[Music]
thank you very much good morning thank
you Dave this is Mars the Red Planet
here’s a closer view with one of NASA’s
incredible Rovers renowned mathematician
and theoretical physicist Stephen
Hawking says threats to the earth are so
dire that we need to prepare to escape
to Mars or even farther I share
professor Hawkins concerns about threats
to the earth but I think we should
assume that our descendants won’t have
anywhere else to live
besides right here now I don’t mean that
NASA won’t send astronauts to Mars or
that we shouldn’t explore space or
anything like that I just mean I think
it would be prudent to assume that
everyone in future generations
aside from perhaps a few explorers will
live right here if I’m right about that
we ought to take care of this planet
besides who wants to go to Mars I’d
rather be here here it’s pretty nice
outside it’s pretty you don’t need an
oxygen tank to go outside you don’t need
a spacesuit and if you rip your clothes
when you’re outside
it’s an annoyance it’s not a
life-threatening catastrophe
so I’m going to try to make three points
first I’m gonna explain why I think it
would be wise to assume that our
descendants the bulk of people in the
future will live right here on this
planet and I’ll argue therefore that we
ought to look after the life-support
capacity of this planet and then finally
my main point is argue that lately in
the United States we have not been doing
a good job of that because we’ve been
tricked we’ve been tricked into
rejecting good environmental protection
ideas on the basis of biased tests and
double standards that we would know
better than to accept in other
circumstances so I hope that after you
hear this talk these bias tests and
double standard arguments will jump out
at you and you’ll point them out to
other people and you’ll help your nation
and your society make better
environmental decisions but first why do
I think we shouldn’t assume that we’ll
be able to go to Mars well for several
reasons the first is at least of my
concerns but it’s still a regular
relevant concern we don’t have the
transportation technology for people now
I wouldn’t be surprised if NASA
overcomes that but I wouldn’t bet
everybody’s future on it either a second
reason is space travel is remarkably
expensive this is the International
Space Station it’s 250 miles up believe
it or not the United States pays Russia
80 million dollars to get one astronaut
back and forth to the International
Space Station 80 million dollars the
biggest building on this campus and it’s
a big beautiful building cost a little
more than thirty million dollars to
build so less than half as much
meanwhile as you know we have more than
7 billion brothers and sisters on this
planet billions of whom live on a few
dollars a day or less they can’t afford
a short taxi ride let alone a ride on a
spaceship and the more function is more
fortunate among us are not providing for
their basic needs to be met in all cases
it seems unlikely that we’re gonna pay
for their space travel this high expense
of space travel is presumably why even
enthusiasts like professor Hawking
imagine that only a couple of thousand
people could ever go anywhere else
a couple of thousand people is roughly
one in a million people that won’t do
much good for the literally thousands of
millions who would be left behind
another reason I think we ought to
assume that our descendants will live
right here is because we don’t know how
to make self-sustaining ecosystems out
of big dead rocks so this diagram this
diagram is meant to show Mars becoming
like Earth not literally but taking on
the self-sustaining ecosystem property
unique to our planet ecosystems are
incredibly complex we know some things
that will destroy them we know maybe
some of their requirements but the gaps
in our understanding of ecosystems are
vast we have no idea how to make eco
systems self-sustaining ecosystems out
of nonliving components in fact we can’t
even make a single living cell out of
nonliving components so I don’t think we
should bet our descendants future on the
on the ability to overcome this
challenge another reason I don’t think
we should count on going to Mars is the
reason to escape to Mars and keep in
mind I’m not talking about exploring or
NASA sending some astronauts but
escaping and mass to Mars is because the
reason to do so would be because we’ve
caused so much damage to this planet in
other words we’ve failed to sustain the
life support capacity of this planet but
to go to Mars and succeed on Mars we
would not only have to manufacture life
support capacity on Mars we would also
have to sustain that life support
capacity what if we can’t do it here
what reason is there to think we could
do it there I can’t see any reason so if
we can sustain the life support capacity
here we ought to just do that where
everybody will benefit and if we can’t
sustain the life support capacity here
it’s not gonna do any good to go to Mars
