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I'm going to talk today about energy and climate.

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And that might seem a bit surprising because

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my full-time work at the Foundation is mostly about vaccines and seeds,

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about the things that we need to invent and deliver

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to help the poorest two billion live better lives.

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But energy and climate are extremely important to these people --

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in fact, more important than to anyone else on the planet.

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The climate getting worse means that many years, their crops won't grow:

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There will be too much rain, not enough rain,

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things will change in ways

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that their fragile environment simply can't support.

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And that leads to starvation, it leads to uncertainty, it leads to unrest.

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So, the climate changes will be terrible for them.

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Also, the price of energy is very important to them.

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In fact, if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of,

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to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy.

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Now, the price of energy has come down over time.

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Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

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The coal revolution fueled the Industrial Revolution,

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and, even in the 1900s we've seen a very rapid decline in the price of electricity,

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and that's why we have refrigerators, air-conditioning,

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we can make modern materials and do so many things.

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And so, we're in a wonderful situation with electricity in the rich world.

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But, as we make it cheaper -- and let's go for making it twice as cheap --

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we need to meet a new constraint,

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and that constraint has to do with CO2.

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CO2 is warming the planet,

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and the equation on CO2 is actually a very straightforward one.

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If you sum up the CO2 that gets emitted,

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that leads to a temperature increase,

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and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects:

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the effects on the weather; perhaps worse, the indirect effects,

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in that the natural ecosystems can't adjust to these rapid changes,

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and so you get ecosystem collapses.

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Now, the exact amount of how you map

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from a certain increase of CO2 to what temperature will be

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and where the positive feedbacks are,

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there's some uncertainty there, but not very much.

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And there's certainly uncertainty about how bad those effects will be,

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but they will be extremely bad.

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I asked the top scientists on this several times:

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Do we really have to get down to near zero?

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Can't we just cut it in half or a quarter?

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And the answer is that until we get near to zero,

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the temperature will continue to rise.

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And so that's a big challenge.

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It's very different than saying "We're a twelve-foot-high truck trying to get under a ten-foot bridge,

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and we can just sort of squeeze under."

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This is something that has to get to zero.

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Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year,

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over 26 billion tons.

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For each American, it's about 20 tons;

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for people in poor countries, it's less than one ton.

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It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet.

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And, somehow, we have to make changes

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that will bring that down to zero.

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It's been constantly going up.

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It's only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all,

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so we have to go from rapidly rising

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to falling, and falling all the way to zero.

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This equation has four factors,

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a little bit of multiplication:

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So, you've got a thing on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero,

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and that's going to be based on the number of people,

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the services each person's using on average,

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the energy on average for each service,

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and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy.

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So, let's look at each one of these

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and see how we can get this down to zero.

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Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero.

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Now that's back from high school algebra,

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but let's take a look.

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First, we've got population.

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The world today has 6.8 billion people.

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That's headed up to about nine billion.

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Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines,

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health care, reproductive health services,

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we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent,

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but there we see an increase of about 1.3.

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The second factor is the services we use.

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This encompasses everything:

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the food we eat, clothing, TV, heating.

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These are very good things:

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getting rid of poverty means providing these services

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to almost everyone on the planet.

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And it's a great thing for this number to go up.

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In the rich world, perhaps the top one billion,

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we probably could cut back and use less,

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but every year, this number, on average, is going to go up,

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and so, over all, that will more than double

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the services delivered per person.

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Here we have a very basic service:

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Do you have lighting in your house to be able to read your homework?

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And, in fact, these kids don't, so they're going out

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and reading their school work under the street lamps.

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Now, efficiency, E, the energy for each service,

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here finally we have some good news.

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We have something that's not going up.

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Through various inventions and new ways of doing lighting,

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through different types of cars, different ways of building buildings --

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there are a lot of services where you can bring

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the energy for that service down quite substantially.

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Some individual services even bring it down by 90 percent.

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There are other services like how we make fertilizer,

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or how we do air transport,

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where the rooms for improvement are far, far less.

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And so, overall here, if we're optimistic,

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we may get a reduction of a factor of three to even, perhaps, a factor of six.

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But for these first three factors now,

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we've gone from 26 billion to, at best, maybe 13 billion tons,

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and that just won't cut it.

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So let's look at this fourth factor --

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this is going to be a key one --

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and this is the amount of CO2 put out per each unit of energy.

