To my left is Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences and author of Earth, the Operators Manual - great book and a great PBS series. Next is David Titley, retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and professor of practice in our department of meteorology and atmospheric sciences and founding director of the center for solutions for weather and climate risk. To my right is Tom Richard, professor of Agricultural and biological engineering and director of Penn State's institure of energy and the environment. We have Klaus Keller professor of geosciences and director of Penn States center for climate risk management and last but not least Erica Smithwick associate professor of geography and director of Penn State's Center for landscape dynamics. So I think what we'll do is start.. Yeah this one's on! Yeah okay great. Alright, so we're going to get going with the panel discussion. I am going to start off with asking each member of the panel a question that has to do folks with the content of the film and their own expertise and then we will open it up to the audience for question-and-answer and I guess we'll go about 30 minutes or so with the whole thing. 30, 30-40 minutes so let me start with Richard so there is a fair amount of discussion in the movie about the.. Oh I forgot to say who I am. So I am professor Michael Mann i joined appointments in the departments of meteorology and atmospheric science and the Department of geosciences. I direct the Penn State Earth System science center and I am the co-author of a new book with the Washington Post editorial cartoonist tom toles entitled the madhouse effect about climate change and climate change denial. So we're going to start out with Richard, question about ice sheets and sea level rise. There's some discussion of that in the movie and in fact we have a seminar today where we actually had a presentation by Dave Pollard, who is an ice sheet expert here at Penn State talking about you know the likely expected loss of ice from the ice sheets and possible sea level rise in the future and there's still some uncertainty about just how much sea level rise we've committed to. In the movie there was a statement at one point that we've probably already committed to 4 to 6 meters of sea level rise just from the warming that's already taken place and I was hoping Richard you could speak to you know what the current state of play is in that area of science, what the uncertainties are, what the implications are. So thank you. So first, you good people in the back if you're happy standing up, that's great. If you want a seat there's some down front and some on the sides and we'll find your seats so that's great. Sea level rise: large uncertainties. Probably we have not yet committed to the worst and were fairly close to doing it. People are planning for three feet by late in this century. It could be two, it could be four, it could be 20. That sort of distribution if we don't change our ways if we continue to ramp up warming that we're planning for something it could be a little better a little worse or a lot worse keeps coming up over and over and over again. Ultimately it probably comes down to the fact that it's much easier to break things and it is to build them and simply cranking up co2 will not turn the planet into the Garden of Eden because that takes getting a lot of things right but it might break things and so when you look at uncertainties, the louder someone says you're not certain the more worried they probably should be because the distribution is a long tale of bad things where stuff we care about breaks. Thanks Richard that actually leads naturally to a question i had for Klaus which is about climate risk and the distribution of risk and the implications of uncertainty and how that plays into climate risk management which is a topic you study and you direct a center related to that topic as well. Thank you Mike. Good point I think you show at risk is something maybe a little bit deeper in addition to what we speculate so far. Number one is to recognize that by the act of emitting CO2, we trigger new risks and one of the key things is we're moving to a place that in a historically point of view, we've never been before. There was a show about tipping points and you know one way to bring boxes which is on this table: this is the known place. By going towards the edge of the table, we expose ourselves more to risks and so the issue about emitting CO2 triggers new risks. That's number one. And I think the point that, it is easier to break things things than to be just lucky, I think is clearly delirious. There's symmetry and the details of the distribution that hurt you. There's another point in terms of risk management which I like to comment here. The movie's great, has many good ideas. But it is dishonest and focuses on one thing: mitigation, how we have a carbon tax, how we reduce CO2 emissions. It's important to recognize and this has been raised before much of the warming has been baking already. We have a much higher CO2 concentration and basically the climate change for the next 30 40 50 years is pretty independent already of what we've done. Think of like a big tanker that has a big inertia and there is a canoe in front and you can say oh I want to stop and go back, just the inertia drives you over all the things you don't really want to go over. So the issue there is sometimes you also want to brace for impact and make the disasters stall The brings me to the issure of adapting to climate change which is sometimes an a word, something you don't want to talk about because it takes away from mitigation, but it is important because there's the whole discussion about, we have some things that will happen to us and how to adapt. Just from a different perspective. One of the most things checklists in flying is when you're signal on the plane for the engine goes off. The first thing is what's air speed, the next one, fly the plane. Before you start getting into restarting the engine and I think the fly the plane don't fly the stuff that is already committed is an important point that there's obviously nothing could be expanded in a movie like that. Thank you. Thanks Klaus and indeed that that's