1
00:00:08,420 --> 00:00:09,850
Thank you very much.

2
00:00:10,460 --> 00:00:11,525
When I was a boy,

3
00:00:11,525 --> 00:00:15,310
my parents would sometimes
take me camping in California.

4
00:00:15,430 --> 00:00:19,080
We would camp in the beaches,
in the forests, in the deserts.

5
00:00:19,590 --> 00:00:22,080
Some people think the deserts
are empty of life

6
00:00:22,080 --> 00:00:25,390
but my parents taught me
to see the wildlife all around us,

7
00:00:25,439 --> 00:00:29,040
the hawks, the eagles, the tortoises.

8
00:00:29,170 --> 00:00:31,410
One time when we were setting up camp,

9
00:00:31,410 --> 00:00:34,510
we found a baby scorpion
with its stinger out,

10
00:00:34,510 --> 00:00:36,849
and I remember thinking how cool it was

11
00:00:36,849 --> 00:00:40,240
that something could be
both so cute and also so dangerous.

12
00:00:41,650 --> 00:00:44,600
After college, I moved to California
and I started working on

13
00:00:44,600 --> 00:00:46,490
a number of environmental campaigns,

14
00:00:46,490 --> 00:00:50,500
I got involved in helping to save
the state's last ancient redwood forests

15
00:00:50,500 --> 00:00:55,590
and blocking a proposed radioactive
waste repository set for the desert.

16
00:00:55,590 --> 00:00:56,890
Shortly after I turned 30,

17
00:00:56,890 --> 00:01:00,410
I decided I wanted to dedicate
a significant amount of my life

18
00:01:00,410 --> 00:01:02,010
to solving climate change.

19
00:01:02,190 --> 00:01:05,589
I was worried that global warming
would end up destroying

20
00:01:05,660 --> 00:01:07,345
many of the natural environments

21
00:01:07,345 --> 00:01:09,730
that people had worked
so hard to protect.

22
00:01:10,170 --> 00:01:13,180
I thought the technical solutions
were pretty straightforward -

23
00:01:13,180 --> 00:01:16,060
solar panels on every roof,
electric car in the driveway,

24
00:01:16,060 --> 00:01:18,820
that the main obstacles were political.

25
00:01:18,820 --> 00:01:21,300
And so I helped to organize a coalition

26
00:01:21,300 --> 00:01:25,470
of the country's biggest labor unions
and biggest environmental groups.

27
00:01:25,470 --> 00:01:30,090
Our proposal was for a 300-billion-dollar
investment in renewables.

28
00:01:30,090 --> 00:01:33,200
And the idea was not only
would we prevent climate change,

29
00:01:33,200 --> 00:01:35,795
but we would also create
millions of new jobs

30
00:01:35,795 --> 00:01:38,440
in a very fast-growing high-tech sector.

31
00:01:38,770 --> 00:01:41,629
Our efforts really paid off in 2007,

32
00:01:41,629 --> 00:01:45,500
when then-presidential candidate
Barack Obama embraced our vision.

33
00:01:45,500 --> 00:01:51,319
And between 2009 and 2015,
the US invested 150 billion dollars

34
00:01:51,319 --> 00:01:54,040
in renewables and other
kinds of clean tech.

35
00:01:54,810 --> 00:01:57,960
but right away we started
to encounter some problems.

36
00:01:57,960 --> 00:02:00,819
So first of all, the electricity
from solar rooftops

37
00:02:00,819 --> 00:02:04,679
ends up costing about twice as much
as the electricity from solar farms.

38
00:02:04,929 --> 00:02:06,719
And both solar farms and wind farms

39
00:02:06,719 --> 00:02:09,369
require covering a pretty
significant amount of land

40
00:02:09,369 --> 00:02:11,590
with solar panels and wind turbines

41
00:02:11,590 --> 00:02:14,590
and also building
very big transmission lines

42
00:02:14,590 --> 00:02:17,780
to bring all that electricity
from the countryside into the city.