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And so the question is: Can you actually get that to zero?

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If you burn coal, no.

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If you burn natural gas, no.

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Almost every way we make electricity today,

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except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2.

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And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale,

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is create a new system.

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And so, we need energy miracles.

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Now, when I use the term "miracle," I don't mean something that's impossible.

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The microprocessor is a miracle. The personal computer is a miracle.

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The Internet and its services are a miracle.

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So, the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles.

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Usually, we don't have a deadline,

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where you have to get the miracle by a certain date.

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Usually, you just kind of stand by, and some come along, some don't.

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This is a case where we actually have to drive at full speed

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and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline.

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Now, I thought, "How could I really capture this?

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Is there some kind of natural illustration,

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some demonstration that would grab people's imagination here?"

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I thought back to a year ago when I brought mosquitos,

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and somehow people enjoyed that.

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(Laughter)

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It really got them involved in the idea of,

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you know, there are people who live with mosquitos.

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So, with energy, all I could come up with is this.

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I decided that releasing fireflies

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would be my contribution to the environment here this year.

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So here we have some natural fireflies.

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I'm told they don't bite; in fact, they might not even leave that jar.

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(Laughter)

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Now, there's all sorts of gimmicky solutions like that one,

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but they don't really add up to much.

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We need solutions -- either one or several --

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that have unbelievable scale

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and unbelievable reliability,

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and, although there's many directions people are seeking,

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I really only see five that can achieve the big numbers.

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I've left out tide, geothermal, fusion, biofuels.

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Those may make some contribution,

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and if they can do better than I expect, so much the better,

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but my key point here

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is that we're going to have to work on each of these five,

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and we can't give up any of them because they look daunting,

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because they all have significant challenges.

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Let's look first at the burning fossil fuels,

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either burning coal or burning natural gas.

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What you need to do there, seems like it might be simple, but it's not,

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and that's to take all the CO2, after you've burned it, going out the flue,

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pressurize it, create a liquid, put it somewhere,

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and hope it stays there.

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Now we have some pilot things that do this at the 60 to 80 percent level,

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but getting up to that full percentage, that will be very tricky,

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and agreeing on where these CO2 quantities should be put will be hard,

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but the toughest one here is this long-term issue.

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Who's going to be sure?

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Who's going to guarantee something that is literally billions of times larger

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than any type of waste you think of in terms of nuclear or other things?

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This is a lot of volume.

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So that's a tough one.

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Next would be nuclear.

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It also has three big problems:

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Cost, particularly in highly regulated countries, is high;

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the issue of the safety, really feeling good about nothing could go wrong,

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that, even though you have these human operators,

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that the fuel doesn't get used for weapons.

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And then what do you do with the waste?

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And, although it's not very large, there are a lot of concerns about that.

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People need to feel good about it.

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So three very tough problems that might be solvable,

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and so, should be worked on.

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The last three of the five, I've grouped together.

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These are what people often refer to as the renewable sources.

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And they actually -- although it's great they don't require fuel --

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they have some disadvantages.

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One is that the density of energy gathered in these technologies

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is dramatically less than a power plant.

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This is energy farming, so you're talking about many square miles,

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thousands of time more area than you think of as a normal energy plant.

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Also, these are intermittent sources.

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The sun doesn't shine all day, it doesn't shine every day,

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and, likewise, the wind doesn't blow all the time.

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And so, if you depend on these sources,

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you have to have some way of getting the energy

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during those time periods that it's not available.

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So, we've got big cost challenges here,

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we have transmission challenges:

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for example, say this energy source is outside your country;

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you not only need the technology,

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but you have to deal with the risk of the energy coming from elsewhere.

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And, finally, this storage problem.

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And, to dimensionalize this, I went through and looked at

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all the types of batteries that get made --

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for cars, for computers, for phones, for flashlights, for everything --

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and compared that to the amount of electrical energy the world uses,

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and what I found is that all the batteries we make now

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could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy.

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And so, in fact, we need a big breakthrough here,

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something that's going to be a factor of 100 better

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than the approaches we have now.

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It's not impossible, but it's not a very easy thing.

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Now, this shows up when you try to get the intermittent source

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to be above, say, 20 to 30 percent of what you're using.

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If you're counting on it for 100 percent,

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you need an incredible miracle battery.

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Now, how we're going to go forward on this -- what's the right approach?

