I worked for Dublin fire brigade as a
paramedic and a fireman and a while back
I was invited over to the Royal Society
in London and I was asked to give a talk
on radical mitigation for climate change
something you don’t normally associate
with a firefighter and I mean when I
think back to that time you know it was
a global gathering of professors
scientists climatologists and some of
the world’s greatest minds and I felt it
was a really bizarre moment in my life
I’m sure it must have looked bizarre to
everybody that was there but well one of
the things that came out of that was
that I was saying to people what it was
that had started in Dublin and was kind
of becoming a movement and I kind of
opposed to say to you that I went from
that moment to then go on talking all
around the world
I’m meeting different politicians some
very well-known presidents governments
and different agencies and commissions
all about the radical needs to halt the
speed of the climate change crisis so
where it kind of all began 10 years ago
my fire station and in Dublin which is
the forest fire station that had this
this walked happen had lost 50% of its
crew to a new fire station that was
built in a different part of Dublin and
a new fire station I call it modern and
sexy and our fire station was 40 year
old and in bits and when the crew left
to go to the new fire station they
brought with them all her experience on
all the different things that they
actually brought to our fire station and
morale started to drop motivation
dropped a lot of the time people are
coming in and weren’t happy to be in
work and in a fire stations you don’t
want that to happen
so I just came up with this crazy random
idea what if we put a cardboard box on a
counter and I tie wrote on the side of
it used watches here and what if people
just decided to take part the crazy
thing happened because within only one
month the battery box had started to
overflow and the same people that are
having motivation issues and had caused
morale to be low for the same people
that were taking part in something and
they were filling the box with batteries
the one of the biggest problems they
then had was where to hide the batteries
because I had nowhere to put them
now as soon as this started to take hold
I became a kind of go-to person and
people were saying to me what are their
ideas of you got what are the projects
have you got what else can we do and I
had no idea but I spotted straight away
that people wanted to buy in and have
some kind of behavioral change that
could do something to lift the spirit at
the fire station and at that stage I
realized well batteries are connected to
waste let’s say they go to landfill what
if we started to think about ways to
tackle waste save money and reinvest
that money as a saving into the fire
station and what about if we did that
the place might become a better place to
walk and all of a sudden the go to
person but with the mad ideas turned
into someone with lots of ideas that
walked and lots of ideas that failed and
I’m really proud of the ideas that
failed because it showed us we can just
keep going I’m very happy to say at the
end of the first year chill stun waste
alone waste in the form of domestic
waste to landfill and waste in the form
of heat that goes out through open
windows we’d reduced the running cost to
the fire station by ten thousand euro
and all the ideas that I had these kind
of procedures I had to give them a name
at that stage because everyone was
asking me what is it that were taking
part in and I called it the green plan
and I realized the firefighters were
becoming the stakeholders in their own
fire station they wanted to improve
everything
so it’s amazing to think that the crazy
random act of recycling batteries in the
Dublin fire station has led me to
talking to you guys today and saying
about the origin needs to tackle climate
change and what we can all do to take
part the thing is that’s exactly how it
should be and that’s exactly how it is
because every one of us is a change
maker every one of us is capable of
taking on something that we don’t fully
understand as long as we believe we want
to take part in being the solution to
the problem in the case of climate
change nobody wants to feel they sat by
and let climate change passes by and
it’s our legacy that we’ve left behind
so in 2008 Rahm Emmanuel’s was the White
House chief of staff and he said never
let a good crisis go to waste I think
it’s very fair to say with President
Trump making one of his most juvenile
ill-advised decisions to pull America
from the Paris agreement perhaps that’s
presented us with a very large crisis
but there’s another way in looking at it
what is that crisis is actually a great
opportunity for all of us to come
together and say well we can do
something about it
we can’t take on climate change we can’t
actually all pull together and come up
with different solutions different ideas
such as what happened in the fire
station and we can see what we can do so
for example when I started off I went
into management and if I had a said to
them okay I have this idea let’s reduce
the emissions of the fire station let’s
