Nick Miller presents: An Inconvenient Truth
Summary
TLDRNicholas Miller, un empresari destacat en el sector tecnològic i defensor del medi ambient, presenta una anàlisi detallada sobre el canvi climàtic i les seves conseqüències. Format per Al Gore, destaca la importància de prendre mesures urgents per mitigar el canvi climàtic, incloent l'adopció de tecnologies més ecològiques, millorar l'eficiència energètica i adaptar-se als efectes inevitables. Utilitza imatges impactants per mostrar el retrocés de glaciars i l'augment del nivell del mar. Miller assenyala les implicacions econòmiques i fa una crida a l'acció individual i col·lectiva, afirmant que tots som responsables d'implementar el canvi necessari.
Takeaways
- 🌍 El canvi climàtic és un problema urgent i global que necessita atenció immediata.
- 🧊 Els glaciars estan retrocedint ràpidament a causa de l'escalfament global.
- 📈 Les emissions de carboni han augmentat fins a nivells sense precedents.
- 💡 La tecnologia actual pot ajudar-nos a mitigar el canvi climàtic.
- 💼 Hi ha oportunitats econòmiques en una economia verda.
- ♻️ Podem reduir les nostres emissions personals amb accions senzilles.
- 🗳️ També és crucial prendre accions polítiques i votar per líders compromesos.
- 🌿 Les energies renovables han de ser una prioritat.
- 🧠 La consciència pública i l'educació són claus per al canvi.
- 🤝 Es necessita cooperació internacional per abordar efectivament el canvi climàtic.
Timeline
- 00:00:00 - 00:05:00
Nicholas Miller és presentat com un emprenedor innovador del sector tecnològic que promou accions contra el canvi climàtic, havent estat format per Al Gore per donar xerrades sobre el tema. Ell explica com es va unir al Climate Project després de veure el documental d'Al Gore 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
- 00:05:00 - 00:10:00
Nicholas relata la seva experiència amb el Climate Project als Estats Units, i la formació a Mont-real on va ser seleccionat per donar conferències sobre canvi climàtic, destacant les oportunitats de parlar directament amb Al Gore.
- 00:10:00 - 00:15:00
Nicholas comença la presentació mostrant imatges emblemàtiques de la Terra des de l'espai, destacant la seva fragilitat i la importància de la consciència ambiental, relacionant-ho amb el moviment mediambiental nascut després de les missions Apol·lo.
- 00:15:00 - 00:20:00
Descriu el procés de cerca d'evidències científiques per comprendre el canvi climàtic, incloent-hi el descobriment de la deriva continental, i critica la certesa en les falses creences, relacionant-ho amb el desconeixement actual sobre l'escalfament global.
- 00:20:00 - 00:25:00
Introducció de la ciència bàsica de l'escalfament global, comparant Venus i la Terra i la influència de l'atmosfera en la temperatura planetària. S'explica com els humans afecten les emissions de CO2.
- 00:25:00 - 00:30:00
Explica la història i la significança de la corba de Keeling i com els nivells de CO2 han anat augmentant constantment a causa de les activitats humanes, relacionant-ho amb el treball d'Al Gore i la seva motivació per actuar.
- 00:30:00 - 00:35:00
S'enfoca en la fusió de les glaceres i la pèrdua de gels, mostrant fotografies comparatives històriques per evidenciar els efectes del canvi climàtic, i discuteix les conseqüències per a l'abastament d'aigua.
- 00:35:00 - 00:40:00
Continua exposant la rapidesa de la fusió de gel a diversos llocs del món i les conseqüències del desglossament de gelterres en el nivell del mar, també parla dels impactes anticipats en les poblacions humanes.
- 00:40:00 - 00:45:00
Tracta les variacions històriques de temperatura i CO2, explicant les dades dels nuclis de gel i la preocupació pel ràpid increment actual en les concentracions de CO2, advertint sobre les conseqüències devastadores si no es prenen mesures.
