here it’s a great pleasure to talk about
something I’ve been worried about for
the last 25 years I was at Los Alamos
National Laboratory when I started to
think about the equation how do we
balance the world’s carbon budget and of
course that relates to climate change in
from an energy perspective it’s actually
quite simple conceptually at least we
dig up carbon we extract carbon out of
the out of the ground we burn it up we
produce co2 which is a greenhouse gas
and we just dump it into the atmosphere
and we leave it there that’s the basic
premise and we can’t do this much longer
than we already are doing it because we
have in essence a finite budget because
that carbon dioxide sticks first for
centuries and half of it is gone and for
thousands of thousands of years and the
other half is certifies the ocean for it
to get out of the system again takes
tens of thousands of years so we do
uncontrolled dumping and somehow another
we have to fix this and I started to
figure out ways of mineralizing the
carbon dioxide to put it away
underground other people said we can
eject it underground so we found ways of
dealing with this problem from this
perspective and lots of people then I
gave talks asked what can I actually do
to do this because there’s all sounds
like heavy industry and doesn’t directly
affect me on the other hand if you start
looking at how we started to solve the
problem we also started roughly 25 years
ago at Rio with a treaty where the world
agreed that we need to do something and
cannot let harmful greenhouse gases pile
up in the atmosphere then we went to
Kyoto and more lately to Paris and we
always agreed on great top-down ways of
solving the problem where everybody had
agreements lots of good ideas and
everybody was told what to do and if you
look back nothing really much happened
so we have to figure out how to look at
this problem from the other end and
maybe start from the bottom up which
means we need to start thinking about
individual responsibility maybe the
responsibility at a municipal level on a
state level or on the other
individual corporations how can
individuals and smaller entities
actually take on responsibility for
their own garbage and deal with the
problem from that end that is in essence
the question we have to ask and it’s not
all as easy as you might think because
people have looked at this and the first
people suggestion people have changed
your lifestyle now that may be helpful
if you stop consuming things you will
emit less co2 but it will take you a
long time to get there and by the way
asking people to do this nearly always
engenders resistance and let’s be honest
this will take a generation or two
before this change happens and
unfortunately our carbon credit card
doesn’t have a limit that high we will
run out much earlier than that so we
have to come up with better ideas people
said how about increasing efficiency and
conserve it it works it helps but it can
only reduce emissions it cannot stop
emissions and we may already have gone
over budget and have to figure out how
to go negative so being less positive is
probably not quite enough so that could
work but it won’t get us there
renewable energy will get us there if we
push it long enough and hard enough
unfortunately there is a very entrenched
very powerful competitor which puts out
lots and lots of fossil carbon and while
I’m very hopeful that in the end
renewable energy will win the day it
will take time and it will take too much
time and quite frankly why are you
allowed to say I’m working very hard but
I leave the rest of my garbage just out
there in the atmosphere just this is
effectively what we have agreed on in
discussions like in Paris think about it
for a moment if I just replace the word
co2 with garbage
so I’m dumping my garbage in the street
in front of my house and I tell you you
really shouldn’t complain about it
because I’m 20 percent better than last
year right well I’m paying for your
garbage and therefore I’m allowed to put
my garbage in the street right that’s
what we do with co2 so we have to change
our view on that in in this environment
and but keep in mind we will make likely
much more because if you think about it
for a moment they are billion people on
the planet who have no electricity who
are they
deal with bei dirty water they have no
good access to water they are poor and
they want to have economic development
and in order to give it to them we need
more energy on top of it I think the
policy implications of telling the rich
and developed countries that you cannot
grow any more
also unmanageable so we have to figure
out how to make this happen how to get
waste management in place while all the
other things are going on and figure out
how to do this but if you come back to
the individual and ask where are you
responsible well if I look at myself I
Drive a car and I have a gas heater at
home and a so every time I take a hot
shower
I very directly put out co2 if I decide
to step on the accelerator of my car I
very directly put out co2 and then of
course I do things indirectly I in the
evening decide I want to morrow morning
some piece of equipment from a
mail-order place well I can do so and I
try get overnight delivery guess what
that truck put out co2 so we have to we
can look at that and then of course the
goods I bought also have co2 involved so
we have to figure out how to manage all