43
00:02:18,100 --> 00:02:22,990
Both of those things were often very
strongly resisted by local communities,

44
00:02:22,990 --> 00:02:25,205
as well as by conservation biologists

45
00:02:25,205 --> 00:02:30,120
who were concerned about the impacts
on wild bird species and other animals.

46
00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:32,610
Now, there was a lot of other people

47
00:02:32,610 --> 00:02:34,830
working on technical
solutions at the time.

48
00:02:34,830 --> 00:02:36,600
One of the big challenges, of course,

49
00:02:36,600 --> 00:02:38,780
is the intermittency of solar and wind.

50
00:02:38,780 --> 00:02:42,080
They only generate electricity
about 10 to 30 percent of the time

51
00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:43,560
during most of year.

52
00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:45,775
But some of the solutions being proposed

53
00:02:45,775 --> 00:02:50,289
were to convert hydroelectric
dams into gigantic batteries.

54
00:02:50,289 --> 00:02:53,504
The idea was that when the sun
was shining and the wind was blowing,

55
00:02:53,504 --> 00:02:56,480
you would pump the water
uphill, store it for later,

56
00:02:56,480 --> 00:02:59,700
and then when you needed electricity,
run it over the turbines.

57
00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:02,649
In terms of wildlife,
some of these problems

58
00:03:02,649 --> 00:03:04,859
just didn't seem like
a significant concern.

59
00:03:04,859 --> 00:03:08,980
So when I learned that house cats
kill billions of birds every year

60
00:03:09,010 --> 00:03:12,155
it put into perspective the hundreds
of thousands of birds

61
00:03:12,155 --> 00:03:14,230
that are killed by wind turbines.

62
00:03:14,630 --> 00:03:16,500
It basically seemed to me at the time

63
00:03:16,500 --> 00:03:20,450
that most, if not all, of the problems
of scaling up solar and wind

64
00:03:20,450 --> 00:03:23,450
could be solved through more
technological innovation.

65
00:03:24,190 --> 00:03:25,979
But as the years went by,

66
00:03:25,979 --> 00:03:29,604
these problems persisted
and, in many cases, grew worse.

67
00:03:29,830 --> 00:03:33,070
So California is a state that's really
committed to renewable energy,

68
00:03:33,330 --> 00:03:36,594
but we still haven't converted
many of our hydroelectric dams

69
00:03:36,594 --> 00:03:37,949
into big batteries.

70
00:03:38,189 --> 00:03:40,630
Some of the problems are just Geographic;

71
00:03:40,630 --> 00:03:43,540
it's just you have to have
a very particular kind of formation

72
00:03:43,710 --> 00:03:44,939
to be able to do that,

73
00:03:44,939 --> 00:03:46,280
and even in those cases,

74
00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:49,019
it's quite expensive
to make those conversions.

75
00:03:49,019 --> 00:03:52,389
Other challenges are just
that there're other uses for water

76
00:03:52,389 --> 00:03:53,910
like irrigation,

77
00:03:53,910 --> 00:03:58,419
and maybe the most significant
problem is just that in California

78
00:03:58,419 --> 00:04:00,814
the water in our rivers and reservoirs

79
00:04:00,814 --> 00:04:03,210
is growing increasingly
scarce and unreliable

80
00:04:03,210 --> 00:04:05,170
due to climate change.

81
00:04:05,170 --> 00:04:09,610
In terms of this issue of reliability,
as a consequence of it,

82
00:04:09,610 --> 00:04:12,080
we've actually had to stop the electricity

83
00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:14,130
coming from the solar
farms into the cities

84
00:04:14,130 --> 00:04:16,470
because there's just been
too much of it at times.

85
00:04:16,470 --> 00:04:20,289
Or we've been starting to pay
our neighboring states like Arizona

86
00:04:20,328 --> 00:04:22,039
to take that solar electricity.

87
00:04:22,039 --> 00:04:25,529
The alternative is to suffer
from blowouts of the grid.

