so when thinking about the theme for
today leading with hope in a changing
world I’ll admit I spent far more time
thinking about the change aspect of the
thing rather than the hope perhaps
that’s not the most optimistic way to
begin especially given what we all came
here for today but I think it’s
important because for me at least it’s
our understanding of the changes that we
see happening around us every day which
creates that opportunity for hope and
that’s what I came here to talk about
today
I was once taking an economics course
back when I was in college to be
specific it was principles of
microeconomics which I know we does not
sound like the most inspiring of courses
to most people in this room but for me
it really was for one simple thing that
our professor said to us early on in the
course he said the most powerful
resources we have as a species or our
ideas most powerful tools we have or all
appear and what’s in our minds is made
tangible there’s always an opportunity
for revolution human history of course
is full of all these revolutions we have
a pattern human race pushes ideas pushes
technologies pushes itself almost to the
edge and then makes a wild even brave
turn towards something new and almost
always something better I believe that
right now
we are at such a moment in our history
and it can be frightening standing here
looking out over the cliffs edge of the
period of changes that I would be
talking about here today but as I pivot
towards talking about the changes that I
focus on professionally I want you all
to keep something in mind ideas can save
the world
we know this of course because they
always have and despite everything that
we see happening around us every single
day that is no different about ourselves
than it has ever been throughout our
history ideas can save the world
remember that because this get very dark
climate change terrorism and violence
and world hunger these problems are
killing us and there is no one here to
save us
except ourselves in my arena at least
these represent the greatest challenges
of the 21st century greenhouse gas
emissions are going through the roof
leading to things like climate
variability
temperature change we see on this graph
right here and natural disasters
happening around the world and these
changes are in fact erupting very
foundations of our global economy in
fact eroding it along side of this we’re
starting to see incredible instability
occurring in some of the world’s most
vulnerable countries starting in roughly
the 1970s we saw a slow and then in fact
very sudden increase in the total number
of terrorist attacks happening around
the world our best guess is by the way
it’s our the source of this change that
we see right here always come back to
instability now on the hunger front we
see a somewhat more hopeful story in
just about 25 years the total number of
people going hungry worldwide dropped
from over a billion in the early 1990s
down to under 800 million by the mid
2010 s now the problem is you can see
here in the end of the graph we’re now
potentially experiencing the beginnings
of another spike and rapid population
growth rates globally you’re making it
even harder for us to combat the problem
with 7.5 iliyan people alive today about
10 billion projected to be living by the
end of the century we are now expected
to have to grow more food in the next 50
years and we have in the last and
thousand years of our history combined
all while our total arable land space is
decreasing in part due to climate change
so where’s the hope the first thing I
can tell you in the hope arena is that
these problems are interrelated well
that may sound strange to me at least
that interrelationship is itself a sign
of hope
see our global food system it sits at
the Nexus of dozens of different
challenges happening around the world
this makes sense of course intuitively
because even if you’re not there already
food is one of three primary inputs for
literally everything that we do you have
not caught on the other two are air and
water
yeah yeah food air and water without
these three things our society as we
know it would not be possible now it’s
the relationship of food and water that
I want us to concentrate on here it’s
particularly important
because unfortunately our global food
systems have what can be called a
resiliency problem and that problem is
due mostly to its use of water he’s a
terrible irony that some of the world’s
most important agricultural centers also
happen to be some of the most water
stressed places on our planet and these
problems are coming from various sources
they come from things like pollution or
sanitation poor treatment and in fact
poorer and underdeveloped technologies
and practices in agriculture but another
major contributor that we all have to
contend with is drought in the US we see
this in the state of California we all
know it’s a pretty drought prone state
right it also happens to be the world’s
ninth largest agricultural economy it
produces about 90% of the world’s
almonds that’s a pretty specific thing
to say but we’ll get to why a 90% of the
world’s almonds it also happens to
produce about 10 percent of all the beef
that’s consumed in the United States
alone both of these products both these
foods almonds and beef take an