of this and I would argue if you look at
it from this perspective you actually
know that you can get volunteers behind
something like this if you phrase it
right because there are people who are
perfectly willing to pay an extra penny
for renewable energy there are people
who pay for an electric car in order to
avoid all of these emissions so we need
to tell them that we also need to clean
up after ourselves and maybe we can find
enough volunteers to get started so this
is the the first question then the next
question is can we actually do it is it
feasible and I would argue the answer is
yes we know how to put co2 a way you can
mineralize it you can inject it
underground and you can even get it back
from the environment now people have not
done this very much because nobody ever
asks you but we can do it and here at
ASU we are working on a device which can
collect co2 directly out of the
atmosphere in the dry air it works
marvelously well then we make it wet it
releases the co2 again we can think of
this like a tree it has leaves the wind
blows over them they see
two sticks to the leaves we then free it
again we process it on and be properly
dispose of it these mechanical trees are
a thousand times faster than natural
trees so they are very good at what they
are doing and so you could in principle
put together a way of making it happen
you have all the bits and pieces the
technologies are there the technological
fix could work if people are willing to
do that so that still doesn’t answer the
question how can you as an individual
make it happen and I would argue you can
get more efficient you can change your
lifestyle but that as I said before is
not quite good enough so how can you get
involved in making this problem go away
and I think in part you can do something
which many of you will have done before
in the context of recycling you start to
volunteer and you do things and you will
need help because you can go out and say
I have their stuff the old newspapers I
put them at the curb but quite frankly
you cannot recycle them yourself
you have to have help from a third party
which comes picks it up processes it and
puts it somewhere so you should demand
these kinds of services and that is what
individuals can do you can go out and
say we want that co2 back so imagine for
a moment you were successful with us and
next time you drive to a gasoline
station a gas station you can go in and
you can push a button and say for maybe
50 60 cents more I can get the twenty
pounds of co2 which are generated every
time I put a gallon of gasoline out
consuming a gallon of gasoline I can put
back into the ground and safely put it
away I balanced the books on my gasoline
you could imagine that a car company
offers you a car which has a hundred
hundred tons of co2 built-in that is the
lifetime emissions of a car which goes
some 200 thousand miles and you can make
it carbon neutral from day one by
scrubbing out a hundred tons of co2 out
of the atmosphere right away one of the
nice features is you have some
flexibility when you do it and how you
do it because the atmosphere is a good
big buffer where you can hide a little
bit of co2 for a short time or take it
out a few years early
it doesn’t matter so you have technology
options you can do that you could answer
to to your mail or tech on the computer
you could say I want to pay back the the
co2 which is emitted from the overnight
delivery I do want to take and you could
even go one step further and say over my
lifetime I’m putting out a thousand tons
of co2 or maybe two thousand tons of co2
maybe I want them back maybe I take my
parents co2 back right and so gradually
we can with volunteers move forward now
I’m not kidding myself that volunteers
will change the needle on climate change
but they what they will change is change
the debate and that’s just like with
recycling right once everybody started
to do it suddenly policies came in place
and so you know it’s a good thing and we
should actually support this and make it
happen
and I think this will happen here too
once everybody can see it’s a good idea
then it will work and it will move
forward right and so ultimately when you
do that you give the politicians cover
to say we do need to regulate this
because without regulations it will
never get big enough to work but on the
other hand learning by doing which is
what it will take to make it cheap the
first day around this will be expensive
learning by doing only happens if you do
and for that you need the volunteers so
the first time around is probably more
than 60 cents on the gallon and maybe
the oil company was smart enough to eat
some of that in order to make it work
but over time I actually would predict
it will get cheaper than that and once
there is enough of it going that people
say oh it really works and it is a good
idea you can move to the next step and
make it happen
and I think technology and technological
fixes have worked in the past and we
just need to step back and figure out
what it is we are seeing here and we see
a waste management problem and we need
to think about it this way and it’s
great if we figure out how to be more
efficient if you figure out how to
recycle the carbon and do all of these
things as well but the part we couldn’t
figure out any other way we need to put
properly away and not just let it sit
the atmosphere in wreak havoc on the
environment thank you very much [Applause]