because we won’t be able to sustain it
there either
so a friend of my younger friend of mine
I don’t know much about video games I’m
too old but a younger friend of mine
said sustaining the life-support
capacity to Earth that’s like beating
the video game on easy mode but creating
ecosystems on Mars and sustaining those
that’s like trying to beat the video
game on expert or or maybe even
impossible mode
so I think the obvious conclusion is not
to damage the life-support capacity of
this planet
well how are we doing in that regard not
very well
there are millions literally millions of
people doing great work and there all
kinds of minor victories but the major
trends are in the wrong direction we are
depleting forests depleting fisheries
depleting aquifers depleting the soil
we’re changing the chemical composition
of both the atmosphere in the oceans and
causing climate change and maybe most
profoundly of all were depleting
biodiversity and the ecosystems upon
which both we and that biodiversity
depend the trends are in the wrong
decision there must be something
terribly wrong with our decisions we’re
damaging life-support capacity of the
only place in the universe known to
support life now we haven’t always made
bad decisions my parents generation the
grandparents of the students in the
audience made some very good decisions
this is a graph of the number of major
environmental laws passed in the United
States per decade since the 1950s and
what you see is the 1960s 70s and 80s
were the heyday of passing environmental
laws some of your younger may not even
realize what these laws did this is a
picture of air pollution in Beijing
today believe it or not American cities
looked like this in the 50s and 60s but
they don’t anymore thanks to one of
those laws the Clean Air Act
likewise incredibly rivers used to be so
polluted in many American cities that
they literally caught fire but they
don’t anymore thanks to the Clean Water
Act so these laws worked but something
has happened since then since the 1990s
this country has passed
no major environmental laws there has
been no major progress during the
lifetimes of today’s students even
graduate students in some cases well
environmental protection threatens
profits of environmentally damaging
activities and some certainly by no
means all but some people whose profits
are threatened therefore object to
environmental protection
and what’s happened since then is
they’ve tricked us into not passing any
laws see they can’t argue that
environmental protection is a bad idea
or that damage to the planet is a good
thing nobody’s going to buy that and
they can’t argue that their profits are
more important than the planet nobody’s
going to buy that so they have to take a
different approach and the approach
they’ve taken is to work behind the
scenes to manipulate public debate and
they do this several ways I have time to
talk about four ways that were been
tricked and for short to help you
remember them I’m gonna refer to them as
certainty freedom jobs and profit well
let’s begin with certainty no matter how
good our understanding of an
environmental problem opponents of
environmental protection will argue that
we just don’t understand it well enough
to act this has been going on with
regard to climate change for decades
even though well over ninety percent of
qualified scientists think we do
understand it well enough to act in this
is a double standard in other
circumstances we understand the danger
of putting off decisions indefinitely if
you are ill if one of your loved ones is
ill you go to the physician you expect
the physician to analyze the situation
carefully examine the patient run the
necessary tests and come up with a
treatment plan but not put off years and
years and years before deciding what to
do
running more and more and more tests
because the patient could die
in the mean time right students in the
room I hope you choke it considered your
college choices options carefully but
what you didn’t do is you didn’t spend
years and years and years at home after
high school studying colleges in more
and more gruesome detail right if you if
my sons had done that guess what they’d
be home I’d be driving them crazy right
and if everybody did that all the
colleges and universities would have
closed right because everybody been home
studying so not studying studying
studying colleges so so in normal
circumstances we understand that delay
and indecision is dangerous it has a
cost but when it comes to environmental
issues we get paralyzed we made this
mistake over and over we made this
mistake for a long time with regard to
stratospheric ozone depletion and with
regard to acid rain and with regard to
the health effects of smoking for
decades right the the by the way the
history of this is really well
documented in a book called merchants of
doubt’ by Naomi Oreskes and Eric
Connelly
so we’re making this mistake now with
climate change this is a double standard