incredible amount of water to produce in
the case of almonds we’re talking about
roughly 1.1 gallons of water or almond
and maybe that does not sound
immediately so significant but for a
product that’s essentially the size of
your thumbprint gallons not exactly
minuscule other crops that are growing
in California things like broccoli
almonds lettuce asparagus these all take
even more water to produce than the
almond but beef beefs a real water hog
it takes about 2,000 gallons of water
just to produce a single pound of beef
and remember again California is a
drought prone state 80% of human water
usage in the state of California comes
from agriculture alone and when we’re
factoring in environmental uses of water
in California things literally like
evaporation like actually wild plants
and animals consuming water agriculture
still accounts for 50% of all the water
consumption in the state of California
at the same time agriculture and other
land use accounts for roughly a quarter
of our emissions globally so greenhouse
gas emissions lots of
lots of these are coming from
agriculture it’s an untenable crisis
because it means that agriculture is
driving problems related to climate from
both the front and the back ends
simultaneously again it is an untenable
crisis that we will have to pay for one
day if we don’t do something soon but
luckily enough for us here in the United
States our relative stability is a
shield against greater problems when
these kinds of crises occur elsewhere
the results can be catastrophic we tell
you a story about Syria see globally
we’ve had an inkling that climate change
was making droughts more likely but
Syria just so happens to be the first
place this connection was shown
quantifiably during the years leading up
to their civil war syria and in fact the
greater Middle East were undergoing a
rather severe drought it would
eventually be a driving factor behind
the protests at the Arab Spring an early
rally cry of these protests by the way
was bread freedom and social justice in
that order the connections to food were
laid bare in the streets from the very
beginning and through research that’s
been published by scholars at Columbia
University we now know that climate
variability associated with the effects
of manmade climate change may drought in
Syria two to three times more likely and
in fact or severe the agriculture is
based on our ability to plan we plant
crops during particular seasons
expecting particular conditions it will
allow them to grow and to thrive when
that starts to fall apart the whole
system can fall apart along with it
droughts in non resilient agricultural
communities is quite literally a death
sentence and not only for the crops
themselves but actually for the people
that grow them in the case of Syria
their drought forced millions of people
to flee their failing crop lands and go
into the cities at the same time a
terrorist organization we now know as
Isis was forcing millions more to flee
Iraq and come into Syrian cities at the
same time
some six thousand people are fleeing
Syria every single day
the system there has fallen apart see
the introduction of millions of new
people quite frankly on especially
unemployed young men into an urban
environment is a recipe for instability
and instability as we all now know is a
terrorist organizations bread and butter
simply put we do not see these kinds of
organizations flourishing like this in
stable environments while the capacity
or the motivations might be there those
things which allow them to grow and to
cause damage on that scale is actually
to vastly diminished simply by a stable
environment again 6,000 people are
fleeing Syria every single day but it
doesn’t in there a conflict itself has
actually deepened the damages done to
the food system as we speak there are
about nine million people in Syria in
need of food based assistance
specifically and unfortunately it
doesn’t even in there Syria is not an
isolated incident we see food based
conflicts happening throughout the world
prime examples of these are happening in
Africa a some of the world’s most severe
droughts are causing some of its most
severe famines and leading to some of
its most brutal conflicts we have data
from Nigeria it shows that violent
deaths and conflict events are actually
rising in conjunction with the price of
food as the price of food goes up more
people get killed in Somalia or about 70
percent of the citizens are using some
form of subsistence agriculture to get
their basic needs taken care of we’ve
got another situation of severe and
prolonged droughts leading to severe
famine it should be no surprise to us
then that in 2016 Somalia is a resident
Isis affiliate the organization known as
al-shabaab was named the most deadly
terrorist organization in the world
these things are happening in Somalia
they’re happening in Nigeria they’re
happening in Syria they’re also
happening in places like South Sudan and
Yemen the people in these places are
food stressed they are water stressed
and they are under daily threat of
violence
but it still does not end there I’m here
to tell you that unfortunately these
things or versions of these things are
happening here at home the research at
Clemson University we now know that a 1%
increase in food insecurity at the u.s.
