Babita Sharma meets young people from around the world working to fight climate change, including a Kenyan engineer who has designed a solar powered fridge which can be used to transport vaccines on a bike, a Californian teenager who has designed a wind turbine for use in cities, and South Korean protesters taking their Government to court. She also meets Nobel Chemistry Laureate Frances H. Arnold, the co-chair of President Biden’s science commission.
Generation Change is a co-production of the BBC and Nobel Prize Outreach
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
There's something about marching in housing, no matter how big or small, when you're chanting the same chance you're, it sounds cheesy bone
when you're marching to the same soul, south korea? Two thousand ninety an aging came his journey. A crowd of teenagers marching against climate change and going on strike
it was on a friday afternoon and more than three hundred four hundred people showed up, which is huge and korea cause. It's really hard ticket excused absence for students, and I was not expecting that many people, but the crowd was
really big. I was really surprised in that year alone, more than a million students joined the global protest movement, skipping school and taking to the streets to make their voices heard. While the strikes captured the public's attention, they weren't forcing the kind of change the teenagers were demanding. We were already quite frustrated from the lack of action that had followed almost a year of campaigning on the streets we held.
For massive school strikes for climate, and we were raising awareness in the public and we were soon change, but there
wasn't any real policy change or real political discourse, see eugene kim and eighteen of the teenagers decided to take their campaign from the streets to the supreme court. They needed to persuade the country's highest court that the government wasn't doing enough to protect their right to a clean environment and should be made to do more. So we decided to
Take a course of action that, if we did succeed, would lead to a sure way of the government haven't changed. Their policies may filed a constitutional appeal against the south korean government. It was,
The grounds that the government's inadequate climate action and its green asked me reduction plans infringing upon are fundamental rights. The right to equality right, pursue happiness right to a clean environment against fields. South korea's supreme court said the case should go ahead.
Forcing the government to respond now, a legal showdown is in the offing between nineteen teenagers and the south korean government. What's at stake is life, as we know, is the climate, the pilot, the physical and environments,
Students are at risk,
like the processes and so many of the most
voices it. This is comp. Twenty six climate summit in glasgow from young people frustrated at the lack of urgency from global leaders to address climate change.
over the next few hours here on the bbc well service, we're going to hear
those young voices fighting to stop climate change and other big social issues like world hunger. Traditional asked choose to organ donation and for more diversities,
science and technology along the way will also hear from people who have spent their lives working for the same goals and have been awarded nobel prizes
I'm debates a showman and this
generation change. First, the battle for a sustainable environment,
Six thousand miles away from union is mechanical engineering, norma gharib who lives in kenya, she's the founder of job
since an organization which mental schoolchildren and works with communities to find sustainable solutions to the challenges they face.
She knows the stakes are high. If things don't change, when the covert pandemic hit, she was working with dairy farmers in the countryside. Their livelihoods were in deep jeopardy because the people who collected their milk couldn't travel. They came to me and they say: hey. You claim to be an engineer. What do we do with our milk nor got to work to come up with a solution to help the dairy farmers distribute their milk themselves? She designed a small fridge powered by the sun, which can be fitted to a bike. So the fridge is a fifty meter,
Box that comes with a budget back up to power, the cold storage unit during the night and made when these low salaries us then, with a solar panel, then.
Additionally, the fridge has a usb port where the vendor wouldn't user and used to change their funds. It also has a bluetooth component so that the vendor can actually controlled the temperature to whatever they want using their phone. The way talking about a small, portable size, frage that can be mounted on a bike. Why did you want to create this? Why is it so important for us to vote, for the obvious reason is to provide for them a more delays to construe rich technology. Then, second, it has to be affordable, so meaning we had two don't kill the size to what's already obtained their markets to be affordable. It had to be small and if its wall, why not cutting it directly from the farm to the market by taking it on your motorbike, it's possible, because if the great work on whose for three kilometres the contrary, all that
That's true tedious. Then we have the basic wasn't motorbikes. So why? Don't you just incorporating a motorbike? What a bicycle and sticking to the market or take it back to the fund or got check the milk to your neighbour? The breaches have potential beyond transporting milk. They could, for example, help distribute vaccine
but has no windows having an eye.