88
00:04:25,649 --> 00:04:27,760
And it turns out that

89
00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:30,730
when it comes to birds and cats -

90
00:04:31,380 --> 00:04:35,180
cats don't kill eagles; eagles kill cats.

91
00:04:35,180 --> 00:04:40,750
What cats kill are the small common
sparrows and jay's and robins,

92
00:04:40,750 --> 00:04:44,700
birds that are not endangered
and not at risk of going extinct.

93
00:04:45,040 --> 00:04:51,185
What do kill eagles and other big birds
like this kite as well as owls and condors

94
00:04:51,185 --> 00:04:53,890
and other threatened
and endangered species

95
00:04:53,890 --> 00:04:54,990
are wind turbines,

96
00:04:54,990 --> 00:04:57,485
in fact, one of the most
significant threats

97
00:04:57,485 --> 00:04:59,900
to those big bird species that we have.

98
00:04:59,900 --> 00:05:03,740
We just haven't been introducing
the airspace with many other objects

99
00:05:03,740 --> 00:05:06,880
like we have wind turbines
over the last several years.

100
00:05:07,640 --> 00:05:09,430
And in terms of solar,

101
00:05:09,430 --> 00:05:13,550
you know building a solar farm is a lot
like building any other kind of farm;

102
00:05:13,550 --> 00:05:16,220
you have to clear
the whole area of wildlife.

103
00:05:16,560 --> 00:05:21,927
So this is a picture of one third of one
of the biggest solar farms in California

104
00:05:21,927 --> 00:05:23,195
called Ivanpah.

105
00:05:23,195 --> 00:05:24,370
In order to build this,

106
00:05:24,370 --> 00:05:27,490
they had to clear
the whole area of desert tortoises,

107
00:05:27,560 --> 00:05:31,660
literally pulling desert tortoises
and their babies out of burrows,

108
00:05:31,670 --> 00:05:35,470
putting them on the back of pickup trucks,
and transporting them to captivity

109
00:05:35,470 --> 00:05:37,490
where many of them ended up dying.

110
00:05:37,490 --> 00:05:42,075
And the current estimates are that
about 6,000 birds are killed every year,

111
00:05:42,200 --> 00:05:44,465
actually catching on fire
above the solar farm

112
00:05:44,465 --> 00:05:46,150
and plunging to their deaths.

113
00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:48,620
Over time it gradually struck me

114
00:05:48,620 --> 00:05:52,090
that there was really no amount
of technological innovation

115
00:05:52,130 --> 00:05:55,420
that was going to make
the sun shine more regularly

116
00:05:55,420 --> 00:05:57,860
or wind blow more reliably.

117
00:05:57,860 --> 00:06:00,870
In fact, you could make
solar panels cheaper,

118
00:06:00,870 --> 00:06:02,680
and you could make
wind turbines bigger

119
00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:06,080
but sunlight and wind
are just really dilute fuels.

120
00:06:06,080 --> 00:06:09,080
And in order to produce
significant amounts of electricity,

121
00:06:09,100 --> 00:06:12,820
you just have to cover
a very large land mass with them.

122
00:06:13,210 --> 00:06:18,340
In other words, all of the major problems
with renewables aren't technical,

123
00:06:18,340 --> 00:06:19,560
they're natural.

124
00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:22,230
Well, dealing with
all of this unreliability

125
00:06:22,230 --> 00:06:23,990
and the big environmental impacts

126
00:06:23,990 --> 00:06:26,560
obviously comes at a 
pretty high economic cost.

127
00:06:26,780 --> 00:06:29,830
We've been hearing a lot about how
solar panels and wind turbines

128
00:06:29,830 --> 00:06:31,970
have come down in cost in recent years,

129
00:06:31,970 --> 00:06:35,130
but that cost has been 
significantly outweighed

130
00:06:35,130 --> 00:06:39,670
by just the challenges of integrating all
of that unreliable power onto the grid.

131
00:06:39,820 --> 00:06:42,620
Just take, for instance, 
what's happening in California.

