I believe that it’s scientifically
feasible right now to literally eat a
big part of climate change and while you
know there’s obviously a lot of
groundbreaking science around this idea
it’s most impressive feature may be that
it can actually cross our highly
polarized political boundaries to now
boundaries whether they’re scientific or
political are usually a question of
perspective as I was thinking about this
question of perspective I was reminded
of the story of the young traveler who’s
comes to a huge river he can’t cross and
he’s walking up and down the banks of
the river looking for a way he gets very
excited because he spots a wise master
on the other side and he says wise
master I’m trying to cross this river
how do I get to the other side and the
wise master looks back at him and looks
down the river and he looks up the river
and he looks a little puzzled and he
says my son you’re already on the other
side I want to invite you today to think
about this challenge from a different
perspective because I think it’s one
that will lead both to both more
powerful paths forward but also two more
paths that we can all take together so
first some historical perspective now
climate change kind of came of age in
our in our consciousness really in the
1970s and it really wasn’t the headline
that it is today it was really still
more a debate among scientists who were
just starting this migration towards
this consensus around warming really
driven by you know more powerful
computer models and better data the
headlines at the time were related but
they were they were more about things
like you know the Apollo mission and
those first views of Earth from from
outer space that that idea of Earth
without boundaries and it was about
famine and food shortages and fuel
shortages and this sense of future shock
and above all really this I
you know global nuclear winter and even
though this was a decade where you know
regional concerns things like air
pollution were really becoming global
concerns and we’re you know we were
becoming kind of increasingly aware of
what I call the unintended consequences
of science and technology it was also a
time of enormous you know scientific and
political innovation the EPA the Clean
Water Act the Clean Air Act and people
like Norman Borlaug his Green Revolution
is credited with saving a billion people
from starvation and he won the Nobel
Prize for it now you know I don’t know
if maybe you guys are having a little
bit of deja vu now but does seem like
these headlines are returning doesn’t it
I mean space is obviously back in the
news with things like SpaceX and you
know Blue Horizon and and our new
spaceship Mars and severe weather I
think as we can all agree has been in
the news really over the last you know
six months or so and North Korea seems
pretty intent on putting nukes back on
the front page but climate change is you
know one of the it is one of the
headlines now but the debate has shifted
from being one mostly among scientists
to being one now I think mostly among
politicians with the lines being really
drawn more along political and even
geographic boundaries and this brings me
to the main shift in perspective I want
to talk to you about today what if we
were just for a second not think of this
as an economic or or moral challenge of
this human waste accumulation but rather
as an imbalance between two fundamental
forces that were essentially unleashed
by bacterial mutation billions of years
ago and which really drive inform the
very essence of our current atmosphere
respiration and photosynthesis now these
are kind of the yin and yang of our
atmosphere respiration is you may
remember or probably do
remember from biology class is taking
oxygen and fuel and it turns that into
energy with water and co2 is the outputs
and photosynthesis takes that water
takes that co2 combines it with light
energy and turns that back into oxygen
and fuel so this is a cycle that has
been balancing itself at various levels
for billions of years and the current
imbalance is the result of not just
human population growth but also human
ingenuity which has figured out how to
rapidly accelerate the that that
respiration side of the equation and
essentially overwhelm the ability of
photosynthesis to keep up now anyone who
you know you don’t have to get look any
further really than the cell phone in
your pocket to understand this phenomena
I mean besides the obvious fact that
everyone you has a cell phone in their
pocket do you think that cell phone that
are these massive advances and things
like battery technology have been
leveraged more for functionality in
other words you know you know get get
more apps in there you know you know
more video and more social networking
and more gaming or do you think that
that was leverage more for conservation
and energy efficiency
someone can Google that if you want
even Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution
was accomplished by accelerating
respiration in the form of fertilizers
and pesticides and mechanized farming
and even our responses right now they
still are on that respiration side in
the form of trying to divert some of
that innovation into you know
technologies and behaviors that limit or
or eliminate respiration things like
renewable energy and fortunately this is
you know been a lot of this has been
pretty successful but I want to ask you
for a second late what if we would
expand that scope just a little bit
further what if we were to realize for a
second like that traveler that we were
already on the other side of the river
what if we were to look at
photosynthesis the same way we looked at
respiration so not as something static
or fixed or to be you know conserved and
protected against this horrible
onslaught of respiration but it’s