county level results in a 12% increase
in violent crime at the same level this
by the way is true even when we’re
holding other predicting factors of
those crimes at a constant food
insecurity causes the change and the
change itself is a quantifiable effect
of more violence so can we come back to
hope yeah ready for that ok I’ll start
here we have the technology to solve
these problems right now these problems
though they’re vast
oh they’re complex though they’re
intimidating or in fact able to be
combated using ideas and technologies
which have already been developed and I
can prove that to you I’m a co-founder
of a little organization called
herbivore the past two years my team and
I we’ve been developing a technology
that we call the you bloom
it’s a hydroponic garden it’s capable of
growing roughly 30 pounds of produce per
month in just a little bit over one
square foot of floor space it uses no
soil and it uses at a minimum 90% less
water and traditional agriculture it
does all of this while taking up the
same amount of energy as one single 90
watt light bulb now these products are
still under development my team you know
we are already pursuing projects and
partnerships that are gonna take them
into some of the most food insecure
communities in the United States and in
fact in the Middle East our our idea was
simple let’s build a technology that
will cut back on the emissions from
agriculture while making the task of
growing food easier cheaper and more
efficient our systems are sustainable
they’re low-cost they take only minimal
time effort and resources to use as I
see it this idea it’s a key towards
Brazil
see it’s one that can nourish our bodies
one that can protect our planet and one
that can make communities not only
healthier but safer in the long run I’ll
repeat it we have the technologies to
solve these problems it’s only a matter
of effort and commitment seeing the
interconnections of the world’s greatest
crises should not paralyze us to action
either it should embolden us towards
seeing things through payoffs are
immeasurable
the possibilities are endless and for me
what all centers around the dinner table
place where we share laughter is where
we share meaning and culture and
community and love it also happens to be
a place where some of the world’s most
important problems can be addressed all
we have left to do ladies and gentlemen
is work towards making our ideas reality
they’re our most powerful resources and
with them I promise you we can save the
world thank you [Applause]
today leading with hope in a changing
world I’ll admit I spent far more time
thinking about the change aspect of the
thing rather than the hope perhaps
that’s not the most optimistic way to
begin especially given what we all came
here for today but I think it’s
important because for me at least it’s
our understanding of the changes that we
see happening around us every day which
creates that opportunity for hope and
that’s what I came here to talk about
today
I was once taking an economics course
back when I was in college to be
specific it was principles of
microeconomics which I know we does not
sound like the most inspiring of courses
to most people in this room but for me
it really was for one simple thing that
our professor said to us early on in the
course he said the most powerful
resources we have as a species or our
ideas most powerful tools we have or all
appear and what’s in our minds is made
tangible there’s always an opportunity
for revolution human history of course
is full of all these revolutions we have
a pattern human race pushes ideas pushes
technologies pushes itself almost to the
edge and then makes a wild even brave
turn towards something new and almost
always something better I believe that
right now
we are at such a moment in our history
and it can be frightening standing here
looking out over the cliffs edge of the
period of changes that I would be
talking about here today but as I pivot
towards talking about the changes that I
focus on professionally I want you all
to keep something in mind ideas can save
the world
we know this of course because they
always have and despite everything that
we see happening around us every single
day that is no different about ourselves
than it has ever been throughout our
history ideas can save the world
remember that because this get very dark
climate change terrorism and violence
and world hunger these problems are
killing us and there is no one here to
save us
except ourselves in my arena at least
these represent the greatest challenges
of the 21st century greenhouse gas
emissions are going through the roof
leading to things like climate
variability
temperature change we see on this graph
right here and natural disasters
happening around the world and these
changes are in fact erupting very
foundations of our global economy in
fact eroding it along side of this we’re
starting to see incredible instability
occurring in some of the world’s most
vulnerable countries starting in roughly
the 1970s we saw a slow and then in fact
very sudden increase in the total number
of terrorist attacks happening around
the world our best guess is by the way
it’s our the source of this change that