in other circumstances we know we can’t
delay decisions until we have perfect
understanding we need to make decisions
in a timely fashion but with regard to
environmental problems we get paralyzed
another flawed argument that has been
used as a basis for rejecting good
environmental ideas are appeals to
freedom when environmental protection is
proposed opponents will argue that it
would infringe upon freedom and the
right it would infringe upon one type of
freedom it would infringe upon freedom
to damage the environment they never
seem to mention that it would do so in
order to protect freedom from
environmental damage so environmental
protection works exactly like the
prohibition on smoking in this room
because of that prohibition we’re all
free to breathe clean air so when you
hear appeals to freedom ask yourself is
the speaker or the writer only
considering freedom to damage the
environment are they considering all the
relevant freedoms freedom to damage the
environment but freedom for everybody
from environmental damage we make
exactly the same mistake with regard to
jobs when environmental protection is
proposed opponents will argue that jobs
will be lost in affected industries
nowadays one hears this most often with
regard to attempts to shift to clean
renewable energy sources
opponents argue this is a disparage this
as a war on coal a war on coal well I
don’t mean to make light of lost jobs
however in that particular instance for
example there are already more jobs in
the solar energy industry than in the
coal industry right so if somebody is
really motivated by jobs they ought to
be an enthusiast for solar power again
this is a double standard the folks that
object to environmental protection don’t
object to other societal developments
and initiatives that cause job losses
for example they don’t object to
entrepreneurship or technological
innovation but entrepreneurship and
technological innovation lead to new
products and
industries which make old products
obsolete and put old industries out of
business but you won’t hear any
complaints about that just jobs lost
from environmental protection even if
more jobs are being created as a result
of the Environmental Protection and the
last one of these double standards that
I’d like to mention is insistence to
Environmental Protection turn a
short-term profit as if it were say a
business investment in expanding a toy
factory or a smartphone app now
sometimes environmental protection does
turn a short-term profit for example
this college Austin College has cut its
greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half
over the last several years nearly half
in the course of doing that we’ve saved
almost not quite but almost a half a
million dollars a year well how is that
possible well you see in part of the way
we’ve cut the greenhouse gas emissions
is to learn to use efficient energy more
efficiently in running the buildings and
so we don’t have to buy as much energy
and because we’re not to buy as much
energy we save money so we’ve cut our
greenhouse gas emissions and save money
at the same time it wasn’t very hard but
we good environmental protection ideas
can be rejected if they’re required to
have an immediate cash profit like that
often society important societal
decisions require an upfront investment
and then a payoff over the long term
again this is a double standard
we don’t expect major decisions in other
contexts to turn a short-term profit
we don’t expect grade schools to turn a
short-term profit we don’t expect basic
medical research to turn a short-term
profit we certainly don’t expect space
exploration to turn a short-term profit
if we did only wealthy children would
have schools to go to and we wouldn’t do
any basic medical research to cure any
diseases and we wouldn’t be talking
about whether we could escape to Mars
because we wouldn’t do any space
exploration so this is a fourth double
standard so I’ve talked about four
objections that are used as a basis for
rejecting good environmental protection
ideas fortunately my parents generation
didn’t fall for these arguments or our
cities would still look like Beijing
does today so my task
for you is to watch for these arguments
when you hear them point them out to
others because as long as these tricks
continue to work will continue to fail
to make good environmental decisions and
continue to grind away at the planets
life support capacity but once the
tricks no longer work Environmental
Protection progress will resume so I
want to leave you with two final
thoughts the first one is this is
actually good news we could make a great
deal of progress if we would simply
reject biased arguments and double
standards and thereby make wiser
decisions and finally I think our
country could use some sort of noble
challenge to get behind and I can’t
think of anything better than leaving
our descendants all of our descendants
and everybody’s descendants a healthy
planet thank you
you
thank you very much good morning thank