132
00:06:42,700 --> 00:06:45,490
At the period in which solar panels
have come down in price

133
00:06:45,650 --> 00:06:47,760
very significantly, same with wind,

134
00:06:47,760 --> 00:06:49,720
we've seen our electricity prices go up

135
00:06:49,720 --> 00:06:52,649
five times more than
the rest of the country.

136
00:06:52,649 --> 00:06:54,169
And it's not unique to us.

137
00:06:54,169 --> 00:06:56,530
You can see the same phenomenon
happen in Germany,

138
00:06:56,630 --> 00:06:59,120
which is really the world's
leader in solar, wind,

139
00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:00,730
and other renewable technologies.

140
00:07:01,030 --> 00:07:05,410
Their prices increased 50 percent
during their big renewable energy push.

141
00:07:05,410 --> 00:07:08,740
Now you might think, well,
dealing with climate change

142
00:07:08,740 --> 00:07:11,470
is just going to require
that we all pay more for energy.

143
00:07:11,650 --> 00:07:13,350
That's what I used to think.

144
00:07:13,450 --> 00:07:15,430
But consider the case of France.

145
00:07:15,630 --> 00:07:18,720
France actually gets
twice as much of its electricity

146
00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:23,039
from clean zero emission sources
than does Germany, and yet,

147
00:07:23,130 --> 00:07:27,030
France pays almost half
as much for its electricity.

148
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:28,820
How can that be?

149
00:07:28,820 --> 00:07:30,960
You might have already
anticipated the answer.

150
00:07:30,960 --> 00:07:36,090
France gets most of its electricity
from nuclear power, about 75% in total.

151
00:07:36,190 --> 00:07:38,760
And nuclear just ends up
being a lot more reliable,

152
00:07:38,760 --> 00:07:41,810
generating power 24 hours a day,
seven days a week,

153
00:07:41,810 --> 00:07:44,050
for about 90% of the year.

154
00:07:44,360 --> 00:07:47,320
We see this phenomenon
show up at a global level.

155
00:07:47,330 --> 00:07:49,710
So, for example, there's been
a natural experiment

156
00:07:49,710 --> 00:07:51,170
over the last 40 years.

157
00:07:51,170 --> 00:07:52,270
Even more than that,

158
00:07:52,270 --> 00:07:55,719
or in terms of the deployment of nuclear
and the deployment of solar,

159
00:07:56,109 --> 00:07:59,370
you can see that
at a little bit higher cost,

160
00:07:59,370 --> 00:08:01,329
we got about half as much electricity

161
00:08:01,329 --> 00:08:04,169
from solar and wind
than we did from nuclear.

162
00:08:05,209 --> 00:08:08,390
Well, what does all this mean
for going forward?

163
00:08:08,500 --> 00:08:11,890
I think one of the most significant
findings to date is this one.

164
00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:15,579
Had Germany spent five hundred
and eighty billion dollars on nuclear

165
00:08:15,579 --> 00:08:17,110
instead of renewables,

166
00:08:17,110 --> 00:08:20,579
it would already be getting
a hundred percent of its electricity

167
00:08:20,579 --> 00:08:24,729
from clean energy sources,
and all of its transportation energy.

168
00:08:25,629 --> 00:08:28,869
Now I think you might be wondering
and it's quite reasonable to ask:

169
00:08:28,869 --> 00:08:32,199
Is nuclear power safe and
what do you do with the waste?

170
00:08:32,199 --> 00:08:34,259
Well, those are very reasonable questions.

171
00:08:34,259 --> 00:08:36,910
Turns out that there's been
scientific studies on this

172
00:08:36,910 --> 00:08:38,270
going over 40 years.

173
00:08:38,410 --> 00:08:40,060
This is just the most recent study

174
00:08:40,060 --> 00:08:43,240
that was done by the prestigious
British Medical Journal, Lancet,

175
00:08:43,240 --> 00:08:45,520
finds that nuclear power is the safest.

