Raising awareness among Kastamonu youth about climate change

I do my best to raise awareness among young people wherever I am. I’m particularly motivated by issues that concern the future of humanity, such as climate change, renewable energy, sustainability, and civil society. In this article, I’ll be sharing with you the presentation I made on climate change at an event organized by the Young Success Education Foundation for young people in Kastamonu.

When the Young Success Education Foundation called me and said, “We’ll be providing training to young people from Kastamonu via Zoom. We’d especially like you to give the opening speech on climate change,” I said without giving it a second thought, “Of course.” I was at our Wind Power Plant near Kefken, Kocaeli, when they called. “You called me at the perfect time,” I thought to myself. The presentation was organized the following Monday (30 November), and I had the opportunity to share my knowledge with dozens of young people from Kastamonu.

Before I move on to the presentation, let me tell you about the Young Success Education Foundation, on which I serve on the advisory board. Founded in 1999, the Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organization. The Young Success Education Foundation builds a bridge between the business world and education, aiming to equip young people with an entrepreneurial mindset and enable their active participation in business life. Their vision is, “To contribute to the development of successful young people who will play an active role in social and economic life.” Their mission is: “To develop entrepreneurship awareness and behavioral patterns in young people and children by experientially introducing them to entrepreneurship. To encourage young people and children to embrace entrepreneurship as a career alternative.” With a mission dedicated to youth development, the Foundation also successfully manages the Youth Bizz program. For more details, please visit their website: http://www.gencbasari.org/

Topics in My Presentation

On the morning of 30 November, I attempted to convey climate change and related issues with a 45-minute presentation and a 15-minute question-and-answer session. My presentation covered the following sections, in order:

– Identifying the Global Problem

– Global Climate Change

– Climate Change in Turkey

– Climate Change in the Black Sea Region

– Disaster Platform

– Renewable Energy: Philosophy, Resources, Technology, R&D, Models, Distributed Systems

– General Education: “There is no limit to technological development,” “Turkey’s English name should be changed to Turkia,” “The Energy Revolution,” “We don’t have another planet.”

With my special thanks…

At the beginning and end of my speech, I thanked Dr. Deniz Demirhan, a faculty member in the Meteorological Engineering Department of the Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Istanbul Technical University, for preparing the “Climate Change” section of this presentation. Once again, I would like to thank Ms. Deniz wholeheartedly, who shared her knowledge with me and prepared the most critical part of the presentation for me the night before, without disappointing me.

Now let’s get to my presentation. You can find the slides and my comments below.

Let’s start with the global problem. In our world with limited resources, the ever-increasing population and rising carbon emissions per capita are the most significant causes of climate change. You can see the slides on this topic below:

Below are the slides where I explain the current state of climate change in the world and its effects:

Of course, as our world is being dragged into a disaster, the situation here at home is bleak. Here are the effects of climate change in our country:

When I spoke with young people from Kastamonu, I tried to internalize the impact of climate change on their own region and encourage them to internalize the issue. While climate change is causing disasters in every region of Turkey, the Black Sea Region, which receives the most rainfall, is particularly affected. The increasing number of floods is a testament to this. You can see the relevant slides below.

I provided information about the Disaster Platform we established to minimize the negative effects of disasters:

I explained the philosophy of renewable energy with this slide:

Here are the renewable energy sources, types and potential:

From now on, I’ll be talking about renewable energy technologies. I’ll start with storage systems, the heart of the business:

In this slide, I touch on the work that can be done in terms of R&D:

I also touch upon the innovative models that emerged with renewable energy after R&D:

I cannot help but mention distributed systems, one of the most important elements of the energy revolution:

In this final section, I touch on topics related to knowledge, experience, and basic principles in contributing to the education of young people in the slides below (you can find what I say with relevant images below the slides):

Technology knows no boundaries, regardless of religion, language, race, or nationality. For technological advancement, we must foster a culture of collaboration worldwide, just as we do in space.

We need to replace the English word for Turkey, ‘Turkey,’ with ‘Turkia.’ Another word for Turkey is Hindi. Furthermore, when you add -ia to the end of any ethnicity in English, it means ‘-its country.’ So, since ‘Turkia’ means ‘Turkish country,’ we need to change the country’s English name to ‘Turkia.’

I explain the four main elements of the energy revolution here.

With this earth image, which means “there is no plan B” or “there is no planet B,” I convey how delicately balanced our world is and how we must protect it.