WEBVTT

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Thank you very much

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When I was a boy, My parents sometimes

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would take me camping in California.

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We would camp in the beaches,

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in the forests, in the deserts.

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some people think that deserts are

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empty of life.

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But my parents taught me to see

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the wild life all around us,

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The hawks, the eagles, the tortoises.

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One time when we were staying up at camp,

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We found a baby scorpion with its sting around,

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And I remember thinking how cool it was

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that something could be both so cute

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and also so dangerous.

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After college, I moved to California,

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And I started working on a number of

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environmental campaigns.

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I got involved in hoping to save

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the state's last ancient redwood forest.

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And blocking a proposed radioactive waste

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repository set for the desert.

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And surely after I turned 30,

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I decided that I wanted to dedicate

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a significant amount of life to solving

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climate change.

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I was worried that global warming would

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end up destroying many of the natural

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environments that people had worked

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so hard to protect.

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I thought the technical solution were

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pretty straight forward,

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solar panels on every roof,

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electric cars in the drive way,

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that the main obstacles were political.

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And so I hoped to organize a coalition

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of the countries biggest labor unions

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and biggest environmental groups.

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Our proposal was for a 300 billion dollar

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in renewables.

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And the idea was not only we would prevent

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climate change but, we would also create

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millions of new jobs in a very fast

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growing high tech sector.

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Our efforts really paid off in 2007,

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when then presidential candidate

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Barack Obama embraced our vision.

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And between 2009 and 2015,

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the US invested a 150 billion dollars

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in renewables and other kinds of clean tac.

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But right away, we started to encounter

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some problems.

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So first of all, the electricity from

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solar roof tops in some costs about twice

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as much as the electricity from solar farms.

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And both solar farms and wind farms

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require a cover of pretty significant

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amount of land with

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solar panels and wind turbines,

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And also building very big transmission lines

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to bring all that electricity from the

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country side into the city.

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Both of those things were often very

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strongly resisted by local communities,

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as well as by conservation biologists who

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were concerned about the impacts on

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wild birds species and other animals.

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Now, there was a lot of other people

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working on technical solutions at the time

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One of the big challenges of course is

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just the intermediacy of solar and wind.

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They only generate electricity about

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10 - 30 % of the time during most of the year

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But, Some of the solutions that were

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being proposed were to convert hydroelectric

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dams into gigantic batteries.

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The idea was that when the sun was shining

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and the wind was blowing, you would pump

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the water uphill, stored for later and

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then when you needed electricity you run

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it over the turbines.

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In terms of wild life, some of these

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problems just didn't seem like

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a significant concern.

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So, when I learned that house cats

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killed billions of birds every year.

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it put into perspective that hundreds of

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thousands of birds that are rather killed

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by wind turbines.

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Basically seemed to me at the time that

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most if not all of the problems of

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scaling up solar and wind could be solved

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through more technological innovation.

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But as the years went by, these problems

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persisted, and in many cases grew worse.

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So, California is a state that is really

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committed to renewable energy.

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But we still haven't converted many of our

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hydroelectric dams into big batteries.

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Some of the problems are just geographic,

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It is just, you have to have a very

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particular kind of formation to build

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and do that.

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And even in those cases, it's quite

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expensive to make those conversions.

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Other challenges are just that, there is

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other uses for water like irrigation,

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And maybe this is the most significant

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problem is just that, In California,

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The water in our rivers and reservoirs

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is growing increasingly scarce and

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unreliable due to climate change.

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In term of the situation of reliability,

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As a consequence of it, we have actually

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had to stop the electricity coming from

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the solar farms into the cities because

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there are just have been too much of it

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at times, or, We have been starting to

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pay out neighboring states as Arizona to

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take that solar electricity, The

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alternative is to suffer from blowouts of

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the grid.

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And in turns out that,

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when it comes to birds and cats,

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Cats don't kill eagles, Eagles kill cats.

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What cats kill are the small common

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sparrows and jays and robins,

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Birds that are not endangered and not at

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risk of going to extinct.

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What do kill eagles and another big birds

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like the skite, as well as owls, and condors.

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And other threatened endangered species

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are wind turbines.

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In fact, they are one of the most

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significant threats to those big birds

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species that we have.

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We just haven't been introducing the air

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space with many other objects like we have

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wind turbines over the last several years.

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And in terms of solar, you know,

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building a solar farm is not like building

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any other kind of farm, you have to clear

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the whole area of wild life.

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so, this is a picture of one third of

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one of the biggest solar farms in

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California called ivanpah.

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In order to build this, they had to clear

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the whole area of desert tortoises.

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literally, pulling desert tortoises and

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their babies out of borrows,

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putting them on the back of pickup trucks

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and transporting them to captivity where

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many of them ended up dying.

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And currently, the current estimates are

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that about 6 thousand birds are

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killed every year.

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Actually, catching on fire above the

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solar farms and bulging to their death.

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Over time, it gradually struck me that,

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there was really no amount of technological

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innovation that was gonna make the sun

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shine more regularly or wind blow more

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reliably.

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In fact, you could make solar panel

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cheaper, you can make wind turbines bigger

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But, sunlight and wind are just really

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dilute fuels, and in order to produce

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significant amount of electricity,

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you just have to cover a very large land

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mass with them.

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In other words, all of the major problems

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with renewables aren't technical,

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They are natural.

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Well, dealing with all of this unreliability

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and the big environmental impacts obviously

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comes that a pretty high economic cost.

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You know, we have been hearing a lot

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about how solar panels and wind turbines

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have come down in cost in recent years.

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But that cost has been significantly

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out wade by just the challenges of