176
00:08:45,890 --> 00:08:47,390
It's easy to understand why.

177
00:08:47,800 --> 00:08:49,450
According to the WHO,

178
00:08:49,450 --> 00:08:52,850
about 7 million people die
annually from air pollution.

179
00:08:52,920 --> 00:08:54,650
And nuclear plants don't emit that.

180
00:08:54,760 --> 00:08:57,710
As a result, the climate scientist,
James Hansen, looked at it.

181
00:08:57,710 --> 00:09:00,410
He calculated that nuclear power
has already saved

182
00:09:00,410 --> 00:09:02,460
almost two million lives to date.

183
00:09:03,030 --> 00:09:06,510
It turns out that even wind energy
is more deadly than nuclear.

184
00:09:07,060 --> 00:09:10,350
This is a photograph taken
of two maintenance workers

185
00:09:10,350 --> 00:09:11,500
in the Netherlands,

186
00:09:11,500 --> 00:09:15,160
shortly before one of them
fell to his death to avoid the fire,

187
00:09:15,160 --> 00:09:17,540
and the other one was engulfed in flames.

188
00:09:17,890 --> 00:09:20,120
Now, what about environmental impact?

189
00:09:20,120 --> 00:09:22,260
I think a really easy way
to think about it is

190
00:09:22,260 --> 00:09:25,510
that uranium fuel which is
what we used to power nuclear plants

191
00:09:25,510 --> 00:09:27,300
is just really energy dense.

192
00:09:27,630 --> 00:09:31,740
About the same amount
of uranium as this Rubiks's Cube

193
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:35,410
can power all of the energy
you need in your entire life.

194
00:09:36,660 --> 00:09:37,950
As a consequence,

195
00:09:37,950 --> 00:09:39,750
you just don't need that much land

196
00:09:39,750 --> 00:09:42,480
in order to produce a significant
amount of electricity.

197
00:09:42,660 --> 00:09:46,150
Here you can compare the solar farm
I just described, Ivanpah,

198
00:09:46,150 --> 00:09:48,220
to California's last nuclear plant,

199
00:09:48,220 --> 00:09:49,430
Diablo Canyon.

200
00:09:49,430 --> 00:09:53,840
It takes 450 times more land
to generate the same amount of electricity

201
00:09:53,840 --> 00:09:55,240
as it does from nuclear.

202
00:09:55,420 --> 00:09:58,910
You would need 17 more
solar farms like Ivanpah

203
00:09:59,090 --> 00:10:02,060
in order to generate the same
output as Diablo Canyon.

204
00:10:02,140 --> 00:10:04,570
And of course it would then be unreliable.

205
00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:09,090
Well, what about the mining and the waste
and the material throughput.

206
00:10:09,620 --> 00:10:11,730
This has been studied
pretty closely as well.

207
00:10:11,730 --> 00:10:14,880
And it just turns out that
solar panels require 17 times

208
00:10:14,880 --> 00:10:17,420
more materials than nuclear plants do,

209
00:10:17,550 --> 00:10:20,760
in the form of cement,
glass, concrete, steel, etc.

210
00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:23,860
And that includes all the fuels
used for those nuclear plants.

211
00:10:24,160 --> 00:10:28,250
The consequence is that what comes out
at the end since its material throughput

212
00:10:28,250 --> 00:10:31,050
is just not a lot of waste from nuclear.

213
00:10:31,260 --> 00:10:35,080
All of the waste from the Swiss
nuclear program fits into this room.

214
00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:38,910
Nuclear waste is actually the only waste
from electricity production

215
00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:41,560
that's safely contained and internalized.

216
00:10:41,560 --> 00:10:43,420
Every other way of making electricity

217
00:10:43,420 --> 00:10:46,050
emits that waste
into the natural environment

218
00:10:46,050 --> 00:10:49,190
either as pollution or as material waste.