and design is just the start of the process. You gets exacted a new home
bingo or a light bulb idea. Then you get to the nitty gritty of actually actually using it. You design it. You know what specks it's good to be, what size it
to be. But when you how one of the physical product kenya's environment, you can't it's not that easy, that you can't go see and I got to get it off the shop or approach a month,
I make it for me. So what we did is a contact, a manufacturer from china and send them the specs and cross your fingers that they actually good to produce exactly what your husband, because, obviously at that time you have a very limited budget festival is very very close
if you make a single product, because when it comes to manufacturing to have to crit the mods, they have to create the tooling equipment or the stations for manufacturing this product at each of them. I just want one: he doesn't make sense, it's not
for them. In fact, anyone product and reiterating the whole sector should just make one, so you have to beg them and also literally promised that you're going to buy more product from them
but nor did persuaded manufacturer to make it and then waited and waited three months
it was actually passed. Four months later, we obviously we were excited and a bit disappointed, because when you start manufacturing a product and you solidify audi seal the concept that you want and you pay for that value that you are given. You expect expected to be exactly the same way that, because you, but because of your your currency, is trust that is, and you get so when you get the product four months later, it's only get. You can't push it back. The need is now they need cold storage, so you accept their substandard quality that you got for the the exorbitant price that you paid for and a ticket to the market and he started.
interesting with it. Four months later, the fridges that came with too expensive and didn't work to plan. Nor a hat to think again. We thought hey we're engineers. Why don't they look for
or engineers who are more excited about manufacturing and see. If we can break down the components of this fridge and see what we can source locally from our factory newfound people who can make the body of the fridge locally, she could also source the insulation, it's very, very hard building from scratch from building a cold storage solution, and can it's very hard? It's expensive. We don't have permissive policies to even promote yale people like us to build items that I want to be using the public from scratch that so many many barriers and hindrances, whether it's going to be the economy, whether it's going to be the finance, whether it just going to be
framework to be able to do that. That is where I feel stock and now is not the only frustration she faces in my case as a woman, I dont get so much support, because the expectation that the community has of me
and when I go beyond those norms, it's it's being view
as an orthodox in a week or different, or we had in some but decided when you don't really get must have got out of it and if, if when we don't get support as a woman to manufacture in kenya to two to three billion, can I start questioning my abilities? I start having impostor syndromes, I start having doubts about making ability and if I have doubts about the capability me each means. If I had a breakthrough,
that would have brought so much change in canada. That's going to die, which is unfortunate, and that is how innovations day these are kenya. I want to see these and africa. I want to see the future I want to see. So we build it from scratch.
is designing a future where we use fewer fossil fuels and protect the environment. Jordan.
It is not your regular california teenager. He has been named one of the top.
Young inventors in the united states for, among other things,
inventing a new kind of wind turbine that can work in a city to ten wind into energy
Can you remember when you first got interested in this issue? As always,
living in this area where the wind speeds are really high- and I was always been thinking about how we could harvest is energy,
it does sustainably power. Our community is on the move,
problems with when
energy? Is that very issue
bill and lifestyle, mountainous areas- but that's not really-
further needed? What I want
The deal with my locker exe file went to buying is to develop a turbine. I can work in both urban and suburban settings position the harvest
the wind energy that is founder and if you, a teenager
California today having an idea is injustice
getting it down with pen paper so
My wind turbine is three printed with my own home pre printed I bought and I desire.
it already- is on solid works
I've been using. That is a pretty monitoring programme. For four years now, Jordan started work.
the idea when he was twelve now he's force.
In years old and focused on trying to create a more sustainable future.
Why do you want to be involved in climate change?
let's be involved, can be changed its one, the most pressing issues of our time and will, in fact, every single thing on the planet in the future and the best henderson
Climate change is now it's like a slippery slope.
We need to get off ass, his possible george
just one of a new generation of global teens, focusing their talents and finding solutions to help protect the planet.
for this new wave of inventors engineers and scientists stopping climate,
It is no longer a pipe dream, but emission and is what is being taken.
around the world
following a journals has been working in this area for more than two decades and his
even been awarded the nobel prize for her work. It's the young people who changed the world. Almost all the
well, inventions were made or the nobel worthy ideas can
from younger scientists, myself included, because we're driven to change the world and young people have the the audacity
do that. They also have the desire to see the world better. Then what we're leaving to them did you have ambitions of being scientist when you younger? No, I thought I would be
A diplomat, then I didn't have any diplomatic skills are worth doing
we see here of a multinational corporation. Then I realized that didn't wanna work that hard. I don't really care about making money so much
and I became an engine
because they had the fewest requirements at my university. So I could study lots of other thing.
and all of a sudden, I ended up with britain mechanical
engineering, but it
an engineering that she was awarded the nobel prize, for it was chemistry I get accused,
practicing chemistry without a license. You know too much than you
and to think along the same lines as everyone else, so I tried
different things and put them together and knew tat the day.
