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Guys, good morning. It's a huge pleasure to be here
I appreciate the invitation.
And it's really cool to succeed Denis, because
I've a sentence that I think that
defines well which he's told:
"In Brazil we can die by heart attack, but boring, never".
And it's more or less like that, in a kind of synthetic way
he's told.
And, what did bring me here to discuss with you?
An idea, which may be kind of weird
but I'd enjoy to share with you.
Human being as main point in the environmental question.
If we take a look... let me take an example:
Let's think about the Rodoanel.
We're building a huge avenue surrounding a road surrounding Sao Paulo
and for that we need to do researches on environmental impact
many, to not harm fauna and flora.
And to do an avenue through a residential region?
And for CET place cones at the street to detour the traffic?
Which is the environmental impact research required to see that?
It's possible that that guilt feeling we've to pollute the environment makes us
to be excluded as victims?
That is a matter that I think we should
reflect a little upon this way to be.
Let's think...
as a doctor.
I'm a doctor, for most astonishing it may be.
Yesterday I've missed a TED dinner because I was watching a lung transplant there at Incore.
But I have this life as environmental researcher.
But, let's think the planet as an individual.
Each country is an organ and we're the billions of cells constituting that organ.
Let's describe the planetary disease.
Let's take a patient having fever
isn't getting hot?
With a chemical dependency on a drug called "oil";
a diffuse arterial obstruction, because there are some jams in our arteries obstructing the flow;
an obstruction in the respiratory system, by the bad air quality;
diabetes, because I can't use energy efficiently;
kidney insufficiency, because I can't take my waste off;
some earth tremors, a certain external flatulence as tornadoes and hurricanes;
a kind of impotency, let's assume
behind the bedroom walls, because we can't take a required attitude for that;
and a cognitive dysfunction, such as an early Alzheimer
because the rulling neurones
think that the planet won't get hotter more than some one hundred part degrees until the future elections.
That is the clinical picture of the patient.
And if the organism is ill, the cells are ill.
In the city of Sao Paulo, 4 thousand more people die due to air pollution.
By AIDS is a little less than one thousand.
Tuberculosis, 500.
Why didn't us take pollution into condieration as a health problem?
The Ministry of Environment does laws about environment and doesn't understand nothing about health
and, by its turn, health doesn't understand environment as part or it.
And in this moment, humans are totally unprepared.
Let's go back to our patient.
When the planet get hotter in accordance to climate models, if they're right
Where will become desert?
In those are already semi-arid.
And our cistern will have no rain.
Or if it have
will rain a lot before, in such a way that the storage capacity couldn't help with.
As happened this year in Northeast.
The cisterns didn't hold, the dams didn't hold.
30% of people in the planet live by rivers from Himalaya, from Himalayan glaciers.
When the water stops flow for those people, to where will they gonna go?
If the insufficiency of food and water
occur, we could imagine a new fundamentalism
we've political fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism
we'll gonna have environmental fundamentalism.
We'll expand the poverty belt around cities
expanding malaria, taking temperate regions, dengue.
All diseases carried by mosquitoes will affect humans, but they'll affect equally?
They'll affect homogeneously?
40cm more in the sea level will affect Netherlands or Samoa equally?
That is a main question that must be considered because there's the aggressor human
but there's also the impacted human, and is about him we're gonna discuss.
I'm a pathologist and I have a thematic room that
in the med school is towards to the Araca graveyard.
And the med school is exactly between the Clinics Hospital and the Araca graveyard
we link these two compartiments.
So, I look at the final product of our actions.
And I see the medicine faculty's car in vogue, Kaene
it's great, isn't it? Every one buy one for everyone to look alike
one pees on other's pole.
We're there, and I see CETESB small clock marking a degree of pollution at Dr. Arnaldo
But, should that dosage for that person inside the air-conditioned Kaene
working on the internal recycling mode
is the same as for that individual at the bus stop, waiting?
The permanency time for people at the transit corridor when is poorer
is worst, much worst.
The dosage is heavier.
The old bus, not allowed at the 9 de Julho corridor, does it disappear in the air?
No, it goes to the outskirts, or to small cities.
The sanitarian bank Sao Joao, which is getting exhausted, is doing that Sao Paulo to export
waste to other cities
which are paid for that.
So, not only England packs dirty diapers
and send to us in containers
We do that.
That I call "environmental racism".
As there's a new fundamentalism, there's an answer for that:
which is called as... the remained model today in the world
is "order by strength".
Not "order by sharing".
And in the order by strength model, economic strength decides the power.
And that explains we're practicing a way of racism that to me there isn't any ethical justification
as any other kind of racism.
