That is why when people say,
do you we need this or this my answer is yes, we need everything. Because if we do everything we can as much as we can without
competition, not saying, oh my solution is better or
this solution is better but just saying, yes, I
support you, you support me. We'll do as much as we can. We know that we will be better off. I am a climate scientist. My background is in physics and atmospheric science and
specifically I study the future. So I'm one of the people who looks at the future scenarios
and then focuses very much on the local level to see what
difference our choices make for our food, our water, our
health, our infrastructure our energy and more. But the way I think about climate change is it's
a symptom of a bigger problem. And I believe this is
an important perspective because if you have a disease and you go to the doctor and
they address your symptoms but they don't address
the cause of the problem they're not going to
ultimately fix the problem. And so with climate change if we focus only on
climate change as a problem but we don't consider the
root causes of this problem then we're not going to come up with solutions that are sustainable. It'll be as if we're putting
a bandaid on a problem. So what is the root of the problem? The root of the problem is that for the entire history
of human civilization we have been living as if
our planet were infinite. So we, we thought if
we run out of something there's always somewhere
we can go to get more or someone that we can take it from. If we produce waste there's always somewhere to
put it where it doesn't matter. Now, we knew many years ago,
even during the Roman Empire they knew that waste was a problem and they had to address
that in large cities but they addressed it by
just putting it elsewhere. We know that air pollution is a problem. The very first air pollution
legislation was in 1300. It was in England in the city of London. The air quality was getting so bad because they were burning sea coal within the city limits that
the king legislated a ban against burning sea coal when he and the queen were in London
and the penalty was death. So we have known that resource
scarcity, that air pollution that water pollution, that
extinctions are a problem. We've known that for a long time yet we continue to live as
if our planet were infinite. And this problem was exacerbated
by the fact that the field of economics that was developed
Rev relatively recently back in the 18 hundreds, the field of economics was created to focus only on what we could assign
a monetary value for. And they did not put externalities
into our economic model. So in other words, there was
no value to what you can take from nature in terms of the
loss that would be taken by cutting down those trees
or destroying that watershed. There was no function within our economic system
to account for that loss. And in fact, the people who benefited from cutting down the trees or destroying the watershed
or overfishing or over farming the people who financially
benefited were not the same people who
financially were harmed by it. And then on the other side, if you look at what comes out of our
economic system, all of the waste let's just think about air pollution. 10 million people a
year die from breathing in the particulates, from
burning fossil fuels. What is the value of that? And that why is that not
inner economic system? Now, if any of you have read Kate Raworth
donut economics, okay, good. A few of you have. If you haven't, I highly recommend it. Now you might say economics
that's not interesting. And I'm with you. When I was in university,
the first economics environmental economics
class I took had very comfortable seats. And I only lasted three weeks in that class because I would fall asleep. It was so boring and the
seats were so comfortable. But later when you realize
that there's much more to it, for example, with a
book like Donut Economics you realize this is really important because this is addressing
the root of the problem. We have to understand that we are living on a round planet with 8 billion
people and we have to live in balance with the
resources on our planet. That is what sustainable means. Sustainable means you can keep on going. That's what sustainable means. And the way we're living
today, we cannot keep on going. If we look at pollution,
if we look at the loss of nature and the biodiversity crisis we are heading very quickly
towards what scientists are calling a sixth
extinction caused by humans. And then if you look at climate change what is climate change? It is, and this is
actually a term that comes from the US military. It is a threat multiplier. So it is taking our problems of economic inequity, pollution,
loss of nature, poverty and hunger disease, lack of
education, lack of healthcare the growing inequality
that covid even made worse. It's taking all of those problems and it's making them worse. And so climate change is
almost like a lens that is is bringing into focus all of the problems that we
are confronting today. And if we don't fix climate change we can't fix these other problems but we need to fix the problems together. So we need solutions that
not only put a bandaid on climate change, but
also address the root issue of not appropriately valuing our waste or the products that go in of not appropriately accounting
for the role of nature in providing the clean air that we breathe and the water that we drink and the food that we eat
and everything that we have. Often we live as if, and there's
some people who think this we live as if we think when we run out of resources in the earth,
we'll just go somewhere else. And there's a few people who think that but when they get to Mars they will see that there
is no green space there. There is no easily accessible water there. That is not plan B. In fact, as many people
say, there was no planet B. So it's very interesting
because five years ago before Covid, I was attending a
science festival called Staus. And it's a very interesting
science festival. It's mostly astrophysicists, cosmologists a lot of Nobel prize winners. And Stephen Hawking was there giving one of his last talks before he passed away. And as you probably know, in his last days he spoke out very strongly
about the climate crisis. And so I was sitting there
in the front row nodding as he spoke about the climate crisis. And then he said and the climate crisis is so
severe and so overwhelming that that is why we have to tear for Mars. And at that point I just thought,
what do you not understand that if the solution to this
problem is terraforming Mars it will exacerbate all of
the other issues we have because who's going to go to Mars? Is it the billion people who live off one or two franks a day who can't