an important point. As our current director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under Barack Obama is John Holdren who actually has expertise in the area of climate science and environmental science and as he has put it, basically the solution is going to consist of three possible approaches, three possible modes of responding to the threat. There is mitigation, adaptation, and suffering and it's up to us to decide how much of each we can tolerate. I want to continue with the subject of impacts and move on to national security because the movie actually weighs in on this matter with the National Security dimensions of climate change several times. There is a discussion of the military implications of an open Arctic Ocean. There is a discussion of water wars when we have decreasing water resources in mid latitude regions large parts of North America and Eurasia that likely leads to conflict and instability and then ultimately sea level rise as land low-lying island nations disappear as coastal regions disappear then you've got a growing global population competing for less land less food less water that's a prescription for national security and conflict catastrophes. I would like our own resident expert on all of that Dave Titley to weigh in. It was an interesting movie. I don't know if anybody noticed a minute nine the irony alert. So you have this film here then took the clips of fox news that showed you know sean hannity and all those guys you know who owns National Geographic that's james murdoch and rupert murdoch, his dad owns fox so it's gonna be an interesting thanksgiving around that table because... I had dinner with James and it's a you know you get into this what can we do, it's like well you might want to have a conversation with your dad, that could help. But that's not what we're asked to talk about but that was the first irony alert. The other one was sean hannity asking for science. I thought that was actually maybe the funniest funniest quip in the whole thing. For the for the military you know I talked about this in terms of two walks it's a readiness issue and it's a risk issue. Pretty much if you have military force you want to make sure that you're ready to do whatever the President and the Secretary of Defense tells you to do so if you're part of the Department of Defense or senior defense official you need to think through multiple future scenarios. You think of changes in demographics economics political conditions and when I started the Navy's passports on climate change he said well why wouldn't you think of changes you know we call it in military jargon of the physical battle space. Most people here we call the environment but if that's changing don't you want to know about because the American Way of war is we want to fight the away game but we want to do it with a home-field advantage. We don't want to fight here. We send our forces overseas wherever so you better know what's going on. So from just a very simple apolitical view, it's a reddiness issue and then it's already been mentioned by both Richard and Klaus there's some risk involved. And again if you're in the department of defense as as a boss of mine told me, you know we are not paid to think happy thoughts. So you want to think of what that fat tail is. You want to think of those maybe not very likely but pretty significant events and what would you do, how do you hedge, what kind of forces, what kind of structures do you put in place. So the Arctic is as we saw lots of polar bears in there and you know but there's going to be increased human activity that's the part that the security forces care about. These geostrategic threats, Syria was mentioned it's a pretty complicated story but basically climate is one of the links in a very complex cause but it is certainly one of the links in there. And then the way we get our forces ready in America is we use bases and I told people for the Navy you know we kind of put our bases at sea level. It's a ship thing. You know we're not the Air Force. We don't move to Minot, North Dakota, although once I had the business manager for Minot North Dakota in the audience he said he welcomed us but so the Navy but it's not just the Navy all the services are going to deal with this and it's more than sea level rise. It's things like temperature, its fires, its drought. The neighbors get unhappy when you set the training range a light because you're using live fire ammunition. So all of those things begin so we have both the direct effects and then we have the effects that we're gonna have to deal with when we go downrange and then finally we will probably have additional conflicts in part not solely but in part exacerbated or even caused by climate change. Thanks Dave. Well we're going to try to transition now from the impacts and the risks to the solutions and I'm going to ask Erica to comment on both because erica is our expert here on the panel when it comes to forest ecosystems and the role that they play in sequestering carbon but as we as Dave just alluded to we also have climate change impacts that involved forests. We saw in Alberta a record wildfire. Fort mcmurray wildfire this last spring and summer and climate change has been implicated set the stage in terms of the considerable heat the warm winter the very dry conditions all came together to give us this unprecedented the most I believe expensive fire in Canada's history so forests are part of the problem but they're also potentially part of the solutions. I was hoping you could speak to both aspects. Thanks so first when we think about wildfire I think it's important to think about fire as you might understand it. So a campfire, you know what you need to light a campfire: you need fuel, you need an ignition source, and you need it to be dry right? So fuels ignition and weather lets say, and the thing is we're manipulating all three of those levers nationally and globally. We manipulate fuels by fire suppression so then we have more fuels ready to burn. We are manipulating ignitions because there is more people living in those landscapes and human caused fires are increasing and then we also are changing weather so we're having longer droughts, So the same snow that is going