- This is the story about how you were lied to
with billions of dollars being spent to confuse you,
about renewable energy.
In fact, the extent of lies has been so drastic
that you may not even realize you are currently living
through one of the most pivotal moments in modern history.
And in order to fully understand
what is happening right now,
we must go back to the First Industrial Revolution.
The First Industrial Revolution started in Britain
between 1760 and 1820.
It was defined as a major economic shift
and according to economists, that requires three things
one, a new way of communicating.
In this case, it was the fancy ability to print
and use the Telegraph.
Two a new transportation mechanism
in this case, it was steam powered locomotives.
And three, a new power source
in this case, it was the burning of coal.
Then came this second industrial revolution
this time it was happening in America mainly,
and it started in 1870 to the early 1900.
The new way of communicating was phones, radio television.
The new transportation mechanism
was internal combustion vehicles
and the new power source was cheap oil,
but of course they were still burning.
- Many people don't want you to know this,
but you are in fact living
through a third industrial revolution.
The new way of communicating is the internet
the new way of getting around is hybrid
and electric vehicles
and the new power source is solar wind and nuclear.
But since 2016, the top five oil companies
have spent a billion dollars trying
to confuse everybody about these new power sources.
And it kinda makes sense because in the last 10 years,
they made $900 billion of profit.
In 2019, they only spent 3% of
their $115 billion capital investment
in low carbon alternatives.
This is just that a power grid based off of renewables,
isn't feasible or is too expensive
or would hurt the economy.
But what if I told you that
as of November 2018, everything changed.
This is the moment when renewable energy such as wind
and solar became cheaper and more efficient
than fossil fuels.
For example, in 1977,
the cost of photovoltaic cells for solar panels was $76
now it's only 50 cents.
This is all well fossil fuel energies
have reached their peak efficiency.
Chemical engineers and scientists agree that fossil fuels
have matured with little potential left to exploit,
whereas wind and solar continue
to become more efficient each year.
Sorry, bud you're old.
Now the sentiment's 470 exajoules of energy
to earth every 88 minutes,
which is the amount of energy that all of us combined use
in one year.
If we grabbed 1/100 of the energy that the sun emits,
it would give us six times the energy we now use across
the global economy.
If wind farms grabbed just 20% of the wind
that currently blows,
it could power eight times the current global economy.
- These facts are pushing the whole world
to shift into the third industrial revolution.
And if the first and second were spearheaded Britain
and America, it seems that the third is being spearheaded
by the European union and China.
In 2017, 45% of global total investment in renewable energy
was from China.
China plans to get 62% of their energy,
from renewable sources in 30 years,
Europe currently gets 18% of electricity
from solar and wind,
but some specific countries are completely committed
to pushing these numbers much further.
Germany announced that over the next 20 years,
they are going to completely phase out coal.
And in order to do this,
they are going to invest $40 billion in coal cities in order
to retrain workers and keep those local economies strong.
And Germany has a lot of coal factories
they currently get one third of their energy from coal.
They understand that moving away from this energy source
is gonna be a huge challenge,
but they realize it is an important thing to do in order
to be a competitive commercial country,
in the future.
- On top of this 18 countries,
including China, India, France, the Netherlands and Ireland
have announced their intention to phase out the sale
and registration of vehicles that are powered
by fossil fuels over the next decade.
The bank of America projects that 40% of all car sales
by 2030 will actually be electric.
A big reason for the steep incline in electric car sales,
is the rapidly declining price of lithium batteries,
which cost $1,000 per kilowatt hour in 2010
but by the end of 2017 were only $209 per kilowatt hour,
a 79% plunge in price in just seven years.
The average density of electric vehicle batteries
is also improving at a rate of about five to 7% each year.
According to Bloomberg new energy finance,
by 2025, electric vehicles will constitute 19%
of all passenger vehicle sales in China, 14% in the EU
and 11% in the US.
- There are still a lot of negative environmental impacts
of lithium batteries.
And with electric cars, if you are charging your car,
using a grid that is powered by fossil fuels,
then that electric car becomes a lot less green.
This brings us to a big point of contention
in these conversations,
which these oil companies spent a lot of money
to confuse us, me, you about.
And that is how are we gonna build a grid
that powers our society based
on just wind solar and nuclear.
And this part is juicy, juicy, juicy,
Oh boy, Oh boy, Oh boy, (laughs)
Scientists and engineers are very, very shook on this one.
- One of the most interesting solutions
to this grid problem comes down
to our very best friend the internet.
Known as the internet of things,
a future smart grid could connect power sources,
computing devices, and everyday objects
in order to all collaborate and work together
to become the most efficient power grid possible.
The grid becomes incredibly efficient by sharing information
and storing energy from wind solar, hydro and nuclear.
A really cool local example of this is wind farms
that use smart technology.
So when there's hundreds of wind turbines,
they're working on their own,
they're actually communicating.
They're suggesting how each individual one
is affecting the wind, and how they can optimize as a group,
as opposed to as individuals,
to be as efficient as possible.
Now imagine this on a way bigger scale,
an entire country's power grid communicating
in order to optimize itself.
In America new studies show that using
the internet of things grid model to connect renewables,
can increase energy efficiency by 60% over
the next 20 years.
And now is the time to do it in America
because the continued deterioration
of your country's infrastructure, could result
in $7 trillion lost in sales and jobs by 2025.
