Speaker 1: Well, it's thank you for having me. It's great to
be here. Paris is one of my favorite places in
the world, and it's actually the the on the first
trip that I went out of South Africa, Paris, that
was where I went and when I when I was
a young little kid, well my my parents brought me
when I was like six years old, so I've loved
Paris ever since. So thank you for having me. What
I'm gonna talk about today is just in general terms,
what is needed to address the climate crisis. And this
is the thing that if, if, if, we if we
do what actions can we take that that will accelerate
the transition out of the fossil fuel era. So where
we are today is let's see if it's worthy. Maybe not, okay,
all right, we have the we have the present era
where we have the carbon cycle. And my apologies if
if some of you already know all about this, but
I think some of these things are maybe not as
obvious as they may seem. So there's a certain amount
of carbon that is circulating through the environment. So it's
going into the air, being absorbed by and getting absorbed
by plants and animals, and then going back into the
air and this this carbon is just circulating on the
surface and this this is fine, and it's been doing
that for millions, hundreds of millions of years. The thing
that's changed is that we've added something to the mix.
So this is what I would call the sort of
the turd in the punch bowl. So we're added all
this extra carbon to the carbon cycle, and the net
result is that the carbon and the ocean's atmosphere is
growing over time. It's much more than can be absorbed
by the ecosystem. It's really it's really quite simple. We're
taking billions of tons of carbon that's been buried for
hundreds of millions of years and is not part of
the corbon cycle, taking it from deep underground and adding
it to the corbon cycle. The result is that a
steady increase in the carbon in the atmosphere and in
the ocean oceans, which doesn't look like much if you
look at it on this chart, but when looked at
in the context of history, it actually looks like this.
So the carbon posts million has really been bouncing around
the three hundred level for around ten million years, and
then the last few hundred years it went into a
vertical climb this. This is the essence of the problem.
This is very unusual and and a and a very
very extreme threat, as you can see from from this
rate of growth. Then this is accompanied by a temperature
increase as one would expect, and and then and this
and this temperature increase. If people talk about two degrees
or three degrees, it's important to appreciate just how sensitive
the climate actually is to temperature. And it's important to
look at it in terms of absolute temperature, not in
degrees celsius relative to zero. We need to say, what
is the temperature change relative to absolute zero. That's how
the universe thinks about temperature, It's how physics thinks about temperature.
It's relative to absolute zero. So for small changes result
in huge effects. So New York City under ice would
be minus five degrees. New York City underwater would be
plus five degrees, but looked at as a percentage relative
to absolute zero, it's only a plus minus two percent change.
So the sensitivity of the climate is extremely extremely high.
We've amplified this sensitivity by building our cities right on
the on the coastline, and most most people live very
close to the ocean. In some countries of course, that
are that are very low lying and would be completely
uh underwater in a in a climate crisis. So then
we've essentially designed civilization to be super sensitive to climate
change and the the the important thing to appreciate is
that we are going to exit the fossil fuels era.
So it is it is inevitable that we will exit
the foss fuel era because at a certain point we
will simply run out of carbon to mine and burn.
So the question is really when when do we exit
the era? Not not? If the goal is to exit
the era as quickly as possible, that means we need
to move from from the old goal with the prenu
real goal, which was to move from uh chopping down
forests and uh killing lots of whales. That the old
goal was to move from from chopping wood and and
killing whales to fossil fuels, which is actually in that
context was a good thing. But the new goal is
to move to a sustainable energy future, and we want
to use things like hydrosolar, wrange geo thermal. Nuclear is
also a good option in places like France which don't
aren't subject to natural disasters, and we want to use
energy sources that will be good for for a billion years.
So how do we accelerate this transition away from fossil
fuels to sustainable era and and and and what happens
if we don't? So if we if we wait, and
if we delay the change, the best case, the best case,
is simply delaying that inevitable transition to sustainable energy. So
this is the this is the best case. If we
don't take action now, at the risk of being repetitive,
it's there's gonna be no choice in the long term
to move to sustainable energy. It's it's totological. We have
to have sustainable energy or something to run out of
the other one. So the only thing we gain by
slowing down the transition is is just slowing it down.