The governor she shared her word for was the way you could work with enzymes to direct the way they evolved. Her discovery form the basis of an alternative fuel company. The sheik I found it.
turn of the century. If you remember back to the two thousands we had yet another energy crisis oil hit.
Urban forty dollars a barrel and we work
I'm beginning to think about climate change as well. So this confluence of both the high cost of fossil fuels and the need to dig carbonized came together an arm.
Great timing for us, because I actually have been thinking about this for decades, not just doesn't years, it was great
for us, and we were able to put into place a commercial venture. That is
Dylan business today, making jet fuel having taken the discovery from the lab
tree into the world of business. She is now set to take a seat at the heart of american government.
She's novi named by president Joe Biden as co, chair of his council of advisers on science and technology, but she's putting climate change, front and centre of her life's mission. We need
to stop using fossil fuels for the health of our planet and ourselves and find renewable resources.
Not just so. We don't use up these limited resources, but really so that we stop emitting so much carbon dioxide, nay
lives, sustainably right. The biological world is highly sustainable and we should learn how to do that. My hope is that the
said ministries will risk.
science science is wrong
decision making
and the scientists have shown that
We are rapidly moving towards carbon dioxide levels and and global police
levels that are
destroying biodiversity, destroying the natural world and destroying what feeds and clothes and houses us. So folks, if we don't get together
and make decisions, scientific decisions but policy decision,
to turn that around I've. I fear that were
we're not on a good trajectory. I am hoping that this administration will help us move to a different trajectory,
because in emissions will force big changes to the way people work and the work they do.
The international labour organization has been looking at the impact of environmental policy on our work and says it. Overall jobs will be created if action is taken to tackle climate change, but in essence,
changing to a more climate friendly way of working women. Many current jobs will disappear. Who change must have a kemal gayer? Has the green jobs team at the ilo? When we look at the rest,
some job destruction, there would be some job destruction and unfortunately it is likely to be geographically concentrate. We see that mostly in countries in the middle east and parts of africa, and these are economies that will need to rely for
the time to come on forcing feels while the rest of the world is a dream
moving out of fossil fuels. The risk
losing your job is more likely to be felt by an older person, and they are also less likely to think climate change is as important as younger people.
one american survey conducted between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen found that more than half of those between eighteen and thirty, four
agreed that global warming would pose a serious threat within their lifetime, but lesson
those aged fifty five years in older, agreed. Young people are much more engage and aware than other people of other
these groups. I think there may be many reasons, but personally, perhaps because those who are older and in
employment at the moment, depending on economic sectors, occupations they have
Maybe more worried about the impact on their jobs today than young people who are in
cool and not necessary, having something to lose in major tree.
The other dimension is an intelligent,
rational issue. I think young
People are more aware of the risks for the future. If nothing is done today- and I think this is very low in the sustainable development debate and they would like to find a future where they can live and breathe clean air, you know see standing forests have clean water. I think they are fighting in a way for the future. They want and fear that, if nothing is done, they will not
she's, not just the anger of younger people. The policy makers need to deal with its the favor of change,
the older generation as well
but we have a lot of education to do
France's arnold again and
We also need to help those people whose lives will be disrupted, as we make them
transitions we're talking major transitions from fossil fuels.
to renewable energy, that's going to be major changes in jobs and training and things that people,
while doing and people my age. Don't why change? That's that's frightening! It's the young people at love, change, I think, and and and easily adapt to it, but older people don't, and that is a huge challenge. How do we bring those people along
whose lives will be disrupted by this change. The eugene came cayman, have friends who are taking the government to court in south korea to force more action for climate change. Time is running out we're about to ruse every, although world as we know it, but I don't think the magnitude of that is getting across to a lot of people
part of it, because it's terrifying to grasp you, even as I'm saying it like I'm shudder, it's terrifying and I feel like a lot of people, don't want to come to terms to that and part of it. I guess is the way that the people in power, of course, they've been trying to do everything they can to hide those facts.