reduce waste let’s take on biodiversity
projects let’s reduce our emissions from
transport let’s reduce the amount of
water we consume let’s be great but
they’ve been picked up and laughed out
of the room and rightly so
at the same time that my walk was
starting in the fire brigade the global
recession had kicked in the Lehman
Brothers Bank
and the recession was being compared to
the Great Depression of the 1930s so
instead I had to refocus and I had to
think what can I do that will pull in
management and that they can see that
there’s a benefit for everybody that we
can all win so I went in and they
explained I had this idea just like what
had happened in the forest fire station
what if we thought about saving money
what about we asked the firefighters to
come up with ideas that are very simple
and very local and they’ll reduce the
cost of running the fire station what if
we used that saving to take on small
projects that attack the low-hanging
fruit the low-hanging fruit are the
people in front of you in the case of
the fire brigade its firefighters in
business it’s it’s the crew that working
for other the people who work for the
company what if those savings to cut
into reformed and you could actually
invest more and more into the next
location and it’s very interesting to
see that the first fire station that we
did the walk in ended up in 2012
becoming the world’s first
carbon-neutral fire station which change
was net 5 and 0 which means that we’d
even calculated the embodied energy of
the fire station and every other piece
of energy was ever needed to create that
fire station
we’d actually offset with positive
actual actions and all of a sudden when
you announce you’re the world’s first
carbon neutral fire station everybody
wants to know what’s the secret of your
success especially if you had no no real
investment so of course even down to the
EU commissioner for climate change came
over to Dublin to meet me and asked can
I see firsthand what are you doing in
the fire station so one of the problems
we have about climate change is that
it’s so regularly mixed up with global
warming okay there are two different
things
climate change is the average increase
in temperature over a period of time
caused by the burning of fossil fuels to
access their energy and it causes
emissions to enter our atmosphere it’s
that simple
that’s all climate changes climate
change is man-made
it’s not local it’s not country by
country it’s completely global when we
think about climate change the soulmates
so much talk and jargon and it’s always
misunderstood and people don’t really
know where to go you know one of the
things I’m not going to do is put up
graphs and put up climate models and do
me usual which is bombard people of
facts and figures and start explaining
about they are preaching could say they
built a catastrophic effects on climate
change on every corner of the world and
how its effects are not actually equally
distributed because most people
especially people in the room most
people guess climate change is real
climate change is happening now it’s not
affecting us all equally the people that
we call poor people the people in
Detroit world the non industrialized
countries they’re actually the people
that the most amount to lose the
quickest it’s interesting to think that
Africa is the one point one place on
earth that has the most potential for
renewable technology and sorry renewable
energy from technology and has the least
access to energy it’s a it’s a crazy
crazy part I think it’s fair to say well
we vote politicians into government or
into office we believe that they will
act with our best interests at heart we
believe that will make informed
decisions based on the most relevant and
up-to-date information that they have
and that they’ll act on science in this
case on scientific fact and yet were
faced looking at certain politicians or
people we believe are in our leaders and
we look at them and they deny and debate
scientific fact
you can’t deny scientific fact everybody
here in this room is entitled to their
own opinion myself included everybody
has an opinion there has to be one of
the best things about being free and
being alive and maybe there’s never been
a better time to be alive as very
today but nobody in the room has the
right to the ownership of the facts of
science when it comes to climate change
nobody can own those facts especially
the people we deemed to be our leaders
those parents in the room I’m sure today
can you imagine if your child came home
I had a real sad face and he said what’s
wrong and they showed you their walk and
it all had a big incorrect americanus
when upon closer inspection you looked
at her at her walk and you realized it
was actually correct
there was nothing wrong the teacher just
felt like saying it was wrong and didn’t
give them to correct marks what would
you do the next morning if you entered
at school bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
and God helped the teacher and there’d
be no debate and in this case there’s no
debate about climate change it’s real
and it’s happening now and I believe
that our leaders are letting us down as