It doesn't doesn't make it not occur, It just slows
it down. The worst case, however, is more displacement and
destruction than all the wars in history combined. Okay, this
is these are these are the best worst case scenarios.
So then if we have you know, about three percent
of scientists that believe in the best case, about ninety
seven percent that believe in the worst case. This is
why I call it the dumbest experiment in history. Ever,
why would you do this? So the reason that the
transition is delayed or is happening slowly is because there
is a hidden subsidy on all carbon producing activity. In
a healthy market, if you have say ten years of
benefit and four years of harm to his society, the
profit would be six euros. The sort of you know,
makes obvious sense. This is where the incentives are aligned
with the good future. This is not this is not
the case today. But if you have the incentives aligned,
then the forcing function towards a good future, towards its
sustainable energy future, will be powerful. In an unhealthy market,
you have your ten years of benefit if your four years,
but the four years doesn't isn't tax. You have untaxed
negative externality. There's basically economics one on one. So you
have basically unreasonable profit and a forcing function to to
do carbon emitting activity because this this this cost to
society is not being paid. The net result is thirty
five gigatons of carbon per year into the atmosphere. So
this is analogous to not paying for garbage collection. And
it's it's not as though we should we should say
in the case of garbage, have a garbage free society.
It's very difficult to have a garbage free society, but
it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection.
So we need to go from having an untaxed negative
externality and which is effectively a hidden carbon subsidy of
enormous size UH five point three trillion dollars a year
according to the IMF every year. We need to move
away from this UH and and and and have a
carbon tax. So but this has been this has been
fought quite hard by the UH, the carbon producers, and
they're using tactics that are very similar to what the
UH cigarette industry or the back industry used for many years.
They would they would take the approach of having of
even though the overwhelming scientific consensus was that UH smoking
cigarettes was bad for you, they would find a few
scientists that would disagree, and then they would say, look,
scientists disagree, so that that that's essentially how they would
try to trick the public into thinking that smoking is
not that bad. The solution, obviously is to remove the subsidy,
so that means we need to have a carbon tax
and to make it sort of something which is neither
a left nor a right issue. We should make it
probably a revenue neutral carbon tax, So this would be
a case of increasing taxes on carbon, but then reducing
taxes in other places. So maybe there would be a
reduction in sales tax or VAT and an increase in
common tax, so that only those using high levels of
carbon would pay an increased tax. And moreover this I
mean in order to give industry time to react, This
could be a phased in approach, so that maybe it
takes five years before the carbon taxes are very high,
so that means that only companies that don't take action
today will suffer in five years. But there needs to
be a clear message from from government in this regard,
because the fundamental problem is the rules today incent people
to create carbon and this is madness, and whatever you
incent will happen. That that's why you know we're we're
seeing little, very little effect thus far, and depending upon
how what what action we take, well we'll drive the
common number to either extreme or moderate levels. I think
it's pretty much a given that that the two degree
see increase will occur. The question is whether it's going
to be much more than that, not if there will
be a two degree increase. So then the question is,
so what can you do? I would say, whenever you
have the opportunity, talk to your politicians, ask them to
enact a carbon text where we have to fix the
unpriced externality. I'll talk to your friends about it and
fight the propaganda from the carbon industry. So that that's
the basic message I have, and I'm happy to take questions.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have we have some mics in the
audience being passed around. Do you want to raise your
hand and we'll give you a mic.
Speaker 3: Hi, sir, he I'm coming old pass from the Master
of Innovation and Technology management management. And my question is
what do you say to those who think there are
more important concerns right now than clean change and global warming?
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean there's definitely there are many important issues
in the world. This is not the only important issue,
but it is I think the thing that will have
the biggest negative effect on humanity if we do not
address it. I mean, based on the projections that we're
seeing right now, these are, like I said, arguably best
case projections. We're going to see significant rises in temperature
and sea level. The net result is if we don't
take action. We could see you anywhere from five to
ten percent maybe more of the land mass absorbed by water,
which would which is maybe not doesn't sound like that much,
but about a third of humanity lives right on the
coastline or in low lying countries, so we'd be talking
about maybe two billion people being displaced and their home
is being destroyed and their country is being gone. So
I think we should take action.