they're, not act on it, which is a terrible shame and part of the reason why we are where we are today, the lucy
eugene and others have followed. The gaze. The governments in south korea follows other lawsuits around the world. In the netherlands, judges demanded the government reduce carbon dioxide emissions sharply and in Brazil there is action against the government and its failure to stop the deforestation of the amazonian
rain forests? So at the moment we are looking to communicate more with other used chapters in other countries, especially in asia, because lawsuits, youth, climate lawsuits likeness or a lot less common in asia than it is in europe or north america, so were hoping to look into ways where we can cooperate with other youth climate groups, an ample
I our message. I feel white people in my generation. The younger people were the ones who
after the longest ahead to live, and if we fail to stop the climate crisis right now will be there to deal with the consequences in the next
However, many seventeen eighty years backing collar
Junior Jordan is still working on his wind turbine
in the pandemic. He and his sister,
a good use of their three d printer preaching face- must for the community to help stop the spread of the virus and in kenya, six months after we spoke to her now
it some good news about her fridge, nor no home
so tell me
well, it's been happening since the last time we spoke, we just at it from scratch like making the kissing the us. It gets into the future
something the components some failed.
blew up. As a joint pointed to give up any thought, we were we of made promises that you need to deliver on the street and of its
Don't believe that difficult, and eventually we gotta pull it off. It was really. It was our view. It was really to decide but better, because we ve been afraid that
you have managed to source the components for this page that you have talked about and worked on for months and months a month and finally it happened.
congratulations. We decided to do a pilot with healthcare facilities in kenya. It's a facility that did not have electricity at all, so they equally demonstrate the vaccines on their side.
No reseller account fridge. Builtin. Kenya is delivering vaccine to parts of the country without electricity. What's really got to me most because this facility, that does he look solutions, because they d really told us that these has budget such a big impact in their work, because initially there to carry walks into good works as an old have to use the use. The future does what the boxes- and it was a beach, shocking.
let them because they they didn't expect to such a change of events. They didn't expect
the lesser evil, from the good boxes to beginning an actual feed that gives vaccines,
and it was also really for them because they didn't what they will do is decker. You called boxes with ice packs, the natural run back before the icebox belt, just ensure that the bucks and don't vote- and they did have to do that, so that it was really. It was also grateful because we actually contributed to them.
to help the hooker workers having better time other work that we should leave? That's true of them having to run left on drought, left, left and right too, to take back. The vaccines are where these cold storage,
It has also just been nominated for prestigious prize by the uk royal academy of engineering festival. One thing I list again: people want the box because they were only called think outside the box. You know that's the thing tickets at the box that you come up with innovation of something exciting or something mind blowing or something trailblazing, but the box and think astronomical. Think after the space, because I have never been outside the country, but I have read so much of what innovation and technology and investment that is happening
outside my country and there's no than a place to burn the box than in a laboratory.
well sciences, a great start.
if you love science and engineering, and you have those skills, it's a great place to be creative and inventive, but don't just stop their think about the impacts on people and the planet
and put your ideas into place. Talk about science to your dear friends. Do your congress people
Your government leaders and make sure
that science is a part
every day, life the what
is warming, but this
new generation of young engineers, inventors and activists do give some hope,
Scientists are optimists right, otherwise we wouldn't be out there exploring the unknown. Having no idea of what you're going to find. You always hoped that there's gold around the corner,
So I'm a born optimist and I do see hope
I do see hope in the younger generation. I do see a lot of people working towards these goals
still to come. A generation change the young
and the nobel laureates working to Seoul congo change attitude.
organ donation.
Of more women and minorities, working the key fields of science, technology, engineering and mass
generation changes, co, production of nobel prize outreach and the bbc
The documentary is just one of our bbc world service podcast. There are many others to choose from
I would love to share some of these letters. They mean so much to me and my girls. It all started with me asking my friends and family here in kenya to write letters to my daughter, giving her advice and telling her about their experiences. You make some mistakes along the way and that's part of life and that's what even makes this being a woman enjoyable and then I want the BBC world services international podcast competition, so it making up
cast full of letters, two daughters everywhere. I'm writing to you, because I know one day. You'll have questions and want to know why the result is dear daughter, a brandy
Podcast from the BBC world service anything else you want to leave us with anything. You want to say to our daughters, always wipe front to back a search for the daughter wherever
You get your podcast.
Transcript generated on 2023-04-28.