A cheat sheet for accelerating clean energy | Kimiko Hirata
4/22/202612 min
After the Fukushima disaster shut down Japan's nuclear reactors, the coal industry rushed in to fill the energy gap. As climate advocate Kimiko Hirata watched dozens of new coal plant proposals quietly surface across the country — each one locking in decades of future emissions — she resolved to make them impossible to ignore. She shares how a small, scrappy civil society movement took on a fossil-fuel-dependent economy and got people to say "yes" to a renewable future.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsElise Hu· Host0:00
[gentle music] You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What does it take to turn a quiet, almost invisible problem into a movement that can change a country?
Kimiko Hirata· Soundbite0:17
Out of a 50 proposed coal projects, 17 totaling nine gigawatt were canceled. [audience cheering] [audience applauding] These cancellation prevented 50 million tons of CO2 per year and 1.7 billion tons over their lifetimes. That's equivalent to taking more than eight million cars off the road every year for 40 years.
Elise Hu· Host0:42
That's climate champion Kimiko Hirata, who's been at the forefront of climate action in Japan for decades. In her talk, she shares how a moment of national upheaval revealed a surge of coal projects hiding in plain sight, and how she was able to shut down a bunch of them before they even opened. But stopping something is one thing. Convincing people to believe in a different future is another.
Kimiko Hirata· Soundbite1:07
We visited communities where projects are located, and then spoke with people. But on many occasions, people didn't care much about the climate and new coal projects. People cared more about their daily issues. So we talked not only about climate change, but also about economic and the financial risks and health impact from