Speaker 4: Hello, sir, thank you for coming here. My question is
I'm PhD student in marketing and what I study is
what motivates people to participate in challenges. Now, you have
created a company which creates challenges, which which brought a
rocket to Moon and back. If I if I'm not wrong,
my question would be, do you think a challenge? Maybe
not Moon and back?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah? Quite getting there?
Speaker 4: Getting there? My question to you would be do you
think that incentives, which is the biggest incentive to use
monetary incentives are the best possible incentive to get people
to participate and solve the world's biggest problems or do
you think people can do it in order to just
help everyone on the planet and make it better. So
is money the only way to ask people to get
in and solve challenges, or do you have other ways
to actually motivate people to participate.
Speaker 1: I think there's definitely a philanthropic element, and there's you know,
I think there's I think in general, people want to
do the right thing and they want to do what's good.
The the issue we have right now is that the
rules fundamentally favor the bad outcome. So when you're fighting
for the good outcome and it's an uphill battle, it's
just it's just slower. So with respect to to climate change,
it's just critical that the government and the goverment is
the center of rules. The government decides what rules companies
will play by. And if we currently have a system
which massively incents bad behavior, so even if most people
don't do the bad behavior, some people will still do
the bad behavior. Yeah, I mean money and prices are
Prices are basically just an information mechanism. They're just they're
just basically they tell you that it's money. Is mostly
an information mechanism for labor, labor allocation and for you know,
and and sort of tells companies what to do. So
it's just critical, This is why it's so critical to
that actually be taken at a government level, because the
government is the one they're setting the rules of the game,
and it's just crazy to have the rules of the
game favor a bad outcome. The question up top there
there's a question here. Hi La Mosque. My name is Michelle.
Speaker 5: I'm an undergriding economics that here. My question is, there
are some new studies on removing carbon dix dark side
from the atmosphere and burrowing deep in the ocean. Do
you think it's a sustainable solution and why?
Speaker 1: Thank you? You know, I'm not aware of any carbon
sequestration or carbon storage system that is that that that
works and works economically, and I definitely wouldn't want to
I wouldn't want to store the carbon in the ocean
because of possible acidification. You know, as the as the
carbon as its huge levels rise in the atmosphere, some
of that is absorbed into the ocean becomes carbonic acid,
and a lot of the shell fish in particular are
super sensitive to changes in in VH level, So I
would definitely er against trying to store in the ocean.
There are potentially you could try to store some of
it in giant underground caverns, but the sheer quantity we're
talking about. I don't think itn be stored anywhere. There's
there's just nowhere to store it. Yeah, question love right, Hello, sir.
Speaker 6: I'm sidering management at the Barion and I would know
how long do you do? Teslam Motors intends to use
lithium batteries knowing that it is not a limited resource.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I think so so lithium in terms of
energy storage. Lithium, I think is is definitely the future
and will be for a long time. There's actually not
a shortage of lithium on Earth, so lithium is number
three on the periodic table. It's actually extremely common. Any
salty water has has lithium, so there definitely won't be
a lithium constraint on energy storage for batteries. So I
feel pretty confident that one could make enough batteries to
store all the energy that the world needs with the
current resources that are that are available. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 7: My name is idvite Idea. I am a PhD student
in Project and infrastructure finance in Sorbon. First of all,
I would like to thank you for your latest product,
power Wall, which to me, it gives to the citizens
to have the power to select the way they can
consume energy. I can spend a few thousand dollars to
buy some solar panel and the power wall and to
be free of any offer in the market. My question
is about the larger scale storage systems you have designed.
Have you received any serious involvement from governments and large
companies to develop such such infrastructure or do you have
any serious plans within the within the United States or
maybe in other countries.
Speaker 1: For large energy storage. Yeah, we do. Actually we've got
a number of very very big storage projects underway with
utilities around the world, so both in the US and outside.