dynamic and open to the same sorts of
innovations for the same sorts of
economic and functional advantages and
with the same sorts of accelerated
impacts and the good news is it’s
already happening technologies are
already being developed and things like
bio mimicking photosynthesis with
artificial leaves or turbocharging
photosynthesis in the field while at the
same time reducing respiration in the
form of you know fertilizers and
pesticides and indoor agricultural
approaches sort of industrialized
agriculture and both around traditional
crops but also new high efficiency crops
like algae and bacteria these
technologies are expanding
photosynthesis and turbocharging it so
in the same way that we used innovation
to figure out how to take essentially
the respiratory power of hundreds of
horses and cram that into the hood of
your car we can industrialize
photosynthesis and take the carbon
reduction power of hundreds of acres of
agriculture and compress that into an
area the size of a basketball court
and these impacts go beyond just carbon
and economics these could be you know
critical tools for meeting a future food
system shocks because they’re actually
insulated from a lot of those climatic
effects and they can expand farming to
areas where we can’t currently farm like
the Arctic so to put this in a broad
global perspective converting even just
one-fifth of current agriculture do
these sorts of industrialized
photosynthetic approaches leveraging
these high efficiency crops like algae
and plugged into low carbon energy
sources like wind or hydro or nuclear
would be the equivalent of taking more
than half I’m talking more than half of
all the world’s cars off the road the
land-use impacts are equally dramatic
you can essentially take a production
area the size of India and compress that
into an area the size of Rhode Island so
in the 70s the Green Revolution saved us
from starving but it did so with carbon
positive agriculture we can have a new
green revolution with new technologies
and address the exact same problems with
carbon negative agriculture and aligning
these these deep-seated human instincts
for growth and innovation and science
and technology with these countervailing
Carbon Reduction forces could also help
alleviate our political issue too
because these technologies they’re
neither anti nature nor anti human
nature now President Kennedy in one of
the last speeches he ever gave was to
the National Academy of Sciences and
ended he was talking about this role of
science as a unifier of knowledge but
also as a crosser of boundaries whether
those boundaries are between the
sciences or those boundaries are between
nations
or those boundaries are between what he
called our our humane and scientific
concerns we can cross those boundaries
again right now and I know this for a
fact because we already are thank you
[Applause]
feasible right now to literally eat a
big part of climate change and while you
know there’s obviously a lot of
groundbreaking science around this idea
it’s most impressive feature may be that
it can actually cross our highly
polarized political boundaries to now
boundaries whether they’re scientific or
political are usually a question of
perspective as I was thinking about this
question of perspective I was reminded
of the story of the young traveler who’s
comes to a huge river he can’t cross and
he’s walking up and down the banks of
the river looking for a way he gets very
excited because he spots a wise master
on the other side and he says wise
master I’m trying to cross this river
how do I get to the other side and the
wise master looks back at him and looks
down the river and he looks up the river
and he looks a little puzzled and he
says my son you’re already on the other
side I want to invite you today to think
about this challenge from a different
perspective because I think it’s one
that will lead both to both more
powerful paths forward but also two more
paths that we can all take together so
first some historical perspective now
climate change kind of came of age in
our in our consciousness really in the
1970s and it really wasn’t the headline
that it is today it was really still
more a debate among scientists who were
just starting this migration towards
this consensus around warming really
driven by you know more powerful
computer models and better data the
headlines at the time were related but
they were they were more about things
like you know the Apollo mission and
those first views of Earth from from
outer space that that idea of Earth
without boundaries and it was about
famine and food shortages and fuel
shortages and this sense of future shock
and above all really this I
you know global nuclear winter and even
though this was a decade where you know
regional concerns things like air
pollution were really becoming global
concerns and we’re you know we were
becoming kind of increasingly aware of
what I call the unintended consequences
of science and technology it was also a
time of enormous you know scientific and
political innovation the EPA the Clean
Water Act the Clean Air Act and people
like Norman Borlaug his Green Revolution
is credited with saving a billion people
from starvation and he won the Nobel
Prize for it now you know I don’t know
if maybe you guys are having a little
bit of deja vu now but does seem like
these headlines are returning doesn’t it
I mean space is obviously back in the
news with things like SpaceX and you
know Blue Horizon and and our new
spaceship Mars and severe weather I
think as we can all agree has been in
the news really over the last you know
six months or so and North Korea seems
pretty intent on putting nukes back on
the front page but climate change is you
know one of the it is one of the
