The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. I'm talking today with Dr. Scott Tinker.

00:01:13.120 I met Scott at the ARC conference, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, in London at the end of October,

00:01:21.040 where he gave a very well-received talk on the nexus between energy and the environment.

00:01:28.580 And it's been the most popular talk on the ARC website on YouTube, racking up about 1.2 million views as of today.

00:01:39.400 And so I felt, for a variety of reasons, that it would be worth delving into Scott's thought and his background in more detail.

00:01:47.780 I've had a number of people on the podcast who've talked about the energy-environment relationship,

00:01:53.520 particularly as it pertains to climate, which is obviously a determining element when you're plotting forward an energy strategy.

00:02:03.960 We talk a lot about the relationship between energy and the rectification of absolute privation.

00:02:11.260 There's a lot of people in the world who are still living hand-to-mouth, you might say.

00:02:17.280 And a huge part of the reason for that is that they don't have access to clean, reliable, plentiful, inexpensive energy in whatever form,

00:02:26.840 and are reduced to doing things like burning dung or wood, if they're fortunate.

00:02:31.940 The problem with that is that poor people, there's many problems with that,

00:02:36.980 but one of the problems is that poor people living hand-to-mouth don't take a long-term view of such niceties,

00:02:43.740 let's say, as environmental sustainability, which doesn't occupy the forefront of your thinking

00:02:48.460 if you're trying to figure out how to scrounge around in the dirt so your children don't starve like today.

00:02:53.560 And so there is evidence that working to eradicate absolute privation around the world

00:03:00.140 with the provision of more inexpensive energy, for example,

00:03:03.340 would simultaneously be the best possible pathway to genuine environmental sustainability

00:03:09.400 as when people become more wealthy or even a little bit wealthy,

00:03:13.900 they start thinking over a long term and are more concerned with the viability of the environment, for example,

00:03:20.160 or even able to conceptualize such a thing.

00:03:22.320 And so we delve into that in great length, trying to flesh out what a more multidimensional view

00:03:28.540 of human flourishing and environmental sustainability might be.

00:03:34.480 So, Scott, the last time we saw each other was in London at the end of October,

00:03:38.900 and you did a speech there which has been extraordinarily well received.

00:03:43.320 On the ARC website, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship,

00:03:47.560 your speech on energy and the environment is the most popular speech.

00:03:53.740 Now, I think Constantine Kissen probably has you in total views

00:03:57.780 because his speech has been distributed in other locales

00:04:01.620 and has kind of gone viral in multiple places.

00:04:04.940 But it was very interesting to me to see this happen because,

00:04:10.000 well, that sort of thing isn't predictable.

00:04:11.920 I think there's probably 30 speeches up now.

00:04:14.300 And it wasn't obvious that it would be a talk on energy and environmental policy that would take the spotlight.

00:04:23.640 Obviously, you did something right.

00:04:25.380 I mean, it's a very well done talk technically.

00:04:28.200 You know, it's very accessible and you're very engaging.

00:04:31.680 And so, that certainly didn't hurt.

00:04:33.540 But why do you think, first of all, what did you think of the ARC Conference?

00:04:38.920 And also, why do you think that your speech struck a chord?

00:04:42.580 It's got about 1.2 million views as of today.

00:04:46.680 Yeah.

00:04:47.160 Yeah.

00:04:47.580 Yeah, that's good.

00:04:48.780 I like the ARC Conference and I appreciate the invitation there, really do.

00:04:52.700 I love the diversity of the audience representing global thinkers.

00:04:56.800 That was nice and the broad depth, Jordan, of the speakers themselves and the breadth of the topics.

00:05:04.620 I didn't expect some of the things to be candid with you.

00:05:07.160 We went from faith and family all the way through to education and, of course, energy of the environment and poetry and music.

00:05:15.440 It was phenomenal.

00:05:16.440 So, congratulations to you and the Baroness for putting together a really excellent, excellent engagement.

00:05:23.280 I really enjoyed my time there.

00:05:24.920 So, thanks for that.

00:05:25.760 Yeah, it was fun, eh?

00:05:26.520 It was fun.

00:05:27.300 We figure we missed one major area that I think we're going to rectify.

00:05:32.480 We didn't talk about virtual identity.

00:05:35.600 And I think we're going to add that as a category.

00:05:37.860 So, that would include discussions of digital currency, for example, et cetera, and all the potential nightmares that come along with that.

00:05:46.840 But it would also cover more broadly, you know, increasingly, we have a virtual self.

00:06:22.400 We made them all watch it.

00:06:23.200 Yeah, you must have a very big family.

00:06:26.800 Look, I've been speaking on these topics for three decades.

00:06:32.720 And it's nice to see, I think, what's happening is some of the extremes on both sides are starting to come around toward that, what I call the radical middle.

00:06:44.060 And think about these things deeper than simply black and white or good and bad believer denier kinds of dialogues that have been pushed on us.

00:06:52.680 So, I think that's striking a chord now.

00:06:55.120 People that I've been hearing from all over the world on that speech, actually, writing from every corner independently are saying, thank you for your objectivity, your balance, for not trying to be, you know, flamboyant or shove an opinion down our throat.

00:07:10.580 Thank you for the data.

00:07:12.280 And I do tend to show a lot of data in my talks, but I spend time with it and animate it so you can understand what that data is saying by the end of a particular slide or theme, if you will.

00:07:23.020 So, a lot of people like the data.

00:07:25.380 Young people at that conference, by the way, came up to me very much and very often and they said, we so appreciate your tone not telling us what we should think or what to do, but just offering this kind of setting, if you will, of the energy, the environment, and the economy for us to think on.

00:07:42.480 And that may be striking a chord now.

00:07:44.720 And I know you do that, too.

00:07:46.000 I really appreciate your efforts and others who were at that conference to get us thinking.

00:07:51.400 And I think it's just time to think.

00:07:54.260 So, perhaps that's why it's striking a chord.

00:07:56.600 Well, you know, one of the things we noticed, because, as I said, we've released a fairly large number of speeches, and, of course, the viewership follows a classic Pareto distribution with a small percentage of the videos taking up the vast majority of the views.

00:08:11.000 And one of the things that we noticed very significantly was that any speaker who politicized the issue got no views.

00:08:20.700 Right. So, it was people who spoke two ways.

00:08:24.840 They either spoke on first principles, so they took a more philosophical rather than a political view, and then more educational.

00:08:33.800 And so, I think you probably tilted more towards the educational side.

00:08:38.620 Although, there was a philosophical aspect in your insistence that what we're always attempting to do is balance trade-offs, right?

00:08:47.520 And there's a philosophical notion there that there's no perfect solution, and that many other competing goods have to be taken into account when we're trekking through something as complex as the relationship between the energy and the environment, which is an impossibly complex nexus.

00:09:07.380 And so, one of the things we've also learned, although we kind of knew this beforehand, but it's really been driven home, is that when we invite speakers, even if they're political figures, we're going to, first of all, focus on political speakers who can speak from first principles and do something more educational.

00:09:29.180 And we're going to inform all our speakers that that's much more likely, it's much more in keeping with the ARC enterprise, and it's also much more likely to be successful.

00:09:38.520 There's a political figure in Canada, Pierre Polyev, who's now the leader of the Conservative Party in Canada, and most likely to be the next Prime Minister.

00:09:48.460 And he's become a real expert user of social media, and so he ran his leadership campaign for the Conservative Party completely outside the legacy media, giving virtually no interviews.

00:10:00.860 He created all his own ads, and he's done something very interesting in the last month.

00:10:05.020 He's produced two 17-minute documentaries, one on housing and one on debt, that they kind of look like PBS documentaries.

00:10:14.720 You know, they have that flavour, back when PBS wasn't a political enterprise.

00:10:18.900 They have that flavour, and it seems to me, I've also found on my podcast, that more political speakers, regardless of their fame, tend to attract disproportionately few views.

00:10:36.100 That's interesting.

00:10:37.060 So I think that people, well, I think people are really hungry for a different approach to problems,

00:10:42.080 and one that's in keeping with what you did, which is like a serious discussion of the facts, dispassionate presentation of the facts at hand,

00:10:51.480 understanding they have to be viewed through the nexus of like a multidimensional value hierarchy,

00:10:57.820 trying to negotiate those, not claiming that the experts know what pathway forward is best.

00:11:04.400 I mean, the problem with that view is that, well, just because you're an expert on energy doesn't mean you know how to balance energy expenditures with education.

00:11:14.800 Absolutely.

00:11:15.600 And much less healthcare and everything else that has to be taken into account.

00:11:19.500 So, okay, so let's go to your background.

00:11:23.560 Yeah.

00:11:24.080 Quick comment before you go.

00:11:26.880 I speak in Canada a lot.

00:11:28.160 In fact, I'll be in Toronto next week speaking to the national...

00:11:30.880 Oh, I'm there.

00:11:31.620 We should have dinner.

00:11:32.800 Oh, well, I'm speaking to the National Bank of Canada at their energy conference.

00:11:39.600 And we're starting to see...

00:11:41.640 We're starting to see that.

00:11:44.080 What you just described is this desire for more, for more depth.

00:11:50.340 And I think that kind of sums it up well, particularly this younger generation of people.

00:11:55.500 And I have a PBS talk show.

00:11:57.840 We're recording our fifth season.

00:11:59.420 And you're right.

00:12:00.680 It's a little bit politically biased, but it's still the most trusted network in the U.S., at least, in terms of an attempt to be.

00:12:07.700 And we very much do that on our show as well.

00:12:10.900 Let's look for the multiple viewpoints.

00:12:12.300 And I say this very often, Jordan.

00:12:15.680 No one owns the truth.

00:12:16.980 You know, we just seek it.

00:12:18.420 Particularly in science.

00:12:20.640 We scientists live a tortured life of always questioning everything over and over.

00:12:26.780 Skepticism, it's part of science.

00:12:28.440 And that's where I think I might have kicked off my speech, I'm recalling now, there in London.

00:12:33.100 Following your lead, there was a bunch on kind of religion and faith early on, I think, day one.

00:12:40.340 And I talked about that a little bit, that you could define faith much better than I can.

00:12:46.000 But, you know, it's a process in which maybe there's less doubt in faith.

00:12:51.620 But science is filled with doubt.

00:12:54.260 Without doubt, we have no science.

00:12:56.680 And I think I probably said there, you take away doubt from science.

00:13:00.040 It becomes more of a religion.

00:13:01.080 And that is a very dangerous path to walk down.

00:13:05.420 I'll comment a bit about the issue of faith in science.

00:13:08.880 And then we'll turn to who you are.

00:13:12.480 So everybody's clued in about your expertise.

00:13:15.440 And we'll talk more about energy and environment.

00:13:18.060 So I've been thinking this through a lot.

00:13:20.320 You know, when a scientist confronts a data set, he does so, or she does so, with a variety of aims in mind.

00:13:31.180 Now, one of the things I saw increasingly happen in the last decades that I was in academia was that science became both politicized and subject to the demands of career.

00:13:43.840 Now, I'd seen this with every graduate student, for example.

00:13:48.300 There's always this terrible tension between going into the data set with an orientation towards the truth and going into the data set knowing full well that if you don't extract out from the numbers a publishable statement, that all of your efforts have been in vain and your career's on the line.

00:14:08.700 And you know that whenever you're doing statistical analysis, when you're conducting scientific inquiry, you're always balancing that demand to falsify your own cherished notions, even those upon which your reputation are based, and to demonstrate to yourself that your current experiment was a failure with the opportunity and requirement to follow the truth.

00:14:35.180 And so what I would say constitutes the proper place of faith in science, and I actually think this is the right way to think about it metaphysically, is that you have to confront the data set with the presumption that there is nothing better that could happen to you than to find out what it actually represents, regardless of the apparent cost to short-term or even medium-term cost to your career.

00:15:01.040 And even more than that, to believe that in the long run, if you actually pursue the truth in your statistical analysis, even though you may pay a short-term price in disruption of your pet theories and the failure of the odd experiment, your career is going to be much more reliable and much broader and deeper as it iterates across time.

00:15:26.720 That's called learning.

00:15:27.620 That's called learning. We learn from our failures, right? Not from our successes.

00:15:32.960 Well, and it's also predicated on the assumption that learning is possible, that the universe is rational, and that if you learn from your mistakes, that the consequence of that will be better for everyone.

00:15:45.480 And those are the axioms of faith, I think, that are part and parcel of the scientific process, not belief in the overall validity of a given set of facts, which is more like a totalitarianism.

00:15:57.460 Yeah, yeah, no, that's very interesting and I think well put.

00:16:01.720 The challenge academics face, and I have been one for 23, 24 years now, out of the industry for 17, is the push, push, push, as you described, to get your research published.

00:16:16.320 And journals want to publish failures.

00:16:21.800 They want to publish things that move the science forward, some kind of a learning or success, if you will.

00:16:28.500 And it's unfortunate because everyone would learn much more if we were to publish the experimental designs we set up and the failures in those.

00:16:37.020 And I think as a result of that, we've stopped asking as many why questions.

00:16:41.160 We see a lot of how, what, where, when, which is interesting, they're interesting questions, but why is the toughest question of all, why, in life, you know, individual as well as scientific, why?

00:16:55.120 And that's really the great challenge because you can only typically prove things that don't answer why, not things that are the answer, if you will.

00:17:03.520 You knock down the possibilities that don't address the data set as you've described it.

00:17:08.120 And that's very powerful as you go down that road, but it takes a long time.

00:17:12.200 And I would like to see us come back to publishing more of the failed experiments, if you will.

00:17:19.200 I think we would all learn greatly from that.

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00:18:56.760 Yeah, well, there's obviously, it's obviously time for a technical revolution in scientific publication, because the whole process has become, it's absurd.

00:19:09.460 The fact that it takes two years to publish something is just, you know, it's just completely, it's, given how easy it is to publish, it's just beyond comprehension.

00:19:19.620 The fact that all that scientific research that's taxpayer-funded is locked behind a paywall, the fact that the publishing companies have a hammer lock on library acquisitions, and that the libraries are, what would you say, duty-bound to subsidize the publishers.

00:19:33.860 Like, the whole thing is just, it's just a mess.

00:19:36.400 I can see Substack headed in a way that would allow for rigorous science to be published.

00:19:42.360 And wouldn't that be neat?

00:19:45.080 I mean, we talk about peer review.

00:19:47.280 Well, you put your science out there to the world, and there's plenty of peer review.

00:19:51.360 We hear back all the time.

00:19:52.880 Well, you know, we've been thinking about doing that technically, too.

00:19:56.540 I mean, one of the things that should happen as well, you could imagine a site where you could publish your paper in the same format that they're published now.