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Is it a Manhattan Project? What's the thing that can get us there?

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Well, we need lots of companies working on this, hundreds.

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In each of these five paths, we need at least a hundred people.

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And a lot of them, you'll look at and say, "They're crazy." That's good.

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And, I think, here in the TED group,

0:12:45.000,0:12:49.000
we have many people who are already pursuing this.

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Bill Gross has several companies, including one called eSolar

0:12:53.000,0:12:55.000
that has some great solar thermal technologies.

0:12:55.000,0:12:59.000
Vinod Khosla's investing in dozens of companies

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that are doing great things and have interesting possibilities,

0:13:03.000,0:13:05.000
and I'm trying to help back that.

0:13:05.000,0:13:09.000
Nathan Myhrvold and I actually are backing a company

0:13:09.000,0:13:13.000
that, perhaps surprisingly, is actually taking the nuclear approach.

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There are some innovations in nuclear: modular, liquid.

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And innovation really stopped in this industry quite some ago,

0:13:21.000,0:13:26.000
so the idea that there's some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising.

0:13:26.000,0:13:32.000
The idea of TerraPower is that, instead of burning a part of uranium --

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the one percent, which is the U235 --

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we decided, "Let's burn the 99 percent, the U238."

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It is kind of a crazy idea.

0:13:42.000,0:13:45.000
In fact, people had talked about it for a long time,

0:13:45.000,0:13:49.000
but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not,

0:13:49.000,0:13:52.000
and so it's through the advent of modern supercomputers

0:13:52.000,0:13:54.000
that now you can simulate and see that, yes,

0:13:54.000,0:14:00.000
with the right material's approach, this looks like it would work.

0:14:00.000,0:14:03.000
And, because you're burning that 99 percent,

0:14:03.000,0:14:07.000
you have greatly improved cost profile.

0:14:07.000,0:14:11.000
You actually burn up the waste, and you can actually use as fuel

0:14:11.000,0:14:14.000
all the leftover waste from today's reactors.

0:14:14.000,0:14:19.000
So, instead of worrying about them, you just take that. It's a great thing.

0:14:19.000,0:14:23.000
It breathes this uranium as it goes along, so it's kind of like a candle.

0:14:23.000,0:14:27.000
You can see it's a log there, often referred to as a traveling wave reactor.

0:14:27.000,0:14:31.000
In terms of fuel, this really solves the problem.

0:14:31.000,0:14:34.000
I've got a picture here of a place in Kentucky.

0:14:34.000,0:14:36.000
This is the leftover, the 99 percent,

0:14:36.000,0:14:38.000
where they've taken out the part they burn now,

0:14:38.000,0:14:40.000
so it's called depleted uranium.

0:14:40.000,0:14:43.000
That would power the U.S. for hundreds of years.

0:14:43.000,0:14:46.000
And, simply by filtering seawater in an inexpensive process,

0:14:46.000,0:14:51.000
you'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of the planet.

0:14:51.000,0:14:55.000
So, you know, it's got lots of challenges ahead,

0:14:55.000,0:15:00.000
but it is an example of the many hundreds and hundreds of ideas

0:15:00.000,0:15:03.000
that we need to move forward.

0:15:03.000,0:15:06.000
So let's think: How should we measure ourselves?

0:15:06.000,0:15:09.000
What should our report card look like?

0:15:09.000,0:15:12.000
Well, let's go out to where we really need to get,

0:15:12.000,0:15:14.000
and then look at the intermediate.

0:15:14.000,0:15:19.000
For 2050, you've heard many people talk about this 80 percent reduction.

0:15:19.000,0:15:23.000
That really is very important, that we get there.

0:15:23.000,0:15:27.000
And that 20 percent will be used up by things going on in poor countries,

0:15:27.000,0:15:29.000
still some agriculture,

0:15:29.000,0:15:33.000
hopefully we will have cleaned up forestry, cement.

0:15:33.000,0:15:36.000
So, to get to that 80 percent,

0:15:36.000,0:15:40.000
the developed countries, including countries like China,

0:15:40.000,0:15:45.000
will have had to switch their electricity generation altogether.

0:15:45.000,0:15:51.000
So, the other grade is: Are we deploying this zero-emission technology,

0:15:51.000,0:15:53.000
have we deployed it in all the developed countries

0:15:53.000,0:15:56.000
and we're in the process of getting it elsewhere?