headlines now but the debate has shifted
from being one mostly among scientists
to being one now I think mostly among
politicians with the lines being really
drawn more along political and even
geographic boundaries and this brings me
to the main shift in perspective I want
to talk to you about today what if we
were just for a second not think of this
as an economic or or moral challenge of
this human waste accumulation but rather
as an imbalance between two fundamental
forces that were essentially unleashed
by bacterial mutation billions of years
ago and which really drive inform the
very essence of our current atmosphere
respiration and photosynthesis now these
are kind of the yin and yang of our
atmosphere respiration is you may
remember or probably do
remember from biology class is taking
oxygen and fuel and it turns that into
energy with water and co2 is the outputs
and photosynthesis takes that water
takes that co2 combines it with light
energy and turns that back into oxygen
and fuel so this is a cycle that has
been balancing itself at various levels
for billions of years and the current
imbalance is the result of not just
human population growth but also human
ingenuity which has figured out how to
rapidly accelerate the that that
respiration side of the equation and
essentially overwhelm the ability of
photosynthesis to keep up now anyone who
you know you don’t have to get look any
further really than the cell phone in
your pocket to understand this phenomena
I mean besides the obvious fact that
everyone you has a cell phone in their
pocket do you think that cell phone that
are these massive advances and things
like battery technology have been
leveraged more for functionality in
other words you know you know get get
more apps in there you know you know
more video and more social networking
and more gaming or do you think that
that was leverage more for conservation
and energy efficiency
someone can Google that if you want
even Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution
was accomplished by accelerating
respiration in the form of fertilizers
and pesticides and mechanized farming
and even our responses right now they
still are on that respiration side in
the form of trying to divert some of
that innovation into you know
technologies and behaviors that limit or
or eliminate respiration things like
renewable energy and fortunately this is
you know been a lot of this has been
pretty successful but I want to ask you
for a second late what if we would
expand that scope just a little bit
further what if we were to realize for a
second like that traveler that we were
already on the other side of the river
what if we were to look at
photosynthesis the same way we looked at
respiration so not as something static
or fixed or to be you know conserved and
protected against this horrible
onslaught of respiration but it’s
dynamic and open to the same sorts of
innovations for the same sorts of
economic and functional advantages and
with the same sorts of accelerated
impacts and the good news is it’s
already happening technologies are
already being developed and things like
bio mimicking photosynthesis with
artificial leaves or turbocharging
photosynthesis in the field while at the
same time reducing respiration in the
form of you know fertilizers and
pesticides and indoor agricultural
approaches sort of industrialized
agriculture and both around traditional
crops but also new high efficiency crops
like algae and bacteria these
technologies are expanding
photosynthesis and turbocharging it so
in the same way that we used innovation
to figure out how to take essentially
the respiratory power of hundreds of
horses and cram that into the hood of
your car we can industrialize
photosynthesis and take the carbon
reduction power of hundreds of acres of
agriculture and compress that into an
area the size of a basketball court
and these impacts go beyond just carbon
and economics these could be you know
critical tools for meeting a future food
system shocks because they’re actually
insulated from a lot of those climatic
effects and they can expand farming to
areas where we can’t currently farm like
the Arctic so to put this in a broad
global perspective converting even just
one-fifth of current agriculture do
these sorts of industrialized
photosynthetic approaches leveraging
these high efficiency crops like algae
and plugged into low carbon energy
sources like wind or hydro or nuclear
would be the equivalent of taking more
than half I’m talking more than half of
all the world’s cars off the road the
land-use impacts are equally dramatic
you can essentially take a production
area the size of India and compress that
into an area the size of Rhode Island so
in the 70s the Green Revolution saved us
from starving but it did so with carbon
positive agriculture we can have a new
green revolution with new technologies
and address the exact same problems with
carbon negative agriculture and aligning
these these deep-seated human instincts
for growth and innovation and science
and technology with these countervailing
Carbon Reduction forces could also help
alleviate our political issue too
because these technologies they’re
neither anti nature nor anti human
nature now President Kennedy in one of
the last speeches he ever gave was to
the National Academy of Sciences and
ended he was talking about this role of
science as a unifier of knowledge but
also as a crosser of boundaries whether
those boundaries are between the
sciences or those boundaries are between
nations
or those boundaries are between what he
called our our humane and scientific
concerns we can cross those boundaries
again right now and I know this for a
fact because we already are thank you
[Applause]
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