you Dave this is Mars the Red Planet
here’s a closer view with one of NASA’s
incredible Rovers renowned mathematician
and theoretical physicist Stephen
Hawking says threats to the earth are so
dire that we need to prepare to escape
to Mars or even farther I share
professor Hawkins concerns about threats
to the earth but I think we should
assume that our descendants won’t have
anywhere else to live
besides right here now I don’t mean that
NASA won’t send astronauts to Mars or
that we shouldn’t explore space or
anything like that I just mean I think
it would be prudent to assume that
everyone in future generations
aside from perhaps a few explorers will
live right here if I’m right about that
we ought to take care of this planet
besides who wants to go to Mars I’d
rather be here here it’s pretty nice
outside it’s pretty you don’t need an
oxygen tank to go outside you don’t need
a spacesuit and if you rip your clothes
when you’re outside
it’s an annoyance it’s not a
life-threatening catastrophe
so I’m going to try to make three points
first I’m gonna explain why I think it
would be wise to assume that our
descendants the bulk of people in the
future will live right here on this
planet and I’ll argue therefore that we
ought to look after the life-support
capacity of this planet and then finally
my main point is argue that lately in
the United States we have not been doing
a good job of that because we’ve been
tricked we’ve been tricked into
rejecting good environmental protection
ideas on the basis of biased tests and
double standards that we would know
better than to accept in other
circumstances so I hope that after you
hear this talk these bias tests and
double standard arguments will jump out
at you and you’ll point them out to
other people and you’ll help your nation
and your society make better
environmental decisions but first why do
I think we shouldn’t assume that we’ll
be able to go to Mars well for several
reasons the first is at least of my
concerns but it’s still a regular
relevant concern we don’t have the
transportation technology for people now
I wouldn’t be surprised if NASA
overcomes that but I wouldn’t bet
everybody’s future on it either a second
reason is space travel is remarkably
expensive this is the International
Space Station it’s 250 miles up believe
it or not the United States pays Russia
80 million dollars to get one astronaut
back and forth to the International
Space Station 80 million dollars the
biggest building on this campus and it’s
a big beautiful building cost a little
more than thirty million dollars to
build so less than half as much
meanwhile as you know we have more than
7 billion brothers and sisters on this
planet billions of whom live on a few
dollars a day or less they can’t afford
a short taxi ride let alone a ride on a
spaceship and the more function is more
fortunate among us are not providing for
their basic needs to be met in all cases
it seems unlikely that we’re gonna pay
for their space travel this high expense
of space travel is presumably why even
enthusiasts like professor Hawking
imagine that only a couple of thousand
people could ever go anywhere else
a couple of thousand people is roughly
one in a million people that won’t do
much good for the literally thousands of
millions who would be left behind
another reason I think we ought to
assume that our descendants will live
right here is because we don’t know how
to make self-sustaining ecosystems out
of big dead rocks so this diagram this
diagram is meant to show Mars becoming
like Earth not literally but taking on
the self-sustaining ecosystem property
unique to our planet ecosystems are
incredibly complex we know some things
that will destroy them we know maybe
some of their requirements but the gaps
in our understanding of ecosystems are
vast we have no idea how to make eco
systems self-sustaining ecosystems out
of nonliving components in fact we can’t
even make a single living cell out of
nonliving components so I don’t think we
should bet our descendants future on the
on the ability to overcome this
challenge another reason I don’t think
we should count on going to Mars is the
reason to escape to Mars and keep in
mind I’m not talking about exploring or
NASA sending some astronauts but
escaping and mass to Mars is because the
reason to do so would be because we’ve
caused so much damage to this planet in
other words we’ve failed to sustain the
life support capacity of this planet but
to go to Mars and succeed on Mars we
would not only have to manufacture life
support capacity on Mars we would also
have to sustain that life support
capacity what if we can’t do it here
what reason is there to think we could
do it there I can’t see any reason so if
we can sustain the life support capacity
here we ought to just do that where
everybody will benefit and if we can’t
sustain the life support capacity here
it’s not gonna do any good to go to Mars
because we won’t be able to sustain it