219
00:10:49,510 --> 00:10:51,759
We tend to think of solar panels as clean

220
00:10:52,039 --> 00:10:55,710
but the truth is that there is no plan
to deal with solar panels

221
00:10:55,710 --> 00:10:58,330
at the end of their 20 or 25 year life.

222
00:10:58,390 --> 00:11:01,680
A lot of experts are actually
very concerned that solar panels

223
00:11:01,930 --> 00:11:05,420
are just going to be shipped
to poor countries in Africa or Asia

224
00:11:05,530 --> 00:11:09,389
with the rest of our electronic
waste stream to be disassembled,

225
00:11:09,660 --> 00:11:13,960
often exposing people
to really high level of toxic elements,

226
00:11:13,960 --> 00:11:16,560
including lead, cadmium and chromium,

227
00:11:16,560 --> 00:11:21,530
elements that because they're elements,
their toxicity never declines over time.

228
00:11:21,970 --> 00:11:23,810
I think we have an intuitive sense

229
00:11:23,810 --> 00:11:27,360
that nuclear is a really powerful
strong energy source,

230
00:11:27,570 --> 00:11:31,180
and that sunlight is really dilute
and diffuse and weak,

231
00:11:31,180 --> 00:11:34,760
which is why you have to spread
solar collectors or wind collectors

232
00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:37,240
over such a large amount of land.

233
00:11:37,680 --> 00:11:39,450
Maybe that's why nobody was surprised

234
00:11:39,460 --> 00:11:43,260
when in the recent science-fiction
remake of Blade Runner,


235
00:11:43,570 --> 00:11:46,600
the film opens with a very
dark dystopian scene

236
00:11:46,600 --> 00:11:51,220
where California's deserts have been
entirely paved with solar farms.

237
00:11:52,420 --> 00:11:55,310
All of which, I think, raises
a really uncomfortable question:

238
00:11:55,880 --> 00:12:00,610
In the effort to try to save the climate,
are we destroying the environment?

239
00:12:01,770 --> 00:12:04,870
The interesting thing is that
over the last several hundred years,

240
00:12:04,870 --> 00:12:07,250
human beings have actually
been trying to move away

241
00:12:07,250 --> 00:12:09,460
from what you would consider
matter-dense fuels

242
00:12:09,460 --> 00:12:11,400
towards energy-dense ones.

243
00:12:11,510 --> 00:12:16,360
That means really from wood and dung
towards coal, oil, natural gas, uranium.

244
00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:19,200
This is a phenomenon that's been
going on for a long time.

245
00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:22,580
Poor countries around the world are in the
process still of moving away

246
00:12:22,580 --> 00:12:24,700
from wood and dung
as their primary energies.

247
00:12:24,700 --> 00:12:27,760
And for the most part,
this is a positive thing.

248
00:12:27,920 --> 00:12:31,240
As you stop using wood
as your major source of fuel,

249
00:12:31,240 --> 00:12:34,830
it allows the forests to grow back
and the wildlife to return.

250
00:12:34,920 --> 00:12:36,960
As you stop burning wood in your home,

251
00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:40,090
you no longer need to breath
that toxic smoke.

252
00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:43,660
And as you go from coal
to natural gas and uranium

253
00:12:43,660 --> 00:12:45,190
as your main sources of energy,

254
00:12:45,190 --> 00:12:49,610
it holds out the possibility of basically
eliminating air pollution altogether.

255
00:12:50,250 --> 00:12:52,270
There's just this problem with nuclear -

256
00:12:52,270 --> 00:12:56,360
well, it's been pretty popular to move
from dirtier to cleaner energy sources,

257
00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:59,390
and from energy-diffuse
to energy-dense sources -

258
00:12:59,390 --> 00:13:03,240
nuclear is just really unpopular
for a bunch of historical reasons.

259
00:13:03,500 --> 00:13:06,400
And as a consequence, in the past,

260
00:13:06,400 --> 00:13:08,590
I think a lot of others have sort of said,

261
00:13:08,590 --> 00:13:10,720
in order to deal with climate change,

262
00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:14,660
we're just going to need all the different
kinds of clean energy that we have.