The thing that's interesting about the energy storage situation is
that even even without renewables, there's a there's a huge
potential to make the energy grid more efficient and to
be able to shut down the heaviest polluting power plants
because the the energy consumption through the day usually changes
by a factor of two or more so an ent
Since with the exception of hydroelectric, you can't store the power,
it has to be available in real time. The world
has somewhere between two to three times as many power
plants as it actually needs, so if you can buffer
the power with a big, big stationary battery packs, then
you can actually shut down the worst half of the
power plants in the world. So I think that's a
that's sort of a very exciting thing that I think
a lot of people don't appreciate, and I think it's
it's going to make it make a big difference. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Hi, Sarah, I'm Geanny from the mess or degree Innovation
and Technology Management. And my question is do you believe
that in the ability of government, international government to prevent
climate change?
Speaker 9: And what would you suggest?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, I think this fundamentally is a government issue.
So it's it's the as mentioned, the government is the
one that sets the rules of the game. That they
said how companies are awarded financially, and so in the
absence of government, uh actually establishing some kind of a
carbon tax or potentially a cap and trade on carbon,
which I was very excited to see that China announced
earlier this year that they were going to do that.
Unless the government does something to fix the market mechanism,
the it's we're fundamentally gonna have a very slow transition
out of the fossil fal era. So it's it's critical
that government action changed the incentive structure. Yeah, and and
that would be very clear. And so it's like, hopefully
what comes out of this, out of these the climate
talks in Paris, is that that the governments of the
world say that they put their foot down and they
say five years from now, let's say there has to
be a huge change, and and and that companies know
for sure that this is going to happen and if
they if they do, then the the investment decisions that
make today will will will bear fruit in five years.
So the for for heavy industrial application, for heavy industry,
you kind of know what the world is going to
look like in five years if you know what plan,
what what what factories are being built today, because if
you built a really big factory, to get to full
production takes about five years from from the start. And
so since we know that today there are very few
sustainable energy projects at large scale that are that are
being built, we know that unless something changes very quickly,
the sustainable energy will still be in a bad situation
five years from now. So you know, I mean, there
are companies like you know at Teslin and Solar City,
we're quite ideologically motivated, but but that's that's relatively unusual.
So Hiland, my name is Thomas.
Speaker 7: What do you think about people who are saying, then,
rather than trying to save the years, we should try
to colonize other planets.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we should do both. Yeah, I think
we yea. The I mean, my sort of personal ideology
is is kind of split right now between trying to
be helpful on Earth related stuff, which is sustainable energy,
and then trying to you know, advance space technology so
we can establish self sustaining city on Mars. But I
do think it's important to be a multiplanet, not just
one planet, but another planet. So the and and the
overarching goal is to minimize existential risk. You know, so
if we look at look out into the future and say,
what are the things that pose a risk to humanity
to what? What? What? What? What is going to make
the future good versus bad? And I think if obviously,
if we have sustainable energy future that's good and the
fastest that comes, the better. And then if we're a
multiplanet species, that gives us much more resilience against an
extinction event and also would be a really great and
fun adventure.
Speaker 10: Hi, my name is Dreda, and I wanted to know
in your opinion, what would the future we look like
in termine energy sources and how soon could we use
nuclear fission efficiently?
Speaker 1: Thank you sure well. The the thing to appreciate about
the industry, the sort of installed industrial base, is that
it's it's really enormous. Like the number of petrol and
diesel cars on the road and trucks is about two billion.
There are sort of hundreds of thousands of of of
power plants using fossil fuels. So the the even if
we if today we went super hard in the direction
of renewables, it would still take a long time. So
I think we will. It's before we see significant changes,
probably ten or twenty years, and there's a lot that
can happen in ten or twenty years of course, so
the faster we can bring that date forward, the better.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Hi, my name is Natasha and from the Master Program
of Sustainable Development. I have two questions. First one, because
I want to be optimistic that we are going to
switch at some point to be completely sustainable and to
use renewable energies. Do you think that there are going
to be a gap between developing and developed countries and
when developing countries will be able to reach developed ones
switching into sustainable and renewable energies. Then second one would
be sustainability of nuclear energy.
