will conspire to help prevent the problems of peak oil and the problems of resource depletion and global warming. There are now things that you can do in your home. There are meetings – you know it’s very important to develop community awareness and get the community to switch to kinds of energy production that are less carbon, that are more carbon neutral; and whether it’s solar or wind energy or small scale bio fuels or small scale hydro systems that are much less depleting of nature and do not contribute to climate change. That can be done in communities and being done in many, many communities around the world right now. And then on the political level agitate for national change along these lines.

Jerry Mander is the founder and president of the International Forum on Globalization and the author of The Case Against The Global Economy.

Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi

What can I do? I cut down on the greed. I tell my friends, known and unknown, that they also need to look at all the way that I have just explained that this world has everything to offer for one to meet ones needs, not greed. We need to be also looking at where is it happening at a level beyond the unsustainable limits. And if people in the northern part of the world reduce it, then only people in the southern part of the world will also reduce, because if you look at the pattern the southern part, the elite, the middle class, they always copy, replicate the pattern of lifestyles that exist in the affluent societies of the north. So, you can’t say we will not reduce our consumption pattern. And, if developing countries like India and China, their communities have to revise their lifestyles, it must begin in the developed world. You can’t stop global warming just by telling that in the south that they need to do A, B, C, D. It has to be matched by action at the other end of the world, the developed world. You can’t do it in your part of the world? I don’t think it is going to ever happen in our part of the world. If you don’t realize the danger that you are putting yourself and ourselves by continuing in this unsustainable lifestyles that are driven by market profits and driven by the ever increasing desire to consume.

Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi is a senior officer in the Community, Health, Education and Outreach Unit of the Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions in Bangalore.

Pico Iyer

Walk, get an electric car, tell your friends to buy a copy of Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance, or better perhaps more shaking, you need to see his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Don’t assume that you are hostage to the decisions that your governments make. Be aware that if global citizenship has any meaning, a part of that meaning is that each one of us as citizens is part of a much larger government and have the power to have our say and to make our decisions within a democracy that stretches across the planet. Don’t accept defeat.

A self-described ‘global village on two legs’, Pico Iyer is the author of The Global Soul.

Lilian Holt

I guess we are all part of the problem, but we all can be part of the solution. I mean for myself could make a contribution if I stop driving my car so much, stop using oil, walk to the shop, walk to the places I want to go. But do I? No. I mean I know that global warming is imminent. The thing about living in Australia is solar power—implementing the use of solar power and getting solar power installed, and it doesn’t depend on other people. I need to take the action. I just need to do it, just do it. And every little contribution counts, because it has the ripple effect. I come back yet again to Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s wonderful words, “let it begin with me.” I think we all know enough. There’s plenty of information around the place. We really all know what to do. We actually don’t have to ask others what we need to do. We can all make a difference. We can all contribute to stopping global warming. Some people say it’s too late, but I don’t think anything is ever too late.

Lillian Holt was the first Aboriginal executive officer of Australia’s National Aboriginal Educational Committee.

Robbie Conal

Make a glitter sign. I think that will be good, like a homemade glitter sign "Stop Global Warming", set it on fire. Whatever you do, I mean, I think it's the way to go is like, if each person does what they can, if you feel that way, to express yourself about global warming, like to stop it, whatever resources you have available to you, join other people who feel the same way, come up with that great glitter sign. There is nothing like homemade glitter signs to impress the world. I really do believe that and I am from LA, so I can have too much glitter, and homemade glitter signs are the way to go to stop global warming for sure. What you are going to -- maybe with a snappy expression like, the world is as hot as this glitter. Kind of something like, if you just do -- it really is important to like, if you feel that way to act on your feelings and beliefs, and express yourself in public anyway you can, and I just think it makes sense to join other people who feel the same way you do, and you will feel a little more -- a little less alone, or little more empowered, and maybe contribute to the lovely warm bowl of ideas about that subject and how to solve what is like a problem is almost -- we have made almost beyond our control, our doing, but just about gotten away from us. So, definitely need you and the homemade glitter sign. You can get great glitter on the Internet by the way and you can also find like-minded people on what is still one of the most democratizing forms of global communication available to us with -- you don't have the resources to take out an ad on TV or in the newspapers, and have given up on smoke signals.

Robbie Conal is a guerilla poster artist famed for his grotesque depictions of American political leaders.

Wim Wenders

Don’t stop informing yourself and spread the word. Spread the word, never stop, make the facts available to everybody you know, everybody who wants to know and everybody who doesn’t want to know; especially those. Pass on the relevant information and the access to it. Ride your bike, sell your car and use public transportation. Yes, sell that car. I did the same. I don’t have a car anymore. I tell you, it’s a big relief. I ride my bike in Berlin, I take the S-Bahn and the subway. I take trains. My life is so much better. I don’t get tickets anymore. I don’t have the hassle. I can read more, make telephone calls which rightfully-so you're not allowed to do when you're driving a car, when you’re steering your car in Germany, which is a good thing. I hate people on the phone driving at the same time. Anyway, just give up that car, you can make more phone calls, read more, doze off, talk to people, avoid the hassle. I keep talking, you know. Nobody stops me. I have nothing more to say though, which is part of the problem today.

A leading light of the New German Cinema in the 1970s, Wim Wenders is the award-winning director of Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire and The Buena Vista Social Club.

Mayank Mehta

The first thing to do is to go ahead and feel the nature. Anybody who feels the forest and the desert and the ocean, or any of those, will feel that there is something that we enjoy, there is something there worth preserving, there is something there worth keeping. Second thing to do perhaps is to grow something and see that food that we eat doesn’t come from nowhere; it grows out of the soil, and to feel the joy of growing some stuff. When you do that, it’s very easy to perceive the effects of global warming when plants don’t do well. Either there is too much rain or too much sun or the draining of resources from the soil. That’s an easy way to feel directly that there is some action of human beings that is hurting you when your plants don’t do well. Unfortunately, it’s a painful way, but that’s one way. In terms of what we can do, the first thing we can do is to watch out how much energy we are consuming, very simple. We can all do that and can turn off the lights when we don’t need them. We can not drive the cars when we don’t really need to. We can use less paper whenever we are using paper, to minimize the amount of use of paper. We can minimize the amount of plastic that we waste. We can minimize the amount of food that we throw away. We can be careful about what kind of food we purchase, whether it is produced in a harmful way, energy wasteful way, or conserving way, and by doing these very simple things, we can at least have a small impact on the whole process. Of course, we will have to do a lot more than that to have a sizable impact on the trend of global warming, such as dramatic reduction in energy costs, energy that we consume, but that’s a start.

Brown University Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Mayank Mehta’s research focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms of learning and memory.