263
00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:17,630
The problem is that it just
turns out not to be true.

264
00:13:17,770 --> 00:13:20,050
You remember I discussed
France a little bit ago.

265
00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:22,990
France gets most of its
electricity from nuclear.

266
00:13:23,160 --> 00:13:26,949
If France were to try to significantly
scale up solar and wind,

267
00:13:26,949 --> 00:13:31,550
it would also have to significantly reduce
how much electricity it gets from nuclear.

268
00:13:31,730 --> 00:13:36,920
That's because in order to handle the huge
variability of solar and wind on the grid,

269
00:13:36,960 --> 00:13:39,339
they would need to burn more natural gas.

270
00:13:39,449 --> 00:13:40,450
Think of it this way,

271
00:13:40,450 --> 00:13:43,510
it's just really hard to ramp
up and down a nuclear plant

272
00:13:43,679 --> 00:13:46,770
whereas I think we're all pretty
familiar with turning natural gas

273
00:13:46,770 --> 00:13:48,219
up and down on our stove.

274
00:13:48,219 --> 00:13:50,730
A similar process works
in managing the grid.

275
00:13:51,100 --> 00:13:52,870
Of course it goes without saying

276
00:13:52,870 --> 00:13:55,970
that oil and gas companies
understand this pretty well,

277
00:13:55,970 --> 00:13:59,900
which is why we've seen them invest
millions of dollars in recent years

278
00:13:59,900 --> 00:14:01,780
in promoting solar and wind.

279
00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:06,380
This just raises, I think,
another challenging question,

280
00:14:06,380 --> 00:14:09,790
which is that in places
that are using a lot of nuclear -

281
00:14:09,790 --> 00:14:13,140
half of their grids that are
mostly nuclear and hydro -

282
00:14:13,610 --> 00:14:16,409
going towards solar and wind
and other renewables

283
00:14:16,409 --> 00:14:19,080
would actually increase carbon emissions.

284
00:14:19,280 --> 00:14:21,850
I think a better alternative
is just to tell the truth.

285
00:14:21,850 --> 00:14:24,150
And that's what a number
of scientists have been doing.

286
00:14:24,150 --> 00:14:25,470
I mentioned earlier

287
00:14:25,470 --> 00:14:29,080
that hundreds of thousands of birds
are killed every year by wind turbines.

288
00:14:29,200 --> 00:14:32,270
What I didn't mention is that
a million bats at a minimum

289
00:14:32,270 --> 00:14:33,940
are killed every year by wind.

290
00:14:34,220 --> 00:14:36,419
The consequence has been
that bat scientists

291
00:14:36,419 --> 00:14:38,120
have been speaking out about this.

292
00:14:38,120 --> 00:14:40,939
This particular bat species,
the hoary bat,

293
00:14:40,939 --> 00:14:43,019
which is a migratory bat species,

294
00:14:43,019 --> 00:14:45,679
is literally at risk
of going extinct right now

295
00:14:45,679 --> 00:14:48,170
because of the significant
expansion of wind.

296
00:14:48,520 --> 00:14:51,360
It's not just wind, it's also on solar.

297
00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:55,229
The scientists who were involved
in creating the Ivanpah solar farm

298
00:14:55,229 --> 00:14:58,639
and who were involved in clearing
that land have been speaking out.


299
00:14:58,979 --> 00:15:00,280
One of them wrote,

300
00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:04,359
"Everybody knows that translocation
of desert tortoises doesn't work.

301
00:15:04,379 --> 00:15:06,889
When you're walking
in front of a bulldozer, crying,

302
00:15:06,889 --> 00:15:09,350
and moving animals
and cacti out of the way,

303
00:15:09,350 --> 00:15:12,049
it's hard to think that
the project is a good idea."

304
00:15:12,289 --> 00:15:16,840
And now we can see these phenomena
at work at an international level.