- 00:45:00 - 00:50:00
Reflexiona sobre els canvis de temperatura recents i l'increment en l'ocurrència d'esdeveniments climàtics extrems com huracans i onades de calor, relacionant-los amb l'escalfament global.
- 00:50:00 - 00:55:00
Detalla les tendències en l'augment de la intensitat i freqüència de tempestes i huracans, i critica la inactivitat política enfront dels desastres naturals causats per canvi climàtic.
- 00:55:00 - 01:00:00
Il·lustra els impactes econòmics del canvi climàtic en indústries com les assegurances i l'agricultura, i l'augment en aquestes catàstrofes naturals en diverses regions, destacant el canvi en els patrons de precipitació mundial.
- 01:00:00 - 01:05:00
Esmenta les conseqüències socials i econòmiques del canvi climàtic, incloent la migració massiva causant conflictes, i discuteix les lluites polítiques internacionals relacionades amb l'adopció de mesures contra el canvi climàtic.
- 01:05:00 - 01:10:00
Es centra en la disminució del gel Àrtic, mostrant dades i imatges sobre la velocitat de la pèrdua de gel i discutint les implicacions per a la fauna àrtica com els óssos polars.
- 01:10:00 - 01:15:00
Explica l'efecte de bucles de retroalimentació al desglaç a l'Àrtic i l'impacte potencial del canvi en els corrents oceànics globals, alertant sobre la gravetat de les projeccions climàtiques futures.
- 01:15:00 - 01:20:00
Comparteix exemples dels efectes del canvi climàtic en ecosistemes específics, com el desequilibri entre la migració d'ocells i la disponibilitat de preses a causa del canvi en les estacions.
- 01:20:00 - 01:25:00
Parla sobre espècies invasores com l'escarabat del pi i d'altres plagues, explicant els efectes de la desforestació i interconnectant-ho amb l'alliberament de carboni i espècies en perill d'extinció.
- 01:25:00 - 01:30:00
Discutir l'escalfament a l'Antàrtida i el trencament de les plataformes de gel, alertant sobre el potencial increment del nivell del mar si aquests processos continuen, explicant els mecanismes darrere del desglaç.
- 01:30:00 - 01:35:00
Relaciona el desglaç a l'Antàrtida amb el potencial augment del nivell del mar global, mostrant gràfics i dades sobre l'impacte del gel terrestre que cau als oceans.
- 01:35:00 - 01:40:00
Desenvolupa com aquestes alteracions afectaran les comunitats del Pacífic, i com les pròximes dècades podrien veure una massiva desestabilització pel canvi climàtic, connectant a temes de justícia climàtica i impactes socials.
- 01:40:00 - 01:45:00
Proposa solucions tecnològiques i polítiques, com l'economia verda i energies renovables, per mitigar el canvi climàtic, destacant que ja es disposa de tecnologia per fer front als problemes.
- 01:45:00 - 01:50:00
Elabora sobre les accions individuals que es poden prendre per reduir l'impacte personal sobre el clima, com fer servir electrodomèstics més eficients, utilitzar transport públic i canviar hàbits de consum.
- 01:50:00 - 01:55:33
Insisteix en la necessitat d'acció política i individual per afrontar el canvi climàtic, animant al públic a ser un catalitzador de canvi i a escollir dirigents compromesos amb polítiques climàtiques sostenibles.
Mind Map
Frequently Asked Question
Qui és Nicholas Miller?
Nicholas Miller és un emprenedor innovador que ha fundat diverses empreses d'alta tecnologia i és conegut com a expert i comunicador en la indústria tecnològica.
Quina és la preocupació principal de Nicholas Miller?
La seva preocupació principal és el canvi climàtic i les accions necessàries per abordar-ne les causes i efectes.
Com està vinculat Nicholas Miller amb Al Gore?
Nicholas ha estat format per Al Gore per presentar una versió actualitzada del seu documental "Una veritat incòmoda".
Per què és important la fotografia "Earthrise"?
La fotografia "Earthrise" és important perquè va inspirar el naixement del moviment ambientalista, mostrant la Terra des de l'espai i ressaltant la seva fragilitat.