Speaker 1: In your opinion, thank you sure. And I actually I
should answer the nuclear question because that was posed just
before this. I actually think that nuclear fission, if it's
in a location that is not subject to natural disasters,
like like in the case of France, there's a very
hYP percentage of nuclear I think that's actually a good thing. Obviously,
you don't want to have nuclear fission power plants in
places that are subject to natural disasters because that obviously
it can go wrong. So and so I think fission
is a good is a good approach. Fusion is also interesting,
and it's exciting to see what's happening with the itroproject,
which is a fusion plant that's being built in France.
I do think fusion is is a is a feasible technology.
I think we can definitely make fusion work the but
but it is it is a it is kind of
a far off technology. So to make fusion at the
power plant level work is probably I don't know, thirty
years away, and and and and and a lot of
a lot of effort. So that that's why in at
least you know for now, and I think maybe even
in the long term. I'm a proponent of using the
big fusion power plant in the sky called the Sun,
so that the Sun is a giant fusion explosion and
it shows up every day, and if we have footable
takes for solar panels, we can capture that fusion energy.
It also needs to be stored in batteries so we
can use it at night. And then we want to
have high power lines to transfer solar energy from one
place to another. So but the important thing to appreciate
is like, if let's say the only thing we had
was with solar energy, then that was the only power
source you could If you just took a small section
of Spain, you could power all of Europe. It's a
very small amount of area that's actually needed to generate
the di trisity we need to power civilization, or in
the case of the US, like a little corner of
Nevada or Utah power of the entire United States.
Speaker 12: So good evening, you do have a very impressive and
stimulating career. You succeed in business while staying true to
yourself and believes so I would like to know what
advice you would give to a young entrepreneur who is
aware of climate change issues, and maybe what was the
best and the worst advice you are given about that?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Okay, Well, I think if somebody is wanting
entrepreneurial and energy, I mean, either either you want to
start a company or you want to join a company
that's doing something sustainable, and it could be you know,
there's there's obviously wind solar and the geodomo, there's title power.
So I would just say, look at companies that are
trying to do sustainable energy and decide if you want
to join them or if you want to start one.
So I generally wouldn't you know, starting companies in either
the automotive arena or the energy like energy arena is
of like quite a tricky business. I mean when when
when we first started uh Tesla and Solar City, we
thought they would fail. We thought Tesla in particular, we
thought probably we've uh maybe ten percent chants of success.
So it's you know, particularly particularly cars, uh the you know,
it's it's hard, it's hard to stay alive as a
car company. Honestly, it's like this must be one of
the worst risk suggested returns. Yeah.
Speaker 13: Hi, my name is Benjamin, and I was wondering what
do you wish for in terms of international rules and
politics to facilitate the implementation of your power wall battery.
Speaker 1: Well, it's really that the what I've been saying here
is that that that the governments of the world need
to price the the extra now. They need to put
put a proper price on carbon, and then automatically the
right behavior will occur. So this is by by putting
a price on carbon, we're essentially fixing a pricing error
in the market's market system. So I mean, most of
the times when government governments intervened in markets, it's usually
increases the pricing error. But but when when the pricing
error is a huge tragedy the commons issue, like we
have with carbon capacity, uh, it's critical that the government
put a price in it because you just can't go
wrong by putting by in. Any price to put in
it will be more right than close to zero, which
it is right now. So this is this is by
far the most important thing if we want to accelerate
the transition to sustainable energy. There are other less effective ways.
By providing incentives and subsidies to say electric cars or
solar that that is, that is a sometimes a more
politically expedient way to do it, but the best way
is just to directly fix the pricing error by taxing carbon.
And this is if you ask most economists, they would
say the same thing. So this is sort of well
known and obvious in the economics world.
Speaker 9: Even could you say a few words on artificial intelligence,
because you know, I think I read or you you know,
you were quoted among with others Bill Gates and Peter
Till and so forth, saying that you know, you were
afraid of the that one day and hyper you know,
intelligent machine would destroy humanity. And you know, are you
investing a lot into artificial intelligence with you know, because
are we wasting a lot of energy because we're using
you know, we're not being smart or we're not having
smart objects and so forth. And how do you reconcile
the two if you know there's a there's a long time,
you know, long term major risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to stay stay on
the you know, just doble energy topic because it's it's
easy to get get derailed on too many other things.
