The Climate Action Festival is a ‘lucky day’ with a – possibly too – positive stance

Bernice Notenboom has just finished her keynote when an audience member puts up a hand and says what makes her angry. “How can we all concentrate here on what is going well, while things are going so badly with the climate and climate justice?” Other people in the audience nod along.

In her presentation, Notenboom, a climate journalist, had just run through a whole list of tipping points in the climate. She experienced them firsthand during her journalism travels for National Geographic and the a television series called Climate Hunters (2013). In 2014 she cross-country skied her way from the North Pole to Canada, she tells the audience. She will always be the last person to have done so as since then the ice has completely disappeared.

In the second half of her presentation, Notenboom opts for a more hopeful message by emphasising the positive tipping points. She mentions the popularity of electric cars which can no longer be stopped, and even tech giant Apple showing in a strong marketing film that it understands that becoming more sustainable is a must.

‘It is absolutely not going well with the climate, and definitely not with climate justice’

The latter point stays in the mind of the person raising the question. It is absolutely not going well with the climate, and definitely not with climate justice. So why the positivity?

Giving hope

The goal is to inspire people and give them hope, Maaike Damen says. She is the Programme Coordinator of the Climate Action Programme, that organised the event. The festival is the highlight of the year in this TU Delft-wide programme that was established in 2021. There are about 100 people in the audience. And yes, they may enjoy themselves. “The urgency is clear. There are still massive challenges, but you can also look at what is going well.”

Damen and her colleagues tried to unite the people on this day in a programme that included two keynote speeches and six break-out sessions. In between, an hour was put aside for a poster market with 34 submitted scientific posters, and during the reception there are demonstrations of climate-related research.

The annual festival is one of the ways that the Programme Team chose to encourage climate action. The team also holds monthly lunch lectures about climate related subjects. Above all, the Climate Action Programme offers a network for people at TU Delft who are working on climate change in whatever way they can. One example is the flagships: teams of academics who are working on roughly the same subject.

Urgent letter

The Climate Action Programme also sent an urgent letter to the governing parties this year, says Herman Russchenberg. He is a Professor (Geoscience & Remote Sensing, CEG) and Chair of the Climate Action Programme, and is the day’s second speaker. “We wrote that they should understand that issues such as housing and migration should not be seen as separate from climate change, and called for them to include it in their entire programme.” The Dutch House of Representatives elections on 29 October are a chance to repair the damage, says Russchenberg.

All 34 research activities in the poster market are connected to at least one goal: damage reparations, prevention or fair division. Standing next to hers, Victory Albada, a Nigerian doctoral candidate at the TU, talks about her research on plastic recycling in West Africa.

‘It is good to see that other people, like me myself, are working tirelessly on a small part of the solution’

Albada understands that it is just a small piece of the climate puzzle, just as all the other research activities are that are displayed at the poster market. “It’s really to see thought that other people, like myself, are working tirelessly on a small part of the solution.”

Sustainable choices

Another piece of the puzzle is the psychology behind more sustainable behaviour. What is stopping us from making more sustainable choices? This is the area of expertise of Professor Gerdien de Vries (Technology, Policy and Management) who opened the afternoon with her keynote speech. She advises everyone to recognise their ‘dragons’, her term for the thoughts that stop you from making sustainable choices.

Puck Wijnia (Project Leader, TU Delft Sustainability Team) believes that this approach is very valuable. “Gerdien de Vries can bring this across really well. And that is so important, definitely at TU Delft.” Namita Sinha and Yunpei Chu (both CEG PhD candidates), are also motivated by this approach, they say at the vegetarian reception after the event. Chu: “It was nice that, for a while, it was the social aspects rather than the technical ones that were highlighted.”

For Suzanne van den Bosch (Programme Coordinator Climate and Biodiversity in the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus university partnership) it is mostly Notenboom’s story that stays in mind, and in particular the film clips from the series that the climate journalist made about the tipping points. “They clearly show that some of the impacts of climate change are really irreversible.”

Space for emotions

Van den Bosch thought that the rest of the festival had a ‘very positive approach’. She believes that it might be good if it had been a bit more gloomy, to match the urgency of climate change. So she was very glad that the audience member expressed their critical view after Notenboom’s keynote speech. “Inspiration is very good, but there also needs to be space for emotions.”

‘A day like this helps to stay positive’

Would happiness count as one of the emotions? For Wijnia, the TU Delft Sustainability Team Project Leader, it would. She says that the festival was her lucky day. She was very pleased to spend the day with people who are also concerned about climate change she says. “You can sometimes feel so alone, and certainly in this era. A day like this helps to stay positive.”