away from our glaciers is also leaving the mountain tops like the rocky mountains and that means less snow melt. It means drier springs and drier summers, longer dry seasons and so when all those combined you have a chance for high wildfire risk and that has been happening again and again and again and Alberta story is one example of that but it's happening all over. We spend two billion dollars in 2015 on wildfire suppression activities. I bet that it will be greater this this year. Half of that money goes to California although the largest fires are indeed in Alaska in places that don't normally burn in the tundra which releases a large amount of stored carbon that is normally stored in the permafrost. It's thousands of years the carbon pool that's going up after one fire so that's what we get concerned about what we think about wildfire risk. I studied work in yellowstone national park. Our science suggests that wildfires used to occur for the past 10,000 years used to have a risk of a severe fire evey 100-300 years quite normally for the ecosystem. We are now projecting that if you believe the relationship between climate and fires in the past and you carry that forward under climate change scenarios you are now having wildfire risks of every 15 to 30 years so the question really is can the ecosystem recover and unfortunately a lot of the recovery adaptations that those trees have like the ability to re-sprout are also going away from climate change. So if you have a big wildfire it's ok, the carbon can come back as long as the conditions are right for those species to come back but unfortunately if you have a drought right after the Wildfire then they're not going to come back. So what we worry about tipping point ecosystem perspective is when the forest doesn't come back as the forest, it comes back as a shrubland or a grassland system. We're seeing massive conversions of forestland to shrub lands in many parts of the Western US right now largely driven by wildfire. Solution In terms of the wildfire aspect of it, I'm going to go back to what Klaus said in terms of mitigation and adaptation. So mitigation is important. A lot of areas that have historically low severity fire systems in the southwestern United States going in there and doing mechanical thinning is appropriate for those systems. It may not be appropriate for other systems that historically have had more standard placing fire regimes. So in those areas mitigation and fire risk may not be the best may not be the best option and really were forced to adapt to being in a fire prone system. In the western US that means historically adapting a fire wise community perspective. It means different methods of zoning so that we're not moving into these fire prone areas and that requires cooperation on multiple levels of government as well to create those kinds of zoning laws. It may involve maps of fire risk so that people can make those informed decisions which don't yet exist the United States in any good way and and we also have to start thinking about creative things like assisted migration and other ways to create a restore ecosystems that we might want to preserve and maintain that carbon balance And last but not least Tom, we heard a fair amount of discussion on solar and also wind as solutions as ways of meeting our demand for energy and power in a carbon friendly way. Of course you at the Institute that you head up does research into biofuels as well. I was wondering if you could comment on the role biofuels might play in the solution of the problem. Sure and first of all I want to preface my comments by saying that I do work personally on biofuels but there are phenomenal researchers at this university in solar in wind in energy storage and several of them are in this room and I don't want to discount that at all. In fact living in Pennsylvania we are actually allowed to buy our electricity from a variety of generators and I buy mine from one that is 100% renewables solar wind, and biomass actually. So this is a little bit of a depressing evening right. So I want to add a note of hope. The disadvantage of solar and wind is that they are only zero carbon emitting energy sources and well we need them massively right now projections are that we'll go pass tolerable limits if we saw that's part of your comments earlier. The really cool thing about biomass energy is that it actually allows negative carbon and those of you who know your system science know that this planet atmosphere full of co2 that are fossil fuels from that atmosphere were transported through the process of photosynthesis with three billion year old technology that works really really well and by the way we have tremendous experts in that field at this university as well and some of them are here. So the trick is to take the power of photosynthesis and actually turn into things that are useful and some of those are growing forests in natural ecosystems and using not only just the above ground parts of plants but also below ground roots to store carbon in the soil. Those are tremendous there's lots of work going on in that space. Biofuels and bioenergy can get you close to zero the only way they can actually go negative is by sequestering carbon under the ground which is actually a topic that environmentalist have been against for decades because it was viewed as a way to allow coal and other fossil energy to continue. I don't disagree with that but but it is a way to both mitigate fossil energy but also allow biomass to to move into a negative carbon space and I think we're as a society going to need. So I think that is an interesting thing to pay attention to but the final one I want to mention is that that that photosynthesis can also make a lot of other extraordinary things including materials bioplastics biochemicals buildings including 10 15 18 story buildings that are going up right now with wood is being used as structural material of engineering processes and when those substitute for concrete and steel which are very energy intensive carbon-intensive materials to make tremendous offsets and it put that carbon in a place where it's going to be fixed for hopefully a 100 years. That's going to help buy us time in other important ways. I think