Transcriber: Amanda Chu Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Climate change is all about science,
and we've been talking about science because it is TEDxMIT,
and we all know that the laws of thermodynamics apply to everybody,
that you take heat and you do work and you get emissions and all this stuff,
and this isn't optional.
What else do we know?
Well, we know that there's almost no scientific ambiguity on the subject.
So the bottom line on this stuff
is 97% of the scientists say climate change is real
and it's leading to abrupt, unpredictable, potentially irreversible effects.
And as you're looking at this,
every day you don't act increases the costs and rises the risks.
So we know that, right?
And so as you watch these glaciers melt -
these are pictures I took over Greenland -
the question is, if the science is so darn clear,
Why aren't we acting?
If the consequences are so serious, why aren't we doing something about it?
And I'm here to tell you it's all due to Thanksgiving.
(Laughter)
So when you think about Thanksgiving,
you think about these complicated conversations at the table -
and there's somebody there who's a Democrat,
another a Republican,
somebody's from the North, another from the South,
and somebody thinks climate change is real and somebody thinks it's not;
and you don't want to fight.
So how do you have a rational conversation
around the Thanksgiving table,
on a complicated technical scientific subject
that people disagree on?
Well, let me give you a little bit of advice.
So as you're looking about this,
just as a public service,
let me give you seven different ways
of beginning to address the topic of climate change over Thanksgiving
or over Hanukkah or over Kwanzaa or over Christmas
or whenever you have your family together,
or other such creatures.
So, instead of saying, "What do you think about climate change?"
start with a sentence like, "Hey, the weather has never been weirder."
And that will get everybody at the table talking.
Right? And it'll open up a conversation in a non-confrontational way.
Once you have their attention on that,
then you can say,
"Oh yeah, by the way,
a bunch of people are dying from this stuff
because these heat waves are actually killing people."
And if you happen to be in the Midwest,
you can say, "You know, what we saw last year
doesn't quite look as we saw it this year.
There seems to be just a touch of flooding here."
And you don't have to have complicated equations about water flow,
or dumping from this, that, or the other;
you start with a very simple sentence which everybody's going to agree with.
Proposition number two:
The ever-popular potty-training conversation at Thanksgiving.
So, you train your kids to go to the potty,
and you train them to clean it up,
and eventually you reach a point where you say,
"You dump it, you clean it.
I'm not going to do your diapers anymore."
Right? Fair enough.
So why is this applicable to climate change?
Because you wouldn't be happy
if somebody dumped this stuff outside your house,
which is what happened to this photographer.
You'd be less happy if you went and cleaned it up with the neighborhood
and then somebody dumped it again.
So if you're not happy if somebody comes and dumps that in your house,
why are you happy that people are putting 37 billion tons of CO2
into the atmosphere?
Because that stuff's dumping on your yard,
and that stuff's dumping on your parents' yard,
and that stuff's dumping into your kids' lungs.
And why is that tolerable
when you would go crazy
if somebody came and just dumped their garbage can into your garden?
As long as there's no price to carbon,
there's no cost to dumping;
you just increase this stuff.
So, does it make any sense whatsoever to not price carbon dumping?
Topic number three:
especially the adults love to tell the youth,
"You've got to budget carefully," right?
If you don't budget carefully, it's real easy to spend too much,
and then your credit goes nuts,
and you end up with these big debts and everything else -
very popular conversation around Thanksgiving and other holidays.
What happens if you don't price and you don't budget carbon?
Just like your credit cards, you overspend,
and that's exactly what's happening.
So as you're looking at these structures - having no budget, having no price -
well, you end up obese;
it just happens to be on the carbon.
Point number four: Fair is fair.
Okay,
I'd love to have a beachfront home.
How would it work out if I had to pay for somebody else's beachfront home
and could never use it?
Well, guess what? All of you are doing exactly that.
Because these homes are exposed to more increasing climate change problems
and because more of them are being wiped out
by fires or wind storms or floods or waves or hurricanes,
the private insurance industry has basically said,
"Hey, I'm washing my hands. I'm not playing this game.
It makes no sense for me to take the risk on rebuilding that house."
So guess what?
The government stepped into this.
And they're saying,
"Because you can't get private insurance, because the risk is too high,
I'll insure you through FEMA."
You know what happens when they insure it through FEMA?
They're using your tax dollars
to pay for that beach house which you will never use.
Can you explain to me how that's fair?
You do get instances
where it's not somebody's fancy beach house that gets taken out -
it's a whole section of a city.
And here, you've got to be more careful, right?
Because these folks need help and they deserve help.
There's a follow-up question, which is a really important question:
"How many times?"
Because in Canada,
when something like this happens, they give you the value of the house,
and they tell you,
"Go rebuild your house anywhere you want.
But if you rebuild it in the same place
and you happen to have another hundred-year flood in five years,
we're not paying for the second time."
So measure the risk very carefully
where you're going to take and rebuild your house -
your choice -
but if you do it in the same place and it floods,
we're not on the hook anymore as taxpayers.
This is relevant to small states like Florida
because when you look at Florida,
there happens to be a little bit of water on there,
and the average rise in Florida is six feet,
so when you look at infrastructure like that of the Florida Keys,
you're maintaining a whole lot of really expensive infrastructure,
in terms of sewage, power, roads,
in an area that's increasingly underwater
and having to be rebuilt time and again.