something that’s really troubled me I
spent so long trying to figure out why
would you deny and waste time debating
scientific facts when you could be
leading from the front so it makes me
say to you if you think about it we have
the scientific facts we have the data
and we have everything we need we even
have the no help for what’s stopping us
if I was to ask anyone in this room to
make a decision on behalf of every other
person the first thing you do is pause
and think what reaction a ramification
will come to my decision to affect
everybody here in this room but yes
leaders aren’t doing that when it comes
to climate change so I’d like to think
that means they’re giving us the biggest
opportunity of all time which is to
giving us the opportunity to be the
change maker everybody here is a change
maker everybody here has the ability to
take on something as I said that they
don’t fully understand as long as we
want to be part of the solution to the
problem
when I started to walk in the forest
fire station my agenda was to save money
that’s all I wanted to do save money and
should have to improve morale if I could
make the saving I told you I’d put it
into the next fire station but here’s
what actually happened we started to
make savings and we started to upgrade
the fire station that made more savings
so we invested more in the fire station
and after not too long I told you
earlier we had 10,000 euro if we
followed our trail it ended up that the
fire station became 90% energy
independent that meant I had the money
to invest in other fire stations and of
course all of a sudden the green plan
went from an idea to maybe a small
movement because in the other fire
stations there’s fire flavors with the
hands up saying hey how can I take part
in this and you see in the forest fire
station what we did we had so much
savings we actually built a porpoise
build state-of-the-art brand-new
gymnasium for the firemen to use on
their downtime and under halftime a
total win-win and of course all the
other fire stations wanted one too now
soon the ideas of what we were doing in
that fire station that made all this
energy saving and all this money I
started to call it green stuff it means
LED lights
it means solar panels rainwater
harvesters air source heat pumps and all
a kind of green stuff that’s brilliant
but when I had the other firefighters in
the other stations taking on the
projects I realized that I was gathering
forced followers and every one of those
forced followers technically is somebody
that doesn’t fully understand what’s
going on but knows they want to take
part in being the solution to a problem
in essence I was gathering all new
leaders and all those people were going
looking for more people to follow them
and of course what’s going to happen
you’re going to have more money to make
more savings to make more investments so
I took the green stuff and I went to the
Fire Brigades their business plan and I
embedded it into the business plan and
it completely disrupted a 100
fifty-year-old organization what that
means is we’ve gone from green stuff to
sustainable development
we’ve gone from real tangible projects
on the ground to full-blown tangible
projects inside our business plan inside
the day-to-day running of an entire 150
year old organization that meant that
immediately we have to determine what
are the main risks to the fire brigade
and we were able to find out it’s the
trash from climate change and we’re able
to make it as our highest risk
immediately we had to do what any normal
business will do set key performance
indicators to help us achieve our
targets and to help us lower our carbon
footprint now at that stage the Safety
Council came along and they said hold on
a minute
how do we take part so I got the green
plan to go inside the City Council and
it went inside the city development plan
and they went inside the city business
plan and before long there’s a lot of
departments around Dublin with people
with the hands up saying hey how can we
take part in this and of course I just
got it a whole load more force followers
as I prefer new leaders before long the
green plant had then been embedded in
libraries swimming pools and leisure
centers as a separate gig completely to
the fire station and the fire brigade
I’m very happy to say that at the end of
only four years
Dublin fire brigade on its own inside
its own state had reduced its energy
spend by 44 percent a 44 percent means
44 percent less carbon emissions but
let’s say what it really means
it means we saved money it means you
saved 11 million euro in four years on
running our fire service with your money
because the taxpayer forms the fire
service so surely dot D risks the fire
service and of course the idea is spread
because soon I realized order fire
brigades internationally and forget
forever heads order our companies or our
countries other people wanted to do this
walk I’m very proud to say
the green plan is now in 41 different
countries so I’m very happy with that so
I’d like to think I took a crisis and
maybe didn’t let it go to waste so thank
you very much for giving me the
opportunity to talk to you today
[Applause]