Quin impacte té el canvi climàtic sobre els glaciars?
El canvi climàtic està causant la retirada massiva i fusió dels glaciars, afectant l'alimentació d'aigua dolça i contribuint a l'augment del nivell del mar.
Com afecta el canvi climàtic els patrons meteorològics?
El canvi climàtic està augmentant la temperatura del mar, afectant els corrents oceànics i provocant fenòmens meteorològics extrems com huracans i inundacions.
Què passa amb les espècies a causa del canvi climàtic?
El canvi climàtic està causant l'extinció d'espècies i alterant els ecosistemes, com els esculls de corall, a causa dels canvis de temperatura i química oceànica.
Quins són els efectes del canvi climàtic en les regions polars?
En les regions polars, el canvi climàtic està fonent el gel àrtic i antàrtic, provocant l'augment del nivell del mar i afectant la vida silvestre com els óssos polars.
Quines mesures poden prendre els individus per combatre el canvi climàtic?
Els individus poden reduir el seu ús d'energia, canviar a vehicles més eficients, utilitzar energies renovables i votar per polítics que prenguin accions decidides contra el canvi climàtic.
Com es pot utilitzar un sistema de comerç d'emissions?
El sistema de comerç d'emissions permet que les empreses que redueixen les seves emissions venguin crèdits a aquelles que en necessiten, creant un incentiu econòmic per disminuir la contaminació.
View more video summaries
- 00:00:08so I'm going to introduce Nick Miller
- 00:00:10this is our presenter for the day uh
- 00:00:13Nicholas is an Innovative career
- 00:00:15entrepreneur who has founded a number of
- 00:00:17successful high technology companies in
- 00:00:18the US and Canada in the software
- 00:00:20wireless security and internet sectors
- 00:00:23Nicholas is a well-known Authority and
- 00:00:25Communicator in the high technology
- 00:00:26industry and frequently speaks at
- 00:00:28technology and business events
- 00:00:30throughout the world Nicholas is a
- 00:00:32strong advocate for Action to address
- 00:00:33the causes and effects of climate change
- 00:00:36and has been trained by Al Gore to
- 00:00:37deliver an updated version of his
- 00:00:39Inconvenient Truth to Canadian audiences
- 00:00:43Nicholas was born and educated in
- 00:00:44Britain and is married with one son who
- 00:00:46is currently studying political science
- 00:00:49at SFU so here we are giving back thank
- 00:00:51you very much Nick for presenting for us
- 00:00:53not surprisingly my son's absent today
- 00:00:57so but um well thanks everybody very
- 00:01:00much for coming and uh thanks to SFU and
- 00:01:03all the sponsors for uh organizing this
- 00:01:06event so as Kaa said uh I was trained by
- 00:01:10Al Gore uh earlier this year in Montreal
- 00:01:13uh the climate project is an
- 00:01:14organization that uh was put together
- 00:01:18right after the movie was made um I told
- 00:01:20a story on um on I don't know if any of
- 00:01:22you heard the interview I did on the
- 00:01:24radio at SFU here but um my wife and I
- 00:01:27went to see the movie The Inconvenient
- 00:01:28Truth movie and I was obviously as we
- 00:01:31all were I was very very impressed by
- 00:01:33the movie and I'm I'm driving home with
- 00:01:34my wife and I said you know uh you know
- 00:01:37what he needs to do is get a bunch of
- 00:01:38guys like me who stand up selling stuff
- 00:01:41doing PowerPoints all day long to
- 00:01:42actually do this presentation so he
- 00:01:44could sort of Clone himself and I
- 00:01:45thought this was a really clever idea
- 00:01:47and got home went on the web and
- 00:01:49immediately discovered that they'd
- 00:01:50already thought of that needless to say
- 00:01:52and um in fact they had put together a
- 00:01:54program called the the climate project
- 00:01:56in the US and they were recruiting uh
- 00:01:59people uh to volunteer their time like
- 00:02:02me um Al anybody I mean everything from
- 00:02:05people who actually know something about