00:20:05.860 A page summary for a lay audience.

00:20:09.020 You can identify your four peer reviewers.

00:20:12.520 They publish their reviews on the paper site.

00:20:15.760 They can take authorship of that, which could be another CV component, because wouldn't it be lovely for people to get some credit, especially beginning scientists, for their peer review work, which is actual real work if you do it properly.

00:20:29.180 And then, so, and that could be done with some degree of rapidity.

00:20:34.080 And then, it's up to the marketplace to sort the papers in terms of how much attention they attract.

00:20:39.820 But that's also how it works in the scientific publishing enterprise anyways.

00:20:43.580 And that could all be open access.

00:20:45.720 Absolutely.

00:20:46.260 I just can't see why that, like, that's right in front of us.

00:20:50.040 And at some point, it's going to happen.

00:20:51.780 And it takes peer review out of the shadows.

00:20:54.920 Yes, exactly.

00:20:56.040 Exactly.

00:20:56.400 So, yeah, so I suspect that we're very much, we're very serious about engaging in an enterprise like that.

00:21:03.620 Excellent.

00:21:04.280 You know, it depends on where it is in the priority stream.

00:21:06.880 But yes, that would be very nice.

00:21:08.640 So, let's talk about...

00:21:09.160 That's not the only thing you have to do.

00:21:11.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:13.080 Yeah, right, right, exactly.

00:21:14.520 Although it's so important because it really, it really, it really has become a problem.

00:21:19.860 And that fact that we've, we only publish successes, when that's the wrong way to describe success.

00:21:28.380 Like, if you happen to stumble across a more profound truth because you set up your experiment properly, well, more power to you.

00:21:36.540 But if you set it up extremely well and tested something of extreme interest and it doesn't work out, there's absolutely no reason people shouldn't know about that.

00:21:44.320 Not least so they don't do the same thing, like, multiple times.

00:21:48.660 Right.

00:21:48.880 So...

00:21:49.720 Yeah, you ask a why question and you have a hypothesis about that question to test.

00:21:55.520 And throughout that process, whatever it may be, your hypothesis may be proven wrong.

00:22:01.360 And we need to be able to show that.

00:22:03.420 That's why we do science.

00:22:05.120 We're not all perfect hypothesizers.

00:22:07.820 No, no, no, not unless we're playing fast and loose with the data.

00:22:13.320 Yeah, that's for sure.

00:22:14.220 So, we shouldn't be punishing the people who follow the pathway of truth.

00:22:20.260 So, tell us, tell everybody a little bit about your background.

00:22:23.360 You've been dealing in the overlap space between energy and the environment for decades.

00:22:28.120 So, what are your...

00:22:30.680 Why are you qualified to do that?

00:22:32.560 How did that interest develop?

00:22:33.800 Well, I'm actually a geologist by training and have degrees in that.

00:22:40.500 My PhD from the University of Colorado, a master from University of Michigan, an undergrad, and degrees in business as well.

00:22:47.220 So, I've always been interested in that overlap space because economics drives so many things.

00:22:54.420 And the environment is a natural piece for geologists to think about.

00:22:58.140 I've spent many nights in a tent in many places in the world in the field.

00:23:05.020 We geologists go into the field a lot.

00:23:06.860 And I've been fortunate to visit over 60 countries, deeply inside of them, from the poorest amongst us, and I mean literally step on a human being without limbs in the dirt poor, to probably some of the wealthiest among us, and seen all of that, Jordan.

00:23:26.780 And I'm still only a fraction of it, but it's very powerful.

00:23:31.920 Well, I learn by that, by sensing things.

00:23:37.220 People say, describe India.

00:23:38.840 I said, you can smell India.

00:23:41.620 You know, you can taste India.

00:23:44.780 You can't unsmell or untaste India after you've been there, particularly in the impoverished regions.

00:23:52.560 And sure, you see it and hear it.

00:23:54.380 The noise is incredible, but it just wakens up all the senses.

00:23:58.060 So that's, as a geologist, we are problem solvers.

00:24:03.160 We deal with lots of imperfect data and incomplete data.

00:24:07.220 I particularly study, have studied the subsurface, which means you only get very small samples of things.

00:24:12.420 And you have to do interpolation and extrapolation and modeling and data analysis.

00:24:17.300 And knowing that your answer isn't right, you're just trying to constrain it around what the data tell you.

00:24:23.180 And then adapt and change as you go.

00:24:25.380 So that's my background as a scientist and a business person.

00:24:29.640 I happen to have built and, well, not built, but over the last 24 years, from 90 people to over 250 people, the largest research organization at UT Austin, other than a Navy-funded one.

00:24:41.360 And we do energy, environmental, and economic research all over the world.

00:24:44.460 And half of our 250-person staff is our international, not U.S.-born, at least.

00:24:51.780 And so very diverse and fun.

00:24:53.840 Yesterday was my last day as director after 24 years.

00:24:57.740 I fired myself.

00:24:59.440 So, you know, at 64 years old, it's time to let other folks have that fun.

00:25:04.720 And I've got plenty to do into the future and hopefully some things with you.

00:25:08.040 So, that's kind of my background, filmmaker.

00:25:13.160 I host a PBS show.

00:25:15.200 I do radio broadcasts and lots of speaking around the world and have through the years.

00:25:20.540 Got a wonderful family, a wife of 40 years now and four kids all grown and gone, and they're all data scientists.

00:25:26.440 And so they just keep teaching me how little I know.

00:25:32.680 And aren't they right?

00:25:33.960 So, anyway, that's a little bit of my background.

00:25:36.240 All right, so let me ask you, given that background, let me ask you some questions.

00:25:41.700 So, I've been trying to understand the energy, environment, business nexus for about three decades, I would say.

00:25:52.860 And trying to use my experience in assessing scientific literature and reading scientific papers to get a sense of the situation.

00:26:05.400 And so, I have a provocative question, maybe, to begin with.

00:26:11.760 So, I came across the data.

00:26:16.000 Let me step one step back.

00:26:17.840 My understanding initially was the idea that global warming, such as it is, was going to produce an expansion of the world's deserts and make our sphere more arid and uninhabitable.

00:26:37.720 And instead, what I've seen since the year 2000, in particular, is the rapid greening of a very large geographical area, which I believe NASA has now estimated at twice the size of the continental US.

00:26:55.020 Three times the size of the Amazon jungle has greened since the year 2000.

00:27:02.380 And along with, and the reason for that is that carbon dioxide levels have gone up.

00:27:08.740 And what that means is that, although there's been a certain arguable degree of heating, so to speak, because of that, it's made it easier for plants to breathe.

00:27:19.280 And when they can breathe easier, their breathing pores shrink in size, because they don't have to expose themselves to so much surface area.

00:27:28.860 And because of that, they can conserve water much more efficiently.

00:27:32.460 And because of that, they can grow in areas that would have otherwise been too arid.

00:27:37.080 And because of that, we're seeing a tremendous amount of greening, not in places where there was already plenty of water, let's say, but in semi-arid areas, so that the deserts, like the Sahara, particularly in the south, are now shrinking.

00:27:52.060 And so part of me thinks, when I look at the data from a bird's eye view, let's say, that the most striking ecological fact of the last 20 years is the radical increase in green space on the Earth's surface.

00:28:07.660 Now, that also accompanies something like a 10% to 15% increase in crop productivity, which is also a major piece of data, right?

00:28:16.260 And that that's also a consequence of carbon dioxide, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

00:28:23.120 And then I add to that other data that I've seen that shows that by long-term historical standards, so over periods of millions of years or tens of millions of years, the atmosphere of the world is actually very much devoid of carbon dioxide.

00:28:40.020 And so although there's more than there was 200 years ago, there have been periods of time where the planet was a lot greener and a lot lusher, where there was way more carbon dioxide in the air, and that seemed to be pretty damn good for plants.

00:28:53.900 So I look at all that, and I think, okay, so if there was no political nonsense around this, and we were just analyzing the data as of today, why wouldn't we conclude that carbon dioxide increase as a consequence of fossil fuel consumption is a net good?

00:29:10.200 Yeah. No, this is an interesting dialogue. I think you laid it out well. I said in Joe Manchin's Senate hearing about two, two and a half years ago now, it's important. It was one of his big climate hearings.

00:29:28.140 Fatih Birol was there and a couple other folks, just four of us. And I said, it's important to be both completely factual and factually complete. And factually complete is hard, Jordan, as you know. None of us can do it. It's just, there's too much.

00:29:42.360 Now, we can be completely factual. We can all have facts, and they're as well presented and known as we can. We're not trying to mislead necessarily, or maybe we are, but factual completeness is difficult.

00:29:56.040 So, what you outlined there, let me try to address on a couple levels as succinctly as I can. One is a geologist. Very true. There have been levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that exceed today's by 20 times. Okay. 7,000, 8,000 parts per million, not 420. Okay. When? Well, back in what we call the Mesozoic.

00:30:22.440 This is when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, you know, the Triassic, Jurassic, and the Cretaceous periods in that era. Plants were huge. Leaves on plants were enormous. Animals were large, obviously. Dinosaurs were around. There were small ones as well.

00:30:41.900 Well, the Earth was pretty healthy. It was warmer. Okay. It was really, truly what's called the greenhouse time, and I'm not talking about, we could talk about these if you wish, you know, the glacial, interglacial cycles that are about 100,000 years long that we deal with now, and Milankovic described very well.

00:31:01.460 Well, I'm talking about tens to hundreds of millions of year cycles, greenhouse, ice house, greenhouse times, when the Earth has been devoid of ice for the most part and covered in ice as a snowballer.

00:31:11.780 Sure. So, the Mesozoic was one of those times when it was high CO2, very warm, and very healthy. Now, those creatures, plants and animals, had had time to adapt to that.

00:31:22.820 They had come out of one of the largest extinctions on Earth at the end of the Paleozoic, at the end of the Permian time. 70% of species or more went extinct.

00:31:34.280 So, this was a—and we define the time by that extinction. Actually, the biology, the paleontology defines that, not the other way around.

00:31:42.000 So, they came into a new sense and flourished, and that ended—and by the way, time is such a hard concept.

00:31:49.940 Let me just give you a feeling for it this way, since we're talking about dinosaurs. Often, you'll see in a diorama in some museum a T-Rex having a battle with a Stegosaurus, right?

00:32:01.520 Well, it turns out Stegosaurus had gone extinct long before T-Rex came about. In fact, there's more time between the Stegosaurus and the T-Rex than the T-Rex and us.

00:32:12.920 So, process that to give you a feel for time, okay? And so, now, a big impact event happened at the end of the Cretaceous, a big meteor impact in Chicxulub, in the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula.

00:32:27.840 And the Alvarez father-son duo described that very well and put out an iridium anomaly around the world that we measure at the end of the Cretaceous and could see.

00:32:36.140 And very—I remember being in grad school at the University of Michigan at that time, the early 80s, and they came to speak.

00:32:42.820 And we were all so smart, we grad students. We had T-shirts made that showed an incoming meteor and dinosaurs looking up saying, oh, shit.

00:32:50.760 You know? And we thought, a meteor killed the dinosaurs? Right. Well, that was right.

00:32:58.720 You know, it had the fallout from that, and we didn't—as grad students, we didn't know much, did we?

00:33:03.320 In fact, I didn't even learn about plate tectonics in undergraduate. That's how far back I go.

00:33:07.840 So, we are always learning.

00:33:10.020 So, the point here is, yes, there have been long cycles of changes in greenhouse gases, CO2 being one of those gases, methane and others as well.

00:33:18.260 Well, if you come into the more nearer term, not to today yet, but let's say the last 5 million years, we've seen about 50 glacial-interglacial cycles, and they're pretty well documented, okay?

00:33:34.020 In the last million years, 10 of those.

00:33:36.640 And what I mean by that is, over every 100,000 years or so, ice comes down from the north.

00:33:43.340 Canada is completely under ice, and parts of the northern U.S., Wisconsin, Michigan, parts of New York City, very well documented, under ice.

00:33:52.200 And I don't mean a little ice, 1,000 to 2,000 feet up to a mile of ice for 80,000 years.

00:33:58.180 And then, for about 20,000 years, it warms, and the ice recedes, and we have an interglacial period, like the one we're living in now.

00:34:09.200 And so, during that interglacial period, and it started about 18,000 years ago, we see the ice melt, which means sea level starts to rise.

00:34:18.300 And I'm talking about rates like the movies, you know, the Gulf of Mexico here in Texas was over 300 feet lower than it is today, just 20,000 years ago.

00:34:29.740 And it started to rise 1 to 2 centimeters a year, almost an inch a year vertical.

00:34:34.840 This is a very rapid rise, and flooded the coastal plain of Texas.

00:34:39.220 And then, about 7,000 years ago, that leveled up, and it's been rising about 1 to 2 millimeters a year ever since, in the last 7,000 years.

00:34:48.340 So, you've studied and seen from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to Enlightenment, you know, all the way through to what we call the Industrial Revolution of this past century.

00:35:01.720 In that time frame, humans, modern humans, have evolved in that last interglacial period.

00:35:07.860 And, yes, you are exactly right.

00:35:11.660 It is one of the lowest CO2 periods in Earth history, and it's one of the coolest periods in Earth history.

00:35:18.160 I'm not talking about the actual interglacial, because it's warmer than it was, 80,000, 20, 80,000, 20.

00:35:24.340 But overall, that periodicity of interglacial is one of the coolest periods in Earth history that we are enjoying today.

00:35:33.160 And a guy named Milankovic worked all this out while on house arrest for 20 years on paper.

00:35:38.400 We call them Milankovic cycles, and we understand why.

00:35:41.900 It's a combination of the rotational orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and that varies.

00:35:47.660 So, it puts you closer and farther from the Sun.

00:35:49.520 And then, the tilt of our Earth's axis and the rotation of the axis combine to form these 20, 40, and 100,000-year cycles, embedded cycles.

00:35:59.260 And we see this repeated over and over.

00:36:02.260 That's driving modern climate today.

00:36:06.320 And it's driving historical climate in what we would consider the recent past geologically.

00:36:12.260 Now, superimpose on that.

00:36:13.780 Let's come into the today.

00:36:15.320 In the last 100 years, we have been burning fossil fuels.

00:36:20.740 More than that, actually.

00:36:21.760 We started with coal, of course, in the 1800s.

00:36:24.420 It powered our ships and trains.

00:36:28.500 It replaced wood and hay, the carbon-based fuels that we lived on for thousands and thousands of years,

00:36:35.260 to make our fires and to cook our food and to power our vehicles, oxen and horses.

00:36:41.720 Hay.

00:36:42.660 Let's just call it hay, you know.