paramedic and a fireman and a while back
I was invited over to the Royal Society
in London and I was asked to give a talk
on radical mitigation for climate change
something you don’t normally associate
with a firefighter and I mean when I
think back to that time you know it was
a global gathering of professors
scientists climatologists and some of
the world’s greatest minds and I felt it
was a really bizarre moment in my life
I’m sure it must have looked bizarre to
everybody that was there but well one of
the things that came out of that was
that I was saying to people what it was
that had started in Dublin and was kind
of becoming a movement and I kind of
opposed to say to you that I went from
that moment to then go on talking all
around the world
I’m meeting different politicians some
very well-known presidents governments
and different agencies and commissions
all about the radical needs to halt the
speed of the climate change crisis so
where it kind of all began 10 years ago
my fire station and in Dublin which is
the forest fire station that had this
this walked happen had lost 50% of its
crew to a new fire station that was
built in a different part of Dublin and
a new fire station I call it modern and
sexy and our fire station was 40 year
old and in bits and when the crew left
to go to the new fire station they
brought with them all her experience on
all the different things that they
actually brought to our fire station and
morale started to drop motivation
dropped a lot of the time people are
coming in and weren’t happy to be in
work and in a fire stations you don’t
want that to happen
so I just came up with this crazy random
idea what if we put a cardboard box on a
counter and I tie wrote on the side of
it used watches here and what if people
just decided to take part the crazy
thing happened because within only one
month the battery box had started to
overflow and the same people that are
having motivation issues and had caused
morale to be low for the same people
that were taking part in something and
they were filling the box with batteries
the one of the biggest problems they
then had was where to hide the batteries
because I had nowhere to put them
now as soon as this started to take hold
I became a kind of go-to person and
people were saying to me what are their
ideas of you got what are the projects
have you got what else can we do and I
had no idea but I spotted straight away
that people wanted to buy in and have
some kind of behavioral change that
could do something to lift the spirit at
the fire station and at that stage I
realized well batteries are connected to
waste let’s say they go to landfill what
if we started to think about ways to
tackle waste save money and reinvest
that money as a saving into the fire
station and what about if we did that
the place might become a better place to
walk and all of a sudden the go to
person but with the mad ideas turned
into someone with lots of ideas that
walked and lots of ideas that failed and
I’m really proud of the ideas that
failed because it showed us we can just
keep going I’m very happy to say at the
end of the first year chill stun waste
alone waste in the form of domestic
waste to landfill and waste in the form
of heat that goes out through open
windows we’d reduced the running cost to
the fire station by ten thousand euro
and all the ideas that I had these kind
of procedures I had to give them a name
at that stage because everyone was
asking me what is it that were taking
part in and I called it the green plan
and I realized the firefighters were
becoming the stakeholders in their own
fire station they wanted to improve
everything
so it’s amazing to think that the crazy
random act of recycling batteries in the
Dublin fire station has led me to
talking to you guys today and saying
about the origin needs to tackle climate
change and what we can all do to take
part the thing is that’s exactly how it
should be and that’s exactly how it is
because every one of us is a change
maker every one of us is capable of
taking on something that we don’t fully
understand as long as we believe we want
to take part in being the solution to
the problem in the case of climate
change nobody wants to feel they sat by
and let climate change passes by and
it’s our legacy that we’ve left behind
so in 2008 Rahm Emmanuel’s was the White
House chief of staff and he said never
let a good crisis go to waste I think
it’s very fair to say with President
Trump making one of his most juvenile
ill-advised decisions to pull America
from the Paris agreement perhaps that’s
presented us with a very large crisis
but there’s another way in looking at it
what is that crisis is actually a great
opportunity for all of us to come
together and say well we can do
something about it
we can’t take on climate change we can’t
actually all pull together and come up
with different solutions different ideas
such as what happened in the fire
station and we can see what we can do so
for example when I started off I went
into management and if I had a said to
them okay I have this idea let’s reduce
the emissions of the fire station let’s
reduce waste let’s take on biodiversity