0:15:56.000,0:15:58.000
That's super important.

0:15:58.000,0:16:02.000
That's a key element of making that report card.

0:16:02.000,0:16:07.000
So, backing up from there, what should the 2020 report card look like?

0:16:07.000,0:16:09.000
Well, again, it should have the two elements.

0:16:09.000,0:16:13.000
We should go through these efficiency measures to start getting reductions:

0:16:13.000,0:16:16.000
The less we emit, the less that sum will be of CO2,

0:16:16.000,0:16:18.000
and, therefore, the less the temperature.

0:16:18.000,0:16:21.000
But in some ways, the grade we get there,

0:16:21.000,0:16:25.000
doing things that don't get us all the way to the big reductions,

0:16:25.000,0:16:29.000
is only equally, or maybe even slightly less, important than the other,

0:16:29.000,0:16:33.000
which is the piece of innovation on these breakthroughs.

0:16:33.000,0:16:36.000
These breakthroughs, we need to move those at full speed,

0:16:36.000,0:16:39.000
and we can measure that in terms of companies,

0:16:39.000,0:16:42.000
pilot projects, regulatory things that have been changed.

0:16:42.000,0:16:45.000
There's a lot of great books that have been written about this.

0:16:45.000,0:16:48.000
The Al Gore book, "Our Choice"

0:16:48.000,0:16:51.000
and the David McKay book, "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air."

0:16:51.000,0:16:54.000
They really go through it and create a framework

0:16:54.000,0:16:56.000
that this can be discussed broadly,

0:16:56.000,0:16:59.000
because we need broad backing for this.

0:16:59.000,0:17:01.000
There's a lot that has to come together.

0:17:01.000,0:17:03.000
So this is a wish.

0:17:03.000,0:17:07.000
It's a very concrete wish that we invent this technology.

0:17:07.000,0:17:10.000
If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years --

0:17:10.000,0:17:12.000
I could pick who's president,

0:17:12.000,0:17:15.000
I could pick a vaccine, which is something I love,

0:17:15.000,0:17:17.000
or I could pick that this thing

0:17:17.000,0:17:21.000
that's half the cost with no CO2 gets invented --

0:17:21.000,0:17:23.000
this is the wish I would pick.

0:17:23.000,0:17:25.000
This is the one with the greatest impact.

0:17:25.000,0:17:27.000
If we don't get this wish,

0:17:27.000,0:17:31.000
the division between the people who think short term and long term will be terrible,

0:17:31.000,0:17:34.000
between the U.S. and China, between poor countries and rich,

0:17:34.000,0:17:39.000
and most of all the lives of those two billion will be far worse.

0:17:39.000,0:17:41.000
So, what do we have to do?

0:17:41.000,0:17:46.000
What am I appealing to you to step forward and drive?

0:17:46.000,0:17:49.000
We need to go for more research funding.

0:17:49.000,0:17:51.000
When countries get together in places like Copenhagen,

0:17:51.000,0:17:54.000
they shouldn't just discuss the CO2.

0:17:54.000,0:17:56.000
They should discuss this innovation agenda,

0:17:56.000,0:18:01.000
and you'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending

0:18:01.000,0:18:03.000
on these innovative approaches.

0:18:03.000,0:18:07.000
We do need the market incentives -- CO2 tax, cap and trade --

0:18:07.000,0:18:10.000
something that gets that price signal out there.

0:18:10.000,0:18:12.000
We need to get the message out.

0:18:12.000,0:18:15.000
We need to have this dialogue be a more rational, more understandable dialogue,

0:18:15.000,0:18:18.000
including the steps that the government takes.

0:18:18.000,0:18:22.000
This is an important wish, but it is one I think we can achieve.

0:18:22.000,0:18:24.000
Thank you.

0:18:24.000,0:18:35.000
(Applause)

0:18:35.000,0:18:37.000
Thank you.

0:18:37.000,0:18:39.000
Chris Anderson: Thank you. Thank you.

0:18:39.000,0:18:44.000
(Applause)

0:18:44.000,0:18:50.000
Thank you. So to understand more about TerraPower, right --

0:18:50.000,0:18:55.000
I mean, first of all, can you give a sense of what scale of investment this is?