00:36:45.480 Stuff we grew.

00:36:46.680 And then along comes coal, and we discover that, hey, nature did that.

00:36:49.360 It made it really compact and dense.

00:36:50.760 So, it's almost pure carbon.

00:36:52.520 Now, there are a lot of things in it that aren't good when you burn it for the air, the actual pollutants, if you will.

00:36:59.560 Socks, NOx, mercury, particulate matter, et cetera, that come when you burn coal.

00:37:03.960 So, but that was a great fuel.

00:37:07.940 It allowed us to do things we'd never done before, including boil water, make steam, turn a turbine, and run a generator and make electricity.

00:37:15.300 And that changed the world.

00:37:16.060 That's the event in time that made us modern societies, at least, as you said, those of us who are fortunate enough to have that.

00:37:26.860 Many still don't.

00:37:28.360 More don't than do.

00:37:29.560 And we can talk all about that, made films about that.

00:37:33.260 So, here we are, and we've been burning coal.

00:37:36.760 So, that's carbon.

00:37:37.780 And then along come hydrocarbons, which are complex carbon and hydrogen molecules, complex chains, long chains.

00:37:44.700 And those burn even better, especially when we refine them and make them into gasoline and diesel and jet fuel.

00:37:49.980 And that's great.

00:37:51.160 We can put that into a vehicle now.

00:37:53.080 It's very dense.

00:37:54.140 I'm happy to talk about why dense matters.

00:37:56.260 But you get a lot of bang for the buck.

00:37:58.940 You put 20 gallons of gasoline in a tank, and the impact of that in energetic terms is remarkable.

00:38:06.320 Okay, I can drive 200, 300, 400 miles on that tank of gasoline, and there's nothing left except CO2 emissions, and you just fill it up in three minutes and go do it again.

00:38:18.840 It's incredible.

00:38:20.320 Okay.

00:38:21.400 Now, it has the CO2 emissions component to it.

00:38:28.000 Along comes methane, CH4, four hydrogens for every carbon.

00:38:32.320 Now, methane, natural gas is what we call that.

00:38:35.720 And there are other gases that are natural, propane, bupane, pentane, whatever.

00:38:39.500 But methane is the one we use a lot of.

00:38:43.060 It's even more incredible.

00:38:44.640 The energy density of methane is phenomenal.

00:38:47.320 You're burning the hydrogen as well as the carbon.

00:38:50.340 So, we get heat from that.

00:38:52.500 It's a very versatile fuel.

00:38:53.960 I can make electricity by burning methane, boiling water, steam, turbine, generator.

00:38:58.600 I can put it directly into vehicles in a compressed form, compressed natural gas.

00:39:03.060 I can use it as a molecule to make things like plastics or ammonia for fertilizers.

00:39:09.560 You mentioned agriculture.

00:39:10.600 And those fertilizers, again, changed the world.

00:39:13.820 So, that all is natural gas.

00:39:16.780 Plastics, it's one of the most versatile molecules we have today.

00:39:23.060 And it will be around a very long time.

00:39:25.320 Produces less CO2 when you burn it than oil or coal, but it still produces CO2.

00:39:30.900 And methane itself is a greenhouse gas, a pretty potent one.

00:39:34.900 It doesn't last as long in the atmosphere, but it's pretty intense, more intense than CO2 in the atmosphere.

00:39:39.980 So, these, as you said, are very complicated.

00:39:42.500 But we've moved out of this carbon economy into a hydrocarbon economy.

00:39:49.260 And now we're truly coming into a methane economy.

00:39:52.380 And that economy, it won't be a few more years before we are using, actually burning more methane than coal in the world, globally.

00:40:01.680 Not just modern societies, but as a world.

00:40:04.020 And that's the methane economy.

00:40:05.360 It will have arrived.

00:40:07.200 And good thing, because it does so many positive things for humanity and human flourishing,

00:40:11.440 and also less in terms of its environmental impact.

00:40:14.420 It doesn't have the sulfur and the nitrogen and the particulates.

00:40:17.440 Good thing we've gone there.

00:40:18.420 And then from methane, we can make hydrogen, you know, and methane is the best molecule to make hydrogen.

00:40:25.460 So, you've heard about a hydrogen economy.

00:40:27.120 Your listeners probably have.

00:40:29.100 Hydrogen didn't form naturally very much.

00:40:31.260 It is in places, but you've got to make it.

00:40:33.620 You've got to split molecules, either a water molecule, H2O, or methane CH4, the two common ones.

00:40:39.540 That takes energy.

00:40:40.840 Less energy to split methane than water.

00:40:43.340 So, energetically and economically, it's better to use methane as a source of hydrogen.

00:40:48.200 And we'll be off in the hydrogen economy in some phase.

00:40:52.360 And you can use hydrogen for a fuel, and you can use it as an electricity carrier and all sorts of other things.

00:40:57.440 So, this has been a really nice natural transition that's been happening driven by efficiency and physics.

00:41:05.320 And those, when those happen, the economics are good, and so the markets adapt them, and they grow.

00:41:13.020 And that's what drives progress at the end of the day.

00:41:16.360 That's a long narrative, but...

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00:42:28.000 Well, there's three things I want to pick up on in that.

00:42:31.720 One is cycles, one is time frame, and one is progress.

00:42:35.120 Sure.

00:42:35.280 We can define all those.

00:42:36.560 So let me continue with my doubts, let's say.

00:42:43.440 So if we're trying to see, the first problem I have when I look at the analysis of climate doom prediction

00:42:52.040 is the problem that you alluded to with regards to time frame.

00:42:56.620 It's like, well, is there too much carbon dioxide in the air, and is that a danger?

00:43:01.680 And the answer to that is, well, it depends on when you compare it to.

00:43:04.580 And that isn't just something you can brush off to the side, because it's very, if the

00:43:11.820 starting point you choose for your analysis of increase or decrease determines whether

00:43:20.800 you see an increase or decrease, the germane question is, well, what starting point do you

00:43:26.640 pick?

00:43:26.900 And if the answer is, well, if you want to demonstrate an increase for political purposes,

00:43:32.440 you pick this starting point.

00:43:34.200 And if you want to demonstrate a decrease for political purposes, you pick this starting

00:43:38.300 point.

00:43:38.520 And you don't have a different criteria, then the question itself starts to become incomprehensible.

00:43:48.480 Because there's no such thing as the question, is there more carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere?

00:43:55.100 There's only the question, is there more carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere compared to then?

00:44:02.040 And then is arbitrary.

00:44:03.020 So I have no idea, as a data scientist, how to solve that problem, especially in the light

00:44:08.780 of the other things we discussed.

00:44:10.200 Like you said, well, the planet is cooler than it has been, according to many historical comparisons.

00:44:18.000 And more people die from cold than heat by a lot.

00:44:21.760 And so if your measure for what constitutes relevance is effect on humans, cool isn't to

00:44:29.680 be preferred to warm.

00:44:31.140 Now, there's obviously extremes over which that isn't true at all.

00:44:34.780 But as a rule of thumb, the mere fact that things are getting warmer isn't in and of itself

00:44:40.960 an indication of catastrophe.

00:44:42.580 And let me clarify, too, on the cooler part, just so nobody goes, oh, it was colder in

00:44:50.380 the glacial period for 80,000 years.

00:44:52.360 We're in a warm now.

00:44:53.760 But in this one to five million glacial, interglacial, the whole package, if you will, is cooler than

00:45:00.860 much of Earth history in the past.

00:45:02.420 In fact, most of Earth history in the past.

00:45:04.120 Just to clarify on that.

00:45:05.780 Okay.

00:45:06.080 Okay.

00:45:06.480 So let me add another wrinkle and tell me what you think about this.

00:45:09.360 So when I first started to study the sorts of things that we're describing now, I was

00:45:15.500 also curious about the relationship between economic development and environmental consciousness,

00:45:21.560 let's say.

00:45:22.340 That would be attitudes and actions that are associated with some concern about the medium

00:45:26.780 to long-term viability of the environment.

00:45:28.660 And one of the things I discovered very quickly, which I think is just an economic truism, as

00:45:33.660 far as I can tell, is that if you're so damn poverty stricken that your fundamental

00:45:39.060 concern is whether or not you're going to have lunch for your children, then the probability

00:45:44.800 that you're going to spend a second thinking about the medium to long-term viability of

00:45:50.040 the general environment is zero.

00:45:52.440 And so one of the things you see reliably in economic analysis is that if you can get

00:45:57.180 people up above $5,000 per year in GDP production, then they start to take a medium to long-term

00:46:06.160 view of environmental sustainability.

00:46:09.020 And we could define sustainability perhaps as something like they're concerned that the

00:46:14.180 planetary resources that they hypothetically enjoy now are likely to be there for their

00:46:19.100 children and their grandchildren and perhaps even their great-grandchildren.

00:46:22.240 So the time frame starts to expand.

00:46:25.300 And so the rule is something like with increased luxury, let's say, or even enough food, which

00:46:31.760 isn't exactly a luxury, your time frame of analysis expands.

00:46:35.420 And if you were actually concerned about transforming human beings into a species that optimized its

00:46:44.100 medium to long-term commitments, it looked to me like there's nothing you could do that would

00:46:48.900 be more effective in that aim than making sure that the bottom 2 billion people aren't

00:46:55.960 scrabbling around in the dirt so desperately that they're willing to burn tomorrow to ensure

00:47:00.580 survival today.

00:47:02.100 And then there's a corollary to that, which is, okay, that means that absolute privation

00:47:08.200 is perhaps the fundamental environmental concern, if this psychology of long-term view is correct.

00:47:15.660 And the fastest way to make poor people rich or to get the hell out of their way while

00:47:20.520 they're trying to do it themselves is to provide inexpensive energy, which, because there's

00:47:26.260 no, in my sense of the world, there's no difference between energy cost and wealth.

00:47:32.000 Since energy is work, and work does everything that's productive by definition, if you lower

00:47:38.800 the cost of energy, you lower the cost of work, and that makes people rich.

00:47:42.180 So, I would like you to tell me if you think there's anything wrong with that reasoning,

00:47:47.340 and then maybe we could also have a discussion about progress on the energy front.

00:47:51.780 Sure.

00:47:52.140 What would it mean to, okay, so let's do that.

00:47:54.600 Yeah, when we made our first feature-length documentary film on energy called Switch, we

00:47:59.900 filmed that in 2009, 10, and post in 11, released it in 2012, and we went to 11 countries and showed

00:48:06.560 you each form of energy where it was best in the world.

00:48:09.300 So, we weren't trying to make something look bad or good.

00:48:13.180 We absolutely did the trade-offs of the pros and cons of each form in that film, however.

00:48:17.580 And it got picked up by academic campuses, and it's still shown around 50 countries, kind

00:48:22.980 of as the first energy, quote, transition film.

00:48:26.840 We showed we weren't really transitioning.

00:48:29.160 So, energy is modern life.

00:48:33.900 There's zero doubt about it.

00:48:35.880 It turns out energy is all life.

00:48:38.580 Even the poorest among us need energy to survive.

00:48:42.340 A few years went by, and I said to our director, hey, we kind of left out Harry Lynch, by the

00:48:47.600 way, a brilliant filmmaker.

00:48:49.100 We left out more than half the world, those who don't have these things.

00:48:52.920 So, we made a second feature-length film.

00:48:55.120 We filmed in 18 and 19 and post, released it right at the beginning of COVID in 20, and

00:49:00.740 that was on energy poverty.

00:49:02.760 We went to six different countries.

00:49:04.560 And we looked at the circumstances in which people are living in Ethiopia and Kenya and

00:49:09.940 Nepal and Vietnam and Colombia, different continents.

00:49:13.080 And again, some of the positive stories around that, Jordan, that you are describing, but some

00:49:20.480 other real challenges as well.

00:49:22.480 What happens when you don't have energy and you can't get above that $5,000 personal wealth level.

00:49:28.560 What's the name of that film?

00:49:29.820 It's called Switch On.

00:49:31.760 Switch On.

00:49:32.400 Okay.

00:49:32.760 So, there's switch and switch on.

00:49:34.120 Yes.

00:49:34.840 Yeah.

00:49:35.240 And it was a very powerful film, a very different style.

00:49:38.460 I'm your on-screen guide, and we take you in and spend time in these different areas.

00:49:44.440 And what you see, and it came to light on us, is you can't, aid is interesting.

00:49:52.840 People take aid, and intentions are always good.

00:49:55.580 And here, here's some aid to go do this thing.

00:49:59.480 It turns out that thing, be it a pump for water or a solar panel for a little bit of electricity,

00:50:04.800 maybe a light bulb, et cetera, it doesn't work unless the community wants it.

00:50:10.960 But they themselves have asked for it, and they will then take it into the cultural situation

00:50:19.980 in which they will benefit from it.

00:50:22.260 And we saw this over and over and over again.

00:50:25.400 It becomes something that is sustainable.

00:50:28.200 It survives.

00:50:28.960 It becomes a virtuous cycle of growth.

00:50:32.100 I'll give you a few quick examples.

00:50:33.840 You know, an induction cooktop in Nepal, selling them on the street markets now.

00:50:40.980 They're very expensive, but it changes cooking indoors with wood.

00:50:44.920 And we take you into the SETI Memorial Hospital there, and we watch kids and mothers die.

00:50:50.440 You know, more die every year from breathing indoor particulates by cooking indoors than COVID

00:50:55.320 killed in 2021.

00:50:57.200 Three million a year.

00:50:58.360 It's just, it's nuts.

00:50:59.540 Another example is hair salons in Bangladesh, where the women, when they first got electricity,

00:51:07.040 they used it for hair salons.

00:51:08.580 And you go, hair salons?

00:51:09.700 Who would have thought?

00:51:10.720 Well, culturally, it's a safe place for women to gather.

00:51:14.540 They share stories.

00:51:16.300 Hair is a piece of culture.

00:51:19.060 The money they get, they invest back in the community at three times the men.

00:51:22.680 And so, all of a sudden, we have a virtuous cycle.

00:51:26.960 We take you to Kenya and look at pumps for water to grow agriculture, Farmer John.

00:51:31.980 So, his backyard is now growing crops more than he needs, so he can sell them into the

00:51:36.520 marketplace.

00:51:37.800 And now that creates an economy, a microeconomy, around which growth begins to happen.

00:51:43.600 His choice, his need culturally, not what we go tell people to do.

00:51:49.380 We, the rich world.

00:51:50.280 Well, I say we, call it what you wish.

00:51:52.420 You know, I've heard global north, not my favorite term.

00:51:54.920 I've heard, whatever you want to call it.

00:51:56.520 But those who have more.

00:51:57.560 The neocolonialists.