projects let’s reduce our emissions from
transport let’s reduce the amount of
water we consume let’s be great but
they’ve been picked up and laughed out
of the room and rightly so
at the same time that my walk was
starting in the fire brigade the global
recession had kicked in the Lehman
Brothers Bank
and the recession was being compared to
the Great Depression of the 1930s so
instead I had to refocus and I had to
think what can I do that will pull in
management and that they can see that
there’s a benefit for everybody that we
can all win so I went in and they
explained I had this idea just like what
had happened in the forest fire station
what if we thought about saving money
what about we asked the firefighters to
come up with ideas that are very simple
and very local and they’ll reduce the
cost of running the fire station what if
we used that saving to take on small
projects that attack the low-hanging
fruit the low-hanging fruit are the
people in front of you in the case of
the fire brigade its firefighters in
business it’s it’s the crew that working
for other the people who work for the
company what if those savings to cut
into reformed and you could actually
invest more and more into the next
location and it’s very interesting to
see that the first fire station that we
did the walk in ended up in 2012
becoming the world’s first
carbon-neutral fire station which change
was net 5 and 0 which means that we’d
even calculated the embodied energy of
the fire station and every other piece
of energy was ever needed to create that
fire station
we’d actually offset with positive
actual actions and all of a sudden when
you announce you’re the world’s first
carbon neutral fire station everybody
wants to know what’s the secret of your
success especially if you had no no real
investment so of course even down to the
EU commissioner for climate change came
over to Dublin to meet me and asked can
I see firsthand what are you doing in
the fire station so one of the problems
we have about climate change is that
it’s so regularly mixed up with global
warming okay there are two different
things
climate change is the average increase
in temperature over a period of time
caused by the burning of fossil fuels to
access their energy and it causes
emissions to enter our atmosphere it’s
that simple
that’s all climate changes climate
change is man-made
it’s not local it’s not country by
country it’s completely global when we
think about climate change the soulmates
so much talk and jargon and it’s always
misunderstood and people don’t really
know where to go you know one of the
things I’m not going to do is put up
graphs and put up climate models and do
me usual which is bombard people of
facts and figures and start explaining
about they are preaching could say they
built a catastrophic effects on climate
change on every corner of the world and
how its effects are not actually equally
distributed because most people
especially people in the room most
people guess climate change is real
climate change is happening now it’s not
affecting us all equally the people that
we call poor people the people in
Detroit world the non industrialized
countries they’re actually the people
that the most amount to lose the
quickest it’s interesting to think that
Africa is the one point one place on
earth that has the most potential for
renewable technology and sorry renewable
energy from technology and has the least
access to energy it’s a it’s a crazy
crazy part I think it’s fair to say well
we vote politicians into government or
into office we believe that they will
act with our best interests at heart we
believe that will make informed
decisions based on the most relevant and
up-to-date information that they have
and that they’ll act on science in this
case on scientific fact and yet were
faced looking at certain politicians or
people we believe are in our leaders and
we look at them and they deny and debate
scientific fact
you can’t deny scientific fact everybody
here in this room is entitled to their
own opinion myself included everybody
has an opinion there has to be one of
the best things about being free and
being alive and maybe there’s never been
a better time to be alive as very
today but nobody in the room has the
right to the ownership of the facts of
science when it comes to climate change
nobody can own those facts especially
the people we deemed to be our leaders
those parents in the room I’m sure today
can you imagine if your child came home
I had a real sad face and he said what’s
wrong and they showed you their walk and
it all had a big incorrect americanus
when upon closer inspection you looked
at her at her walk and you realized it
was actually correct
there was nothing wrong the teacher just
felt like saying it was wrong and didn’t
give them to correct marks what would
you do the next morning if you entered
at school bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
and God helped the teacher and there’d
be no debate and in this case there’s no
debate about climate change it’s real
and it’s happening now and I believe
that our leaders are letting us down as
something that’s really troubled me I
