Tim Jarvis is an environmental scientist and advocate, currently working on finding pragmatic solutions to climate change. He has served as the vice-president of Fauna and Flora, a global ambassador and general for WWF, an ambassador to Koala Life, and board director of the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife. He has also re-enacted the famed Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic explorations!
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00:00 I think setting foot on Antarctica is just one of those life-changing moments.
00:05 I've been expeditioning for many decades and that includes 13 trips to Antarctica
00:11 and five to the high Arctic and the thing that strikes you about them is
00:17 their fragility, their beauty and the need to protect them.
00:23 Back in the late 90s when I reached the South Pole on foot and arrived there
00:29 never for a moment really imagining that I'd be capable until the last steps I
00:33 took that I'd be able to do that journey. It suddenly opened a whole world of
00:37 possibilities thinking well if I can achieve this what else can I apply this
00:41 to and suddenly a whole world of possibility opened up and that's given
00:45 rise to me using my expeditions to remote places as a means to try and
00:50 affect positive change along with the environmental science background that I
00:53 have. I think raising awareness of climate change is critical because it is
00:57 the existential threat that humanity faces indeed the planet faces. We here in
01:03 Australia have the highest rate of native species loss in the developed
01:07 world so very evidently we have to arrest that. We are the ones who are
01:11 causing it and we are the only ones who can fix it so it's critical that we
01:15 bring this to people's attention. Humanity's footprint comes in the form
01:19 of seeing things like plastic in even the remotest parts of the ocean
01:23 understanding the ocean is more acidic now than than at any time in the last
01:29 perhaps million years. We have the highest levels of carbon dioxide we've
01:33 had in the atmosphere for about a million years. It's about seeing the
01:36 melting ice in the glaciers of places like the Antarctic and indeed the
01:40 equatorial region where 25 mountains still have glaciers and I've been using
01:44 images of their melting to try and communicate the urgency with which we
01:49 need to deal with an issue like the climate. Well the challenges of climate
01:52 change and humans impact on nature are of course huge and in fact for many
01:57 people they're too big to comprehend me included sometimes but the key thing is
02:01 really breaking down the enormity of those into smaller pieces. You don't
02:05 necessarily have to think in terms of the whole issue just break it down into
02:09 small pieces and deal with what you can. Hope I think is something that you carry
02:15 deep within you I'm fundamentally a an optimistic person but I also use
02:18 techniques I've learned from many years of expeditions you know you control what
02:23 you can you don't allow the enormity of the challenge ahead of you to to put you
02:27 off and we need to apply that same thinking to the way we deal with an
02:31 issue like biodiversity loss or climate change or any major issue we're trying
02:35 to deal with. We need to save the planet and it starts with each and every one of
02:39 us making a difference.
02:43 you
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