[Music]
[Applause]
America celebrated its first Earth Day
in 1970 it came about in part because of
this image it’s called Earthrise
and it’s known as the photo that
inspired the environmental movement
because it was such a vivid reminder
that we live on a beautiful and delicate
planet was taken during the Apollo 8
mission in 1968 the next year we got a
vivid reminder of a very different kind
when downtown in a major American city
the river caught on fire when the coil
ho got burned in Cleveland it drove home
the fact that we had serious
environmental problems Earth Day
combined the themes of these two images
that we had a vulnerable and precious
planet and that we were screwing it up
around the time of the festival at the
dawn of the environmental movement a few
ideas took shape that there were too
many of us that we were consuming too
much and polluting too much that we were
going to run out of resources and suffer
greatly as a result hey by the way do
you think a title like famine 1975
a lot of these ideas are still with us
today and they shape how we think about
a relationship with our planet if you
looked at the evidence if you looked at
the trends in 1970 you actually would
have found a lot of support for these
gloomy views our population was growing
steadily and our economy the size of our
total consumption was growing even more
quickly we were getting wealthier and we
liked it
we liked our prosperity we liked our
comforts we liked our stuff we didn’t
show any signs of changing course and to
generate all this prosperity and all
this stuff we took more and more
resources from the planet every year
more metals
more fertilizer more minerals more water
more energy more and more steadily year
after year of all the things that
yielded our prosperity we built an
economy that did exactly what it was
designed to do grow voraciously
relentlessly and apparently at the
expense of everything else and in our
mania for growth we made some terrible
mistakes we let our rivers catch on fire
we blanketed our cities in smog we
killed all the passenger pigeons we damn
near killed all the Buffalo bear wolves
and whales our mistakes kept coming and
they kept compounding and it felt like
planetary death by a thousand cuts
Earth Day was a plea for us to stop this
insanity otherwise we were gonna flat
run out we were gonna choke and starve
ourselves and our planet to death we had
to walk away from this mania for growth
and embrace a philosophy of D growth so
did we have we Americans turned our
and wholeheartedly embrace de-growth no
no we have not to see this let’s keep
looking at the transit since 1970 our
population has continued to increase
very steadily and our economy again our
total consumption has continued to
increase much more quickly we keep
making stuff and buying stuff and
driving vehicles and eating meals and
doing all the things that make up a
modern economy we have not embraced D
growth we have continued to embrace
growth growth but something fundamental
did change something that really nobody
was anticipating and that even today
very very few people are aware of even
as we kept growing more and more year
after year eventually we started taking
less and less from the planet less metal
less fertilizer fewer minerals less
water fewer trees I have some
extraordinarily good news to report in
America we are finally past peak
I find this one really weird
we’re probably actually past peak energy
and look what’s happened to pollution it
I want to stress all of these resource
lines include everything we buy from
China and other countries and everything
we recycle so they really do tell the
whole story and it’s an unbelievable
story something extraordinary has
happened
for the first time in human history we
have decoupled output growth from
resource consumption that was way too
much economists speak let me say the
same thing a different way we have
finally figured out how to give
ourselves more and more while taking
so how did we accomplish this how did we
pull off this unbelievable unanticipated
feat to get an answer we have to turn to
the obvious source a Radio Shack ad from
1991 I’m serious this actually tells us
something really important because all
of these devices 11 out of the 13
featured in this ad have basically
vanished into the modern smartphone this
is a great example of the phenomenon of
dematerialization dematerialization is
simply the ability to consume the things
we want in this case media
communications computing while using
fewer resources fewer molecules from the
world in some cases none at all
now dematerialization does not happen
because we spontaneously give up the
desire to consume and embrace the
philosophy of deep growth it doesn’t
happen because we’re noble it happens
because we’re cheap it’s very simple
resources cost money that we would
rather not spend and technological
progress offers us an alternative to
that spending so instead of buying a
computer and a hard drive and a landline
in an answering machine in the camcorder
we just buy one tiny phone once you’re
aware of dematerialization you start to
see it all over the place how many of us
still have extensive VHS tape libraries
how many of us still use a bulky CRT
monitor it’s not just digital and
high-tech products cars today use less
metal and less gas telecommunication
networks use a lot less copper and
farming is very quickly giving way to
precision agriculture or harvests go up