afford to feed their families? No, they won't get a ticket to Mars. When people go to Mars, will
they take the same mindset with them of just using
everything they can and not valuing the
resources that are there? Of course they will. So I was absolutely astonished. And then I thought about it all the all day
and then all that night. And then the next morning
I was giving my talk and I was giving my talk in
a session with Martin Reese who is another very famous astronomer. He's the royal astronomer of England. And we were backstage and they
were putting little pieces of tape on our computers because
we had the same computer. So imagine if we got switched that would be very interesting. And so I said, do you mind
if I ask you a question? And he said, of course. And I said, do you agree with what Hawking said that you know to address the climate crisis
we have to terraform Mars? And he said and I'm not gonna do a British
accent because I can't. But he said, oh, Steven
and I are old friends. And of course they're at the
same college in Cambridge so they know each other. And of course you know
the colleges in Cambridge you eat together every
night, but he is so wrong. Fixing climate change is a doddle in the park compared to terraforming Mars. I was like, yes. So rather what that
illustrates is it that story illustrates the dangers of believing that there's
only one quick fix to climate change and that
is more technology just go to Mars and all our
problems will be solved. They won't be, we're just
creating new problems. When we look at climate change,
people are often so worried and this is a bit where the
psychology comes into it we're so worried that one
of our defense mechanisms if we're very worried is to
identify one solution and say this is it. If everybody did this one thing,
everything would be fixed. And so I see this all the time. I see people who, who have decided that if everyone in the
world became a vegan that would fix the climate problem. Now of course we know that industrial meat
production is a big source of methane and heat trapping gases. Of course we know that
plant-based diets are healthier for the planet, but we also know that even if everyone in the world
went vegan, if they could and many people cannot do that they do not have the ability to do that especially if they are living
in low income countries where their primary source of
protein might be the ocean. Even if everybody did that that would take care of
this much of the problem. Then I often hear too,
from people who've decided that nuclear power will fix everything. So you don't have to change your lifestyle you don't have to change anything. Nothing has to change. All we need is nuclear power. And I hear quite often
from those people too more subtly I hear from
people who say, well technology is the only solution. If we just change the technology nothing else has to change. Or maybe one piece of policy,
there's just a certain policy. Now there's very good policies like putting a price on
carbon cap and trade. There's very good economic
policies that help but sometimes people put their faith in a single policy and they
say, if we just do this this will fix everything when
it comes to climate change. And when it comes to equitable and fair and sustainable solutions
that address the symptoms but also address the causes,
there's no silver bullet. You know, sort of the lone ranger one silver bullet fixes
everything that was from like very long time ago. There's no silver bullet but there's a lot of silver buckshot. So you sort of think of,
there's little, little pieces but all the little pieces
add up to a good solution. So if you saw the short talk I gave at the at the symposium just two weeks ago I mentioned there that I think of climate solutions as a swimming pool. Remember that? Okay, it's okay. There's no quiz. I'll explain what I mean by that because it's kind of strange
if you think about it. So if you imagine the swimming pool and I'm thinking of an
above ground swimming pool I grew up with an above
ground swimming pool in our backyard and it
had just the right amount of water in it that my toes
could just touch the ground. And that's how I learned to swim. So if you picture an
above ground swimming pool that is the atmosphere and the atmosphere had just
the right amount of water in it just the right amount
of heat trapping gases in it that our toes could
just touch the ground. It was the perfect temperature
for us for our civilization. But then at the beginning
of the industrial revolution we stuck a giant hose in the pool and we've been turning
the hose up every year and that hose is our
greenhouse gas emissions. And during the first year of the pandemic we turned the hose down 7% and then we turned it back up again. So what's the first type of
climate solution we have to do? We have to turn off the hose but the swimming pool also has a drain and this is where you come in. The drain is a way to take the CO2 and the heat trapping gases out of the atmosphere once they're
already in the atmosphere. And if we can make the drain
bigger, we can actually take out some of the extra
water that the hose put in. But then there's one
more thing we have to do. The level of water in the pool is so high that our toes don't touch the ground. We have to adapt because
everything we have, our buildings our energy systems, our infrastructure our agricultural systems,
our water systems even our human bodies,
our are perfectly adapted to a climate that no longer exists. Where you live today, you
are experiencing the climate of somewhere that was
significantly further south when you were born within your lifetime. Yeah, exactly. In terms of the temperature,
the plants, the seasons the birds that you see. So I'm from Canada and I grew
up every summer spending most of the summer up north at
what we call the cottage. So in Canada people have cottages. That means you have indoor plumbing. Our indoor plumbing was from
like 1920, so it was a bathtub and one of those sinks that has like hot and cold cabin means you
have outdoor plumbing. That's an outhouse. So we had a, we had a cottage and I got to spend most of
the summer outside in nature. And so I know exactly
what birds, what plants what fish you see there,
because that's where I grew up. And I saw them every day. And now when I go back I, I'm
saying, what are those birds? Or where are the mosquitoes? Oh, they already came out and died in June, that's not normal. Or where, where is this? Or where is that? Or it's so hot, nobody there
has air conditioning either. And it's getting so hot
now that some people this is where people used to go in the summer to get away
from the the city heat. Some people are saying I can't even do this anymore
because it's too hot. So wherever we live,