The American society of civil engineers gave
the current public infrastructure of America a D plus,
when I used to get that mark my perfectionist,
but would cry.
The cost of a nervous system
that would connect America to live off of renewables
will be complex and expensive.
But public opinion polls show
that Americans support more federal state
and local funding to improve infrastructure.
- Okay, So how do we pay for this?
This is definitely an area of hot debate
I can already hear the tipty tap ties
of everyone having an opinion on this okay
that is fine, there is no correct answer right now.
But after reading books and studies
and listening to a lot of experts,
we're gonna go over some options
and talk about a few numbers.
If a 70% tax were put on the super rich in America,
it would bring in between 72 to $170 billion per year.
This is a tax on people who make more
than $10 million per year.
And again, this 70% tax, is only on the money
that they make over $10 million.
I know that people freak out about this idea on Twitter.
I think a lot of it has to do with the thought
that maybe taxing these rich people
is going to slow down the economy
but history shows that between the 1950s and sixties,
when the US had super high marginal tax rates
between 70 to 92%, the actual American economy
at the time was defined as having strong growth
that's kind of hot, (sighs)
Like America okay, you need to tax the rich, (laughs), okay.
Then 2018 60 of America's top corporations paid $0
in federal income tax, that's insane, (laughs), okay
Amazon didn't pay any federal income tax in 2018,
even though they had $11.2 billion in profit.
If you were an American paying taxes in 2018,
you yourself paid more tax than Amazon.
I know we're picking on America right now,
but you do have extremely wealthy corporations
and you don't seem to like to tax them.
Zooming out to look at the world,
in 2015, all fossil fuel companies, received $5.3 trillion
in post tax subsidies.
It is a confusing statistic,
but essentially it means that your government
and your tax paying money, actually had
to go to funding these rich corporations.
Okay I need to say this now,
this is a point where you can get involved
we need to be voting for politicians
who are going to tax the rich.
Because the eight richest individuals in the world,
have more money than half of the world combined.
I don't know how else to describe
this other than like not cool.
We also have to vote for politicians who listen
to scientists, and understand the environmental
and economic negative impacts of continuing
to subsidize fossil fuel companies.
This means voting for politicians who are open
to making carbon taxes that make fossil fuels more expensive
were also rewarding green innovation.
Building out renewables is gonna create new jobs,
which brings us to another point of contention
in these arguments and in this discussion,
which is about jobs because,
if you work in the fossil fuel industry
with climate change coming and shifting the economy,
you're gonna have to end up losing your job.
- To start a conservative estimate, found that jobs
in wind, solar and nuclear,
already outnumber fossil fuel jobs
by a rate of three to one.
But the devastating truth is that people
in the fossil fuel industries will lose their jobs,
which is why it's so important to help transition them,
but keep them in the energy sector.
These jobs might include building new batteries
that are more efficient and can hold energy longer
for solar and wind,
or the construction of more efficient nuclear power plants.
- In Canada there's a group of oil workers called Iron
and Earth who are calling on the Canadian government
to help retrain laid off oil workers,
to put solar panels on top of buildings,
starting with public buildings like schools.
In Germany they incentivize people
by subsidizing green energy and solar energy
by using tax subsidies.
This created new industries
and now a lot of early adopters are actually making money
by selling energy back to the grid.
In China Henergy is a company that leads the world
in thin solar powered material.
They make backpacks and umbrellas and a range of items
that allow you as an individual to carry
the sun's energy with you and like charge your phone.
And this specific industry employs 3.8 million people.
And finally, in Texas, many people have second incomes
from their wind farms
because Texas is windy AF,
it is pretty much like the Saudi Arabia of wind.
Now let's chat COVID,
as most of this information on energy
is from before this current global pandemic
The pandemic has contracted the economy,
which means that by the end of 2020 CO2 emissions
will likely be 8% less than in 2019.
A decrease of 128 gigatonnes of CO2
in the atmosphere, compared to if there
was no pandemic at all.
This is the biggest annual decrease since world war II.
This may seem like good news,
but looking at this graph of CO2 emissions,
every down tech is an economic crisis
that is followed by a steep increase in CO2 emissions.
But looking at the 2008 financial crisis
we see after there was a long period of flattened emissions.
One reason is because 15% of the global stimulus after
that financial crisis went into developing
and deploying green technologies.
We have to do this again now,
as we get out of the economic crisis.
To do this, we need to create jobs in wind
and solar in the US at the beginning of 2020 250,000 people
were working in solar.
We need financial incentives that help
them get back to work.
Infrastructure, construction jobs for the grid,
as well as the internet of things, building energy,
retrofits of buildings and public transportation jobs
we'll get people back to work fast.
We need programs that retrain and justly move workers
out of conventional coal industries
into new green alternatives.
This will save the inevitable disappearance
of their jobs in coal, and also help the environment.
During COVID the US Mexico and South Africa,
have relaxed, laws, controlling pollution standards,
vehicle efficiency, and even in the US,
they rolled back fuel economy rules
to commit the nation to higher transport emissions,
which doesn't make any sense scientifically,
politically or economically.
So get ready to vote
you will say it now and say it again.
We need to vote for politicians who believe in science
and who use scientific literature to build policy.
This is how we catalyze political action to understand
that a respect for science will protect us
against the biggest threats to our societies,
such as pandemics and the biggest one that is already here
and will only be getting worse in the future.
And we need to be paying attention to,
and that is climate change.