there either
so a friend of my younger friend of mine
I don’t know much about video games I’m
too old but a younger friend of mine
said sustaining the life-support
capacity to Earth that’s like beating
the video game on easy mode but creating
ecosystems on Mars and sustaining those
that’s like trying to beat the video
game on expert or or maybe even
impossible mode
so I think the obvious conclusion is not
to damage the life-support capacity of
this planet
well how are we doing in that regard not
very well
there are millions literally millions of
people doing great work and there all
kinds of minor victories but the major
trends are in the wrong direction we are
depleting forests depleting fisheries
depleting aquifers depleting the soil
we’re changing the chemical composition
of both the atmosphere in the oceans and
causing climate change and maybe most
profoundly of all were depleting
biodiversity and the ecosystems upon
which both we and that biodiversity
depend the trends are in the wrong
decision there must be something
terribly wrong with our decisions we’re
damaging life-support capacity of the
only place in the universe known to
support life now we haven’t always made
bad decisions my parents generation the
grandparents of the students in the
audience made some very good decisions
this is a graph of the number of major
environmental laws passed in the United
States per decade since the 1950s and
what you see is the 1960s 70s and 80s
were the heyday of passing environmental
laws some of your younger may not even
realize what these laws did this is a
picture of air pollution in Beijing
today believe it or not American cities
looked like this in the 50s and 60s but
they don’t anymore thanks to one of
those laws the Clean Air Act
likewise incredibly rivers used to be so
polluted in many American cities that
they literally caught fire but they
don’t anymore thanks to the Clean Water
Act so these laws worked but something
has happened since then since the 1990s
this country has passed
no major environmental laws there has
been no major progress during the
lifetimes of today’s students even
graduate students in some cases well
environmental protection threatens
profits of environmentally damaging
activities and some certainly by no
means all but some people whose profits
are threatened therefore object to
environmental protection
and what’s happened since then is
they’ve tricked us into not passing any
laws see they can’t argue that
environmental protection is a bad idea
or that damage to the planet is a good
thing nobody’s going to buy that and
they can’t argue that their profits are
more important than the planet nobody’s
going to buy that so they have to take a
different approach and the approach
they’ve taken is to work behind the
scenes to manipulate public debate and
they do this several ways I have time to
talk about four ways that were been
tricked and for short to help you
remember them I’m gonna refer to them as
certainty freedom jobs and profit well
let’s begin with certainty no matter how
good our understanding of an
environmental problem opponents of
environmental protection will argue that
we just don’t understand it well enough
to act this has been going on with
regard to climate change for decades
even though well over ninety percent of
qualified scientists think we do
understand it well enough to act in this
is a double standard in other
circumstances we understand the danger
of putting off decisions indefinitely if
you are ill if one of your loved ones is
ill you go to the physician you expect
the physician to analyze the situation
carefully examine the patient run the
necessary tests and come up with a
treatment plan but not put off years and
years and years before deciding what to
do
running more and more and more tests
because the patient could die
in the mean time right students in the
room I hope you choke it considered your
college choices options carefully but
what you didn’t do is you didn’t spend
years and years and years at home after
high school studying colleges in more
and more gruesome detail right if you if
my sons had done that guess what they’d
be home I’d be driving them crazy right
and if everybody did that all the
colleges and universities would have
closed right because everybody been home
studying so not studying studying
studying colleges so so in normal
circumstances we understand that delay
and indecision is dangerous it has a
cost but when it comes to environmental
issues we get paralyzed we made this
mistake over and over we made this
mistake for a long time with regard to
stratospheric ozone depletion and with
regard to acid rain and with regard to
the health effects of smoking for
decades right the the by the way the
history of this is really well
documented in a book called merchants of
doubt’ by Naomi Oreskes and Eric
Connelly
so we’re making this mistake now with
climate change this is a double standard
in other circumstances we know we can’t