- 00:02:06climate science to people who are not
- 00:02:08climate experts I'm not certainly not a
- 00:02:10global warming or climate science expert
- 00:02:12but I'm a you know I do a lot of
- 00:02:13communicating for a living so um uh I
- 00:02:17applied and it turned out that they
- 00:02:19weren't looking for Canadians at the
- 00:02:20time they they actually did um recruit I
- 00:02:23think four or five people from Canada uh
- 00:02:27who went to Nashville and were trained
- 00:02:28and then later on uh they decided that
- 00:02:31uh what they wanted to do was do the
- 00:02:32same thing in Canada that they had done
- 00:02:34in the US and so uh earlier this year
- 00:02:37and I think it was April in Montreal uh
- 00:02:39they they organized um they actually
- 00:02:41sent me an email and said are you still
- 00:02:42interested I said well yeah sure I'm I'm
- 00:02:44definitely interested and so a number of
- 00:02:46us were selected um apparently lots and
- 00:02:49lots of people applied and for some
- 00:02:51bizarre reason I got chosen um and went
- 00:02:54and got trained and um and it was a
- 00:02:56really fascinating time to to spend the
- 00:02:59whole week weekend with Al Gore and get
- 00:03:02to speak to him and get his take on uh I
- 00:03:05mean it was great because he was able to
- 00:03:07say what he really wanted to say you
- 00:03:08know a lot of times he can't say
- 00:03:10publicly because he's a political figure
- 00:03:11what he'd really like to say but he was
- 00:03:13really forthright and and uh and went
- 00:03:16through the presentation and so uh now
- 00:03:18whenever I have some time and whenever
- 00:03:20everybody wants me to do it I I'll go
- 00:03:22and give an updated version of the
- 00:03:24presentation which I'm going to do now
- 00:03:25and I hope you I hope you all enjoy it
- 00:03:28later on uh one of my other co-
- 00:03:31presenters Ambert church is going to be
- 00:03:34here she's actually studying at SFU she
- 00:03:36teaches actually at SFU and she's
- 00:03:37studying glacial erosion and she is a
- 00:03:40climate change expert and she's going to
- 00:03:41be here later on for the Q&A session um
- 00:03:44and U so Amber and I will both take
- 00:03:47questions at the end so getting into the
- 00:03:51uh presentation let me just see if this
- 00:03:53is going to work here we
- 00:03:56go so this is um this is a great shot
- 00:03:59this was um one of the first pictures
- 00:04:01that most of us ever saw of the Earth
- 00:04:03from space and I remember this quite
- 00:04:06well I was a child at the time it was
- 00:04:09the Apollo 8 mission it was a very very
- 00:04:11exciting time because we were getting
- 00:04:12ready to uh go to the go to the moon and
- 00:04:16uh the story of this shot is that the
- 00:04:18spacecraft uh this was the first time
- 00:04:20that actually gone around the back of
- 00:04:22the moon so it was the first they didn't
- 00:04:24actually land on the moon in Apollo 8
- 00:04:26but they went all the way to the Moon
- 00:04:27went around the back of the Moon and
- 00:04:28then just came back I think they did a
- 00:04:29few orbits and then came back but it was
- 00:04:32very very exciting because of course
- 00:04:33nobody had seen the back of the Moon and
- 00:04:35we didn't you know you didn't really
- 00:04:36know if there were dragons back there or
- 00:04:38what was going on so it was very very
- 00:04:40exciting the spacecraft went behind the
- 00:04:42moon and as it went behind the Moon it
- 00:04:43lost radio contact with uh Houston with
- 00:04:46Earth and it was a time of great tension
- 00:04:49and are they going to come out the other
- 00:04:51side and what's going to happen and of
- 00:04:52course needless to say at the appointed
- 00:04:54time they did come around the back of
- 00:04:55the Moon and came back into radio
- 00:04:57contact and just as they did uh they saw
- 00:05:00this wonderful uh image of the Moon and
- 00:05:03a rookie astronaut Bill Anders uh took