0:18:55.000,0:18:59.000
Bil Gates: To actually do the software, buy the supercomputer,

0:18:59.000,0:19:01.000
hire all the great scientists, which we've done,

0:19:01.000,0:19:04.000
that's only tens of millions,

0:19:04.000,0:19:07.000
and even once we test our materials out in a Russian reactor

0:19:07.000,0:19:11.000
to make sure that our materials work properly,

0:19:11.000,0:19:13.000
then you'll only be up in the hundreds of millions.

0:19:13.000,0:19:16.000
The tough thing is building the pilot reactor;

0:19:16.000,0:19:21.000
finding the several billion, finding the regulator, the location

0:19:21.000,0:19:23.000
that will actually build the first one of these.

0:19:23.000,0:19:27.000
Once you get the first one built, if it works as advertised,

0:19:27.000,0:19:31.000
then it's just clear as day, because the economics, the energy density,

0:19:31.000,0:19:33.000
are so different than nuclear as we know it.

0:19:33.000,0:19:37.000
CA: And so, to understand it right, this involves building deep into the ground

0:19:37.000,0:19:41.000
almost like a vertical kind of column of nuclear fuel,

0:19:41.000,0:19:43.000
of this sort of spent uranium,

0:19:43.000,0:19:46.000
and then the process starts at the top and kind of works down?

0:19:46.000,0:19:49.000
BG: That's right. Today, you're always refueling the reactor,

0:19:49.000,0:19:52.000
so you have lots of people and lots of controls that can go wrong:

0:19:52.000,0:19:55.000
that thing where you're opening it up and moving things in and out,

0:19:55.000,0:19:57.000
that's not good.

0:19:57.000,0:20:02.000
So, if you have very cheap fuel that you can put 60 years in --

0:20:02.000,0:20:04.000
just think of it as a log --

0:20:04.000,0:20:07.000
put it down and not have those same complexities.

0:20:07.000,0:20:12.000
And it just sits there and burns for the 60 years, and then it's done.

0:20:12.000,0:20:16.000
CA: It's a nuclear power plant that is its own waste disposal solution.

0:20:16.000,0:20:18.000
BG: Yeah. Well, what happens with the waste,

0:20:18.000,0:20:23.000
you can let it sit there -- there's a lot less waste under this approach --

0:20:23.000,0:20:25.000
then you can actually take that,

0:20:25.000,0:20:28.000
and put it into another one and burn that.

0:20:28.000,0:20:32.000
And we start off actually by taking the waste that exists today,

0:20:32.000,0:20:36.000
that's sitting in these cooling pools or dry casking by reactors --

0:20:36.000,0:20:38.000
that's our fuel to begin with.

0:20:38.000,0:20:41.000
So, the thing that's been a problem from those reactors

0:20:41.000,0:20:43.000
is actually what gets fed into ours,

0:20:43.000,0:20:46.000
and you're reducing the volume of the waste quite dramatically

0:20:46.000,0:20:48.000
as you're going through this process.

0:20:48.000,0:20:50.000
CA: I mean, you're talking to different people around the world

0:20:50.000,0:20:52.000
about the possibilities here.

0:20:52.000,0:20:55.000
Where is there most interest in actually doing something with this?

0:20:55.000,0:20:58.000
BG: Well, we haven't picked a particular place,

0:20:58.000,0:21:06.000
and there's all these interesting disclosure rules about anything that's called "nuclear,"

0:21:06.000,0:21:08.000
so we've got a lot of interest,

0:21:08.000,0:21:12.000
that people from the company have been in Russia, India, China --

0:21:12.000,0:21:14.000
I've been back seeing the secretary of energy here,

0:21:14.000,0:21:18.000
talking about how this fits into the energy agenda.

0:21:18.000,0:21:21.000
So I'm optimistic. You know, the French and Japanese have done some work.

0:21:21.000,0:21:25.000
This is a variant on something that has been done.

0:21:25.000,0:21:29.000
It's an important advance, but it's like a fast reactor,

0:21:29.000,0:21:31.000
and a lot of countries have built them,

0:21:31.000,0:21:36.000
so anybody who's done a fast reactor is a candidate to be where the first one gets built.

0:21:36.000,0:21:41.000
CA: So, in your mind, timescale and likelihood

0:21:41.000,0:21:44.000
of actually taking something like this live?

0:21:44.000,0:21:49.000
BG: Well, we need -- for one of these high-scale, electro-generation things

0:21:49.000,0:21:51.000
that's very cheap,

0:21:51.000,0:21:55.000
we have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to deploy.