there's a whole range of areas there and I say although the focus in the film was on some of the negative aspects of our managed ecosystems in terms of food and it is phenomenal that ninety percent of our food system brings us less than ten percent of our calories but we can also manage our ecosystems to do really powerful things. We know a little bit about it but we need to start doing more. I'm a big fan of the Elon Musk's and I thought that it was nice that there was that segment that does look at the reasons for optimism that we can we can tackle this problem and so it's not all doom and gloom there's a little bit of optimism in there and interestingly enough when Fisher Stevens talked to me about my role in the film basically the problem they had was that leo is extremely depressed and pessimistic about our prospects for actually doing something about the problem and so he used the movie almost as a vehicle to try to turn Leo around and expose him to the reasons that do exist for cautious optimism. One of the points that's emphasized in the movie towards the end and indeed we are less than a week from an election, it's not coincidental that the film was shown shortly before this next presidential election. It is something that people should think about when they go to the voting booth. Voting on the issue of climate not just at the top of the ticket but all the way down so that's the only political statement that i'm going to make. Now we're going to open this up for Q&A with the audience and maybe 15-20 minutes if people want to stick around Who wants to tackle that one? I would say okay so so full disclosure i'm on a couple advisory boards including something called citizens climate Lobby. They talk about a revenue-neutral carbon tax and and then probably are no doubt and you know when you're organizing these groups think of who your target is. The left-of-center folks the Democrats basically I mean they have drunk the kool-aid ok so you know a lot of things if we show more polar bears and stuff like that you're preaching to the choir. The folks you need to really bring in some how are the folks in the center and even center right because under our system of government that you know that this administration has not being able to pass a single piece of legislation why because it has to go through Congress and even when they have Democratic majorities in both houses they were not able to do that and we can that's another discussion for another day why this administration was not able to do that but i would say look at framing your issue whether it's in terms of health whether it's in terms of food but think about it in terms that are going to attract the people who may be in that kind of undecided haven't thought about it Center even center right and get them to basically advocate to their elected leaders at all levels and I I when I give my talks i say the question you should ask is what are you going to do to stabilize the climate? This is sort of like dating one-on-one you do not ask yes or no question are you in favor of carbon tax that's yes/ no but one, you might get an interesting answer and two even if you don't you at least register in that reptilian politician brain that they're interested you know and it was brought up in the movie it's something i always say it's like Congress will not lead but they can be led and they will be led by you. They will be led by the voters but if the voters keep putting this at number 21 of 20, they're not going to pay attention and then you've got to listen to michael and that all of the evil people who work in this space here so i'll just stop there. Richard, I just want to add a tiny bit more, they have that Harvard economist and he showed the tax swap, the congressional budget office looked at that and they said if global warming's an evil lie, everything you saw there about damages is an evil lie and that tax swap will have no serious impact on the economy and it might help it and because global warming is not an evil lie that tax swap gives you a bigger economy with more jobs so here's some just sp you know, if you're looking at Washington State, anybody aware that washington state actually has a carbon tax you-know-who opposing it? The environmental groups ok so if you're on the left you've got to ask what your big environmental groups like your Sierra Clubs and stuff why they're opposing it because that's not going to be helpful because Richard just kind of said you know these things will actually help us out a lot ok thanks let's take another question over here I've got one quick thought and then Tom has some thoughts here as well so i actually have done quite a bit of cleanup with respect to a previous film that Leo was also involved on. Some of you may have heard or seen the film Cow-spiracy and it actually communicated quite a bit of misinformation when it has to do with the role that agriculture and farming plays in the climate change problem. It's not trivial it's not negligible but the movie creates this sort of notion that it's the main contributor to the problems when effectively, it's not. The main contributor is the burning of fossil fuels so so I do think it's important for us to call out misinformation regardless of what side of the debate we call out on, I think that's our role as scientists is to be objective arbiters and referees when it comes to the public discourse on this issue. You know I'll second that and and to mention I come from five generations of cattle ranchers out of Colorado so for me to say negative things about your land us number of people all over the great but but every agricultural system can be managed well or poorly and one of the challenges these are complex questions and yes you can give examples that are going to be contrary to maybe some of the things in the film but you know that there is a problem rainforest destruction is a complicated problem people want to have simple solutions there is a problem with our livestock system your food system in this country roughly I think the quote was ten percent what percent of our missions are from agriculture most those are from from bovine but it's not just be actually happens the very system right so we switched from being a hard war to