There are towns in Florida that flooded 82 days so far in 2019 -
not because of hurricanes, but because of tides.
This is starting to look like Venice.
It is indefensible because this is a porous soil,
so you build a wall, it comes up from underneath.
Are you going to go out and pay 400 billion dollars
to rebuild this real estate time and again
so somebody can have an oceanfront home?
Because it's your tax dollars that are going to be at work here.
Point number five:
The ever-popular pottery barn rules.
Big store pottery barn -
they used to place these signs all over the place:
"You break it, you buy it," or "You break it, you own it."
Well, it turns out that a lot of these emitters that we're talking about
don't just have consequences on climate and on CO2,
they have huge consequences on health.
Are we going to charge the medical costs
in those same ways we started charging tobacco companies medical costs,
in the same way as vaping companies are now being held accountable.
At what point do we, taxpayers, quit paying for the stuff
and place the cost where we should place them?
Point number six for Thanksgiving conversation:
The ever-popular and cheerful "We're all going to die,"
(Laughter)
which, by the way, is a great festival in Australia
where you discuss death on the beach -
highly recommend it.
(Laughter)
So as you're thinking about death -
"Yeah, we're all going to die, but how early and how?"
And the stuff we're talking about
means that you can potentially die on a fire
that comes down the hills of California and drives you into the sea,
or it happens in Greece and kills a lot of people,
or it happens with mudslides, or it happens with tornadoes,
or it happens with hurricanes.
We are changing this equation of how we're going to die by our actions,
and it is a non-trivial change
in terms of the amount of people that are being hurt by this.
This is not a Democrat issue.
This is not just the guy who created the National Park Service,
Roosevelt,
for his grandchildren.
I think most decent people
really want to leave this place better than we found it.
And there are people on all sides of the political spectrum,
including this guy,
who in the midst of the Civil War,
took the time to protect Yosemite and the sequoia groves
and a whole series of other things
because this stuff was so important to him.
And we have to support those political leaders on all sides of the spectrum
who are willing to do something serious about climate change.
Number seven:
Environmentalists have a lock on what we should do.
Well, some of them are very sensible,
but others think,
"Let's just move into a drafty cabin in the woods, unheated,
and wear scratchy socks and underwear."
That is not a good proposition for a Thanksgiving table
because most people at Thanksgiving would say, "Nope!
I want to sit and watch the football game or Netflix after Thanksgiving."
So, yes, there is an element of conservation -
we do have to conserve.
But …
point number seven
is Matt Damon will actually turned out to be right:
We'll really have to apply a lot of science to this.
[We are going to have to science the s*** out of this.]
(Laughter)
And that's why it's so important
to support the folks who are not just studying the problem
but the folks who are actually trying to do something about this problem,
the folks who are trying to get the price of alternatives down quickly -
to the point where they cross coal,
where they cross oil, where they cross gas,
and where it becomes economically feasible
to substitute this stuff on a large scale
through distributed grids, through a whole series of other things.
This is where we have to focus.
And as you're thinking about this,
it's really important for a whole series of people,
including folks in Congress,
to understand that the laws they pass are human laws.
And human laws are different across societies,
across political parties, across congressional periods.
People can choose to obey or disobey those laws.
Those laws can change.
But the laws we're talking about are physical laws.
Everything and everywhere obeys,
belief has absolutely nothing to do with it,
and these laws are immutable.
And that is a completely different legal system.
Well, sea level is already up 6.5 inches since this Thanksgiving in 1940.
That's just the appetizer.
As sea levels go up,
this is what a 5-meter elevation or 10-meter elevation in sea level
does to Florida -
normal days.
Second law of thermodynamics is nothing to screw around with.
Once you break the equilibrium and you begin to cause entropy,
it becomes irreversible.
This is not a law you can repeal.
It's on the other part of legal structures.
Entropy turns out to be really bad juju.
So as you're thinking about inducing entropy,
we quote, again, Professor Broecker,
who was quoted in the beginning of this:
[Do not poke the climate beast.]
(Laughter)
Really, really bad idea to poke the climate beast.
You put the system into disequilibrium,
it doesn't go back for a long time.
What do we know?
We know the climate changes,
climate changes often:
It has changed -
all the geological evidence is there.
It is changing -
all the science evidence is there.
It's really time we get better at talking to one another,
we quit polarizing and politicizing this issue,
we start taking it seriously on all parts of the political spectrum,
and find a common ground around these tables
regardless of what side of the political circus you're on
or the ideological circus or age.
So, in closing,
help me find and spread more common talking points.
I gave you seven.
Let's come up with more.
Let's come up with ways of discussing climate change
in ways that don't immediately polarize the conversation
as we start doing this.
And let's start building an overwhelming consensus that we have to act.
Well, Daniella Rus and I have been talking about this,
and we'd love to issue a small challenge.
How about we put out a billion-dollar prize
for lowering the temperature of the planet by one degree centigrade?
Because if you go out there
and you say, "Well, I made solar panels more efficient,
or I did this or I did that."
You know what? It's not bending the curve.
And the bottom line on this is either we lower this temperature,
or we're toast.
And it's time to get to work on some real results
and building a consensus around those results.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)