00:51:58.440 Yes.

00:51:59.200 Those who have more.

00:52:00.860 Okay.

00:52:01.480 And so, yes, energy is fundamentally vital for that.

00:52:06.820 And affordable energy.

00:52:08.800 And then moving into reliable energy.

00:52:12.660 And then eventually, I don't like the word clean.

00:52:15.760 It's kind of meaningless to me.

00:52:17.060 But energy that has lower environmental impacts.

00:52:20.600 But you're exactly right.

00:52:22.040 I'm not going to worry about that environmental impact if I'm trying to eat.

00:52:26.780 Or my kids aren't in a school.

00:52:29.580 Et cetera, et cetera.

00:52:30.900 I'm going to worry about, basically, you know, go back to Maslow.

00:52:34.260 You know, my hierarchy of need.

00:52:35.600 I have to have these fundamental things first in order just to survive.

00:52:40.300 And everything else becomes a luxury that I'm not going to indulge in.

00:52:44.480 So that's what we see.

00:52:47.560 We, the world needs to come out of energy poverty.

00:52:51.520 It needs to come out of economic poverty so that we can all begin to, there will always

00:52:56.960 be disparity in wealth.

00:52:58.380 But we can all begin to function at basic, we would consider basic human levels now.

00:53:02.840 And that's why we made that film.

00:53:05.460 And that's why I'm so passionate about this dialogue.

00:53:08.360 I absolutely think that global leaders, all of them, every single time, Jordan, energy

00:53:14.500 security trumps climate security.

00:53:16.660 Every single time.

00:53:18.380 Look at the action, not the words.

00:53:21.340 Look at the action.

00:53:22.140 Look what Germany has done.

00:53:23.900 Look what China is doing.

00:53:25.320 Look what we've done.

00:53:26.120 Even in Canada, where Mr. Trudeau has some pretty, you know, heady words, but look what

00:53:32.420 you do.

00:53:32.980 You don't sacrifice your energy security, or at least you haven't.

00:53:37.380 Now we're starting to see...

00:53:38.780 Not so far.

00:53:39.820 Not so far.

00:53:40.800 And we're seeing circumstances even in the U.S. now, in California, and in New York, and

00:53:47.940 other places where they're starting to get toward the edge of sacrificing energy security.

00:53:52.740 And wow, get ready as that starts to happen.

00:53:56.680 We've already seen it happen in Western Europe.

00:53:58.440 We could talk all about the countries that are doing that.

00:54:00.560 Well, let's talk.

00:54:02.300 Well, let's do that.

00:54:03.460 So we could do two things in parallel here.

00:54:06.360 So one would be, we touched on the idea of progress.

00:54:09.440 And so we have a working definition of progress that's kind of risen out of the conversation.

00:54:15.320 And so one of the things we could say is that if our goal is the alleviation of misery and

00:54:22.500 the sustainable alleviation of misery, then one pathway towards that is to provide low-cost

00:54:29.280 energy to those in absolute privation, working on the hypothesis that, first of all, that's

00:54:36.480 obviously a good thing to do if you think that unnecessary suffering is, you know, is something

00:54:41.880 to be dealt with, but also if your fundamental concern is sustainability, even over human

00:54:47.500 flourishing, which I think is a mistake.

00:54:49.660 But anyways, even if it is, the data that indicate that people who have a certain degree

00:54:56.240 of security can take a longer-term view seems crystal clear.

00:55:01.380 So to me, it's a mystery why this is actually an issue, you know, because once you know that,

00:55:07.320 you think, well, obviously, then you make a hierarchy of energy sources and you find out

00:55:12.260 what's inexpensive and you calculate the trade-offs in relationship to even potentially carbon dioxide

00:55:18.160 production, but there's sort of a pathway.

00:55:20.280 And I'd like your opinion on that.

00:55:22.300 So, you know, dung isn't so good.

00:55:25.580 Wood is better than dung.

00:55:27.100 Coal is better than wood.

00:55:28.620 Natural gas is better than coal.

00:55:30.640 You know, better.

00:55:31.880 It's denser.

00:55:32.660 But you can move along that.

00:55:33.940 Yeah, okay.

00:55:34.740 It's denser.

00:55:35.300 So how do you see progression in the marketplace with regards to the alleviation of absolute

00:55:42.100 privation?

00:55:42.860 What's the logical steps to undertake globally?

00:55:46.500 And then how is that being violated, let's say, in places like Germany?

00:55:50.380 Sure.

00:55:51.040 Yeah.

00:55:51.420 And not to be too sanguine about it, but in the end, physics wins.

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00:57:15.560 Yeah.

00:57:16.300 Dense wins.

00:57:17.060 Now, what do I mean by dense?

00:57:18.140 The bang for the buck on a per-unit weight or per-unit volume or even a per-unit area,

00:57:24.860 that's called surface power density.

00:57:27.400 Where do you get more energy for your buck, if you will?

00:57:31.120 And so, if I can do more, I used gasoline as an example of dense, but let me throw a curveball.

00:57:38.500 My tank of gasoline will drive me 300 miles.

00:57:41.520 Okay, well, the energy equivalent of one little uranium pellet that I stuff into a fuel rod in a

00:57:48.320 nuclear reactor, one pellet, a centimeter high, half a centimeter wide, the energy equivalent would

00:57:54.360 drive me from New York to Los Angeles and back to Dallas.

00:57:58.040 One pellet.

00:57:59.560 That's dense energy compared to gasoline, which is very dense compared to lots of other things

00:58:05.800 that aren't dense, the sun, the wind, hydro, biofuels, things that take a lot of land to do.

00:58:13.340 So, physics wins in the end, and we need to allow physics to win.

00:58:19.460 I am not a person who thinks that it's either the economy or the environment, Jordan.

00:58:25.220 I just don't believe that.

00:58:26.860 I don't think that the data lead us there.

00:58:28.720 I think we, in this sense, can have both, but we can't have all of both.

00:58:35.800 Okay, and there's the trade-off space.

00:58:39.500 If I want 100% zero CO2 emissions, well, I don't get energy security, and I don't get

00:58:46.000 economic security.

00:58:47.300 I get very little of that.

00:58:49.140 Okay, I got to bring that.

00:58:50.660 Well, why would you want 100%?

00:58:54.960 This is the thing I don't quite get.

00:58:56.660 I mean, let's assume that there are people who are willing to make that trade-off.

00:59:01.040 Their goal is, like, net zero carbon dioxide emission, or even reversing it.

00:59:06.460 It's like, okay, your point is, we're going to pay a major price for that, and the we isn't

00:59:12.220 going to be you and me.

00:59:13.440 The we is going to be the world's poor, wherever they happen to be.

00:59:16.120 And they're going to get walloped, like, devastated by it.

00:59:20.320 What's the old line?

00:59:21.440 When the aristocrats catch a cold, the working class dies of pneumonia.

00:59:28.080 Well, it's always the case.

00:59:29.460 If 5% of the world's population is barely hovering on the edge of viability, and you double their

00:59:35.740 energy costs, they all die.

00:59:37.820 Yeah.

00:59:38.280 So, this is not good.

00:59:40.140 It turns out 60% of us live in some level of energy poverty today.

00:59:44.880 I'm going to say that again.

00:59:45.860 60%, 5 billion out of 8.2, and I say some level, they're not in abject energy poverty

00:59:54.640 and economic poverty, not the bottom billion.

00:59:58.120 That's come up after COVID, unfortunately.

01:00:00.040 We were doing great.

01:00:01.120 But it's that next level where energy is not secure to them.

01:00:04.660 It comes and goes, unpredictably.

01:00:06.900 The electricity is maybe on an hour or two a day.

01:00:09.460 My fuel price is volatile, and I don't have it sometimes.

01:00:12.720 So, we don't understand these things.

01:00:15.180 These are so-called electrified, energized economies, but it's not what you and I have.

01:00:22.060 Nothing close.

01:00:23.300 Right.

01:00:23.440 Okay, so this is—

01:00:24.160 Which is something that works all the time.

01:00:26.460 All the time, affordably.

01:00:29.020 Yes.

01:00:30.020 Yes.

01:00:30.500 And that's very hard to achieve, but the 99%—

01:00:33.340 Absolutely.

01:00:34.180 —is what we strive for.

01:00:37.460 So, I think you've kind of brought us back around to the question I never answered about

01:00:41.320 greening, so I'll just chime in on that.

01:00:43.040 Yes, the Earth is greening.

01:00:45.640 You can see it from space.

01:00:47.780 CO2 is a food.

01:00:49.340 You described it well.

01:00:50.860 We have to be a little cautious there.

01:00:53.260 Some of that growth is not plants that are the kind that we would expect in those environments,

01:01:00.200 and they're not very diverse.

01:01:02.160 So, you get a lot of aggressive growth, sometimes of exotics, things that have come in, including

01:01:07.700 in the reefs.

01:01:09.120 The Great Barrier Reef has growth, but it's a few species, not the healthy diversity of

01:01:15.000 species that we see.

01:01:16.140 So, we've got to be a little cautious.

01:01:17.760 This is back to the completely factual and factually complete on describing what that looks

01:01:22.800 like, and whether it's kind of a healthy growth, if you will.

01:01:26.620 A very important point.

01:01:28.260 But nonetheless, yes, the world isn't baking in the Sahara.

01:01:33.700 The Sahara Desert hasn't gone, you know, crazy in that sense either.

01:01:39.500 But I come back to kind of that trajectory of energy then.

01:01:45.040 Fortunately, and fortunately, we can address the emissions with dense energy, okay?

01:01:54.840 It's maybe we're lucky.

01:01:56.780 Maybe it's not a coincidence.

01:01:57.900 But methane, CH4, hydrogen, nuclear, uranium and thorium being used as a heat source to

01:02:07.440 boil water, make steam, turn a turbine, run a generator.

01:02:10.800 That's fission.

01:02:12.040 The fusion side of the equation, which is getting closer.

01:02:14.880 I used to smile, but it's getting closer, and I'm not a nuclear physicist.

01:02:18.520 Those are things that have zero to no emissions, and they're very dense, and the technologies

01:02:24.500 are ever better.

01:02:25.380 And so, there's a solution staring us in the face here.

01:02:31.040 It's not necessarily the one that climate scientists and climate, well, just climate

01:02:38.740 impassioned, because a lot of climate scientists are wonderfully deep thinkers and great scientists.

01:02:46.600 They leave the realm a little bit as they start to talk about energy, just like I leave my realm

01:02:51.460 if I get into deep climate modeling.

01:02:53.200 So, we have to allow the scientific space for those who have the most expertise to help

01:03:01.720 us move forward in energetic terms to address emissions and human flourishing.

01:03:08.800 And it can be done.

01:03:09.860 Well, we should make a stronger statement than that.

01:03:13.640 There is no bloody way we're going to move to environmental sustainability on the backs

01:03:17.860 of the poor, because they won't have it.

01:03:21.000 If we produce enough economic havoc, which we could easily do, then we'll produce a deterioration

01:03:29.720 back to very short-term thinking, and we'll produce an environmental nightmare.

01:03:33.440 So, it isn't, can we have human flourishing or zero impact on the planet?

01:03:38.700 It's that if we put the poor under too much stress, which is, first of all, is an absolutely

01:03:43.920 unconscionable thing for rich people to be doing.

01:03:47.000 But if it does, there's going to be a kickback, the likes of which we can hardly imagine.

01:03:50.900 Yeah, yeah.

01:03:51.660 Let them eat cake.

01:03:52.980 Well, guess who ate cake?

01:03:54.200 Yeah.

01:03:55.260 Right, right.

01:03:56.020 Off with their heads.

01:03:56.640 Yeah, or zoo animals.

01:03:58.000 Right, right.

01:03:58.900 Because if you make, you know, if you take a given country and you destroy the economy,

01:04:02.440 you're going to destroy all the animals.

01:04:04.240 Because as soon as people get hungry enough, they're going to eat everything.

01:04:07.640 So, we have to manage human beings, so to speak.

01:04:10.340 Like, we, we have to allow human beings to step up the energy density ladder so that they

01:04:19.080 can address their absolute privation, so they can take a longer-term view.

01:04:22.960 And there's no environmental solution absent of that, as far as I can tell.

01:04:26.680 Right.

01:04:27.160 There's an interesting, we've talked about energy, the economy, and the environment.

01:04:30.860 There's another E that's really important here, one of efficiency.

01:04:35.240 And let me just briefly describe that and how I think about efficiency.

01:04:40.740 In the United States, we use about 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy every year.

01:04:45.460 100 quads.

01:04:46.900 What does that mean to anybody?

01:04:48.220 Nothing.

01:04:49.300 That's, interestingly enough, it's about, a quadrillion BTU is about the same as an exajoule,

01:04:53.860 a term physicist love.

01:04:55.160 That means nothing.

01:04:56.260 It's about the same as a trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

01:04:59.760 Maybe we're getting a little closer into this space, people start to understand.

01:05:02.520 It's a lot of energy.

01:05:04.140 100 quads.

01:05:06.200 Primary energy comes into our system.

01:05:08.220 We use it for residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation reasons.

01:05:14.260 That's how we use energy.

01:05:15.900 Heat and cool things and move ourselves around.

01:05:17.920 Okay.

01:05:18.920 The 100 quads comes in, Jordan.

01:05:20.500 Guess what?

01:05:21.040 Only one-third of that does useful work.

01:05:26.400 Two-thirds of that is wasted.

01:05:29.000 Mostly it's heat and other things.

01:05:31.420 It doesn't do anything useful.

01:05:33.140 So we have a lot of low-hanging fruit in that space.

01:05:38.160 Even if we could go to 50% does useful work, think of that.

01:05:42.520 That adds another 17 quads of energy without adding any more primary in.

01:05:48.440 So there's an incredible opportunity here as the world begins to lift itself from poverty and the modern world continues to stay healthy to do more with less.

01:06:01.460 I'm not changing my lifestyle, and those who need to change your lifestyle can, but we can all do more with less.

01:06:09.000 We can become a lot more efficient in how we use energy.

01:06:13.220 And that's how we ended our very first film.

01:06:14.880 When you end a film, it's with the last thing you want them to remember.

01:06:17.300 It was on just personal efficiency things.

01:06:19.600 It's not rocket science.

01:06:21.440 These are simple things we can all do.

01:06:24.060 And I'm not saying, you know, go to austerity measures and turn off your heating in the wintertime.

01:06:30.140 Not at all.

01:06:32.220 Quite the opposite.

01:06:33.560 Just simple things we can all do.

01:06:35.680 And so that's a very important piece of this overall equation.

01:06:38.920 And I think the opportunity to waste less as the world begins to modernize is there.