0:21:55.000,0:22:00.000
That's sort of the deadline that the environmental models

0:22:00.000,0:22:02.000
have shown us that we have to meet.

0:22:02.000,0:22:07.000
And, you know, TerraPower, if things go well -- which is wishing for a lot --

0:22:07.000,0:22:09.000
could easily meet that.

0:22:09.000,0:22:12.000
And there are, fortunately now, dozens of companies --

0:22:12.000,0:22:14.000
we need it to be hundreds --

0:22:14.000,0:22:16.000
who, likewise, if their science goes well,

0:22:16.000,0:22:19.000
if the funding for their pilot plants goes well,

0:22:19.000,0:22:21.000
that they can compete for this.

0:22:21.000,0:22:23.000
And it's best if multiple succeed,

0:22:23.000,0:22:26.000
because then you could use a mix of these things.

0:22:26.000,0:22:28.000
We certainly need one to succeed.

0:22:28.000,0:22:31.000
CA: In terms of big-scale possible game changes,

0:22:31.000,0:22:34.000
is this the biggest that you're aware of out there?

0:22:34.000,0:22:38.000
BG: An energy breakthrough is the most important thing.

0:22:38.000,0:22:40.000
It would have been, even without the environmental constraint,

0:22:40.000,0:22:45.000
but the environmental constraint just makes it so much greater.

0:22:45.000,0:22:48.000
In the nuclear space, there are other innovators.

0:22:48.000,0:22:51.000
You know, we don't know their work as well as we know this one,

0:22:51.000,0:22:54.000
but the modular people, that's a different approach.

0:22:54.000,0:22:58.000
There's a liquid-type reactor, which seems a little hard,

0:22:58.000,0:23:00.000
but maybe they say that about us.

0:23:00.000,0:23:03.000
And so, there are different ones,

0:23:03.000,0:23:06.000
but the beauty of this is a molecule of uranium

0:23:06.000,0:23:10.000
has a million times as much energy as a molecule of, say, coal,

0:23:10.000,0:23:13.000
and so -- if you can deal with the negatives,

0:23:13.000,0:23:16.000
which are essentially the radiation --

0:23:16.000,0:23:19.000
the footprint and cost, the potential,

0:23:19.000,0:23:21.000
in terms of effect on land and various things,

0:23:21.000,0:23:25.000
is almost in a class of its own.

0:23:25.000,0:23:29.000
CA: If this doesn't work, then what?

0:23:29.000,0:23:33.000
Do we have to start taking emergency measures

0:23:33.000,0:23:36.000
to try and keep the temperature of the earth stable?

0:23:36.000,0:23:38.000
BG: If you get into that situation,

0:23:38.000,0:23:43.000
it's like if you've been over-eating, and you're about to have a heart attack:

0:23:43.000,0:23:47.000
Then where do you go? You may need heart surgery or something.

0:23:47.000,0:23:51.000
There is a line of research on what's called geoengineering,

0:23:51.000,0:23:54.000
which are various techniques that would delay the heating

0:23:54.000,0:23:57.000
to buy us 20 or 30 years to get our act together.

0:23:57.000,0:23:59.000
Now, that's just an insurance policy.

0:23:59.000,0:24:01.000
You hope you don't need to do that.

0:24:01.000,0:24:03.000
Some people say you shouldn't even work on the insurance policy

0:24:03.000,0:24:05.000
because it might make you lazy,

0:24:05.000,0:24:09.000
that you'll keep eating because you know heart surgery will be there to save you.

0:24:09.000,0:24:12.000
I'm not sure that's wise, given the importance of the problem,

0:24:12.000,0:24:16.000
but there's now the geoengineering discussion

0:24:16.000,0:24:20.000
about -- should that be in the back pocket in case things happen faster,

0:24:20.000,0:24:23.000
or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect?

0:24:25.000,0:24:30.000
CA: Climate skeptics: If you had a sentence or two to say to them,

0:24:30.000,0:24:34.000
how might you persuade them that they're wrong?

0:24:35.000,0:24:39.000
BG: Well, unfortunately, the skeptics come in different camps.

0:24:39.000,0:24:43.000
The ones who make scientific arguments are very few.

0:24:43.000,0:24:46.000
Are they saying that there's negative feedback effects

0:24:46.000,0:24:48.000
that have to do with clouds that offset things?