305
00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:18,580
In my home state of California,

306
00:15:18,580 --> 00:15:21,779
we've been stuffing a lot of natural gas
into the side of a mountain

307
00:15:21,779 --> 00:15:24,410
in order to handle all that
intermittent solar and wind.

308
00:15:24,470 --> 00:15:25,570
It's sprung a leak.

309
00:15:25,570 --> 00:15:28,300
It was equivalent to putting
500,000 cars on the road.

310
00:15:28,300 --> 00:15:29,620
And currently in Germany,

311
00:15:29,620 --> 00:15:34,050
there's protesters trying to block
a new coal mining project

312
00:15:34,050 --> 00:15:38,020
that would involve destroying 
the ancient Han back forest

313
00:15:38,020 --> 00:15:40,000
in order to get to the coal underneath,

314
00:15:40,200 --> 00:15:44,190
all in an effort to phase out nuclear
and expand solar and wind.

315
00:15:44,790 --> 00:15:49,120
The good news is that I think that
people still care about nature enough

316
00:15:49,120 --> 00:15:50,810
for these facts to matter.

317
00:15:50,810 --> 00:15:52,770
We saw last year in South Korea

318
00:15:52,770 --> 00:15:55,570
a citizen's jury deliberated
for several months

319
00:15:55,570 --> 00:15:57,290
weighing these different issues.

320
00:15:57,470 --> 00:16:00,420
They had to decide whether they were
going to phase out nuclear

321
00:16:00,430 --> 00:16:02,380
or keep it and expand it.

322
00:16:02,630 --> 00:16:06,080
They started out 40 percent
in favor of expanding nuclear

323
00:16:06,080 --> 00:16:08,620
but after several months
and considering these issues,

324
00:16:08,620 --> 00:16:11,890
they ended up voting 60%
to expand nuclear.

325
00:16:11,900 --> 00:16:14,770
A similar phenomena just
happened last week in Arizona.

326
00:16:14,890 --> 00:16:16,700
The voters had a ballot initiative

327
00:16:16,700 --> 00:16:19,640
to vote on whether or not
to continue with nuclear

328
00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:23,500
or to phase it out and try to replace it
with natural gas and solar.

329
00:16:23,620 --> 00:16:26,160
They ended up rejecting at 70 to 30.

330
00:16:26,270 --> 00:16:27,860
And even here in Europe,

331
00:16:27,860 --> 00:16:31,900
we saw the Netherlands is one of the first
countries in recent memory

332
00:16:31,900 --> 00:16:34,560
to actually announce as they did last week

333
00:16:34,560 --> 00:16:38,860
that they're going to start to increase
their reliance on nuclear power

334
00:16:38,920 --> 00:16:40,520
in recognition that there's just no way

335
00:16:40,520 --> 00:16:44,340
they could generate significant amounts
of energy enough from solar and wind

336
00:16:44,340 --> 00:16:46,060
to meet their climate targets.

337
00:16:46,560 --> 00:16:47,760
I think it's natural

338
00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:50,870
that those of us that became
very concerned about climate change,

339
00:16:50,890 --> 00:16:52,820
such a big environmental issue,

340
00:16:52,850 --> 00:16:56,160
would gravitate towards
really romantic solutions

341
00:16:56,240 --> 00:16:59,830
like harmonizing human civilization
with the natural world

342
00:16:59,830 --> 00:17:01,550
using renewable energies.

343
00:17:01,550 --> 00:17:05,390
But I think it's also understandable
that as the facts have come in,

344
00:17:05,449 --> 00:17:09,520
many of us have started to question
our prior beliefs and change our minds.

345
00:17:09,840 --> 00:17:12,200
For me the question now is

346
00:17:12,470 --> 00:17:16,449
that we know that renewables
can't save the planet,

347
00:17:16,459 --> 00:17:18,950
are we going to keep
keep letting them destroy it?

348
00:17:19,170 --> 00:17:20,640
Thank you very much.

349
00:17:20,776 --> 00:17:22,496
(Applause)