a vegetarian utilize over and she's now you know this same species actually so so I think the important thing is to try to sort of be thoughtful about it and to know as much about the system can and use the critical thinking that you hopefully our learning at the university so distinguish right from wrong just very quickly in a broader sense on this you know like when when you're asking for this kind of falls onto the previous answer i think we just have to be careful and demonizing other industries are companies you know it's about because there are some that have two monster about that intentional bad behavior they probably he called out but but the but the movie kinda had a pretty broad brush on some things and I I think that sometimes can get almost a counter-revolution kind of kind of action so just in general you know if we stick to the facts and look at what are the solutions is some of which we already talked about i think that's kind of a way for that's just my personal opinion thanks to you we have a question right here oh well we'll look at you next we've got here we have an intruder see to please but I want to do i perfectly then ID on this bed demonstration that I have that chemical can program it on of maybes about the environment the bar and shit all night my personal you know there's a nuclear bomb pop it's just that happen suddenly start with we don't have confirmation that back but you know I'm trying to compliment your programs through so i was reading through ground I have you thanks i think what they do in the movies the connection of drawing is that the burning of coal is what is produced a lot of those micro particles that are causing health issues and so they are related in the sense that if you're getting your energy from dirty coal burning then there is also a potential health impact china has been suffering that in large cities and so in some ways has drawn attention to the issue of who should we continue into to burn coal for energy and the interesting thing is that China doing that bilateral agreement as mentioned between the US and China to reduce carbon emissions china is actually ahead of their commitment and not only are they not building new coal-fired power plants as fast as they work their actually decommission coal-fired power plants and spending a whole lot more on solar and wind energy going to be hard are here in the US now you raise another interesting Western can nuclear energy play a role in leading us from from carbon-based energy is not renewable in the conventional sense but it also doesn't involve the emission of carbon into the atmosphere nuclear energy be part of the solution I'm not going to answer that question if anyone else was to tackle I i would try in my experience talking to lots of groups in lots of places the nuclear question is the one that is most likely to generate a really heated discussion among people who are serious about finding solutions no problem yes so people who actually accept the climate change is real except that we need to find solutions to it you bring up nuclear and we will have to fight virtually guaranteed and so what that says to me is a while nuclear absolutely unequivocally works we can do it of we have not yet generated that consensus in the united states that would allow it to move forward directly in rapidly my brother works for Nuclear Regulatory Commission he's retired Coast Guard officer who now works for the NRC if you love nuclear you better love this central government because the government carries the long term and catastrophic insurance with the nuclear industry which means that you want my brother to be watching over them because you're paying for them if it breaks so um so you but there seems to be some overlap between people who make the government a lot of nuclear and that doesn't work in chicago on tuesday i'm part of the bulletin of the atomic scientist and we're going to do a whole day on the role of nuclear power rating on carbon-based energy system but don't commit any carbon on your way to Chicago united another common he was very good question there's often a tendency to look for a single solution or magic or silver bullet now you know the magic bullet comes from overrides that didn't really work out your / and the point is that this is a problem which by most estimates doesn't have a single solution it's a portfolio its communication and education and it's not just nuclear and it's just solar horses horses used to write to the right job for you approach this I'm sorry makes it a little more complicated do with of the simple measures of home buddy maybe more realistic myself so it's a color is called but you on the other side as a society has called somewhat similar from this problem before so there's also two or three more questions and we get from this ok yeah I'm geographer but I used to study so I was like and eventually he was like frustrated that part of power over to that what you think and that where oh it world cup never hey I wasn't really all that like that's why like through and what is like was just carbon other than just like movement like that ok thanks dude question maybe one energy which is helpful is that there have been cases where in the world came together to find the agreements for example one is closed four carbons when there was a discovery that immediate clover carbons damage to ozone layer and cause damage at the end the world came together and we actually are not on the downward slide of the chlorofluorocarbons concentration and the police recovered so there are examples the world's number one number two there are examples where the world has come together for certain things which was unacceptable tortures one it's not eradicated but he's clearly you're in it but more close the whole year and every smart people think about carbon taxes and have stable coalition that then get it all or most of all but most and so one of approach you know your house and yale things about any agreement where we start with one bed one of them when you have trade you actually require them to be able to trade to also have and in charge on the carbon tax and then your braces up isn't as a way to be able to trade you have to be to your beauty there are many ways I'll