- 00:05:06out a camera and snaap this shot this
- 00:05:09shot became known as
- 00:05:11earthrise uh and uh really sort of
- 00:05:14imprinted on the human consciousness and
- 00:05:15within 18 months of this picture
- 00:05:18appearing the environmental movement was
- 00:05:20born so this is a really seminal event
- 00:05:23and it was a just a wonderful
- 00:05:26shot this picture uh is another shot
- 00:05:29that um we're all very very familiar
- 00:05:32with uh this picture was actually taken
- 00:05:35on Apollo uh 17 which was and it was
- 00:05:38actually the last picture that a human
- 00:05:41being ever took of the Earth from space
- 00:05:44the full Earth from space other than the
- 00:05:45shots that the astronauts in the space
- 00:05:47shuttle do and what's really cool about
- 00:05:49this picture is that it was a sort of a
- 00:05:51rare situation where the sun was
- 00:05:53directly behind the spacecraft so the
- 00:05:55full dis of the Earth was uh displayed
- 00:05:59uh and it's a it's a really wonderful
- 00:06:01shot it's actually the most popular
- 00:06:03picture ever in human history so this
- 00:06:06has been published more than any other
- 00:06:07picture so whenever you see a washing
- 00:06:08machine ad with a picture of the Earth
- 00:06:10it's this shot and it's a it's a really
- 00:06:12wonderful uh shot um this is an
- 00:06:16interesting uh time lapse shot uh this
- 00:06:18was actually taken by the Galileo
- 00:06:20spacecraft just as it was leaving
- 00:06:22Earth's gravity and Carl San who was
- 00:06:25running the show at that time uh
- 00:06:27commanded the spacecraft to turn its
- 00:06:29cameras back to Earth and they took a
- 00:06:32series of images I think about over a
- 00:06:3424-hour period they took a series of
- 00:06:36images and then made it into a into one
- 00:06:39an image for every second an an hour
- 00:06:42every second so this is a 24 second
- 00:06:44image it shows a complete rotation of
- 00:06:46the
- 00:06:47earth uh this shot is a uh a very
- 00:06:50interesting shot it's a composite
- 00:06:52picture it's an actual real picture of
- 00:06:53the Earth but it's made up of 3,000
- 00:06:56composite shots it was done by a fellow
- 00:06:59called Tom Van Sant and he managed to
- 00:07:02assemble a bunch of shots that were
- 00:07:04taken of the whole earth when there were
- 00:07:05no clouds in the way obviously you know
- 00:07:07so it's the Earth minus the weather and
- 00:07:10um it's a really uh fascinating image
- 00:07:14actually because you get to see the
- 00:07:17whole
- 00:07:18earth and then this is the same image of
- 00:07:21course made into a m projection
- 00:07:23flattened out and Al Gore tells a story
- 00:07:26about this when he gives the
- 00:07:28presentation uh about um uh being in a
- 00:07:31in sixth grade with a classmate who he
- 00:07:33had a teacher who would pull down a
- 00:07:35picture of the earth like this in front
- 00:07:37of the class it's a roller blind thing
- 00:07:39and uh one one of his classmates stuck
- 00:07:41his hand up and and said you know didn't
- 00:07:44uh these two countries once fit together
- 00:07:47it looks like they just sort of fit
- 00:07:48together and the teacher said well
- 00:07:50that's what a ridiculous thing to say
- 00:07:51that's the most ridiculous thing I've
- 00:07:52ever heard of course they didn't ever
- 00:07:54fit together well it turns out that uh
- 00:07:57he was completely wrong and we now know
- 00:07:59that they do fit together or they did at
- 00:08:01one point in time uh so the point here
- 00:08:04that we're making is that the teacher
- 00:08:05was sure of his facts at the time and he
- 00:08:08was actually correct the prevailing
- 00:08:09science at the time didn't know anything
- 00:08:11about continental drift and they thought
- 00:08:12well it's ridiculous of course the
- 00:08:14continents don't move around but it
- 00:08:16turns out that uh he was wrong and
