TEDxKTH Salon: Why aren’t politicians listening to scientists?

A few days ago, I attended the TEDxKTH Salon event “Why aren’t politicians listening to scientists?” with Rafael from KTH Instagram. The conference featured a diverse group of speakers, including researchers and KTH professors, addressing the pressing issue of climate change from different points of view. This is a perfect example of the many events that take place every week at KTH university – that’s why I thought I’d take you with me to Ångdomen, in the KTH Library!

One of the key themes that emerged from the event is the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability. As the speakers pointed out, addressing the complex environmental, social, and economic issues facing our planet requires collaboration and cooperation across different disciplines and, most importantly, the ability to listen to each other during the debate.

As a matter of fact, the title of the TEDx turned out to be quite provocative: it is true that politicians seem to ignore scientists, but it is also true that, just like in any other debate, both parts should listen to each other to make the dialogue prolific and lead to a change.

The speakers also highlighted the importance of citizen engagement and activism in driving change. It is clear that governments and businesses alone cannot solve the pressing sustainability issues we are facing – or, if they can, they will take a lot of time (in one word: bureaucracy). This requires that all of us start to take action with wiser choices in our everyday life, to promote sustainable practices.

One of the reasons why I chose KTH is the emphasis that the university puts on sustainability, both through research (like, a lot of research) and through everyday choices on campus – and these events can do nothing but make me happy to be part of such a community. This also goes hand in hand with the sustainable Swedish lifestyle, as exemplified by Raygo in this post on his green lifestyle.

Another example of this is the presence of different student associations focused on sustainability. At the conference, three of them were present:

• KTH Hyperloop: they focus on developing a new carbon-free method of transportation based on the Hyperloop concept, collaborating with other universities around Europe
• KTH Foodtech: here, the focus is on food innovation and sustainability, as well as providing inspiration for students and companies to make greener decisions (also in the campus!)
• KTH Students for Sustainability: this group of environmentally-concerned KTH students operates to create a greener student lifestyle, actively acting on sustainability issues in and outside the campus.

This is all for today. I really enjoyed attending this TEDx talk as I think that climate change is really something that relates to each and everyone of us – and it is often good to step back and think about the issue from another perspective.

During the next weeks we will focus more on how student life is like at KTH and in Stockholm on a daily basis, so stay tuned! Also, feel free to leave any suggestions in the comment section below. In the meantime, I suggest you to check Martyna’s post on Swedish culture and Raygo’s post on Swedish Winter sports (just one of the many perks of the Swedish Winter)!

I’ll see you in the next post!

// Lorenzo