we see right here always come back to
instability now on the hunger front we
see a somewhat more hopeful story in
just about 25 years the total number of
people going hungry worldwide dropped
from over a billion in the early 1990s
down to under 800 million by the mid
2010 s now the problem is you can see
here in the end of the graph we’re now
potentially experiencing the beginnings
of another spike and rapid population
growth rates globally you’re making it
even harder for us to combat the problem
with 7.5 iliyan people alive today about
10 billion projected to be living by the
end of the century we are now expected
to have to grow more food in the next 50
years and we have in the last and
thousand years of our history combined
all while our total arable land space is
decreasing in part due to climate change
so where’s the hope the first thing I
can tell you in the hope arena is that
these problems are interrelated well
that may sound strange to me at least
that interrelationship is itself a sign
of hope
see our global food system it sits at
the Nexus of dozens of different
challenges happening around the world
this makes sense of course intuitively
because even if you’re not there already
food is one of three primary inputs for
literally everything that we do you have
not caught on the other two are air and
water
yeah yeah food air and water without
these three things our society as we
know it would not be possible now it’s
the relationship of food and water that
I want us to concentrate on here it’s
particularly important
because unfortunately our global food
systems have what can be called a
resiliency problem and that problem is
due mostly to its use of water he’s a
terrible irony that some of the world’s
most important agricultural centers also
happen to be some of the most water
stressed places on our planet and these
problems are coming from various sources
they come from things like pollution or
sanitation poor treatment and in fact
poorer and underdeveloped technologies
and practices in agriculture but another
major contributor that we all have to
contend with is drought in the US we see
this in the state of California we all
know it’s a pretty drought prone state
right it also happens to be the world’s
ninth largest agricultural economy it
produces about 90% of the world’s
almonds that’s a pretty specific thing
to say but we’ll get to why a 90% of the
world’s almonds it also happens to
produce about 10 percent of all the beef
that’s consumed in the United States
alone both of these products both these
foods almonds and beef take an
incredible amount of water to produce in
the case of almonds we’re talking about
roughly 1.1 gallons of water or almond
and maybe that does not sound
immediately so significant but for a
product that’s essentially the size of
your thumbprint gallons not exactly
minuscule other crops that are growing
in California things like broccoli
almonds lettuce asparagus these all take
even more water to produce than the
almond but beef beefs a real water hog
it takes about 2,000 gallons of water
just to produce a single pound of beef
and remember again California is a
drought prone state 80% of human water
usage in the state of California comes
from agriculture alone and when we’re
factoring in environmental uses of water
in California things literally like
evaporation like actually wild plants
and animals consuming water agriculture
still accounts for 50% of all the water
consumption in the state of California
at the same time agriculture and other
land use accounts for roughly a quarter
of our emissions globally so greenhouse
gas emissions lots of
lots of these are coming from
agriculture it’s an untenable crisis
because it means that agriculture is
driving problems related to climate from
both the front and the back ends
simultaneously again it is an untenable
crisis that we will have to pay for one
day if we don’t do something soon but
luckily enough for us here in the United
States our relative stability is a
shield against greater problems when
these kinds of crises occur elsewhere
the results can be catastrophic we tell
you a story about Syria see globally
we’ve had an inkling that climate change
was making droughts more likely but
Syria just so happens to be the first
place this connection was shown
quantifiably during the years leading up
to their civil war syria and in fact the
greater Middle East were undergoing a
rather severe drought it would
eventually be a driving factor behind
the protests at the Arab Spring an early
rally cry of these protests by the way
was bread freedom and social justice in
that order the connections to food were
laid bare in the streets from the very
beginning and through research that’s
been published by scholars at Columbia
University we now know that climate
variability associated with the effects
of manmade climate change may drought in
Syria two to three times more likely and
in fact or severe the agriculture is
based on our ability to plan we plant
crops during particular seasons
expecting particular conditions it will
allow them to grow and to thrive when
that starts to fall apart the whole
system can fall apart along with it
droughts in non resilient agricultural
communities is quite literally a death
