3 Detroiters brought climate solutions to international audience at TED - MLive.com

3 Detroiters brought climate solutions to international audience at TED - mlive.com

Detroit’s trademark resiliency and innovation took main stage this week at the TED Countdown Summit conference, highlighting the city’s environmental past and future.

Nearly 800 leaders from the science, activism, innovation, business, finance, policy and philanthropic sectors listened to presentations at the Fillmore Detroit and engaged in breakout sessions at Michigan Central for the annual Countdown Summit, focused on solutions to the climate crisis through both business and policy.

Topics range widely from meeting the sheep that made clothes to how China and the U.S. could work together to solve the climate crisis. There were also performances from Detroit musicians like the Detroit Youth Choir, Tunde Olaniran and Grammy-nominated singer Mike Posner.

Related: ‘Do you take us as fools?’ Al Gore targets oil companies at Detroit climate summit

Detroit was selected as an example of planning and environmental justice, said Monique Ruff-Bell, Head of Events at TED, the nonprofit, nonpartisan group focused on speaker series founded in 1984. The Countdown Summit was launched in 2020 as TED’s first issue-specific initiative.

“We picked Detroit for a very particular reason, there is a lot of wonderful climate change sustainability work happening on the ground here,” she said. “We want our attendees from all over the world to experience that and to see how they can help further that work.”

Here are three Detroiters, some of several speakers, and their climate solutions, brought to the international audience.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan speaks at TED Countdown Summit. July 11-14, 2023, Detroit, MI. (Photo: Nick Hagen / TED)Nick Hagen / TED

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan

Throughout the four-day conference there was emphasis on reversing climate change by using resources, technology and applications already in place rather than racing to find a new fix.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan spoke on how to spark change individually.

“I actually believe that our biggest problem of climate change is not the climate-change deniers that are attacked on television,” he said. “But all the folks out there who say ‘yeah, climate change is real,’ but then don’t change anything in the action in their lives. Getting people to change habits is about the hardest thing to do.”

Last month, Duggan proposed a plan to power all municipal buildings in the city through solar power. Rather than following the example of Cincinnati or Chicago and building solar farms outside city limits, Duggan wants to utilize blighted land in Detroit, and the city is asking neighbors to act and volunteer their land.

Homeowners would be offered double their house value. Renters would receive 18 months free rent in a new location, Duggan said.

The city would also provide $25,000 an acre to the neighborhood in community benefits. This idea builds off a 2016 project to build a 10-acre solar site on a largely abandoned O’Shea Park in Detroit. The remaining land was converted into a neighborhood playground.

Since applications opened July 1, Duggan said his office has received 45 applicants. An initial review found 10 neighborhoods look large enough to be solar farm sites. Solar field applications will be due by Oct. 2.

Duggan said he fully expects debate and pushback at community meetings, but based on the initial response he hopes the new idea takes hold.

“In six months, I’m going to know if we’re doing what Chicago and Cincinnati did, I couldn’t get anybody to go along, we’re building somewhere out there [outside the city],” he said.

“Or maybe we get a city that says ‘I’m going to change.’ We’re going to take responsibility for powering our city within our city, adopted our neighborhoods, and really make a commitment to change the environment.”
Anika Goss, CEO of Detroit Future City, speaks at TED Countdown Summit. July 11-14, 2023, Detroit, MI. (Photo: Jasmina Tomic / TED)Jasmina Tomic / TED

Anika Goss, CEO of Detroit Future City

The TED Countdown Summit audience members came from nearly 60 different countries. To give them a fuller picture of Detroit’s history, Anika Goss, CEO of Detroit Future City, rewound the clock to 1936, when her grandmother migrated from the South.

“Up until the late 1950s Detroit was a haven for middle-class families living in neighborhoods where there was green space and community connectivity and opportunity,” she said. “But my grandmother’s Detroit is not the Detroit that I live in today. The Detroit today is not sustainable.”

The very thing that made Detroit a global powerhouse and booming economy also has created economic inequity and climate vulnerability today, Goss said.

At the time, factories embedded into neighborhoods made for an easy, carless commute. Decades later it would be identified as the source of water and air contamination. Those now-abandoned buildings and neighborhoods are a concrete symbol of Detroit’s stark population loss from its peak of 1.8 million in 1950 to 620,000 in 2022.

Alongside her economic and infrastructure solutions for Detroit, Goss emphasized quality of life starts with rebuilding blighted neighborhoods. Detroit Future City, a think-and-do tank, builds urban forests and food gardens. Gardens, parks and greenspace should not be reserved for the suburbs, she said.

To end her talk Goss showed a picture of her grandmother’s house, still in tact.

“Her expectation of me and you is that a Black family just like mine, that migrated north 90 years ago, will be able to prosper 90 years from now, because they are economically thriving. Their neighborhood has parks, gardens, trees and community spaces. And they are still Black,” Goss said.
Cynthia Williams, global director of sustainability at Ford, speaks at TED Countdown Summit. July 11-14, 2023, Detroit, MI. (Photo: Jasmina Tomic / TED)Jasmina Tomic / TED

Cynthia Williams, global director of sustainability at Ford

Throughout the Countdown Summit there was an emphasis on what role business plays in the climate crisis and solution.

This year launched the TED Future Forum, a community businesses looking for ways business can accelerate progress. Ford Motor Co. is among the 12 founding companies.

Cynthia Williams, global director of sustainability at Ford, promoted the automaker’s 2050 carbon neutrality goal as well its progress toward fleet electrification. But she also emphasized the teamwork across competitors necessary for environmental impact. She joked her family of legacy General Motors workers raised eyebrows at her switching sides to Ford.

The auto industry as a whole has invested more than $120 billion in electric vehicle manufacturing, creating 143,000 new U.S. jobs in the last eight years. A large portion of that progress, 40%, happened in the last six months under new federal legislation, she said.

The 110,000 electric Ford vehicles on the road so far have the potential to reduce five million tons of carbon emissions over their lifetime. That would be the equivalent of not burning 600 million gallons of gasoline, Williams said.

“I’ll tell you as a person who’s dedicated my entire career to sustainability, the road ahead is paved with promise,” she said. “It might surprise my dad, but it’s not going to be about Ford versus GM or Stellantis, or even the U.S. versus Asia or Europe. We all have to work together to build a better future for the next three generations of my family and yours.”

Related articles:

Michigan is a climate haven in a warming world. Will everyone move here?

Michigan must build carefully to protect its lush, green spaces

Michigan’s housing market is in crisis. Climate change could make it worse.

Fresh water will draw millions, but Michigan lacks systems to harness it

Michigan’s climate haven is gleaming blue in a country of growing drought