spent so long trying to figure out why
would you deny and waste time debating
scientific facts when you could be
leading from the front so it makes me
say to you if you think about it we have
the scientific facts we have the data
and we have everything we need we even
have the no help for what’s stopping us
if I was to ask anyone in this room to
make a decision on behalf of every other
person the first thing you do is pause
and think what reaction a ramification
will come to my decision to affect
everybody here in this room but yes
leaders aren’t doing that when it comes
to climate change so I’d like to think
that means they’re giving us the biggest
opportunity of all time which is to
giving us the opportunity to be the
change maker everybody here is a change
maker everybody here has the ability to
take on something as I said that they
don’t fully understand as long as we
want to be part of the solution to the
problem
when I started to walk in the forest
fire station my agenda was to save money
that’s all I wanted to do save money and
should have to improve morale if I could
make the saving I told you I’d put it
into the next fire station but here’s
what actually happened we started to
make savings and we started to upgrade
the fire station that made more savings
so we invested more in the fire station
and after not too long I told you
earlier we had 10,000 euro if we
followed our trail it ended up that the
fire station became 90% energy
independent that meant I had the money
to invest in other fire stations and of
course all of a sudden the green plan
went from an idea to maybe a small
movement because in the other fire
stations there’s fire flavors with the
hands up saying hey how can I take part
in this and you see in the forest fire
station what we did we had so much
savings we actually built a porpoise
build state-of-the-art brand-new
gymnasium for the firemen to use on
their downtime and under halftime a
total win-win and of course all the
other fire stations wanted one too now
soon the ideas of what we were doing in
that fire station that made all this
energy saving and all this money I
started to call it green stuff it means
LED lights
it means solar panels rainwater
harvesters air source heat pumps and all
a kind of green stuff that’s brilliant
but when I had the other firefighters in
the other stations taking on the
projects I realized that I was gathering
forced followers and every one of those
forced followers technically is somebody
that doesn’t fully understand what’s
going on but knows they want to take
part in being the solution to a problem
in essence I was gathering all new
leaders and all those people were going
looking for more people to follow them
and of course what’s going to happen
you’re going to have more money to make
more savings to make more investments so
I took the green stuff and I went to the
Fire Brigades their business plan and I
embedded it into the business plan and
it completely disrupted a 100
fifty-year-old organization what that
means is we’ve gone from green stuff to
sustainable development
we’ve gone from real tangible projects
on the ground to full-blown tangible
projects inside our business plan inside
the day-to-day running of an entire 150
year old organization that meant that
immediately we have to determine what
are the main risks to the fire brigade
and we were able to find out it’s the
trash from climate change and we’re able
to make it as our highest risk
immediately we had to do what any normal
business will do set key performance
indicators to help us achieve our
targets and to help us lower our carbon
footprint now at that stage the Safety
Council came along and they said hold on
a minute
how do we take part so I got the green
plan to go inside the City Council and
it went inside the city development plan
and they went inside the city business
plan and before long there’s a lot of
departments around Dublin with people
with the hands up saying hey how can we
take part in this and of course I just
got it a whole load more force followers
as I prefer new leaders before long the
green plant had then been embedded in
libraries swimming pools and leisure
centers as a separate gig completely to
the fire station and the fire brigade
I’m very happy to say that at the end of
only four years
Dublin fire brigade on its own inside
its own state had reduced its energy
spend by 44 percent a 44 percent means
44 percent less carbon emissions but
let’s say what it really means
it means we saved money it means you
saved 11 million euro in four years on
running our fire service with your money
because the taxpayer forms the fire
service so surely dot D risks the fire
service and of course the idea is spread
because soon I realized order fire
brigades internationally and forget
forever heads order our companies or our
countries other people wanted to do this
walk I’m very proud to say
the green plan is now in 41 different
countries so I’m very happy with that so
I’d like to think I took a crisis and
maybe didn’t let it go to waste so thank
you very much for giving me the
opportunity to talk to you today
[Applause]
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