01:06:44.520 It's ripe for the taking.

01:06:45.580 That's one of the things we, the modern societies, can transport to evolving, developing and developed and emerging economies is efficiency as they gain energy.

01:06:57.500 Yeah, well, it makes sense to me that as the developing countries develop, they're going to start with technologies that to some degree we have superseded, right?

01:07:08.500 So you see this, for example, with China's hyper-reliance on cheap coal, and some of which is provided by the Australia that won't burn coal themselves.

01:07:19.540 Now, I know coal produces a fair bit of particulate matter, but it doesn't really matter where the carbon dioxide is produced because it turns out that we all share the same atmosphere.

01:07:28.620 So the Chinese and the Indians in particular, and those are the most populous countries, and the same thing is going to happen in Nigeria at some point

01:07:35.420 because it's going to be the world's most populous country by the year 2100, they're going to step up the energy density ladder.

01:07:43.040 And it would make a certain amount of sense that the developed countries, I mean, China can obviously do this to some degree by themselves,

01:07:50.320 are going to turn increasingly to sources of extremely high density like nuclear sources.

01:07:54.920 But then I see these weird inversions where countries like Germany and states like California have decided,

01:08:02.280 well, the next right thing to do in the progression towards a sustainable economy is to shut down the nuclear reactors.

01:08:09.660 And so, and then in, well, in Germany, they burn late night coal, which is high particulate, high carbon dioxide,

01:08:17.480 as a consequence, at least a partial consequence, of shutting down their nuclear reactors.

01:08:22.100 And so when I see that, I think, well, what the hell's going on?

01:08:25.480 Like, there is no standpoint from which that makes sense.

01:08:28.840 So what are the impediments?

01:08:30.700 What do you think, like, what's the proper pathway forward in your estimation?

01:08:34.680 And what are the impediments to that at the moment?

01:08:37.020 Boy, there's a lot here to unpack.

01:08:38.920 I'll try to be brief.

01:08:40.000 We have lignite in Texas.

01:08:41.160 We call it black dirt.

01:08:42.660 You know, it's hardly coal.

01:08:44.300 It's not anthracite by any means or other forms of coal.

01:08:47.960 So Germany has that.

01:08:49.960 They increased their coal production 13% when they set down their nuclear reactors.

01:08:55.500 And climate scientists were aghast, and they should be.

01:08:58.080 That was crazy, okay?

01:09:00.000 There's a cultural component to Germany's fear or aversion to nuclear power.

01:09:06.760 I don't fully understand it.

01:09:08.400 France, on the other hand, about the same size, et cetera, has a nuclear fleet.

01:09:12.880 They needed it, so they didn't have options, so they built their nuclear fleet.

01:09:16.600 It doesn't make sense.

01:09:17.780 You can't make logical sense of that.

01:09:21.120 That's a cultural human thing in Germany and other parts of the world.

01:09:25.740 They're going to change.

01:09:26.720 You're starting to see it.

01:09:28.020 Maybe they'll evolve it with small modular reactors, which they'll think is different, but it's not.

01:09:33.140 It's the same technology.

01:09:34.420 It's fission.

01:09:34.860 Whether they're light water reactors or sodium-cooled, whatever.

01:09:39.280 Pick your favorite.

01:09:39.980 It's still fission.

01:09:42.120 But that's fine.

01:09:43.380 If that's what it takes to help mitigate some of that fear, great.

01:09:48.500 You see China and Russia are building 75% of the world's nuclear reactors today.

01:09:55.360 Just those two countries.

01:09:56.220 And they have a lot more on the books.

01:09:58.460 China gets it.

01:09:59.820 Now, they're also growing everything else rapidly.

01:10:02.240 And this is where that completely factual, factually complete comes back in.

01:10:06.040 You will hear, completely factual, China is the leader in solar and wind in the world.

01:10:10.640 They have more than any other country.

01:10:12.540 True.

01:10:12.740 You scale it all down, and it's still a trivial part of their total energy consumption.

01:10:18.920 It's just a few percent of the power alone, electricity alone.

01:10:23.340 And electricity is only 20 to 25% of total energy.

01:10:26.980 So this is the scale challenge, Jordan.

01:10:29.420 China has to have it all, and they are going toward dense.

01:10:33.620 China's energy alone, China's annual energy consumption alone, just that country,

01:10:38.840 is more than all the electricity consumed in the world combined.

01:10:42.740 All the electricity in the world, okay?

01:10:46.660 So that's a scale challenge.

01:10:48.720 We just have to start to understand the scale.

01:10:51.900 You said it very well.

01:10:53.680 India and China combined are one out of every three people on the planet today.

01:10:58.560 One out of three.

01:11:00.080 Now, getting a little population demography,

01:11:05.280 China's birth rates or fertility rates are some of the lowest in the world at 1.2.

01:11:09.140 India is now at 2.1, which is the replacement rate.

01:11:12.740 India has come down to 2.1.

01:11:14.860 Who knew?

01:11:15.580 I didn't.

01:11:16.680 There's a great demographer.

01:11:18.720 Shock, a shock.

01:11:20.080 Yes.

01:11:20.760 And a UT Austin guy.

01:11:22.340 And what's been happening since the last 30 years, picture this graph.

01:11:27.580 I'm a data guy.

01:11:28.560 You know, the bottom is GDP per capita.

01:11:32.580 And this axis is fertility rates.

01:11:35.400 Right.

01:11:35.660 Okay.

01:11:36.180 Yeah.

01:11:36.500 I was looking at those the other day.

01:11:37.960 It's incredible.

01:11:39.160 Every large country in the world, over a million people,

01:11:42.760 since in the last 30 years, the fertility rates are just plummeting.

01:11:46.660 All of them.

01:11:47.560 And they're moving toward wealth.

01:11:49.640 They're not wealthy.

01:11:50.960 They're moving toward wealth.

01:11:52.420 And so, this is a remarkable trend underpinned by energy.

01:11:57.960 Now, there are a lot of people very concerned about this, including China.

01:12:02.740 We, this gets philosophical, we define growth as good.

01:12:07.480 If you're not growing, you're dying.

01:12:09.160 What's, China's not growing in population anymore.

01:12:12.640 And they don't, they don't bring people in like we do in our countries.

01:12:18.220 You know, so their role, they're, they're seeing their population do this.

01:12:22.680 And how are they going to continue to grow?

01:12:26.400 And how's the world going to grow?

01:12:28.580 What we see in those studies is around 2080.

01:12:32.900 That's not very far away.

01:12:35.360 The world peaks at 10 billion people from our 8.2 today.

01:12:38.780 And it doesn't, it doesn't plateau.

01:12:40.940 It plummets back down.

01:12:43.460 Right, right, right.

01:12:44.080 It plummets.

01:12:45.140 Well, so, so you've added another interesting and counterproductive observation.

01:12:50.660 So, even, well, well, even if, even if you were concerned about human impact.

01:12:56.120 Yes.

01:12:56.480 Let's say.

01:12:57.600 If that was your primary concern, was human impact on the biosphere,

01:13:01.480 no matter how that was measured,

01:13:03.620 your logical steps forward would be to make the poor rich as fast as possible,

01:13:07.900 not least, because that is by far the most effective method of population control we've ever invented.

01:13:14.720 As you pointed out, it's absolutely staggering.

01:13:17.240 Step one.

01:13:17.600 In some countries.

01:13:18.480 Yeah, step one.

01:13:19.520 Yes.

01:13:19.940 Well, and so, now I would say, as you've already intimated,

01:13:23.980 that the fact that fertility rates have declined so precipitously

01:13:28.040 is going to become a problem in and of itself.

01:13:30.560 But we can leave that aside.

01:13:31.760 We can especially leave that aside if we're concerned about human impact on the planet,

01:13:35.580 because we would recognize that as a net good.

01:13:38.080 So, even if you're one of these people who, you know, derived from the club of Rome,

01:13:42.420 think there are far too many people on the planet,

01:13:44.580 the obvious cure for that is to make everybody rich because they stop having babies.

01:13:48.920 So, it's another reason that I can't, like,

01:13:51.240 I can't understand the pervasive nature of the insistence,

01:13:56.200 for example, that we have to de-industrialize

01:13:58.680 to serve the planet's interests most appropriately.

01:14:01.660 And then we can look at practical examples like Germany,

01:14:05.800 where this is starting to be implemented,

01:14:09.180 and all the consequences appear to be negative,

01:14:12.820 including the fact, so Germany,

01:14:14.280 and I think I have these figures about right,

01:14:18.080 energy is now five times as expensive in Germany as it needs to be.

01:14:21.920 But it's also far dirtier.

01:14:23.740 It's more unreliable, and it's more dependent on dictators to provide.

01:14:28.220 Like, in whose interest, even hypothetical, is any of that?

01:14:33.920 It isn't serving the green agenda in the least.

01:14:36.460 Quite the contrary.

01:14:38.000 Well, maybe it's in the interest of, you use the word dictators, autocrats.

01:14:42.500 Yeah, well, short term.

01:14:45.560 Okay, it keeps me elected.

01:14:48.020 Yeah, well, it seems to.

01:14:49.180 It seems to be keeping people elected in people like, places like Germany.

01:14:52.640 Of course, all the farmers are having a short circuit in Germany at the moment,

01:14:55.700 and that didn't go so well for the Dutch authorities, obviously.

01:14:59.400 Yellow vests in France.

01:15:00.700 You had the truckers in Canada.

01:15:02.400 I mean, the people are starting to speak,

01:15:05.420 and they're starting to speak wisely.

01:15:07.900 People, I think you and I both believe that

01:15:10.380 the markets are very wise and very smart.

01:15:13.440 You know, they get it.

01:15:15.160 People, we understand.

01:15:16.980 The markets understand these things.

01:15:18.520 It may not be quite as quick as some would like,

01:15:20.960 but your fundamental question,

01:15:23.560 and I think you're not confused,

01:15:25.940 because I don't think you're confused about too much, personally.

01:15:28.940 But your fundamental question is a very real one.

01:15:30.920 How can we make energy more expensive?

01:15:33.620 We're starting to de-industrialize.

01:15:36.300 We're seeing companies and industries leave.

01:15:40.100 We're increasing the cost and the burden on the poorest amongst us.

01:15:44.200 That's regressive in economic terms.

01:15:47.020 It doesn't help the environment,

01:15:48.300 because the rich can actually afford to buy these things from other places,

01:15:52.360 import energy.

01:15:54.080 And again, another quick fact.

01:15:55.600 In the U.S., only 11 states produce more energy than they consume.

01:16:00.060 39 states consume more than they produce, Jordan, and buy a lot.

01:16:04.040 And the big ones, New York and California,

01:16:05.940 they're importing their energy.

01:16:07.780 Well, that's great as long as you can,

01:16:09.320 but ask Germany how that went when the Russian gas stopped.

01:16:13.340 It didn't go well.

01:16:14.540 And so we have to start to conflate these things

01:16:19.400 in what I lovingly call the radical middle

01:16:21.300 and have for a couple decades.

01:16:23.800 We got to put these in there,

01:16:25.240 and there's nothing glamorous about the radical middle.

01:16:28.520 It's brutal.

01:16:29.180 There's data, and there's compromise,

01:16:31.680 and I'm not always right.

01:16:33.180 But it's where the big challenges lie,

01:16:34.920 and that middle is between energy, the economy, and the environment.

01:16:38.300 How do those play together so that we can solve these things for real?

01:16:42.460 Let our young people have the complexity of these.

01:16:45.540 They're very smart.

01:16:47.300 But if we keep telling it's binary,

01:16:49.140 clean and dirty, good, bad, believer, denier,

01:16:51.940 they're not going to have the tools.

01:16:53.680 They're just going to think they're evil and they're good.

01:16:55.800 It's kind of a bizarre story.

01:16:58.440 And most of the people, and I speak to a lot of people,

01:17:01.340 when they hear these things,

01:17:02.660 they come strongly saying,

01:17:05.180 I want to be in there.

01:17:06.340 I didn't get it.

01:17:07.120 I hadn't learned all that.

01:17:07.960 I hadn't heard it.

01:17:08.320 I want to be part of that complex equation

01:17:11.440 and help to address these things for real.

01:17:13.980 So what you're doing matters a lot, communicating.

01:17:17.140 Well, some of what's happening with,

01:17:19.360 well, so imagine the attraction of that binary system is twofold.

01:17:23.920 Okay, so the first is that it's something,

01:17:28.160 it's very straightforward and simple.

01:17:31.240 Industrialization has environmental costs.

01:17:33.420 Therefore, industrialization is the problem.

01:17:36.380 Okay, so once you've identified that,

01:17:38.120 you don't have to think anymore.

01:17:39.320 You just have to be against industrialization.

01:17:41.700 So that solves a lot of technical problems.

01:17:44.220 And that reduces entropy.

01:17:46.540 It reduces complexity, at least in the short term.

01:17:49.100 But then there's an additional psychological component

01:17:52.300 that's unbelievably powerful.

01:17:54.520 And I think the radicals,

01:17:56.380 particularly on the environmental left,

01:17:58.100 have been very good at falling prey and capitalizing,

01:18:02.560 falling prey to and capitalizing on this.

01:18:04.460 So the developmental psychologist,

01:18:06.740 Jean Piaget, pointed out that

01:18:08.360 in a fairly large subset of adolescents,

01:18:12.820 those who are maybe higher along,

01:18:16.620 further along the cognitive distribution,

01:18:18.600 so a little bit of intellectual horsepower to spare,

01:18:21.660 they go through what he described

01:18:23.140 as a messianic phase in late adolescence.

01:18:27.060 And what that would mean anthropologically

01:18:29.360 is that there's going to be a subset of bright kids

01:18:32.640 who they've removed themselves

01:18:36.300 from dependency on their parents.

01:18:38.420 They've socialized themselves into the peer group,

01:18:41.140 but now they're looking to take their place

01:18:42.940 in the broader world,

01:18:45.240 conceptually and practically.

01:18:47.000 And there's a philosophical element to that.

01:18:48.980 And the philosophical element,

01:18:50.240 and this is the messianic part,

01:18:51.540 is that they want to do,

01:18:53.660 they want to act ethically

01:18:55.040 and do well at the highest level of striving.

01:18:58.880 And so what we're offering them in our culture

01:19:01.260 is the chance to play hero

01:19:04.160 on the environmental preservation front.

01:19:06.500 And so that satisfies that need,

01:19:10.340 which is a real need,

01:19:11.540 but it also does it in a very false way,

01:19:14.160 because it,

01:19:14.680 and this is one of its attractions,

01:19:16.000 just like you can oversimplify

01:19:17.820 the industrialization issue,

01:19:19.740 industrialization is bad,

01:19:21.460 and all human impact on the planet

01:19:23.700 is to be eschewed.