But yeah, I mean, I think, I just think we
should be cautious about the adventive AI. And a lot
of people that I know that are developing AI are
too convinced that that the only outcome is good and
we need to consider potentially less good outcomes, and you know,
to be careful and and and and really to monitor
what's happening and make sure the public is aware of
what's happening.
Speaker 14: I'm Gabrie rondoin from where I stood the innovation here
in Sorbon I have a question about fundraising, specifically about
the fundraising process regarding.
Speaker 1: What Tesla does.
Speaker 14: What is the most difficult thing to raise funds in
the beginning, not now, because now you have a well
developed project and the worldwide knows you and knows the
Tesla also, but in the beginning about the industry that
you are working about this kind of energy, What is
the most difficult thing to find investors and also to
convince investors and keep what you thought in the beginning
throughout the development of the company.
Speaker 1: Sure well, in the beginning, uh, at the beginning of
Tesla and and Soul City, I mean, I thought the
probability of success was was so low that I provided
all of the money, So all of the money was
just came from me personally, because I didn't want to
ask people other investors for money if I thought we
were going to die, because I thought I thought we would,
So so I invested you entirely the money that I
got from PayPal, all of all of that got invested
into Tesla, Sol City and SpaceX and and even then
we only narrowly survived. So you know too that in
two thousand and eight for Tesla, we actually closed the
financing round on Christmas Eve, two thousand and eight. It
was the last hour of the last day that it
was possible. And you know, this is one of the
tricky things with with something like a car company, is
like there are good times and bad times, and when
the economy goes south, then that's when things get really
really tricky for a manufacturing company. So yeah, I mean
in the US, for example, like the only two car
companies that haven't gone bankrupt in history or forward in Tesla,
that's it. Everybody else is bankrupt or went bankrupt at
some point, you know, General Motives, Chrysler and others. So
so I think we just made it by the skin
of our teeth. These days. Last few years, it's really
really I'd say, you know, the last two years is
when Tesla's achieved a level where it's not facing imminent death.
I mean even as recently as early twenty thirteen, we
were operating with maybe one to two weeks of money. Hi.
Speaker 15: My name is Pascal, and I would like to ask you,
don't you think that we need a deeper reflection about
our dynamic of society because all the solutions that we're
talking about is about efficiency. But don't you think that
we need to sing differently and consume less because right
now our didn't make is about confronting problems and going
always in the same direction and trying to find the
technological innovasion to save us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I do think we should be watch
our consumption. We shouldn't be wasteful. But even if we're
really conservative in our use of energy and very effective
with recycling and all sorts of things, that that that
delays the that the need to move to a sustainable future,
but it doesn't eliminate it. Like if we don't have
sustainable energy generation, that that there's no way that we
can conserve our way to a good future. We have
to fundamentally make a sustainable energy available. I mean, on
on the plus side, that there's actually an enormous amount
of sustainable energy. The energy from the sun pers per
square kilometer is a giga white. So if you just
had a one kilometer by one kilometer array of solar
panels generating, well, it would be receiving a gigawatt of
solar energy. Then at a twenty percent efficiency, you would
be generating two hundred megawahtes. So we can actually generate
way more energy, like probably a hundred times more energy
than we actually need to operate civilization just with solar panels.
So we just need to fix the stata structure of
the world to make sure that that companies are incentive
towards sustainable versus unsustainable technology. This is fundamentally the problem. Hello.
Speaker 16: My name is Lily and I'm a PhD physics students
at Yale University that I graduated here. So I have
three questions. So the first one is sort of political
because because you mentioned it, you said that scientists sometimes
they diverge, they have different.
Speaker 1: Opinions, and it's probably on anything.
Speaker 16: Yeah, and that's also probably because sometimes they are financed
by different corporations, and so you said that we should
stop the propaganda, we should try to ask the politicians
to set the rules so that we will go in
a better direction, you know, not a climate you know,
global warming. But so that probably goes against the interest
of oil companies, but as well probably the governments themselves
when they have a financial interest. So I was thinking
perhaps your own I mean, perhaps we could have lobbyists ourselves,
so that would be perhaps an efficient way to to
have those rules put into you know, so these rules
the carbon tax would be applied. So that's my first
question because also you know, France is one of the
main import of nuclear energy, so you know, trying to
ask them for a tax carbon tax when themselves are
the people who are making the most money from importing
you know, nuclear energy from power plants.
