(soft music)
- Stanford University.
- Climate change is no longer theoretical.
It's here.
Atmospheric CO2 is 40% higher than in preindustrial times.
Heat waves are more intense.
Droughts are more severe.
Wildfire risk is up.
Sea levels are rising.
Heavier rains are causing devastating floods.
Infectious diseases are spreading
as mosquito habitat zones expand.
Economic inequality is growing.
By 2050, Earth's population will reach perhaps nine billion,
requiring even more energy and food
without the greenhouse gases.
At Stanford, we are looking at solutions from every angle.
- I'm a climate scientist.
- I'm an environmental lawyer.
- I'm an earth scientist.
- I am a biologist.
- I'm a glaciologist.
- I'm an energy scientist.
- I'm a behavioral decision scientist.
- I'm an atmospheric scientist.
- I'm an earth scientist.
- I'm a geophysicist.
- I'm an ecologist.
- I'm a climate scientist.
- I work at the intersection of environmental engineering
and infrastructure planning.
- In order to understand climate change
we need to understand the full Earth system.
- Sea level rise is having consequences
for people who live on the coast.
Putting careful numbers around how much the ice sheets
will contribute to that is a critical component
in creating thoughtful, informed policy
and adaptation measures.
- If we were able to say in the next 10-year period,
we are going to have five or seven or eight winters
that are going to be anomalously bad
compared with the normal
now that would be tremendously useful.
- What we've experienced in California
over the last couple of years
is that climate damages are now.
Scores are killed, tens of thousands of homes burned down.
There is enormous investment in trying to improve
the modeling approaches to wildfire risk,
to understand what is the risk at your house?
- These types of events, like extreme weather events,
tend to help people make that link
between climate change and their lives.
- Climate change is really a side effect
of something that benefits humanity.
We need access to energy resources
and the combustion of fossil fuels
release greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
- We can't solve the climate problem
without solving the energy problem.
We recognize that having a reliable
low cost electricity system is absolutely crucial.
We're at the forefront of technologies in batteries
and solar and wind and geothermal and hydro power,
carbon capture and storage,
natural gas as a transition fuel.
At the end of the day, we can develop
all of the technologies that we want,
but what's going to make a difference
is whether we implement them.
- The entire world could lose 20% of GDP this century
if we fail to do anything about it.
- We can put a price tag on services provided by nature.
The Natural Capital Project is playing a major role
in the transformation underway in China.
We're helping to develop a suite of new technology
that will transform the way investments are made in nature.
And these software tools are being used by 185 countries.
- So in Costa Rica we're partnered
with some of the government agencies
that are really interested in learning
how we can apply these ecological concepts to improve policy
around both land management and human disease risk.
- A couple of colleagues and myself have started a company
that's serving data to the needs of the developing world
to really push forward whether we're able to feed
the populations with the existing lands that we have.
- My group works with local governments
in countries like Haiti and Mozambique and Bangladesh
to engineer water and sanitation solutions that really fit.
- We are working with San Mateo county
to understand socioeconomic impacts of sea-level rise.
We are also working with San Jose
to better understanding compound risk from flooding.
- So we have a new administration in Sacramento.
We're trying to help them think through
how can we move towards 100% renewable power.
- Some of our emissions work has ended up
in state laws and federal laws.
- I've had the opportunity to testify before Congress
about building a climate resilient America.
- We're already finding solutions today.
What we need even more of is leadership, consensus,
investment and something that's already happening:
excitement and energy from a new generation.
- Stanford has really done a phenomenal job
of laying the foundations to now meet
one of the most critical existential threats
of the 21st century, and that is meeting climate change.
We have to drive solutions at scale
by advancing fundamental science,
technology and future partnerships.
We're ready, we have the foundation
and now we need to launch into the future.