The truck sold in Brazil
pollutes 90% more than the same one sold in Sweden and made in Brazil.
What's the health reason to explain the Brazilian lung to be 90% more resistant than the Swedish?
Or the heart, or babies, or elders?
That is a main theme on the matter
I think that we should embody here
maybe as a proposition
and embody the external costs of certain economic choices to the product matrix.
See, when you talk to an oil company
I've conducted a conference once at the National Academy of Science in the USA
to discuss this very theme I'm proposing here
and that doesn't last too much, because that was in 2007 and so far it didn't get into the matter yet
but, the Exxon chairman, he used to say the follow:
"See, we take oil by 3 dollars a barrel from Saudi Arabia and we sell it by 80 dollars a barrel
at the London Stock.
There's nothing to move this profit".
However everybody's telling to be sustainable
and every oil company place it in a green make-up
and perform sustainability actions
they conserve wild animals, they polish Tamar's turtle cask
and do permanents on the golden lion tamarin.
But nothing to interfere on their business strategy.
Because the cost, the life cycle of the fuel is calculated from the pump to the station
Let's put this thinking on a pharmaceutical industry.
I take responsibility for the side effects from medicines
until the moment they arrive at the shelf.
After sold, isn't with them anymore.
By its turn, car companies
which are also, in the most part, sustainable
They say as follow... well, in the USA, GM chairman
has said that in the USA they can't sell more cars
because they've 760 vehicles for one thousand inhabitants.
So, there are babies not driving, there are sick people not driving, so, it gets even
more or less it counts on some more than a car for each inhabitant.
I'm excluding baby's car.
So, what happened? They can't grow anymore and they only can grow
devouring each other
or investing, taking different strategies
Asian people has invested on quality
American people has invested on price
the Asians has won.
So, to where these people go?
In India, there are around to 30 to 40 vehicles for inhabitant.
Let's sell cars in India.
The street cost
the bridge cost
the warming cost
isn't with them.
You can hit the walrus, we're gonna sell cars in India.
In Brazil, as we have 300 vehicles for every one thousand inhabitants
there's a chance to duplicate, slightly more than duplicate.
Duplicate, in a scenery like that
our mobility has reached 12km/h in the city of Sao Paulo.
If the bandeirantes would transported by a time machine
riding mules
they'd arrive first than us.
So, I've a model
that kill people, make it hot, hit the planet by the environment point of view
and didn't bring any advantage regarding to mobility.
And that's main matter and especially affects poor people.
Professionals of health
during a long time don't thought that as a theme, but they've started to awake.
The World Medical Association has assembled a group
which I've made part
to show a line for Copenhagen which were referenced now in meeting in Delhi.
And lined the actions by some topics.
The first one is enlightenment:
is that we're discussing here, this paradox.
The second is leadership, for example:
all health institutions, and professionals of health as legal entities
should also lead by example, I mean
you go to see a doctor and he says: "Quit smoking" then he lights two cigarettes.
And you can't also drive the Kaene, do you agree?
If you get yourself operated, you must adopt more sustainable methods in fact.
Partnerships with society, to propose measures as the cistern
as other things, we can't be just on that thing to be healing, treating
on mitigation.
Adaption, better saying.
We should frankly discuss the ethical aspects on this matter.
The fact that who gonna pay the bill
are the people that have contributed less, there are no moral or ethical justification in any way.
We've to work on the limits notion, as we've limits for cholesterol
how much trans fat I can eat, how much I can drink
we've to work on limit concepts.
Limits that are very obvious
for example, this watch here is written 100m deep resistance
So, this matter...
You see that 4x4, turbo, *** V6
you buy the dream to climb on a cliff, they put it on the billboard
but you never found a cliff to climb.
And that is a problem to work on, I mean
under every thing on the car should have: "This model contributes to global warming"
like the cigarette packs.
"It contributes to emit pollutants and contributes to jam the city arteries".
Because it occupies much more space than others.
If I sell this wind eggmobile, something by wind key, a tricycle
moving at 20km/h nobody would buy
however it could move faster than that car marked 200km but moving much less than it.
We should get ready to litigant to explain that.
And I just want to finish saying this:
I really enjoy radio
I listen radio and radio have many functions, to inform and, to me
there's no great mass psychotherapy ever than the Ouvinte Reporter.
Which comes and tells: "I'm jammed here at the radial"
and the other also says: "I'm here too..."
Then you feel part of a greater thing...
And that gives a personal comfort.
But I never saw nobody tells: "Don't take Butanta/USP it's crowded".
"Don't take the subway to East region 'cause it's crowded".
I think that's our role to open space to these people.
Thank you very much.