while cropland water and fertilizer all
go down dematerialization is happening
all over the place in big ways in small
ways in obvious ways in subtle
waise it’s the best environmental news
in the world and for our planet its life
by a thousand cuts so now that we are
all evidence loving technology loving
eco modernists what do we need to do how
do we keep this amazing trend going of
getting more and more from less and less
three things first of all we need to be
vigilant about pollution businesses will
dump waste into the environment if it’s
costless for them to do so so we have to
make it costly with smart regulation and
tough enforcement second we really need
greenhouse gases are an especially tough
kind of pollution because they come from
so many of our activities everything
from generating electricity to driving
cars to raising animals so we need a
wide range of solutions the good news is
we have them we have amazing progress
with renewables we have super promising
research with everything from batteries
to geoengineering to lab-grown meat we
have the nuclear option and we should
use it I like the way bill gates frames
the issue he says we desperately need an
energy miracle in the 21st century and
we might just get one the third thing we
have to do is the most controversial and
the most counterintuitive we have to
this is the exact opposite of the advice
we’ve been hearing since Earth Day which
is about the urgent need for D growth
that advice is really well-meaning but
we now know that it’s wrong it is not
prosperity that’s the enemy of the
environment it’s poverty and it’s not D
growth that’s gonna rescue us
it’s dematerialization look I am NOT a
Pollyanna I know that we face serious
challenges no shortage of them and I
don’t believe that technology is pixie
dust it’s just going to magically make
everything better for all of us but I
also know that sometimes we have to take
yes for an answer yes we have finally
built an economy that gives us more and
more while letting us tread more and
more lightly on the earth yes we are
fixing our past mistakes our rivers do
not catch on fire anymore and yes we can
build a world that takes better care of
all of us and better care of our fellow
creatures in fact we already are the
the wolves and the bear are coming back
I started this talk with Earthrise which
is now my second favorite environmental
image of all time I want to end with my
absolute favorite and I love it because
it shows me what we have already been
able to accomplish and what we’re going
to see more and more of in the future it
is a picture taken in 2014 of a humpback
whale off the coast of New York City
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
America celebrated its first Earth Day
in 1970 it came about in part because of
this image it’s called Earthrise
and it’s known as the photo that
inspired the environmental movement
because it was such a vivid reminder
that we live on a beautiful and delicate
planet was taken during the Apollo 8
mission in 1968 the next year we got a
vivid reminder of a very different kind
when downtown in a major American city
the river caught on fire when the coil
ho got burned in Cleveland it drove home
the fact that we had serious
environmental problems Earth Day
combined the themes of these two images
that we had a vulnerable and precious
planet and that we were screwing it up
around the time of the festival at the
dawn of the environmental movement a few
ideas took shape that there were too
many of us that we were consuming too
much and polluting too much that we were
going to run out of resources and suffer
greatly as a result hey by the way do
you think a title like famine 1975
a lot of these ideas are still with us
today and they shape how we think about
a relationship with our planet if you
looked at the evidence if you looked at
the trends in 1970 you actually would
have found a lot of support for these
gloomy views our population was growing
steadily and our economy the size of our
total consumption was growing even more
quickly we were getting wealthier and we
liked it
we liked our prosperity we liked our
comforts we liked our stuff we didn’t
show any signs of changing course and to
generate all this prosperity and all
this stuff we took more and more
resources from the planet every year
more metals
more fertilizer more minerals more water
more energy more and more steadily year
after year of all the things that
yielded our prosperity we built an
economy that did exactly what it was
designed to do grow voraciously
relentlessly and apparently at the
expense of everything else and in our
mania for growth we made some terrible
mistakes we let our rivers catch on fire
we blanketed our cities in smog we
killed all the passenger pigeons we damn
near killed all the Buffalo bear wolves
and whales our mistakes kept coming and
they kept compounding and it felt like
planetary death by a thousand cuts
Earth Day was a plea for us to stop this
insanity otherwise we were gonna flat
run out we were gonna choke and starve
ourselves and our planet to death we had
to walk away from this mania for growth
and embrace a philosophy of D growth so
did we have we Americans turned our
and wholeheartedly embrace de-growth no
no we have not to see this let’s keep
looking at the transit since 1970 our
population has continued to increase
very steadily and our economy again our
total consumption has continued to