01:19:24.820 You can simplify the moral issue,

01:19:26.540 which is now if you're on the side of the planet,

01:19:29.240 you're good,

01:19:30.440 and your moral duty has been done.

01:19:32.340 Now that's absurd,

01:19:33.260 but the thing is,

01:19:34.300 is that people,

01:19:35.860 let's say like you,

01:19:37.100 who are promoting the radical middle,

01:19:40.100 haven't elucidated a vision

01:19:43.080 that's as compelling on the psychological side

01:19:46.500 with regards to the fulfillment

01:19:47.960 of that deep metaphysical need

01:19:50.080 as the environmentalists

01:19:51.840 who offer young people

01:19:54.140 the opportunity to be planetary saviors

01:19:56.660 just by waving around a placard.

01:19:58.940 And this is a real problem,

01:20:00.240 and it speaks to problems

01:20:01.780 like the attitude in Germany

01:20:04.260 that's anti-nuclear.

01:20:05.520 You know,

01:20:05.760 your sense is,

01:20:06.820 well,

01:20:06.920 that's irrational,

01:20:07.760 and look at France,

01:20:09.260 from whom the Germans import energy,

01:20:11.680 by the way,

01:20:12.360 who've managed a nuclear transition brilliantly

01:20:14.880 and have energy to spare

01:20:16.760 and at a low cost.

01:20:18.240 Like,

01:20:18.540 there's no logical reason there,

01:20:20.280 but these so-called illogical reasons,

01:20:22.660 they're real reasons,

01:20:23.640 and they're real impediments.

01:20:24.960 And,

01:20:25.600 you know,

01:20:25.920 one of the things

01:20:26.700 I do believe

01:20:27.720 that people found attractive

01:20:29.420 about your talk

01:20:30.480 and about the sort of things

01:20:31.920 that, say,

01:20:32.440 Bjorn Lomburg are doing

01:20:33.540 is that a new sort of standard

01:20:35.820 is being waived,

01:20:36.880 which is something like,

01:20:38.160 well,

01:20:38.300 here's a better moral vision.

01:20:40.620 How about we make everybody

01:20:42.280 who's dirt poor rich

01:20:44.220 as fast as we possibly can,

01:20:47.020 and then we can have our cake

01:20:48.400 and eat it too.

01:20:49.040 We can serve the poor,

01:20:50.240 which is like a classic

01:20:51.460 left-wing orientation.

01:20:53.240 And,

01:20:53.460 like,

01:20:53.820 I've been shocked,

01:20:54.780 literally,

01:20:55.460 I've been shocked to the degree

01:20:56.780 that the radical leftists

01:20:58.380 will sacrifice the poor

01:20:59.600 to the planet.

01:21:00.940 Because I wondered,

01:21:01.760 when push came to shove,

01:21:02.980 because there's two competing

01:21:04.160 tendencies there,

01:21:05.120 right?

01:21:05.340 There's the green environmental tendency,

01:21:07.620 fair enough,

01:21:08.300 but there's the,

01:21:09.420 well,

01:21:09.600 everything should be done

01:21:10.660 in service of the poor tendency,

01:21:12.500 and what we've seen

01:21:13.560 time and again

01:21:14.280 in the UK

01:21:14.880 and Germany

01:21:15.500 and Canada,

01:21:16.500 well,

01:21:16.660 and around the world,

01:21:17.440 is that

01:21:17.800 if we had to choose

01:21:19.420 between hypothetically

01:21:20.860 serving the planet

01:21:21.920 and helping the poor,

01:21:24.040 we'll pick serving the planet

01:21:25.280 in the nanosecond

01:21:26.660 and to hell with the poor.

01:21:28.160 And that's,

01:21:28.720 that's not a vision

01:21:29.640 that a lot of people

01:21:30.520 find particularly attractive.

01:21:32.120 I think you are offering

01:21:33.440 an alternative to that.

01:21:34.800 Yeah,

01:21:35.180 yeah,

01:21:35.780 and I'll be extreme

01:21:37.080 in this statement,

01:21:38.000 but almost the elites

01:21:39.560 have flipped.

01:21:41.840 What used to be,

01:21:43.400 Republicans in the U.S.

01:21:44.760 used to be sort of

01:21:45.640 elite,

01:21:47.020 if you will,

01:21:48.220 and now they're working,

01:21:49.320 I think,

01:21:49.560 more with

01:21:50.140 that next class

01:21:52.040 than,

01:21:53.260 than the Democrats are,

01:21:54.300 the elite.

01:21:54.740 It's,

01:21:55.420 it's almost flipped

01:21:56.440 in a strange way,

01:21:57.140 and again,

01:21:57.460 that's an extreme characterization.

01:21:59.080 Within those bodies,

01:22:00.200 we have everyone.

01:22:01.460 Okay,

01:22:01.900 the whole spectrum.

01:22:03.340 But I,

01:22:03.860 I think

01:22:04.420 you can have your cake

01:22:07.120 and eat it too

01:22:08.080 as long as

01:22:09.660 you don't try to eat

01:22:11.500 the whole cake.

01:22:13.300 Right,

01:22:13.720 okay.

01:22:14.060 Well,

01:22:14.180 that's the net zero problem.

01:22:15.800 Yes.

01:22:16.240 It's like,

01:22:16.520 no,

01:22:17.100 zero,

01:22:18.260 like,

01:22:18.580 no,

01:22:19.260 net zero,

01:22:20.240 that's the wrong measure.

01:22:22.080 Like,

01:22:22.460 you can,

01:22:22.860 you can put that

01:22:23.880 in your mind

01:22:24.360 and you can remember

01:22:25.100 it in a second.

01:22:26.200 It's a nice cliche.

01:22:27.560 But zero,

01:22:28.660 it's like,

01:22:29.540 you're not thinking

01:22:30.460 when it's zero.

01:22:31.680 Right.

01:22:32.140 Well,

01:22:32.320 you know,

01:22:32.600 it turns out

01:22:33.240 when that came,

01:22:34.420 when that report

01:22:35.100 came out of the IEA

01:22:36.060 a couple summers ago,

01:22:37.820 I speak to a lot of boards

01:22:39.160 and sit on several.

01:22:41.040 I got a call

01:22:41.660 from a chair,

01:22:42.260 a CEO,

01:22:42.920 and he said,

01:22:43.200 you got to come talk

01:22:43.760 to my board this week.

01:22:45.000 And so I did.

01:22:46.560 I read it.

01:22:47.500 And it was incredible

01:22:49.100 the assumptions

01:22:49.740 that went into that.

01:22:50.580 This was pre-Glasgow.

01:22:52.040 Okay.

01:22:52.660 COP,

01:22:53.400 I think it was 26

01:22:54.260 in Glasgow.

01:22:57.140 They set up a framework

01:22:58.480 in which

01:22:59.080 there were a lot

01:23:00.520 of crazy assumptions.

01:23:02.400 But the craziest

01:23:03.100 amongst them,

01:23:04.060 Jordan,

01:23:04.340 was this,

01:23:05.720 that the energy consumption

01:23:07.200 in the world

01:23:08.020 would start to go down

01:23:10.740 two years later,

01:23:12.500 which is today.

01:23:14.640 Down.

01:23:15.460 Aggregate energy consumption

01:23:16.560 in the world,

01:23:17.280 down,

01:23:17.860 in order to achieve

01:23:18.880 that net zero.

01:23:20.480 And there were a lot

01:23:21.000 of other things.

01:23:22.680 And I looked at that

01:23:23.920 and I made the figures

01:23:25.320 and I showed this wedge

01:23:26.640 between,

01:23:27.580 you know,

01:23:28.880 GDP and human population

01:23:30.840 before we peak

01:23:31.780 in 2080,

01:23:32.800 et cetera.

01:23:33.920 That's literally impossible.

01:23:36.280 Okay.

01:23:37.160 It won't go down.

01:23:38.620 Now we can help

01:23:39.440 lower the per capita

01:23:41.340 consumption

01:23:42.000 and therefore

01:23:43.600 start to help things.

01:23:45.360 Nobody challenged it.

01:23:46.340 It became a roadmap

01:23:47.140 for COP26.

01:23:48.460 And I was with Dan Yergin.

01:23:49.560 He was on our PBS show

01:23:50.780 and he said,

01:23:51.520 Scott,

01:23:51.760 you have to write this up.

01:23:53.080 So I put out

01:23:53.820 a little piece called

01:23:54.640 The Road to Glasgow

01:23:55.340 is Paved with Bad

01:23:56.300 Assumptions.

01:23:57.280 You know,

01:23:57.660 and it was.

01:23:59.120 But we used it

01:24:00.020 as a roadmap.

01:24:01.240 I think this is

01:24:01.940 the single,

01:24:02.920 one of the single

01:24:03.740 more

01:24:04.380 destructive almost,

01:24:08.120 too strong of a word,

01:24:08.800 but destructive

01:24:09.420 constructs

01:24:10.500 that we're dealing

01:24:11.640 with now

01:24:12.300 is this concept

01:24:13.500 of net zero.

01:24:14.380 Now,

01:24:14.920 admittedly,

01:24:15.500 net means

01:24:16.040 if you can capture

01:24:17.380 some out of the

01:24:18.200 air and atmosphere,

01:24:19.560 that's part of net.

01:24:20.960 So I could still emit

01:24:21.900 as long as I'm offsetting

01:24:23.440 by some level of capture.

01:24:24.940 Net zero,

01:24:25.760 not absolute zero.

01:24:26.920 Important distinction.

01:24:28.180 But we're not.

01:24:28.940 Net zero is

01:24:29.680 kind of this weird

01:24:31.480 target

01:24:32.300 that I think

01:24:33.280 a lot of people

01:24:34.280 have rallied around.

01:24:35.060 We've got to

01:24:35.800 begin to think

01:24:36.660 beyond that

01:24:37.280 and recognize,

01:24:39.060 you know,

01:24:39.320 use an analogy.

01:24:40.940 I want to run a marathon.

01:24:42.680 You know,

01:24:43.100 I'm 64 years old.

01:24:44.280 I want to run it

01:24:44.860 in four hours,

01:24:45.860 which I'll never do,

01:24:47.140 but that's my goal.

01:24:48.980 Let's say I run it

01:24:49.940 in four and a half hours,

01:24:51.140 but I finish it.

01:24:53.240 I achieved something big.

01:24:55.940 You know,

01:24:56.460 it wasn't four hours.

01:24:57.920 It was four and a half hours.

01:24:59.440 Maybe net 40 is okay.

01:25:01.720 Or net 50.

01:25:02.860 Or net 30.

01:25:04.440 You know,

01:25:04.640 we've brought down,

01:25:06.560 but we haven't imploded

01:25:08.040 the economic health

01:25:09.960 and well-being

01:25:10.620 of not just

01:25:11.640 the poorest among us,

01:25:12.540 but the whole

01:25:13.260 global economy,

01:25:14.700 which is starting to happen.

01:25:16.520 Because if we do that,

01:25:18.400 the environment's

01:25:20.120 going to get crushed.

01:25:22.360 You know,

01:25:22.740 you start...

01:25:23.220 It's going to be irrelevant

01:25:23.900 so fast that...

01:25:25.840 Look what Germany did.

01:25:26.960 You can't even imagine it.

01:25:28.060 It's not hypothetical anymore.

01:25:29.740 Germany consumed more coal.

01:25:31.740 They burned more coal

01:25:32.980 when they needed to.

01:25:34.840 And other economies

01:25:35.940 will do the same thing

01:25:37.140 when push comes to shove.

01:25:38.480 Global leaders,

01:25:39.360 say it again,

01:25:40.380 prioritize energy security

01:25:42.060 over climate security

01:25:43.480 every time.

01:25:45.420 So we've got to...

01:25:46.220 So, young people,

01:25:47.620 you asked a good question.

01:25:48.840 How do you get them

01:25:49.560 away from just that?

01:25:51.080 We have to begin

01:25:51.980 to think away from

01:25:53.040 A, B.

01:25:55.400 Okay?

01:25:56.440 It's not...

01:25:57.260 It's not an A, B linear

01:25:58.800 like that.

01:26:00.540 It's actually A, B, C.

01:26:03.040 You can't jump from A to C

01:26:04.680 just to the environment.

01:26:06.320 There's energy,

01:26:07.160 there's the economy,

01:26:07.960 and there's the environment.

01:26:09.120 And it flows that way.

01:26:11.060 Healthy energy

01:26:11.720 underpins healthy economies.

01:26:13.720 Healthy economies

01:26:14.440 invest in the environment.

01:26:16.480 So the more

01:26:17.220 we can accelerate that,

01:26:18.720 the better.

01:26:19.640 And young people

01:26:20.520 working in there,

01:26:21.580 if you could

01:26:22.060 have two goals,

01:26:23.480 lift the world up

01:26:24.100 from poverty,

01:26:24.800 isn't that amazing?

01:26:25.660 and begin

01:26:27.400 to clean up

01:26:27.900 the environment.

01:26:28.820 Not perfectly,

01:26:30.020 but begin

01:26:30.740 to clean up

01:26:31.180 the environment.

01:26:31.320 But intelligently.

01:26:32.400 Intelligently.

01:26:33.340 Well, the other thing, too,

01:26:35.440 on the environment front,

01:26:36.600 like, it's also

01:26:37.200 not obvious to me

01:26:38.400 at all

01:26:39.300 that the most

01:26:40.660 compelling

01:26:41.600 environmental problem

01:26:43.100 is associated

01:26:44.360 with carbon dioxide.

01:26:45.180 It's not.

01:26:46.260 Well, so, for example,

01:26:47.920 one of my bugbears

01:26:49.120 for a few decades

01:26:50.140 has been

01:26:50.740 the state

01:26:51.880 of the world's

01:26:53.400 fisheries,

01:26:54.160 the oceanic management.

01:26:55.420 Because of all

01:26:57.000 the stupid things

01:26:57.860 we've done

01:26:58.280 in the last 100 years,

01:26:59.320 and we've done

01:26:59.800 many things

01:27:00.300 that weren't stupid,

01:27:01.140 but of all

01:27:01.820 the stupid things

01:27:02.520 we've done,

01:27:03.980 decimating

01:27:04.720 the ocean's fisheries

01:27:06.080 has to rank up

01:27:07.020 there very highly.

01:27:08.380 And, like,

01:27:08.980 the estimates

01:27:09.560 that I've read

01:27:10.280 that I believe

01:27:11.240 to be reasonable,

01:27:12.220 and I'm certainly

01:27:12.800 no extremist

01:27:13.540 in this matter,

01:27:14.220 is that we've

01:27:14.900 depleted, like,

01:27:15.840 99% of the

01:27:17.280 accessible,

01:27:18.120 world's accessible

01:27:18.920 fish stocks.

