- This is the story about
how you were lied to with billions of dollars
being spent to confuse you, about renewable energy. In fact, the extent of
lies has been so drastic that you may not even realize
you are currently living through one of the most pivotal
moments in modern history. And in order to fully understand what is happening right now, we must go back to the
First Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial
Revolution started in Britain between 1760 and 1820. It was defined as a major economic shift and according to economists,
that requires three things one, a new way of communicating. In this case, it was the
fancy ability to print and use the Telegraph. Two a new transportation mechanism in this case, it was
steam powered locomotives. And three, a new power source in this case, it was the burning of coal. Then came this second
industrial revolution this time it was happening
in America mainly, and it started in 1870 to the early 1900. The new way of communicating
was phones, radio television. The new transportation mechanism was internal combustion vehicles and the new power source was cheap oil, but of course they were still burning. - Many people don't want you to know this, but you are in fact living through a third industrial revolution. The new way of communicating
is the internet the new way of getting around is hybrid and electric vehicles and the new power source
is solar wind and nuclear. But since 2016, the top five oil companies have spent a billion dollars trying to confuse everybody about
these new power sources. And it kinda makes sense
because in the last 10 years, they made $900 billion of profit. In 2019, they only spent 3% of their $115 billion capital investment in low carbon alternatives. This is just that a power
grid based off of renewables, isn't feasible or is too expensive or would hurt the economy. But what if I told you that as of November 2018, everything changed. This is the moment when
renewable energy such as wind and solar became cheaper
and more efficient than fossil fuels. For example, in 1977, the cost of photovoltaic
cells for solar panels was $76 now it's only 50 cents. This is all well fossil fuel energies have reached their peak efficiency. Chemical engineers and scientists
agree that fossil fuels have matured with little
potential left to exploit, whereas wind and solar continue to become more efficient each year. Sorry, bud you're old. Now the sentiment's
470 exajoules of energy to earth every 88 minutes, which is the amount of energy
that all of us combined use in one year. If we grabbed 1/100 of the
energy that the sun emits, it would give us six times
the energy we now use across the global economy. If wind farms grabbed just 20% of the wind that currently blows, it could power eight times
the current global economy. - These facts are pushing the whole world to shift into the third
industrial revolution. And if the first and second
were spearheaded Britain and America, it seems that
the third is being spearheaded by the European union and China. In 2017, 45% of global total
investment in renewable energy was from China. China plans to get 62% of their energy, from renewable sources in 30 years, Europe currently gets 18% of electricity from solar and wind, but some specific countries
are completely committed to pushing these numbers much further. Germany announced that
over the next 20 years, they are going to
completely phase out coal. And in order to do this, they are going to invest $40
billion in coal cities in order to retrain workers and keep
those local economies strong. And Germany has a lot of coal factories they currently get one third
of their energy from coal. They understand that moving
away from this energy source is gonna be a huge challenge, but they realize it is an
important thing to do in order to be a competitive commercial country, in the future. - On top of this 18 countries, including China, India, France,
the Netherlands and Ireland have announced their intention
to phase out the sale and registration of
vehicles that are powered by fossil fuels over the next decade. The bank of America projects
that 40% of all car sales by 2030 will actually be electric. A big reason for the steep
incline in electric car sales, is the rapidly declining
price of lithium batteries, which cost $1,000 per
kilowatt hour in 2010 but by the end of 2017 were
only $209 per kilowatt hour, a 79% plunge in price in just seven years. The average density of
electric vehicle batteries is also improving at a rate
of about five to 7% each year. According to Bloomberg new energy finance, by 2025, electric vehicles
will constitute 19% of all passenger vehicle
sales in China, 14% in the EU and 11% in the US. - There are still a lot of
negative environmental impacts of lithium batteries. And with electric cars, if
you are charging your car, using a grid that is
powered by fossil fuels, then that electric car
becomes a lot less green. This brings us to a
big point of contention in these conversations, which these oil companies
spent a lot of money to confuse us, me, you about. And that is how are we gonna build a grid that powers our society based on just wind solar and nuclear. And this part is juicy, juicy, juicy, Oh boy, Oh boy, Oh boy, (laughs) Scientists and engineers are
very, very shook on this one. - One of the most interesting solutions to this grid problem comes down to our very best friend the internet. Known as the internet of things, a future smart grid could
connect power sources, computing devices, and everyday objects in order to all collaborate
and work together to become the most efficient
power grid possible. The grid becomes incredibly
efficient by sharing information and storing energy from wind
solar, hydro and nuclear. A really cool local example
of this is wind farms that use smart technology. So when there's hundreds of wind turbines, they're working on their own, they're actually communicating. They're suggesting how each individual one is affecting the wind, and how
they can optimize as a group, as opposed to as individuals, to be as efficient as possible. Now imagine this on a way bigger scale, an entire country's
power grid communicating in order to optimize itself. In America new studies show that using the internet of things grid
model to connect renewables, can increase energy efficiency by 60% over the next 20 years. And now is the time to do it in America because the continued deterioration of your country's
infrastructure, could result in $7 trillion lost in
sales and jobs by 2025. The American society
of civil engineers gave the current public infrastructure
of America a D plus, when I used to get that
mark my perfectionist, but would cry. The cost of a nervous system that would connect America