delay decisions until we have perfect
understanding we need to make decisions
in a timely fashion but with regard to
environmental problems we get paralyzed
another flawed argument that has been
used as a basis for rejecting good
environmental ideas are appeals to
freedom when environmental protection is
proposed opponents will argue that it
would infringe upon freedom and the
right it would infringe upon one type of
freedom it would infringe upon freedom
to damage the environment they never
seem to mention that it would do so in
order to protect freedom from
environmental damage so environmental
protection works exactly like the
prohibition on smoking in this room
because of that prohibition we’re all
free to breathe clean air so when you
hear appeals to freedom ask yourself is
the speaker or the writer only
considering freedom to damage the
environment are they considering all the
relevant freedoms freedom to damage the
environment but freedom for everybody
from environmental damage we make
exactly the same mistake with regard to
jobs when environmental protection is
proposed opponents will argue that jobs
will be lost in affected industries
nowadays one hears this most often with
regard to attempts to shift to clean
renewable energy sources
opponents argue this is a disparage this
as a war on coal a war on coal well I
don’t mean to make light of lost jobs
however in that particular instance for
example there are already more jobs in
the solar energy industry than in the
coal industry right so if somebody is
really motivated by jobs they ought to
be an enthusiast for solar power again
this is a double standard the folks that
object to environmental protection don’t
object to other societal developments
and initiatives that cause job losses
for example they don’t object to
entrepreneurship or technological
innovation but entrepreneurship and
technological innovation lead to new
products and
industries which make old products
obsolete and put old industries out of
business but you won’t hear any
complaints about that just jobs lost
from environmental protection even if
more jobs are being created as a result
of the Environmental Protection and the
last one of these double standards that
I’d like to mention is insistence to
Environmental Protection turn a
short-term profit as if it were say a
business investment in expanding a toy
factory or a smartphone app now
sometimes environmental protection does
turn a short-term profit for example
this college Austin College has cut its
greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half
over the last several years nearly half
in the course of doing that we’ve saved
almost not quite but almost a half a
million dollars a year well how is that
possible well you see in part of the way
we’ve cut the greenhouse gas emissions
is to learn to use efficient energy more
efficiently in running the buildings and
so we don’t have to buy as much energy
and because we’re not to buy as much
energy we save money so we’ve cut our
greenhouse gas emissions and save money
at the same time it wasn’t very hard but
we good environmental protection ideas
can be rejected if they’re required to
have an immediate cash profit like that
often society important societal
decisions require an upfront investment
and then a payoff over the long term
again this is a double standard
we don’t expect major decisions in other
contexts to turn a short-term profit
we don’t expect grade schools to turn a
short-term profit we don’t expect basic
medical research to turn a short-term
profit we certainly don’t expect space
exploration to turn a short-term profit
if we did only wealthy children would
have schools to go to and we wouldn’t do
any basic medical research to cure any
diseases and we wouldn’t be talking
about whether we could escape to Mars
because we wouldn’t do any space
exploration so this is a fourth double
standard so I’ve talked about four
objections that are used as a basis for
rejecting good environmental protection
ideas fortunately my parents generation
didn’t fall for these arguments or our
cities would still look like Beijing
does today so my task
for you is to watch for these arguments
when you hear them point them out to
others because as long as these tricks
continue to work will continue to fail
to make good environmental decisions and
continue to grind away at the planets
life support capacity but once the
tricks no longer work Environmental
Protection progress will resume so I
want to leave you with two final
thoughts the first one is this is
actually good news we could make a great
deal of progress if we would simply
reject biased arguments and double
standards and thereby make wiser
decisions and finally I think our
country could use some sort of noble
challenge to get behind and I can’t
think of anything better than leaving
our descendants all of our descendants
and everybody’s descendants a healthy
planet thank you
you
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