Speaker 2: A little bit at our inference, we'll limited to one
question per person for now, I think the thing So the.
Speaker 16: Other question is, you know, renewable jogy that that would
be great, but it's going kind of intermittent, you know,
like solar.
Speaker 7: Solar energy.
Speaker 16: Okay, that's great, but perhaps we need to store it
with perhaps with batteries. But we we want we want
to use like sure, yeah, I see the last one
was the fossil sial era. I mean yeah, I mean
is it not going to go to an end on
its own because it's not an unlimited resource?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 17: Maybe pick one out of the three questions, you know.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I mean I think it's each government should
just that they should do the right thing without waiting,
without depending upon what other governments are doing, like the
I think that's that there's too much in these pliant
climate talks of countries like trying to only do things
if another country does it. I mean, if something, if
it's if it's the right if it's the right thing
for the future, a country should just do it and
don't worry about what other countries are doing. Just do
the right thing. And many of the countries are so
it's it's really just, you know, we just don't want
to encourage as many governments as possible to change the
rules to insent a good future. That this is fundamentally
what what what has to happen or we will substantially
lay the transition away from carbon so and and yeah,
so that that's that's what has to happen. And and
and you know, Tesla and Soulial study that my companies
are very tiny, like we're tiny, tiny companies. So the
in order for there to be a big move towards sustainability,
the giant companies have to know that that that that
is what the governments demanding for the future, and that's
what the people are demanding for the future. So at
the end of the day, if you know, the governments
respond to to flood to popular pressure, Like if you
tell politicians that that you will vote depends on them
doing the right thing with climate change, that that makes
a difference. So if they're having sort of a fundraising
event or a dentive party or whatever, and at every
fundraising event, every dynive party, somebody's asking them, hey, what
are you doing about the climate, then they will take action.
So I think you have tremendous power. You have the
power to make the change. We can't. We can't. Let
me tell you, we definitely can't beat the oil and
gas industry on lobbyists. Okay, this is that that would
be a losing battle. You know, the you know, uh,
Exon makes more profit in a year than the value
of the entire solar industry in the United States. So
it's like if you take every solar company the United States,
it's less than excellent profit in one year. There's no
way you can win on money. It's impossible. Good evening.
So I've just one small question, very actual. Do you
think the coup twenty one will be a success?
Speaker 8: You know, I am.
Speaker 1: I don't have any real basis for this, but I
have a good feeling about it. I do have a
good feeling about it, so I think, well, it's going
to be degrees of success. So it's sort of like like,
for example, like the Copenhagen was terrible, like nothing, nothing
came out of Copenhagen. The Copenhagen climate talks, I mean
it was basically I think there was a net increase
in global warming as a result of that one. Unfortunately,
in the case of the Paris talks, I think there
will be some positive movement, and it's a question of
what degree. And I think we need to send a
clear message to the negotiating teams and to the politicians
that this time there needs to be significant change. At
this time, something needs to happen. There's a question all
the way up on them.
Speaker 17: Hello and thank you for coming. My name is Marianne.
I'm a student of international relations.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 17: My question here is this, we know that climate is
global or common good, So how do we get countries
with economies relying heavily on fossil fuels on board with
climate change? Which like, how do we get those who
have the most to lose on board?
Speaker 1: Thank you? I think I think we just need to
turn that argument around and say, like, look, this, this
is a common good and if if, if we if,
if countries don't take action, that they all will share
in a bad future, so that they need that everyone
needs to take action and and care about what the
future is going to hold and lead by example. So
even countries that that are quite dependent on on fossil fuels,
if they just change their tax structure, they can they
can move away from that in in a way that's
not super disruptive to the economy. It's really just a
question of collecting like the same amount of taxes, but
but weighted towards uh things that that's that people believe
are most likely to be bad instead of things that
are most likely to be good. And we do this
already in you know, in in in our tax code,
we we tax alcohol and cigarettes much more than we
tax fruits and vegetables. It's just sort of the sensible things,
the sensible thing to do, and nobody you know, you
don't and you don't here, you know countries saying well,
we make lots of fruits, you know, we make lots
of fruits and vegetables, so like we we want lower taxes,
or we make lots of alcoholics, background we want, you know,
lower taxes. Like that's a silly debate that it's gone.