01:27:20.040 And given that

01:27:20.700 that's a

01:27:21.200 renewable resource

01:27:22.720 that can actually

01:27:23.840 bounce back

01:27:24.540 pretty damn

01:27:25.100 quickly,

01:27:25.660 given how many

01:27:26.260 eggs fish lay,

01:27:28.340 it can bounce

01:27:28.820 back quickly

01:27:29.360 if you leave

01:27:29.840 it the hell alone.

01:27:30.640 It's like,

01:27:31.400 another part

01:27:32.120 of the problem

01:27:32.640 with this

01:27:33.120 unidirectional

01:27:34.000 obsession

01:27:34.760 with climate,

01:27:36.380 apart from

01:27:37.160 its sketchy base

01:27:39.300 in five different

01:27:40.500 ways,

01:27:40.900 is that there

01:27:41.640 are a lot

01:27:41.940 of other

01:27:42.300 environmental

01:27:42.760 problems

01:27:43.260 that we could

01:27:43.840 be addressing

01:27:44.380 that they just

01:27:45.700 get no attention

01:27:46.580 at all.

01:27:47.040 You and I grew

01:27:47.900 up learning

01:27:49.300 about water

01:27:50.480 and land

01:27:50.900 and air.

01:27:51.880 That was the

01:27:52.900 environment we

01:27:53.560 were protecting.

01:27:54.600 Clean water

01:27:55.180 and abundant

01:27:56.860 water,

01:27:57.640 tough problem.

01:27:59.300 Clean soils

01:28:00.300 and land,

01:28:01.680 less land use

01:28:02.660 is good,

01:28:04.300 you know,

01:28:04.600 more with less,

01:28:05.380 and clean air.

01:28:06.200 Not talking

01:28:06.840 atmosphere,

01:28:07.600 air, local air.

01:28:08.740 So, the land,

01:28:10.180 the air,

01:28:10.320 and the water

01:28:10.780 are three of the

01:28:11.640 four components

01:28:12.320 of the environment

01:28:13.120 and the atmosphere

01:28:13.880 is a fourth.

01:28:15.520 Those are

01:28:16.380 not just

01:28:17.800 interchangeable,

01:28:18.680 they're interconnected.

01:28:20.740 So, if I start

01:28:21.880 to put,

01:28:23.720 for example,

01:28:24.360 in place

01:28:25.020 something that

01:28:26.160 has no emissions

01:28:27.160 but consumes

01:28:28.880 a lot of the

01:28:29.720 Earth's land,

01:28:31.640 solar farm,

01:28:33.460 okay,

01:28:34.260 large wind farms,

01:28:35.180 I just drove

01:28:35.920 through the Texas

01:28:36.460 panhandle recently,

01:28:37.420 you can't do it

01:28:38.820 without seeing

01:28:39.300 wind turbines.

01:28:40.320 Doesn't consume

01:28:40.920 all the land

01:28:41.360 but they're everywhere.

01:28:42.320 Low-density forms

01:28:43.460 of energy

01:28:43.800 use a lot

01:28:44.480 of land

01:28:46.000 to collect energy

01:28:47.660 so that it can

01:28:48.860 get it dense enough

01:28:50.220 and abundant enough

01:28:51.060 for us to use.

01:28:52.900 I go beyond that

01:28:53.980 and say

01:28:54.400 to get to

01:28:55.700 those wind turbines

01:28:57.840 which are

01:28:58.440 composites

01:28:59.180 and copper

01:28:59.800 and lots of other

01:29:00.620 precious resources

01:29:01.660 and solar panels

01:29:03.060 which have lots

01:29:03.860 of metals in them

01:29:05.160 and other

01:29:06.140 polysilicates,

01:29:08.460 batteries

01:29:09.140 to back them up,

01:29:10.320 extreme amount

01:29:11.220 of metals

01:29:11.760 just the amount

01:29:12.800 of mining

01:29:13.360 and look,

01:29:14.500 I'm a geologist.

01:29:15.500 I don't mind

01:29:15.940 mining.

01:29:17.440 Doesn't bug me

01:29:18.280 because I know

01:29:19.440 we mine everything

01:29:20.080 we don't grow

01:29:20.680 but I can also

01:29:21.960 tell you

01:29:22.340 the amount

01:29:22.800 of mining

01:29:23.260 that it's going

01:29:23.800 to take

01:29:24.280 to produce

01:29:25.100 enough

01:29:25.420 energy collectors

01:29:26.900 in that system

01:29:29.380 is incredible.

01:29:30.700 So we're talking

01:29:31.660 about not just

01:29:32.580 land but water,

01:29:34.220 mining.

01:29:35.140 I've asked audiences

01:29:36.640 every time I speak,

01:29:37.580 Jordan,

01:29:37.800 I speak to about

01:29:38.400 20,000,

01:29:38.740 30,000 people

01:29:39.540 live a year.

01:29:40.160 How many

01:29:40.860 think mining

01:29:41.280 is green

01:29:41.680 and never

01:29:42.780 has a hand

01:29:43.420 gone up?

01:29:44.080 Never.

01:29:45.360 Because it's not.

01:29:46.740 You know,

01:29:47.320 we can make it

01:29:48.580 better but it's

01:29:49.220 not green.

01:29:50.900 So when you

01:29:51.360 start to think

01:29:51.920 about the earth

01:29:52.960 in that holistic

01:29:54.020 sense with climate

01:29:55.840 being one component

01:29:57.100 of it,

01:29:57.460 this is another

01:29:58.020 thing we have

01:29:58.600 to balance

01:29:59.160 the trade-offs

01:30:00.000 between the land,

01:30:01.120 the air,

01:30:01.400 the water,

01:30:01.780 and the atmosphere.

01:30:02.840 And it's messy.

01:30:04.420 It's not perfect.

01:30:05.680 We have to get

01:30:07.740 away from this

01:30:08.320 idea of

01:30:09.340 nirvana

01:30:10.080 perfection

01:30:11.300 if we could

01:30:12.740 just get rid

01:30:13.460 of CO2

01:30:14.160 in the atmosphere.

01:30:15.580 No,

01:30:16.560 it won't go

01:30:17.200 that way.

01:30:18.060 So one of

01:30:19.340 the reasons

01:30:19.800 that we,

01:30:20.900 so at this

01:30:21.520 art conference

01:30:22.140 we had a lot

01:30:22.820 of music

01:30:23.420 and there

01:30:24.320 was a reason

01:30:25.060 for that.

01:30:25.560 I mean,

01:30:25.760 we wanted

01:30:26.100 to make

01:30:26.420 the conference

01:30:27.080 beautiful

01:30:28.000 and we wanted

01:30:28.620 to give people

01:30:29.320 a breather

01:30:29.920 from purely

01:30:31.280 semantic

01:30:31.860 discussion.

01:30:32.560 But there's

01:30:33.600 another reason

01:30:34.640 that's deeper

01:30:35.320 than that

01:30:35.900 and it has

01:30:36.620 to do

01:30:36.940 with the

01:30:37.300 meaning of

01:30:37.760 music per se.

01:30:39.540 You know,

01:30:39.760 you talk about

01:30:40.520 trade-offs

01:30:41.200 but there's

01:30:42.160 actually a

01:30:42.720 positive way

01:30:44.220 of describing

01:30:46.080 what you're

01:30:46.680 getting at

01:30:47.340 with regard

01:30:48.280 to trade-offs.

01:30:49.060 So what you

01:30:49.880 see in music

01:30:50.580 is a harmony

01:30:52.280 between competing

01:30:53.260 forces.

01:30:54.760 And the

01:30:55.480 beauty of music

01:30:56.580 is the balance

01:30:57.600 of that

01:30:58.240 cooperation

01:30:59.320 and competition

01:31:00.180 across some

01:31:00.880 span of time,

01:31:01.720 right?

01:31:01.860 It's a melody

01:31:03.540 of interweaving

01:31:04.460 patterns.

01:31:05.660 And you know

01:31:06.240 that if you're

01:31:07.500 somewhere where

01:31:08.140 things are going

01:31:08.860 well,

01:31:09.260 that there are

01:31:09.660 many competing

01:31:10.460 forces that are

01:31:11.340 harmoniously balanced

01:31:12.460 and there's an

01:31:13.100 intrinsic beauty

01:31:13.860 to that.

01:31:14.460 And when you

01:31:15.380 talk about

01:31:15.900 trade-offs,

01:31:17.080 there's an

01:31:18.600 implicit pessimism

01:31:19.820 in it that

01:31:20.360 there's going

01:31:21.540 to be costs.

01:31:22.860 But there's

01:31:23.640 another view

01:31:24.340 that we tried

01:31:25.440 to put forward

01:31:26.080 in our conference,

01:31:27.480 which is that

01:31:27.940 if we get

01:31:28.380 the balance

01:31:29.120 between

01:31:29.780 the multiple

01:31:31.600 requirements

01:31:33.460 for life

01:31:34.300 optimized,

01:31:35.860 that there's

01:31:36.240 an intrinsic

01:31:36.740 beauty in that

01:31:37.640 and that's

01:31:38.120 the right

01:31:38.540 target.

01:31:39.720 And so it's

01:31:40.160 not exactly

01:31:40.800 trade-off.

01:31:41.860 It's not

01:31:42.440 trade-off.

01:31:43.260 It's multidimensional

01:31:45.080 optimization.

01:31:46.720 Now, it's more

01:31:47.260 complex, as you

01:31:48.160 said, because

01:31:48.640 you can't,

01:31:49.420 because it's

01:31:49.940 multidimensional,

01:31:50.880 you can't say

01:31:51.600 that if we get

01:31:52.120 to 100%

01:31:53.100 on axis

01:31:54.160 A, we've

01:31:55.360 now established

01:31:56.040 the kingdom

01:31:56.520 of God.

01:31:57.240 It's like,

01:31:57.960 well, it's

01:31:58.360 70% on

01:31:59.480 axis A

01:32:00.100 and 65%

01:32:01.700 on axis B.

01:32:02.900 But there is

01:32:03.580 a genuine

01:32:04.180 harmony and

01:32:05.060 goal there.

01:32:05.920 Yes.

01:32:06.360 And that's,

01:32:07.660 see, that's

01:32:08.300 the kind of

01:32:08.760 higher-order

01:32:09.380 goal that

01:32:10.080 positively

01:32:10.780 posited

01:32:11.500 could be

01:32:12.560 attractive to

01:32:13.640 the young

01:32:14.300 people, for

01:32:14.860 example,

01:32:15.440 who become

01:32:15.840 hyper-concerned

01:32:16.760 morally about

01:32:17.420 the planet.

01:32:18.140 Absolutely.

01:32:18.600 Right.

01:32:18.860 And so I know

01:32:19.400 you're being

01:32:19.860 hard-headed when

01:32:20.720 you talk about

01:32:21.360 trade-offs,

01:32:21.880 but if you

01:32:23.960 have a family,

01:32:24.900 you're not

01:32:25.300 trading off

01:32:26.160 exactly between

01:32:27.020 the kids.

01:32:27.620 Yeah, well,

01:32:27.960 I definitely

01:32:28.540 love one of

01:32:29.140 my four kids

01:32:29.720 better than

01:32:30.080 the other

01:32:30.340 three.

01:32:30.680 I just don't

01:32:31.060 tell them

01:32:31.360 which one.

01:32:32.480 Well, right,

01:32:33.740 right, right,

01:32:35.140 exactly.

01:32:35.900 But I use a

01:32:37.540 ternary diagram

01:32:38.380 for this concept.

01:32:40.000 And in a

01:32:40.340 triangle diagram,

01:32:42.040 everything has

01:32:42.600 to sum.

01:32:43.200 It's 100%

01:32:44.100 on one corner.

01:32:45.960 As I move

01:32:46.420 away from that

01:32:46.960 corner, I'm

01:32:47.780 picking up

01:32:48.220 components of

01:32:48.940 the other

01:32:49.260 thing.

01:32:50.060 But everything

01:32:50.680 sums to 100%.

01:32:51.860 somewhere in

01:32:53.140 there.

01:32:53.740 And the

01:32:54.040 reality is,

01:32:55.700 in the

01:32:56.080 middle somewhere,

01:32:57.260 that radical

01:32:57.780 middle, is a

01:32:58.460 balance between

01:32:59.200 the things we're

01:32:59.760 trying to do.

01:33:00.360 So let's not

01:33:00.900 call it a

01:33:01.400 trade-off.

01:33:02.240 We're not

01:33:02.660 giving up

01:33:03.180 one, we're

01:33:03.700 balancing

01:33:04.260 them, good

01:33:04.820 word that

01:33:05.280 you use

01:33:05.760 there, at

01:33:06.580 very powerful.

01:33:07.460 Harmonizing,

01:33:08.060 yeah.

01:33:08.280 So your

01:33:08.720 wavelength,

01:33:10.480 okay, so I'm

01:33:11.000 going to take

01:33:11.300 your music, I

01:33:11.920 got musicians

01:33:12.500 for kids, but

01:33:13.780 those are just

01:33:14.220 wavelengths in

01:33:14.820 science.

01:33:15.320 So those are

01:33:15.940 wavelengths of

01:33:16.560 different amplitudes

01:33:17.600 and different

01:33:18.660 wavelengths.

01:33:20.720 And so the

01:33:21.440 big bass wave

01:33:22.300 comes in and

01:33:23.240 the treble

01:33:24.140 wave and a

01:33:25.160 loud and a

01:33:26.000 soft, but they

01:33:28.080 can sound

01:33:28.820 beautiful together

01:33:29.820 when that music

01:33:30.880 is made in that

01:33:31.800 way.

01:33:32.280 We've talked

01:33:32.980 about the

01:33:33.460 wavelengths of

01:33:34.340 CO2 coming

01:33:36.120 and going, of

01:33:36.820 ice coming and

01:33:37.800 going.

01:33:38.520 Nature produces a

01:33:40.000 lot of things that

01:33:41.440 have those embedded

01:33:42.420 cycles or waves,

01:33:43.880 Jordan.

01:33:44.660 That's how

01:33:45.160 science of the

01:33:46.020 earth works.

01:33:47.340 And we can

01:33:47.820 study and measure

01:33:48.560 it just like

01:33:49.160 music.

01:33:50.100 And so finding

01:33:51.940 that beautiful

01:33:52.760 harmony, and by

01:33:53.540 the way, the

01:33:53.880 music was

01:33:54.280 beautiful, I

01:33:54.800 stayed on the

01:33:55.240 breaks and

01:33:55.640 filmed those

01:33:56.260 musicians, they

01:33:57.380 were just

01:33:57.740 phenomenal, is

01:34:00.780 the goal.