we're seeing these changes and we have to adapt because there was a study that just came out a few weeks ago showing that if we continue on our current pathway a third of the world's
population will live in places that are, that
will experience extreme heat so intense that it'll be
uninhabitable for humans. Our bodies will not be able
to cool off in that heat. So all of the solutions we have they fall into these three
categories, turning off the hose making the drain bigger,
learning how to swim. And there's many different ways to do it because for example turning off the hose,
people say, oh, clean energy right? Yes, but also efficiency. We're very wasteful with
our energy even here and much more in North America. What about behavioral change? So we don't need to use as much energy. What about making the drain bigger? That's where we can talk about
technology and about nature. Nature has huge potential
to make the drain bigger in part because nature has been so under threat the last 2, 3, 400 years. Because we have deforested
such large areas of the planet. There's large, there's great potential for reforestation because so
many ecosystems are degraded. There's great potential to
restore those ecosystems because we have been farming in such an unsustainable manner. There is a great potential
to rethink our farming practices to be regenerative
and sustainable. If you add up all of the things that we
could do to bring nature back it could take up up to a third
of the carbon that we produce on an annual basis, which is huge. But of course nature is
finite because we live on a round planet, we don't
have that infinite, flat planet. So you can't just keep on
restoring more ecosystems or you know, planting more
trees or doing more climate. Smart agriculture. There is a limit to what
we can do with nature. And we know this is what the science says and this is very important. There's no magic threshold for how much water in the pool is unsafe. Any increase puts more people at risk. So we know that the more CO2
we take out of the atmosphere, the bigger we make the
drain, the faster we turn off the hose, the better off we'll all be. And so that is why when people
say, do you we need this or this, my answer is
yes, we need everything. Because if we do everything we can as much as we can without
competition, not saying, oh my solution is better or
this solution is better but just saying, yes, I
support you, you support me we'll do as much as we can. We know that we will be better off. So that's my perspective
on climate solutions. That's why I, as the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy
are here talking about technology like direct air capture. Because I believe that by working together we can accomplish more
than we can working apart. And I know that there's so much potential. I know that there's so
much that we can do. And I know that there's
so many positive benefits to these solutions. So positive benefits including jobs including building a healthy and sustainable economy that is not based on extractive industries but rather sustainable
industries with nature. When we restore nature, we
clean up our air and our water. When we restore green spaces in cities we help keep cities cool. When we practice regenerative agriculture we can provide habitat for biodiversity. There's so many different
things that we can do and we can take carbon out of the atmosphere at the same time. And so with everything that we do think about how is this
helping with climate change? But then also think about how is this helping
with the root issues? How is it making a difference for a truly sustainable planet? Because again if we don't fix the
root issues, we're never gonna fix the symptoms that
we're experiencing today. One that question I had for you was since we are often
confronted with the situation that we're in discussions, it
could be friends, it could be at a conference, it could
be in a podcast or whatever confront with a question like, okay so this or that line,
which one are you favoring? And you're on this side, but
there's the other option. Do you have any, any
way how you explain it to people that that brings it
together relatively easily? So like that it clicks and
so like it makes sense. It's just saying, well,
one option, you say none of whatever we can imagine will do it on its own is just not the capacity just isn't there, right? So that's a reason for having an and we need to add on top of that don't know whether that
people find convincing or not but sort of what is what is your simple storyline
to explain to people that the power of and is
what we have to re-leverage? Yeah I, I think it's, it's
what I've said before which is there's no one
solution, but we need it all. With direct air capture
specifically, I would usually add something that I know you
probably do too, and this is this is that unfortunately many people who don't want to change
anything, they just wanna keep on business as usual
and put a bandaid on it. They say, oh, direct air capture, keep on using fossil fuels and
use direct air capture or use carbon capture and sequestration to take all the carbon outta the atmosphere. So I think often I have found bringing up people's objections
myself and showing them that I'm conscious of those
objections often disarms it. So you can even say, you may have heard and then say da, da da da,
but that is not the case. Direct air capture is important,
but it will never take up all of the CO2 that we have produced nor will nature take up all the co2. We have to turn off the hose also. But then as we're turning off the hose we need to take out all the carbon we can and that is where we need all
of these different solutions. So I think sort of bringing up the objections that you
know they're gonna have and addressing them is very disarming. Yeah. You're very honest. This is among friends here, right? Yeah. You don't have to spare
as criticism, but what are you what is your own view
on direct air capture in as as an element of
this big picture where many other things are floating around? What role do you see for it? Where do you see its limitations? Kinda like if you have
to sort it into, into the into the large sequence of all the actions where would you put direct air capture? That's a great question. It's the, the way I think
about it is on, on the tree of climate solutions, we
have fruit that is lying on the ground that we just need
to pick up, like efficiency just pick it up, it's lying there. Then we have low hanging
fruit that's easy to reach many nature-based solutions. The acceleration of clean energy fall into the low hanging fruit. But then the higher up the tree we go the more difficult and more
expensive the reductions get. And so that is where
direct air capture adds that extra little bit
to help us reach some of those higher hanging fruit. Thank you very much. Excellent. Very good.
