9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thank you very much

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I was a boy, My parents sometimes

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
would take me camping in California.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We would camp in the beaches,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the forests, in the deserts.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
some people think that deserts are

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
empty of life.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But my parents taught me to see

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the wild life all around us,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The hawks, the eagles, the tortoises.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
One time when we were staying up at camp,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We found a baby scorpion with its sting around,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I remember thinking how cool it was

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that something could be both so cute

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and also so dangerous.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
After college, I moved to California,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I started working on a number of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
environmental campaigns.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I got involved in hoping to save

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the state's last ancient redwood forest.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And blocking a proposed radioactive waste

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
repository set for the desert.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And surely after I turned 30,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I decided that I wanted to dedicate

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a significant amount of life to solving

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
climate change.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was worried that global warming would

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
end up destroying many of the natural

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
environments that people had worked

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so hard to protect.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I thought the technical solution were

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
pretty straight forward,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
solar panels on every roof,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
electric cars in the drive way,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the main obstacles were political.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And so I hoped to organize a coalition

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of the countries biggest labor unions

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and biggest environmental groups.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Our proposal was for a 300 billion dollar

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in renewables.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the idea was not only we would prevent

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
climate change but, we would also create

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
millions of new jobs in a very fast

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
growing high tech sector.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Our efforts really paid off in 2007,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
when then presidential candidate

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Barack Obama embraced our vision.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And between 2009 and 2015,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the US invested a 150 billion dollars

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in renewables and other kinds of clean tac.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But right away, we started to encounter

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
some problems.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So first of all, the electricity from

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
solar roof tops in some costs about twice

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as much as the electricity from solar farms.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And both solar farms and wind farms

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
require a cover of pretty significant

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
amount of land with

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
solar panels and wind turbines,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And also building very big transmission lines

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to bring all that electricity from the

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
country side into the city.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Both of those things were often very

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
strongly resisted by local communities,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as well as by conservation biologists who

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
were concerned about the impacts on

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
wild birds species and other animals.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, there was a lot of other people

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
working on technical solutions at the time

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
One of the big challenges of course is

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
just the intermediacy of solar and wind.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They only generate electricity about

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
10 - 30 % of the time during most of the year

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But, Some of the solutions that were

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
being proposed were to convert hydroelectric

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
dams into gigantic batteries.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The idea was that when the sun was shining

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the wind was blowing, you would pump

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the water uphill, stored for later and

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
then when you needed electricity you run

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it over the turbines.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In terms of wild life, some of these

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
problems just didn't seem like

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a significant concern.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, when I learned that house cats

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
killed billions of birds every year.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it put into perspective that hundreds of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
thousands of birds that are rather killed

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
by wind turbines.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Basically seemed to me at the time that

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
most if not all of the problems of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
scaling up solar and wind could be solved

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
through more technological innovation.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But as the years went by, these problems

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
persisted, and in many cases grew worse.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, California is a state that is really

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
committed to renewable energy.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But we still haven't converted many of our

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
hydroelectric dams into big batteries.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Some of the problems are just geographic,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It is just, you have to have a very

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
particular kind of formation to build

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and do that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And even in those cases, it's quite

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
expensive to make those conversions.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Other challenges are just that, there is

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
other uses for water like irrigation,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And maybe this is the most significant

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
problem is just that, In California,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The water in our rivers and reservoirs

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is growing increasingly scarce and

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
unreliable due to climate change.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In term of the situation of reliability,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As a consequence of it, we have actually

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
had to stop the electricity coming from

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the solar farms into the cities because

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there are just have been too much of it

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
at times, or, We have been starting to

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
pay out neighboring states as Arizona to

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
take that solar electricity, The

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
alternative is to suffer from blowouts of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the grid.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And in turns out that,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
when it comes to birds and cats,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Cats don't kill eagles, Eagles kill cats.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What cats kill are the small common

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sparrows and jays and robins,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Birds that are not endangered and not at

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
risk of going to extinct.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What do kill eagles and another big birds

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like the skite, as well as owls, and condors.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And other threatened endangered species

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are wind turbines.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, they are one of the most

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
significant threats to those big birds

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
species that we have.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We just haven't been introducing the air

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
space with many other objects like we have

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
wind turbines over the last several years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And in terms of solar, you know,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
building a solar farm is not like building

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
any other kind of farm, you have to clear

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the whole area of wild life.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so, this is a picture of one third of

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
one of the biggest solar farms in

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
California called ivanpah.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In order to build this, they had to clear

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the whole area of desert tortoises.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
literally, pulling desert tortoises and

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
their babies out of borrows,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
putting them on the back of pickup trucks

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and transporting them to captivity where

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
many of them ended up dying.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And currently, the current estimates are

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that about 6 thousand birds are

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
killed every year.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Actually, catching on fire above the

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
solar farms and bulging to their death.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Over time, it gradually struck me that,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there was really no amount of technological

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
innovation that was gonna make the sun

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
shine more regularly or wind blow more

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
reliably.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In fact, you could make solar panel

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
cheaper, you can make wind turbines bigger

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But, sunlight and wind are just really

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
dilute fuels, and in order to produce

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
significant amount of electricity,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you just have to cover a very large land

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
mass with them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In other words, all of the major problems

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
with renewables aren't technical,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They are natural.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Well, dealing with all of this unreliability

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the big environmental impacts obviously

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
comes that a pretty high economic cost.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You know, we have been hearing a lot

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
about how solar panels and wind turbines

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
have come down in cost in recent years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But that cost has been significantly

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
out wade by just the challenges of