No fossil fuel, only renewables: CA tells COP29

Chief Adviser of the interim government professor Muhammad Yunus Tuesday urged the global people for creating a new fossil-fuel and waste-free culture for future survival.

“It is based on zero waste.  It will limit consumption to essential needs, leaving no residual waste This lifestyle will also be based on zero carbon. No fossil fuel. Only renewables,” he elaborated.’

Nobel laureate Dr Yunus made these remarks while addressing the World Leaders Climate Action Summit at the 29th conference of parties (COP29) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Baku the capital of Azerbaijan Wednesday.

Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world.

“In order to survive we need to create another culture. A counter-culture which is based on a different lifestyle,” professor Yunus said.

“This will be an economy based primarily on zero personal profit, i.e. on social business,” he said.

This business is defined as a non-dividend business addressed to solve social and environmental problems, he added.

A vast part of social businesses will focus on protecting the environment and mankind.  Human lives will not only be protected but qualitatively enhanced through affordable healthcare and education, he added.

‘It will facilitate entrepreneurship for the youth. Young people will get prepared through new education of entrepreneurship. Education of creating job seekers will be replaced by entrepreneurship-focused education,” Dr Yunus underscored.

Safety of environment needs a new lifestyle, he said adding, “that lifestyle would not be imposed, it will be a choice.”

Young people love that life style as a choice. Each young person will grow up as a three zero person —  zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration, through building social businesses only, and zero unemployment by turning themselves into entrepreneurs, he added.

Each person will grow up as a three zero person, and remain a three zero person all his or her life. That will create the new civilization, he said. 

“It can be done. All we need do is to accept a new lifestyle consistent with the safety of the planet and all who live on it. Today’s generation of youth will do the rest. They love their planet,” Dr Yunus said.

“I hope you’ll join me in this dream. If we dream together, it will happen,” he added.

He also underscored the significance for mobilizing intellectual, financial and youth power to lay the foundation for a new global civilization.

“The climate crisis is intensifying. Our civilisation is at grave risk as we continue to promote self-destructive values,” he said.

“We need to mobilise our intellectual, financial and youth power to lay the foundation for a new civilisation --- a self-preserving and self-reinforcing civilization,” he said.

“We, the human inhabitants of this planet are the cause of the destruction of the planet. We are doing it deliberately. We have chosen a lifestyle which works against the environment. We justify this with an economic framework which is considered as natural as the planetary system,” Dr Yunus said.

That economic framework thrives on limitless consumption, he said adding, “The more you consume the more you grow. The more you grow, the more money you make.”

Maximisation of profit is treated as the force of gravity which lets everything in the system play its role according to our desire, professor Yunus said.

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