01:34:02.680 Otherwise, you

01:34:03.540 end up with a

01:34:04.020 cacophony of

01:34:04.640 sounds that are

01:34:05.240 just, they're

01:34:06.580 an irritant to

01:34:07.580 hear, right, when

01:34:08.820 you truly don't

01:34:10.020 get things right or

01:34:10.740 something is just

01:34:11.540 out of tune.

01:34:12.780 And you can

01:34:13.340 hear that pitch

01:34:14.940 difference, you

01:34:16.340 know, it's like,

01:34:16.960 oh, you know.

01:34:18.260 Well, we have an

01:34:19.140 instinct, we have

01:34:19.980 an instinct for

01:34:20.780 that balance, right,

01:34:21.760 that harmonious

01:34:22.480 balance.

01:34:22.980 And it's also a

01:34:24.040 good place, maybe,

01:34:25.580 and this is a good

01:34:26.120 place to close this

01:34:27.020 part of the

01:34:27.420 discussion, this is

01:34:28.420 also why it's so

01:34:29.960 important to rely

01:34:31.700 on bottom-up

01:34:32.740 information propagation

01:34:33.900 of the sorts that

01:34:35.080 can be provided by

01:34:36.040 markets.

01:34:36.720 It's like, so, our

01:34:38.520 hypothesis is, well,

01:34:39.900 what we're aiming at

01:34:40.860 now is a target that

01:34:42.000 has to be specified

01:34:42.980 multidimensionally.

01:34:44.140 It can't be reduced

01:34:44.940 to any given

01:34:45.500 dimension.

01:34:46.260 It has to be

01:34:46.720 specified multidimensionally.

01:34:48.460 Now, that makes it

01:34:49.360 complex, so where is

01:34:50.460 that target?

01:34:51.160 And the first answer

01:34:52.580 is, well, we don't

01:34:53.240 exactly know.

01:34:54.600 And the second answer

01:34:55.540 is, well, we can take

01:34:56.840 hints from bottom-up

01:34:58.020 markets because they're

01:34:59.120 the most intelligent

01:35:00.040 computational devices

01:35:01.280 we have.

01:35:02.280 They're closest to the

01:35:03.500 reality of the

01:35:04.680 environment because

01:35:05.620 they're made of

01:35:06.240 millions of people

01:35:07.100 going about their

01:35:08.020 business in direct

01:35:09.360 contact with their

01:35:10.240 local environments,

01:35:10.960 and we can allow

01:35:12.260 those signals to

01:35:13.340 propagate, and in

01:35:14.780 that is some

01:35:15.360 indication about what

01:35:16.340 the appropriate

01:35:16.960 harmony might be.

01:35:17.980 So, we see that

01:35:19.260 disturbed, for example,

01:35:20.420 in Germany because

01:35:21.380 the farmers have

01:35:22.520 decided that the

01:35:24.280 dimensionality of the

01:35:26.800 solution is

01:35:27.420 inappropriate in

01:35:28.240 relationship to what

01:35:29.100 they need, and

01:35:30.040 they're throwing a

01:35:30.780 spanner into the

01:35:31.980 works, and that's

01:35:34.220 inevitable.

01:35:35.560 And so, well, partly

01:35:38.760 what we've been trying

01:35:39.600 to do with the ARC is

01:35:41.700 to specify a little bit

01:35:44.240 more explicitly what

01:35:45.340 that multidimensional

01:35:46.380 landscape might be,

01:35:48.140 right?

01:35:48.440 And then to set that as

01:35:49.960 a target that people

01:35:50.940 could strive towards

01:35:52.220 morally.

01:35:53.660 Now, it's complicated,

01:35:54.700 so it's difficult to

01:35:55.600 package as a story, but

01:35:56.960 it does seem to me

01:35:58.460 that, and there isn't

01:35:59.580 anything you said today,

01:36:00.680 I think, that

01:36:01.320 contradicts this, is

01:36:02.200 there's no reason to

01:36:03.460 assume that we

01:36:05.340 couldn't collectively

01:36:06.280 set our minds to

01:36:07.680 the amelioration of

01:36:09.640 absolute privation

01:36:11.000 through appropriate

01:36:12.560 energy provision in a

01:36:14.660 manner that would

01:36:15.640 radically increase

01:36:16.920 medium-to-long-term

01:36:18.060 sustainability of the

01:36:19.380 whole project, right?

01:36:20.360 Right, I agree with

01:36:21.140 that.

01:36:21.500 That's not a pie-in-the-sky

01:36:23.040 notion.

01:36:24.340 No, I published a

01:36:25.160 piece earlier this year

01:36:26.540 which I titled

01:36:27.320 Net Zero Poverty.

01:36:29.820 Right, right, right.

01:36:31.180 And the editor changed

01:36:33.020 the title, as they

01:36:33.920 do, but that's the

01:36:35.960 concept, is to drive

01:36:39.200 without that, nothing

01:36:40.980 else will work, Jordan.

01:36:43.200 Nothing else works.

01:36:44.960 Nothing else works.

01:36:45.900 We have to strive for

01:36:47.800 that.

01:36:48.100 We, the collective, have

01:36:49.540 to strive for that.

01:36:51.600 And the most important

01:36:52.820 dimension, and we

01:36:54.560 geoscientists, geologists

01:36:55.900 deal with this all the

01:36:56.800 time, not that I can

01:36:57.780 truly understand it, but

01:37:00.180 probably have studied it

01:37:01.060 more, let's just say

01:37:01.840 that, is the dimension

01:37:02.680 of time.

01:37:04.120 And so we plot all

01:37:05.080 these things, but that

01:37:06.880 time dimension is so

01:37:09.260 vital because if I'm

01:37:12.620 struggling to feed my

01:37:14.060 family, I don't have

01:37:15.780 20 years.

01:37:17.080 I don't have a year.

01:37:18.160 I have now.

01:37:19.980 And yes, I can think in

01:37:21.360 longer terms because I'm

01:37:22.780 wealthy, but it doesn't

01:37:25.040 mean I'm going to act in

01:37:26.120 longer terms.

01:37:26.820 And we see this propagated

01:37:29.080 over and over.

01:37:30.880 It's not intentional

01:37:32.080 hypocrisy, but it's

01:37:35.280 apparent hypocrisy in

01:37:37.400 what our leaders are

01:37:38.840 saying and what they

01:37:39.740 themselves are doing in

01:37:42.680 their own personal

01:37:43.460 lives.

01:37:44.800 And people pick up on

01:37:46.700 this.

01:37:47.060 They say, look, don't

01:37:48.920 tell me what to do if

01:37:50.440 you're not willing to do

01:37:51.640 it in your own life.

01:37:53.260 And so how do we get

01:37:57.300 the market, the whole

01:37:59.920 market engaged?

01:38:01.000 And I have to believe

01:38:02.080 that the Greta Thunbergs

01:38:03.900 of the world, and she's

01:38:04.940 in her powerful voice,

01:38:07.080 could help carry this

01:38:09.600 story.

01:38:10.240 I use her as a metaphor,

01:38:13.120 a simile for the young

01:38:14.540 people could carry this

01:38:16.120 story of poverty and

01:38:17.760 environment together.

01:38:19.680 Okay?

01:38:20.880 The dual challenge, if you

01:38:22.400 will, so I gave a TED

01:38:23.760 talk a couple years ago

01:38:24.940 on this, the dual

01:38:25.660 challenge, and talked a

01:38:29.340 lot about how do we

01:38:30.800 carry that.

01:38:31.480 And so I said to them

01:38:32.920 somewhere in the middle

01:38:33.780 of that talk, and this

01:38:34.740 was the shocker moment,

01:38:36.300 as we were looking at

01:38:37.860 solar panels, wind

01:38:38.700 turbines, and batteries,

01:38:40.100 1,100 students in a

01:38:42.000 room, and I said, I

01:38:44.440 explained where those

01:38:45.600 come from, and I said,

01:38:46.440 there's no renewable

01:38:47.040 energy.

01:38:48.440 Don't hate me, but

01:38:49.420 there's no renewable

01:38:50.100 energy.

01:38:50.440 There's nothing, there's

01:38:51.840 nothing renewable about

01:38:53.060 mining, manufacturing,

01:38:55.440 collecting, wearing out,

01:38:57.000 and dumping, and doing

01:38:57.820 that over and over again.

01:38:58.760 That's not a renewable

01:38:59.680 process.

01:39:01.460 And that, they digested,

01:39:03.120 and a lot of, long line

01:39:04.980 afterwards, but this is,

01:39:06.640 this is this complexity a

01:39:08.180 little bit that they're

01:39:08.920 ready to go for.

01:39:10.560 You know, I've got, my

01:39:11.400 kids range from 33 to 23.

01:39:13.120 They're ready, they're

01:39:14.200 brilliant.

01:39:15.100 You know, they're ready to

01:39:16.260 tackle this challenge, and I

01:39:17.360 know the young people in the

01:39:19.120 world are as well if they

01:39:20.360 can get structured around

01:39:23.120 this.

01:39:23.840 So, at Switch, the not-for-

01:39:25.900 profit I started many years

01:39:27.120 ago, we do something called

01:39:28.140 a case competition.

01:39:30.160 It's universities around the

01:39:31.880 world, teams of four,

01:39:32.900 competing on a case

01:39:34.380 competition on energy

01:39:35.440 poverty.

01:39:36.960 And they're

01:39:37.600 multidisciplinary teams,

01:39:40.000 and they have three weeks

01:39:41.980 to try to lift real

01:39:43.260 countries out of energy

01:39:44.360 poverty.

01:39:45.220 And this year, we gave

01:39:46.100 them a pair of countries to

01:39:47.320 compare and contrast.

01:39:48.220 And it's hard.

01:39:50.240 They keep wanting their,

01:39:51.200 each one has a volunteer

01:39:52.200 mentor, very powerful, and

01:39:53.880 they present in real, there's

01:39:55.580 cash prizes, you know, online

01:39:57.080 presentations, and they're so

01:39:58.780 empowered.

01:39:59.760 But it's so hard, and they're

01:40:01.180 like, there's no answer.

01:40:03.660 Correct.

01:40:05.460 There's a suite of

01:40:06.600 possibilities as you move

01:40:07.980 out into that time future,

01:40:09.640 that time dimension.

01:40:10.960 But you can constrain that in

01:40:13.440 real ways that don't fly off into

01:40:16.460 sort of physics never-never

01:40:17.940 land, if you will.

01:40:19.380 And they come away empowered.

01:40:21.300 I would love, we've done this

01:40:22.660 four years in a row, several

01:40:23.780 thousand students.

01:40:24.720 Let's energize them to build

01:40:26.600 these, this core, C-O-R-P-S,

01:40:29.320 core of young people.

01:40:30.820 And your network is incredible.

01:40:32.920 To begin to take that and run

01:40:34.540 with it.

01:40:35.420 And let old guys like us just,

01:40:37.180 just invest in them and say,

01:40:39.320 run, run, run, go, go, go.

01:40:40.840 How can we help you to address

01:40:43.020 these two issues?

01:40:44.240 That would be powerful.

01:40:45.700 Well, that's an excellent

01:40:46.540 place to stop, and pretty much

01:40:48.300 dead on time.

01:40:49.500 I think I'll probably name this

01:40:51.340 net zero poverty, and we'll do

01:40:53.340 energy and environment, the

01:40:54.740 dual challenge.

01:40:55.880 That seems like a good, yeah,

01:40:57.700 yeah, yeah.

01:40:58.340 And so, well, thank you very

01:40:59.380 much for talking to me today,

01:41:00.860 and to everyone who's listening

01:41:03.360 and watching, and for walking

01:41:05.620 through these problems.

01:41:07.500 It's so interesting, eh?

01:41:08.740 Because to me, when I started to

01:41:11.460 study these problems more

01:41:13.940 deeply, all that it did was

01:41:15.900 make me much more radically

01:41:17.380 optimistic.

01:41:18.700 Because what I discovered was,

01:41:20.460 oh, I see, so the solution to

01:41:22.680 energy and environmental

01:41:24.800 sustainability is the eradication

01:41:27.120 of absolute poverty.

01:41:28.900 Well, that's a good deal.

01:41:30.320 Like, who, why would we be

01:41:32.140 upset about that?

01:41:33.160 That's such, you couldn't

01:41:34.260 possibly imagine a more

01:41:35.700 positive solution to that

01:41:39.600 suite of problems.

01:41:40.920 No more heart-rending

01:41:43.580 privation and the propagation

01:41:46.940 of a much more long-term view

01:41:49.640 of sustainability around the

01:41:51.360 world.

01:41:51.780 Well, that's a damn good deal.

01:41:54.340 So, well, so, I think your

01:41:56.640 talk at ARC, you know, went

01:41:57.880 some ways, and all the work

01:41:59.000 you've done has gone some ways

01:42:00.260 to making that a more real

01:42:02.020 possibility, and we'll hope that

01:42:04.040 that's the direction that

01:42:05.460 prevails as we move forward in

01:42:08.000 this new year.

01:42:09.820 Jordan, it's been a privilege

01:42:10.840 to be on with you, and thanks

01:42:12.240 for the invitation, and thanks

01:42:13.320 for all the work you do.

01:42:15.080 Yeah, my pleasure, my

01:42:16.220 pleasure.

01:42:16.700 So, thank you to everybody

01:42:17.880 watching and listening, and

01:42:19.120 this is the first podcast I've

01:42:21.320 done in the new year, so

01:42:22.320 happy new year to all of you,

01:42:23.760 and thank you to the Daily

01:42:24.780 Wire Plus crew for making

01:42:26.580 this possible.

01:42:27.700 I'm going to continue this

01:42:29.000 conversation on the Daily

01:42:30.740 Wire Plus side.

01:42:32.040 I'm going to talk a little bit

01:42:33.720 about the origin of these

01:42:37.100 ideas, I think that's what

01:42:38.340 we'll delve into, and also

01:42:40.080 where you see them going in

01:42:41.180 the future, practically, and

01:42:42.560 how that might be facilitated

01:42:45.040 by this ARC enterprise, and so

01:42:47.520 for those of you who are

01:42:48.580 inclined, join us on the Daily

01:42:50.060 Wire Plus side, and otherwise,

01:42:53.580 thank you very much for your

01:42:54.580 time and attention today, and

01:42:55.780 thanks again, sir.

01:42:57.380 Very interesting.

01:42:58.920 Thanks.

01:42:59.220 Thanks.

419. A Realistic Conversation About Energy and the Planet ｜ Scott Tinker

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