to live off of renewables will be complex and expensive. But public opinion polls show that Americans support more federal state and local funding to
improve infrastructure. - Okay, So how do we pay for this? This is definitely an area of hot debate I can already hear the tipty tap ties of everyone having an opinion on this okay that is fine, there is no
correct answer right now. But after reading books and studies and listening to a lot of experts, we're gonna go over some options and talk about a few numbers. If a 70% tax were put on
the super rich in America, it would bring in between
72 to $170 billion per year. This is a tax on people who make more than $10 million per year. And again, this 70% tax,
is only on the money that they make over $10 million. I know that people freak out
about this idea on Twitter. I think a lot of it has
to do with the thought that maybe taxing these rich people is going to slow down the economy but history shows that
between the 1950s and sixties, when the US had super
high marginal tax rates between 70 to 92%, the
actual American economy at the time was defined
as having strong growth that's kind of hot, (sighs) Like America okay, you need to
tax the rich, (laughs), okay. Then 2018 60 of America's
top corporations paid $0 in federal income tax,
that's insane, (laughs), okay Amazon didn't pay any
federal income tax in 2018, even though they had
$11.2 billion in profit. If you were an American
paying taxes in 2018, you yourself paid more tax than Amazon. I know we're picking on America right now, but you do have extremely
wealthy corporations and you don't seem to like to tax them. Zooming out to look at the world, in 2015, all fossil fuel
companies, received $5.3 trillion in post tax subsidies. It is a confusing statistic, but essentially it means
that your government and your tax paying money, actually had to go to funding these rich corporations. Okay I need to say this now, this is a point where you can get involved we need to be voting for politicians who are going to tax the rich. Because the eight richest
individuals in the world, have more money than half
of the world combined. I don't know how else to describe this other than like not cool. We also have to vote for
politicians who listen to scientists, and
understand the environmental and economic negative
impacts of continuing to subsidize fossil fuel companies. This means voting for
politicians who are open to making carbon taxes that
make fossil fuels more expensive were also rewarding green innovation. Building out renewables
is gonna create new jobs, which brings us to another
point of contention in these arguments and in this discussion, which is about jobs because, if you work in the fossil fuel industry with climate change coming
and shifting the economy, you're gonna have to
end up losing your job. - To start a conservative
estimate, found that jobs in wind, solar and nuclear, already outnumber fossil fuel jobs by a rate of three to one. But the devastating truth is that people in the fossil fuel industries
will lose their jobs, which is why it's so important
to help transition them, but keep them in the energy sector. These jobs might include
building new batteries that are more efficient
and can hold energy longer for solar and wind, or the construction of more
efficient nuclear power plants. - In Canada there's a group
of oil workers called Iron and Earth who are calling
on the Canadian government to help retrain laid off oil workers, to put solar panels on top of buildings, starting with public
buildings like schools. In Germany they incentivize people by subsidizing green
energy and solar energy by using tax subsidies. This created new industries and now a lot of early adopters
are actually making money by selling energy back to the grid. In China Henergy is a
company that leads the world in thin solar powered material. They make backpacks and
umbrellas and a range of items that allow you as an individual to carry the sun's energy with you
and like charge your phone. And this specific industry
employs 3.8 million people. And finally, in Texas, many
people have second incomes from their wind farms because Texas is windy AF, it is pretty much like
the Saudi Arabia of wind. Now let's chat COVID, as most of this information on energy is from before this
current global pandemic The pandemic has contracted the economy, which means that by the
end of 2020 CO2 emissions will likely be 8% less than in 2019. A decrease of 128 gigatonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere, compared to if there was no pandemic at all. This is the biggest annual
decrease since world war II. This may seem like good news, but looking at this
graph of CO2 emissions, every down tech is an economic crisis that is followed by a steep
increase in CO2 emissions. But looking at the 2008 financial crisis we see after there was a long
period of flattened emissions. One reason is because 15%
of the global stimulus after that financial crisis went into developing and deploying green technologies. We have to do this again now, as we get out of the economic crisis. To do this, we need to create jobs in wind and solar in the US at the
beginning of 2020 250,000 people were working in solar. We need financial incentives that help them get back to work. Infrastructure, construction
jobs for the grid, as well as the internet of
things, building energy, retrofits of buildings and
public transportation jobs we'll get people back to work fast. We need programs that retrain
and justly move workers out of conventional coal industries into new green alternatives. This will save the
inevitable disappearance of their jobs in coal, and
also help the environment. During COVID the US
Mexico and South Africa, have relaxed, laws, controlling
pollution standards, vehicle efficiency, and even in the US, they rolled back fuel economy rules to commit the nation to
higher transport emissions, which doesn't make any
sense scientifically, politically or economically. So get ready to vote you will say it now and say it again. We need to vote for politicians
who believe in science and who use scientific
literature to build policy. This is how we catalyze
political action to understand that a respect for science will protect us against the biggest
threats to our societies, such as pandemics and the
biggest one that is already here and will only be getting
worse in the future. And we need to be paying attention to, and that is climate change.
What I really don't like is how the fact that Germany is phasing out coal until 2038 is framed as a good thing.
Germany is the last country in the EU to do this and it would be possible (and necessary) so much earlier. German government is being kept on a short leash by the coal lobby and it enjoys that.