And I think the same thing applies to to carbon emissions.
Just just adjust the tax code and the right thing
will happen over time. And if you if you're graduated
over time and you know it starts so small and
becomes significant in the future, then even if you're heavily
dependent on corbon today, the that that that that message
of seeing what's going to happen in the future will
have a huge impact on UH, on the way that
that any given country's economy works, so so so they
will then become not dependent on carbon because of the
incentive structure. So I really don't think they have anything
to lose here, and anything to lose by taking action,
and a lot to lose by not taking action.
Speaker 2: We have time for maybe two or three more questions,
So there's one right here.
Speaker 1: Hi, My question is about batteries.
Speaker 18: So electric batteries today, especially liftimayon have a significant carbon
footprint and potential impacts on both the environments and our health.
And the environmental impact moves away from consumables and to
how the way how we produce and how we store
the waste that comes from it. So the gap with
fossil fuels might not be as wide as we think.
So my question how do you respond to this and
how do you see this evolving in the next years?
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure I totally understand that question. Could
you say that again?
Speaker 18: Yeah, basically the impact on the environment of today are
ways of electrical batteries, production of lithium ion batteries, and
how do you equate this with fossil fuel and its
impact as it's more about the production and how we
use the waste and how we store the waist and
so how do you see this, How is this going
to be optimized in the next years or is this
going to change?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, the one thing is like once you once
you've built a battery, then at the end of life,
of the battery. You can recycle those components. So it's
it's a it's it's something that you know has no
long term or negligible long term impact on the carbon
cycle because you essentially you get those of the lithium
and nickel, cobalt and and you create create the battery
you created. You just essentially get those materials once and
then you recycle them forever. So I think that the
it's really a negligible impact for for for batteries on
the environment. And uh yeah, and as compared to carbon producing,
mining and verting billions of tons of carbon every year,
which which effectively permanently from from a pumous standpoint affects
the carbon the carbon content of the ocean's and atmosphere.
So yeah, it's it's really we're talking orders of magnitude
difference between uh, fossil fuels and batteries, like you're not
not even on the same scale.
Speaker 19: Then the last one, hello, as on my question is
taking into consideration of the technology, now, is it some
of a breaking point it is advanced, but not so
advanced to pass to the sustainable clean energy? How do
you see this integration of clean energy in for long
term in the future, step by step, maybe.
Speaker 1: How do I see the integration? How do I see
this getting to a sustainable energy future? Yes?
Speaker 19: Yes, How will will the clean energy integrate into a society?
Thinking into the consideration that technology isn't advanced.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, I mean I expect, you know, all transport
to go fully electric over time, with the ironic exception
of rockets, and then all energy production to go sustainable
over time. This will take this will take a long time,
many decades. But you know, the way it will manifest
itself is by people having batteries in their homes or
at the utility substation, and by driving you know, electric
vehicles and having electric planes. But as I said that
this is this is going to be quite a very
slow transition because the instead of structure is so biased
against sustainable energy. So in fact, even I think even
if there's quite a strong action by government as a
result of of the climate talks in Paris, I think
it's still going to be a transition that's measured in decades.
So it will be it will be a slow, slow transition.
And and and the fundamental question is how do we
accelerate that transition? That that's the real question here, what
actions can we take that would accelerate a transition to
a good future. And that's why I'm so so harping
on this notion of a revenue neutral and tax i.
Think that's something that that every country can implement, and
it can be graduated and faced and over time, and
this is this will be by far the most effective
thing for accelerating that transition to a good future.
Speaker 8: Kay.
Speaker 1: Thanks, all right, Well, thank you everyone, m
Speaker 4: All right, all right,