sentence and not only for the crops
themselves but actually for the people
that grow them in the case of Syria
their drought forced millions of people
to flee their failing crop lands and go
into the cities at the same time a
terrorist organization we now know as
Isis was forcing millions more to flee
Iraq and come into Syrian cities at the
same time
some six thousand people are fleeing
Syria every single day
the system there has fallen apart see
the introduction of millions of new
people quite frankly on especially
unemployed young men into an urban
environment is a recipe for instability
and instability as we all now know is a
terrorist organizations bread and butter
simply put we do not see these kinds of
organizations flourishing like this in
stable environments while the capacity
or the motivations might be there those
things which allow them to grow and to
cause damage on that scale is actually
to vastly diminished simply by a stable
environment again 6,000 people are
fleeing Syria every single day but it
doesn’t in there a conflict itself has
actually deepened the damages done to
the food system as we speak there are
about nine million people in Syria in
need of food based assistance
specifically and unfortunately it
doesn’t even in there Syria is not an
isolated incident we see food based
conflicts happening throughout the world
prime examples of these are happening in
Africa a some of the world’s most severe
droughts are causing some of its most
severe famines and leading to some of
its most brutal conflicts we have data
from Nigeria it shows that violent
deaths and conflict events are actually
rising in conjunction with the price of
food as the price of food goes up more
people get killed in Somalia or about 70
percent of the citizens are using some
form of subsistence agriculture to get
their basic needs taken care of we’ve
got another situation of severe and
prolonged droughts leading to severe
famine it should be no surprise to us
then that in 2016 Somalia is a resident
Isis affiliate the organization known as
al-shabaab was named the most deadly
terrorist organization in the world
these things are happening in Somalia
they’re happening in Nigeria they’re
happening in Syria they’re also
happening in places like South Sudan and
Yemen the people in these places are
food stressed they are water stressed
and they are under daily threat of
violence
but it still does not end there I’m here
to tell you that unfortunately these
things or versions of these things are
happening here at home the research at
Clemson University we now know that a 1%
increase in food insecurity at the u.s.
county level results in a 12% increase
in violent crime at the same level this
by the way is true even when we’re
holding other predicting factors of
those crimes at a constant food
insecurity causes the change and the
change itself is a quantifiable effect
of more violence so can we come back to
hope yeah ready for that ok I’ll start
here we have the technology to solve
these problems right now these problems
though they’re vast
oh they’re complex though they’re
intimidating or in fact able to be
combated using ideas and technologies
which have already been developed and I
can prove that to you I’m a co-founder
of a little organization called
herbivore the past two years my team and
I we’ve been developing a technology
that we call the you bloom
it’s a hydroponic garden it’s capable of
growing roughly 30 pounds of produce per
month in just a little bit over one
square foot of floor space it uses no
soil and it uses at a minimum 90% less
water and traditional agriculture it
does all of this while taking up the
same amount of energy as one single 90
watt light bulb now these products are
still under development my team you know
we are already pursuing projects and
partnerships that are gonna take them
into some of the most food insecure
communities in the United States and in
fact in the Middle East our our idea was
simple let’s build a technology that
will cut back on the emissions from
agriculture while making the task of
growing food easier cheaper and more
efficient our systems are sustainable
they’re low-cost they take only minimal
time effort and resources to use as I
see it this idea it’s a key towards
Brazil
see it’s one that can nourish our bodies
one that can protect our planet and one
that can make communities not only
healthier but safer in the long run I’ll
repeat it we have the technologies to
solve these problems it’s only a matter
of effort and commitment seeing the
interconnections of the world’s greatest
crises should not paralyze us to action
either it should embolden us towards
seeing things through payoffs are
immeasurable
the possibilities are endless and for me
what all centers around the dinner table
place where we share laughter is where
we share meaning and culture and
community and love it also happens to be
a place where some of the world’s most
important problems can be addressed all
we have left to do ladies and gentlemen
is work towards making our ideas reality
they’re our most powerful resources and
with them I promise you we can save the
world thank you [Applause]
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