Alejandro Suarez: Dispatch from Venezuela- How to Green Our Way to a Low-Carbon Economy

By Alejandro Suarez

If climate change continues without any efforts to reduce it, we can expect not only to incur serious economic costs but also catastrophic damages, which would have an impact on agricultural productivity, human health, property damages from increased flood risk and more. I come from the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela; a country that is largely based on the petroleum sector, which represents a 95% of the total exports. Meanwhile the world keeps evolving by producing self-generating, renewable energy systems, which could make oil dependent countries like Venezuela suffer in the near future.

To start growing green we must take in consideration some basic elements to make this take effect, such as:

• Investments
• Innovation
• Market design & competition
• Consumer and demand side

To develop these elements, businesses have to start creating new ideas to transform peoples’ lifestyles, which will make the transition to a low carbon economy go hand by hand. These ideas most be implemented the in daily life of consumers around the world, creating erasing carbon footprint products at accessible prices for every home, involving wind power, nuclear power, solar panels, geothermal power and tidal power; the plan is to change the way we eat, built, drive, fly and live: in sum, marketing and innovation are key components to initiate this “Green-Volution.”

In addition to these new products, then comes the investment, which will not only expand the stock worldwide but it boost the customer and demands side, leading to amplify a behavior that will progressively become a consumable habit by the year 2030. This means that by that year, the general rule would be that only low- carbon products would be at home.

Governments all around the world play a fundamental roll in this new direction we are pushing for, as the international exchange of information and technology agreements are vital for the world to be synchronized in this conception of new beliefs.

One way to prepare the road for advanced upcoming developments is the establishment of new legislations, laws and international treaties that supports the talent, market potential, entrepreneurship and investment opportunities; the government also has the commitment to promote modern strategies to benefit every nation´s economy based on a low carbon point of view; pioneers all over the world are already engaged on studying solutions in order to establish a new approach to globalize a cleaner fuel and greener market.

In conclusion, by 2030 a low carbon world is a reality that will modify the landscape of what our world is today, and to accomplish a permanent effect on society we must generate impact on the basic pillars of the ordinary lifestyle in which we currently live in; goverments must use their platform to expose this transition on a global scale today in order to build for a green world tomorrow. The concept is to manufacture these ideas into making them into our everyday reality. Information and technologies are allowing each day to be a new dawn in the discovery of what I see as a new Green-volution.