increase much more quickly we keep
making stuff and buying stuff and
driving vehicles and eating meals and
doing all the things that make up a
modern economy we have not embraced D
growth we have continued to embrace
growth growth but something fundamental
did change something that really nobody
was anticipating and that even today
very very few people are aware of even
as we kept growing more and more year
after year eventually we started taking
less and less from the planet less metal
less fertilizer fewer minerals less
water fewer trees I have some
extraordinarily good news to report in
America we are finally past peak
I find this one really weird
we’re probably actually past peak energy
and look what’s happened to pollution it
I want to stress all of these resource
lines include everything we buy from
China and other countries and everything
we recycle so they really do tell the
whole story and it’s an unbelievable
story something extraordinary has
happened
for the first time in human history we
have decoupled output growth from
resource consumption that was way too
much economists speak let me say the
same thing a different way we have
finally figured out how to give
ourselves more and more while taking
so how did we accomplish this how did we
pull off this unbelievable unanticipated
feat to get an answer we have to turn to
the obvious source a Radio Shack ad from
1991 I’m serious this actually tells us
something really important because all
of these devices 11 out of the 13
featured in this ad have basically
vanished into the modern smartphone this
is a great example of the phenomenon of
dematerialization dematerialization is
simply the ability to consume the things
we want in this case media
communications computing while using
fewer resources fewer molecules from the
world in some cases none at all
now dematerialization does not happen
because we spontaneously give up the
desire to consume and embrace the
philosophy of deep growth it doesn’t
happen because we’re noble it happens
because we’re cheap it’s very simple
resources cost money that we would
rather not spend and technological
progress offers us an alternative to
that spending so instead of buying a
computer and a hard drive and a landline
in an answering machine in the camcorder
we just buy one tiny phone once you’re
aware of dematerialization you start to
see it all over the place how many of us
still have extensive VHS tape libraries
how many of us still use a bulky CRT
monitor it’s not just digital and
high-tech products cars today use less
metal and less gas telecommunication
networks use a lot less copper and
farming is very quickly giving way to
precision agriculture or harvests go up
while cropland water and fertilizer all
go down dematerialization is happening
all over the place in big ways in small
ways in obvious ways in subtle
waise it’s the best environmental news
in the world and for our planet its life
by a thousand cuts so now that we are
all evidence loving technology loving
eco modernists what do we need to do how
do we keep this amazing trend going of
getting more and more from less and less
three things first of all we need to be
vigilant about pollution businesses will
dump waste into the environment if it’s
costless for them to do so so we have to
make it costly with smart regulation and
tough enforcement second we really need
greenhouse gases are an especially tough
kind of pollution because they come from
so many of our activities everything
from generating electricity to driving
cars to raising animals so we need a
wide range of solutions the good news is
we have them we have amazing progress
with renewables we have super promising
research with everything from batteries
to geoengineering to lab-grown meat we
have the nuclear option and we should
use it I like the way bill gates frames
the issue he says we desperately need an
energy miracle in the 21st century and
we might just get one the third thing we
have to do is the most controversial and
the most counterintuitive we have to
this is the exact opposite of the advice
we’ve been hearing since Earth Day which
is about the urgent need for D growth
that advice is really well-meaning but
we now know that it’s wrong it is not
prosperity that’s the enemy of the
environment it’s poverty and it’s not D
growth that’s gonna rescue us
it’s dematerialization look I am NOT a
Pollyanna I know that we face serious
challenges no shortage of them and I
don’t believe that technology is pixie
dust it’s just going to magically make
everything better for all of us but I
also know that sometimes we have to take
yes for an answer yes we have finally
built an economy that gives us more and
more while letting us tread more and
more lightly on the earth yes we are
fixing our past mistakes our rivers do
not catch on fire anymore and yes we can
build a world that takes better care of
all of us and better care of our fellow
creatures in fact we already are the
the wolves and the bear are coming back
I started this talk with Earthrise which
is now my second favorite environmental
image of all time I want to end with my
absolute favorite and I love it because
it shows me what we have already been
able to accomplish and what we’re going
to see more and more of in the future it
is a picture taken in 2014 of a humpback
whale off the coast of New York City
[Applause] [Music]
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