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