designations come together or may notice that then enforce rules isn't perfect no help at all thanks pops one thing i would add by the way is when it comes to acid rain or regulation seesaw policy action under Republican administrations ronald reagan richard nixon george HW bush their EPA the very das all active to solve the global environmental problems montreal protocol happened under Reagan's watch Nixon created the EPA and the Clean Air Act's occurred on over the course of administration's but there is a substantial progress during the administration of george HW bush so acting using market mechanisms to solve global environmental problems has not always been a partisan political issue it's only relatively recently that's happened it's worth keeping my another question here American consumption train station I'm just wondering it innovation there's actually ok so this is like I wrote a book on this lab tech 2009 and when I wrote the book i could not with a straight face say that solar power was competitive with anything for anything except my solar calculator which is really good there was absolutely no question that solar costs a fortune and seven years later every utility in America is either embracing solar trying to close solar or both but they're all trying to figure out what to do with solar but the Solar has dropped in price so fantastically and so rapidly that it is now part of the discussion we can learn we can build we can teach if you want to suppose that you tried to make this movie a thousand years ago to think about it for a minute negative persons and come into North America and have been full of mammoths and mastodons and it will stake on the roof and they had told them off and they were spreading it all eventually we spread across South Sea Islands and we killed off all kinds of things and never whatever a drought hit people died because they couldn't feed their kids the world was overpopulated with a million people and then we learned and we built and we talked and we grow and we went from a world that was overpopulated with a few million people to a world that may or may not be overpopulated with a few billion people but we doubled the population can fault sometimes and so we can screw this up in the ways that are just fantastically disasters but we can also solve it and there's as long as three of us burning anything we can get to get energy running out of what we were burning having panic trying to figure out what to do next pennsylvania was tribbles a hundred years ago rock right the first four star the Commonwealth wrote about the great Pennsylvania desert because i'm going to freeze left in counseling and there was no why I like button Pennsylvania we have nothing to burn and then we sort of figured out Russell fuels but um and then we like three scroll back and we're the first generation that knows how to fix this and so we actually can do better than anybody else or we can screw it up part of your question was about the great and equity in the world right now with respect to energy and material and I think there's a lot of hope that we can now see pathways to having great xicon amis without as much carbon emission but i do want to emphasize those are not low energy strategies there's a really strong correlation between energy availability and access many development indices help so we do not want to ask the five billion people that don't have the energy to get need to make sure that they had an opportunity to have it needs to be we can the film did a great job connections making that point I actually thought the film kind of leaning towards that we all have to go live in a cave where sure to be a mite they talk about cutting down and you know you sing and all that I think you're right well Richard Thomas talked about Gary's is how to use the technologies it will be probably developed in the west of the manufacturer elsewhere but does this become part of the great part in that we screw this up the West is basically screwed this up so what at least moral obligation do we have to make sure this technology comes in at affordable prices I mean I thought the most compelling character in the entire movie was a lady with the NGO from India me she was like she was going to tell you the truth you know and no matter how much dicaprio storm she was going to tell you the truth so how do we help those 1.1 1.2 billion evil 300 million with no power I mean you know we can't just stand here and say use solar are we going to get it too but it's to Richard's point that we do have the technology and I think it's our obligation to figure that out and to help just have an abstract way but that's gonna be frankly your generations Grand Challenge what i meant that the movie did a good job and you can bring the dominated ones that emphasize the fact that in areas in the developing world where there isn't already in energy infrastructure that exists here where there is an electrical grid distributed energy is going to make a lot more sense it we're gonna leap frog into a distributed energy system that could be substantially powered by renewable language by solar another so I thought that was important i think we have time for maybe one up one one last question yes let's give the 1i probably well just to finance our most problems ways like I know that America would like to dump off so how do we get out of that carbon and we have a lot of old technology so how can you do that without that Reese brilliant recycling Don do you wanna this is your so i was mentioning a minute ago that we have an opportunity to kind of change the way to handle the material and world and Andy waste is actually incredibly valuable part of worship at other places because they can extract the platinum gold and other precious metals are in their utilize material unfortunately not always under very environmentally safe strap methods which is part of why so I think recycling that she weighs effectively is going to be part of it you know the electronic technologies now are really so much so much smaller impact per unit of useful value they did one question is how much do you need and reason I think that is a question of consumption that sustainable consumption everyone right well then all right one last