0:00 And... [CLAP] "This planet is threatened with destruction..." "Half of humanity is living in the danger zone NOW..." "Be mindful and conserve as much as possible..." What people get wrong about energy is the idea that to slow climate change, we have to use less of it, forever. "From LED lights to solar electric..." "Starting in Asia, skylines around the world switched off today for Earth Hour..." "Oh don't turn them off. Forget it!" "Saving energy is trending" That what we’re in for is a long struggle toward a smaller, less comfortable life. That the reason to care about clean energy is just to try our best to prevent... catastrophe. "That's never good." But that’s not true. In fact, I’ve realized it’s a pretty backward way of looking at things.
0:45 The goal isn’t to use less energy, or to just replace fossil fuels. The goal is vastly more energy, to help more people live better lives and to make it all clean. "Renewable energy use is on the rise..." "If you have enough energy..." "Energy" "This is the greatest opportunity for innovation in human history." As long as most of our energy comes from fossil fuels (and it does) we're in kind of a trap. "It's a trap!" Using less is the only real option to slow climate change. And throughout my life, we haven’t had the technologies
1:30 that would allow us to replace fuels. You know what, actually? Let's do this outside. See you in a bit! Staaayyyy.... No! Stay. I’m not exactly near a lot of nature in New York City, but there’s one place I love to go. Welcome to Central Park. A little bit of green in the middle of a lot of cement. So, where was I? We were in the middle of that fossil fuel trap and there really wasn't anything else we could do but conserve energy. Besides, until recently, people didn’t really know enough to give a sh*t about climate change. So to get people to care, scientists and policymakers used
2:17 what I now think of as “the stick.” Which is: “We need to use less energy. Terrible things will happen if we don’t.” All of which is true. That message - along with efficiency improvements, policy changes, don’t pat yourself on the back too much - slowed the skyrocketing energy use in some countries where people could. Keep in mind, Americans use WAY more energy than most people around the world, so this chart isn’t particularly congratulatory. I was born here. For my whole life, it went: "energy equals fossil fuels, fossil fuels equal energy, fossil fuels are bad, energy is bad." Until recently, I really never considered another option. Matt Yglesias: “But it turns out, conservation isn't good enough environmentally, right? We actually need zero carbon sources of energy.
3:02 But if you can have a net zero economy, then there's no more need to conserve.” That’s Matt Yglesias, my former colleague at Vox and the author of the piece that really took my lifelong understanding of how to think about energy and put it through the blender. If you think the way I thought before, my goal here is to change your mind like Matt did mine. Here's how he did it: In the piece, he describes our current approach as an "energy diet" and makes the case that we should try to end it. But before you comment, he doesn’t use a drop more fossil fuels. He means we need to wildly increase our clean energy ambition. “When you see the potential of clean energy, I think it becomes much more compelling to say, we need to make the steps that will sort of unleash this. And you need to paint for people though, a picture of like,
3:51 why is my life going to be better?” It is possible that if we do this right, in the future this equation might look different. And so our thinking should be different too. "Open your mind..." So why does it matter how we think about energy use? I've thought about this question a lot and I think the answer is: The way that we think about things now shapes what we can accomplish in the future. "The new climate change report the UN released today provided the starkest warnings yet." “See this is why I can’t read the news because then I feel helpless and powerless” "There is a constant fear at the back of our minds..." "You say the ocean's rising..." "The world is just not a good place to live in... "The eyes of all future generations are upon you..." I’ll just speak for myself: I could use a vision
4:39 of not just what WILL go wrong if we fail, but what COULD go right if we succeed. I think it’s time to talk about “the carrot” of clean energy. Why we should all hope and work for it, for more than just to avoid catastrophe… "We have to look at all clean energy technologies..." Take another look at this chart. I always saw this increase in energy use as shameful, honestly. And in the context of climate change, it is. In the context of improving life for human beings... it really isn't. This is when Americans started astonishing technologies like Electricity... and flushing toilets… and refridgerators. "With my Frigidaire cold pantry..." So, the first and most important goal is: We need to get everybody there. To the quality of life that most people in rich
5:26 countries take for granted. Realistically, we just can’t do that without using more energy which we can’t do using fossil fuels without speeding up climate change. This is already one of the biggest fights on the global stage over clean energy. Richer countries, like the US, who used fossil fuels to radically redefine "comfortable" for their citizens, looking at poorer countries and saying, "Well, YOU can’t do that because climate change…" "What has been said at the higher levels are far different from what is happening in the negotiation rooms." "Historical emissions coming mostly from the West..." "We have the best, lowest number in carbon emissions..." "How dare you!" Who do we think we are? “Taking the present day as like a ceiling and then saying, well, okay, well, we're going to conserve.
6:12 I think that's not the right solution for the United States or Europe or Japan, but it's a terrible solution for Vietnam or Ethiopia or Nicaragua. And it's also not a solution that those countries are going to accept.” The sooner we can get more zero carbon energy sources, the sooner this fight no longer even makes sense. And if we actually do that, just imagine how we could continue to improve everyone's lives if energy no longer meant harmful emissions. As I listened to Matt describe a vision of a future with abundant clean energy, I felt myself begin to imagine. Honestly, I felt a lot more motivated to do the work that it takes to get there. So, for the next minute, just listen to him describe what we could do and let yourself imagine what could go right.
7:01 “We're now in a world where you can invent a lot of things that work, but the problem is they're really energy intensive... It would be really useful to be able to capture carbon dioxide, especially to do what's called direct air capture. This is what trees do. You can make machines that do this. Hydrogen could be a zero carbon solution to lots of problems But you would need the hydrogen. We could have vertical farms and feed everyone locally to our cities. With these vertical farm designs, You could use drastically less water. You could produce incredible amounts of crops at much greater efficiency with much less pollution, but you need to use much, much, much more energy, because the sun is free, and lamps are not free. You can also take saltwater and make it drinkable. These are tools that we have, they are science projects that function, but
7:48 they're not usable commercially because the energy cost is much too high. But if we can get more energy and we can get that energy from clean sources, then we can actually do these things.” This isn’t just a story of, “Huh, one day we’ll have clean energy and then we can do all this cool stuff.” This isn’t even a story of how practically we might get there, although I’m working on episodes about that. This is a much simpler story. It's a perspective shift I wanted to share with you before we get to episodes like that. This is a story about ambition. About the sheer audacity that it’s gonna take to get where we need to go. Human history is a story of finding ways to use a little more energy to make life a little bit better. And it’s on us to keep doing that, in a responsible way.
8:35 The goal isn't less energy. It's more. And we can only have more by going clean.