0:24:48.000,0:24:51.000
There are very, very few things that they can even say

0:24:51.000,0:24:54.000
there's a chance in a million of those things.

0:24:54.000,0:24:57.000
The main problem we have here, it's kind of like AIDS.

0:24:57.000,0:25:01.000
You make the mistake now, and you pay for it a lot later.

0:25:01.000,0:25:05.000
And so, when you have all sorts of urgent problems,

0:25:05.000,0:25:08.000
the idea of taking pain now that has to do with a gain later,

0:25:08.000,0:25:11.000
and a somewhat uncertain pain thing --

0:25:11.000,0:25:17.000
in fact, the IPCC report, that's not necessarily the worst case,

0:25:17.000,0:25:19.000
and there are people in the rich world who look at IPCC

0:25:19.000,0:25:23.000
and say, "OK, that isn't that big of a deal."

0:25:23.000,0:25:27.000
The fact is it's that uncertain part that should move us towards this.

0:25:27.000,0:25:30.000
But my dream here is that, if you can make it economic,

0:25:30.000,0:25:32.000
and meet the CO2 constraints,

0:25:32.000,0:25:34.000
then the skeptics say, "OK,

0:25:34.000,0:25:36.000
I don't care that it doesn't put out CO2,

0:25:36.000,0:25:38.000
I kind of wish it did put out CO2,

0:25:38.000,0:25:42.000
but I guess I'll accept it because it's cheaper than what's come before."

0:25:42.000,0:25:46.000
(Applause)

0:25:46.000,0:25:50.000
CA: And so, that would be your response to the Bjorn Lomborg argument,

0:25:50.000,0:25:54.000
that basically if you spend all this energy trying to solve the CO2 problem,

0:25:54.000,0:25:56.000
it's going to take away all your other goals

0:25:56.000,0:25:59.000
of trying to rid the world of poverty and malaria and so forth,

0:25:59.000,0:26:03.000
it's a stupid waste of the Earth's resources to put money towards that

0:26:03.000,0:26:05.000
when there are better things we can do.

0:26:05.000,0:26:08.000
BG: Well, the actual spending on the R&D piece --

0:26:08.000,0:26:12.000
say the U.S. should spend 10 billion a year more than it is right now --

0:26:12.000,0:26:14.000
it's not that dramatic.

0:26:14.000,0:26:16.000
It shouldn't take away from other things.

0:26:16.000,0:26:19.000
The thing you get into big money on, and this, reasonable people can disagree,

0:26:19.000,0:26:22.000
is when you have something that's non-economic and you're trying to fund that --

0:26:22.000,0:26:25.000
that, to me, mostly is a waste.

0:26:25.000,0:26:28.000
Unless you're very close and you're just funding the learning curve

0:26:28.000,0:26:30.000
and it's going to get very cheap,

0:26:30.000,0:26:34.000
I believe we should try more things that have a potential

0:26:34.000,0:26:36.000
to be far less expensive.

0:26:36.000,0:26:41.000
If the trade-off you get into is, "Let's make energy super expensive,"

0:26:41.000,0:26:43.000
then the rich can afford that.

0:26:43.000,0:26:46.000
I mean, all of us here could pay five times as much for our energy

0:26:46.000,0:26:48.000
and not change our lifestyle.

0:26:48.000,0:26:50.000
The disaster is for that two billion.

0:26:50.000,0:26:52.000
And even Lomborg has changed.

0:26:52.000,0:26:57.000
His shtick now is, "Why isn't the R&D getting more discussed?"

0:26:57.000,0:26:59.000
He's still, because of his earlier stuff,

0:26:59.000,0:27:01.000
still associated with the skeptic camp,

0:27:01.000,0:27:04.000
but he's realized that's a pretty lonely camp,

0:27:04.000,0:27:07.000
and so, he's making the R&D point.

0:27:07.000,0:27:12.000
And so there is a thread of something that I think is appropriate.

0:27:12.000,0:27:15.000
The R&D piece, it's crazy how little it's funded.

0:27:15.000,0:27:18.000
CA: Well Bill, I suspect I speak on the behalf of most people here

0:27:18.000,0:27:21.000
to say I really hope your wish comes true. Thank you so much.

0:27:21.000,0:27:23.000
BG: Thank you.

0:27:23.000,0:27:26.000
(Applause)