question ok what parts edition I will reiterate a point that I made earlier which is the voting booth is one place to try to fix that I'm voting in making your views on matters such as the priority that we should be giving to our analysis ability to clean energy as long as the public is not expressing its well not element X has made the point earlier as long as we are not demanding that from our policymakers we're not going to see and and David is correct that fortunately issues like climate change still live really far down the list of priorities when bolsters ask electric what they're most concerned about that means that obviously each of us voting individually isn't enough we have to create a greater public awareness for the threats that are posed by climate changing for the opportunities by transitioning just clean energy framing it for example as an issue of in international competitiveness know China the rest of the world is moving ahead towards the clean energy to do that then we fall behind the rest of the world so I do think that mean ways to frame this issue and that's sort of a point that's come up in our discussion here tonight others i think I'm echoing what you said I think that we need to do more telling was like this is going more listening so what do you why why are you feeling that way what are you eating because I think a lot of the solutions will get the very core issue with this help or food or economy if we're both having that conversation we can have together and save the environment but we keep saying this is happening you gotta listen it's going to put people walking 20 scientific evidence to show that people are very well that way they learn when you're in a collaborative environment right so how do we create a collaborative environment of learning where we can find mutual yeah i'd certainly echo everything that both my generika set their the training is very important to health security in some of these other than environmental things with sometimes attract different people so can you align the message the messenger and the audience a good person to talk about security I'm probably not the right person to go talk to the NRDC so that those things have to have to align it's beyond the scope of this panel but honestly and we'll see what happens in six days but things like talk radio and stuff that is poured out on talk radio and basically on challenge within their circle for decades and it's frankly it's far bigger than fun here there is this anti-science and I knowledge of self top i don't i'm not sure what else i can call it here that needs to be challenged it you know when people can say it's a cycle but it's a very destructive one and you know it leads to things like we don't get vaccines and we have almost medieval type fears of some technologies we know if they science always like national academy of sciences sky is blue you get people saying no the sky is something else and so step back has to be fixed that's beyond this over here but what we can do is make sure that you know this is talked about DiCaprio said nobody ever talks about this and he's kind of right we need to talk about yeah find the window don't even ice people almost everybody involved with this a good people there are a few bad actors and who were doing this for a living but almost everybody involved is a good people fossil fuels have been fantastic for us we asked for the energy and they gave to us and we have trees we have whales because we burn fossil trees and fossil algae and that's true and so you know don't demonize on and find the winds ultimately if you are interested in in the ethical issues you want to move away from fossil fuels in a measured way if you are interested in the environmental issues you want to move away from fossil fuels any measured way if you're interested in the economic issues you want to move away from fossil fuels in a measure not panic not in demonizing them but in taking the advantages that are out there that will help and so look for the winds and do it with a knowledge that we owe a lot of good people that we're going to move away from just a few final thoughts about that all great points from the members of the panel all very useful and complimentary perspectives i do think that ultimately we do face a great challenge and I were different Richard perhaps a little bit in the language of the transition that's required is probably more than measure it was somewhat characterize it as a revolution not unlike the sort of galvanization that we saw during the during world war two of the same sort of globalization arguably is necessary if we are going to avert what many scientists with reasonably described as catastrophic levels of climate change warming more than 2 degrees Celsius we're more than halfway there if we continue on the course that we're on for another decade or so we're probably committed to those levels of warming and climate change so i do think that there have been few bad actors that have poisoned public discourse unfortunately that was true with tobacco it was true with acid rain and ozone depletion and it's true with climate change today there's something lightened individuals and corporations in the fossil fuel industry but there are also been some bad actors who have hit the information that they had about the potential threats continue fossil fuels there's been some discussion about that recently in some discussion about the need to hold some of those bad actors accountable in the same way that the tobacco industry was held accountable ultimately there's a good-faith debate we had this problem about the solutions and many conservatives and progressives wrote that the table in discussing those solutions but we do need to recognize that there's a problem and we probably have to call out those bad actors who continue to deny that there's a problem while taking money from fossil fuel interests to reduce do think it's important to call that out so i know that there are actually a couple organizations that are set up outside the room here that actually are working on the policy solutions to climate change and trying to get people involved and so I would encourage you to check them out on your way out and please thank all the members of the
