8/8/2019 TEDx Tartu

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How to clean up the entire planet?

Iʼm going to share a story with you today, a story about waste. Or, perhaps, it is a storyabout how to create a change. Youʼll see.

Anyway, it all started with waste. You know, we are small country. We have a lot of forests.

We are sparsely populated. It is quiet and beautiful here.But there was lot of waste in our forests. Tons of trash had been brought to our forestsduring soviet occupation. You wouldnʼt believe! That was twenty years ago. That was ugly.

But it was getting worse! I mean, we, the people of a free country, kept the soviet habits!The piles of trash just kept growing. Despite government efforts or outcry of people.Nothing changed.It finally got to the point that around some towns you could barely walk few hundredmeters without spotting another pile of car tires, or construction waste or pieces offurniture. People started to get used to all that waste. You know, it felt just hopeless!

So how do you create the change? First I tried wait and see, perhaps somebody will fix it.Didnʼt happen. I remember the hatred I felt at that time - someone must be responsible forthis! Fine them! Blame the government! Surveillance! Police!Still nothing. No budget for this, too massive a problem. Someone should, would, must.But sorry, we canʼt. More waste was popping up. It was completely crazy situation!

The truth is, it takes strong emotions to create the change. Passion can create a change.Love and hate can create the change.I have had both of them motivate me from time to time. But Iʼve seen that hate tends tobreak you inside so I try to stick with love as much as I can.

You know, love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of love is not hate butindifference.I mean, nobody hates the planet. Nobody hates the nature. Some folks just....donʼt care. Itis indifference which allows people to trash the forests. It is indifference which allows us todestroy our planetʼs ecosystems.

I figure that hate creates fear. Fear kills compassion. No compassion - thatʼs indifference.Luckily, love can extinguish indifference. So it makes sense to stick with love if you want tocreate the change.

Now, Iʼm going to show you a short video, about what happened next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GryIDl0qY

You know, it was great that we managed to get our country cleaned! But it was not the bestpart of it. The best part was the feeling we had that day. All of us, tens of thousands ofpeople. It is hard to describe. Suddenly all of us realized - what a great power we all have!A power - of - togetherness. What a force we are when we are truly united for a rightcause! The joy of doing something completely unselfish and realizing that you are notalone in this - it is hard to describe. It sure beats watching TV, for example.

Then, the story spread.

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Our neighbors from Lithuania heard us preparing for the Cleanup Day. I guess it touchedtheir conscience, too. They launched similar campaign only month before Estonian CleanUp. Their slogan was to challenge Estonians - for who will collect more trash. It was quitea fun. You know, that was like a nagging neighbor thing, but with a good twist. Theymanaged to gather thousands of people with such a short notice. Next came Latvia, half ayear later. They gathered over 20 thousand people on Big Cleanup. Both Latvia and

Lithuania repeated the Clean Up Day last year, and over 60 000 people took part in boththe countries.

Then came Portugal. It was a rainy day, in March. Over 100 000 people came outand removed tens of thousands of tons of garbage from countryside.

Then came the story of Slovenia. It started when Heikki Attila, our world-traveling-messenger, who met Nara Petrovic, a young Slovenian writer. They were sitting on a fallentree somewhere in Finland when Nara said: yes, we should do that in Slovenia, too. Hewent home and posted the idea to the social network. Next thing he knew there were 30000 fans on that page!To make the story short - in April, over 270 000 people turned out and cleaned Slovenia! Itis 13,5 percent of the whole countryʼs population! 13,5% of population! Picture this - itwould be about 40 million if this were US!Then many smaller cleanups in New Delhi, Bangalore, Kiev. Then came Romania - 150thousand people came to clean-up their home.For next year Moldavia, Bulgaria, Finland and all the major cities of Brazil are preparing forclean-ups.

You know, it hasnʼt been just cleaning up the waste, in all of these countries. It has been agreat lesson of ecology, too. And there was strange a thing we felt - somehow, we were

cleaning up ourselves. Somehow, by cleaning the outside world we were cleaning upinside our heads, too. Strange it is, but so it felt.

All of this made me wander.Somehow we have come to believe, that the governments will fix the looming ecologicalcrisis. We believe that the guys with ties will take care of it, eventually.We have come to think that we, the people, can only do our small things. We can preferpaper to plastic. We can sort the trash. We can buy a smaller cars. Sure, we can voice our opinions, oh yes. We can demonstrate, yes. But to actuallyput together a plan to save a planet and execute, it? No, sir! Thatʼs for governments!

Now let me ask you one thing. What if... governments fail in this? What if the warming ofclimate and wasting of ecosystems can not be fixed by governments?The task is gigantic. Global agreement over how to do this takes much more cooperationand trust than governments have ever been capable of. It is very likely, that governmentswill fail in saving the planet.

You see, historically countries were designed to separate, not to cooperate.Countries are for safeguarding our self-interest. Countries were made for fighting withother countries!Countries donʼt love each other. Countries had interests. Thatʼs what they still do. Nothingpersonal, just interests.

But it takes love to bring our planet back to normal. It takes love for a planet! Governmentshave never been designed for this. We, people - we are.

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