- 00:08:18there's a great saying by uh Mark Twain
- 00:08:20that says what gets us into trouble is
- 00:08:22not what we don't know it's what we know
- 00:08:23for sure just ain't so and it's uh
- 00:08:27that's really the situation that we're
- 00:08:29in
- 00:08:30with global warming so it's it's there
- 00:08:32are a lot of people out there who are
- 00:08:34quite sure that there's not a problem a
- 00:08:36diminishing number uh but they don't
- 00:08:38have a lot of the data uh it turns out
- 00:08:41that the Earth's atmosphere is
- 00:08:44incredibly thin uh relative to the globe
- 00:08:46and Carl Sean once said that if you took
- 00:08:49a globe a normal Globe like you might
- 00:08:51have in your living room and varnished
- 00:08:52it the thickness of the atmosphere is
- 00:08:55about the same as the thickness of the
- 00:08:56varnish on the globe so it's very very
- 00:08:59very thin and it turns out that in fact
- 00:09:02we can impact on that atmosphere it's
- 00:09:04not uh it's not something that we we can
- 00:09:07have no impact on at all which really
- 00:09:09brings us to the science of global
- 00:09:11warming and I'm not going to spend a lot
- 00:09:12of time on this because I know that you
- 00:09:13all uh are probably familiar with this
- 00:09:16but the basic science is pretty simple
- 00:09:18uh solar radiation from the Sun in the
- 00:09:20form of light waves hits the Earth it
- 00:09:23passes through this a very thin
- 00:09:26atmosphere uh some of it gets tra TR by
- 00:09:29the atmosphere and it warms the Earth up
- 00:09:31which is a good thing and some of it is
- 00:09:34radiated back the the low frequency
- 00:09:36radiation is R radiated back into space
- 00:09:38in in the form of infrared radiation
- 00:09:41again with some being trapped uh by the
- 00:09:43atmosphere and this is what keeps the
- 00:09:46Earth nice and warm and comfortable and
- 00:09:49livable for human beings it turns out
- 00:09:52that uh another way to look at this this
- 00:09:54is a sort of tale of two planets if you
- 00:09:56look at Venus and Earth both Venus and
- 00:09:58Earth have a approximately the same
- 00:10:00carbon composition the difference
- 00:10:03between the two is that on Earth
- 00:10:05biological processes have sucked a lot
- 00:10:07of the carbon carbon dioxide out of the
- 00:10:10atmosphere so Earth has a relatively uh
- 00:10:14thin uh atmosphere Venus on the other
- 00:10:17hand has an extremely thick atmosphere
- 00:10:20now if you compare a reasonable average
- 00:10:22day on Earth it's 15° Centigrade uh a
- 00:10:26typical day on Venus is Toasty 4507 de
- 00:10:30Centigrade now some people might say
- 00:10:32well that's because Venus is closer to
- 00:10:33the Sun you know it's got nothing to do
- 00:10:35with the atmosphere well it turns out
- 00:10:37that mercury is even closer to the Sun
- 00:10:39than Venus it has a very very thin
- 00:10:42atmosphere and it's cooler than Venus so
- 00:10:45we actually know that the thickness of
- 00:10:47the atmosphere has a is is really what
- 00:10:49causes um global
- 00:10:52warming and uh of course now we're
- 00:10:56impacting on it massively by pumping
- 00:10:58huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the
- 00:11:01atmosphere and what's really happening
- 00:11:03as a result of this is that this
- 00:11:05atmosphere here is starting to thicken
- 00:11:07up you can't really see it in the slide
- 00:11:09and that's causing more radiation sorry
- 00:11:14to be to be reflected back in uh and so
- 00:11:17the Earth is uh is heating up so as this
- 00:11:19atmosphere thickens it's just like
- 00:11:21having a thicker comforter on your bed
- 00:11:22you just get hotter and and that's
- 00:11:24exactly what's happening to the Earth
- 00:11:27well this uh is a sort of a graphic that
- 00:11:29illustrates really a curve and I'll talk
- 00:11:32about it at more length in a minute it's
- 00:11:34actually the keing curve and this is
- 00:11:35what really inspired Al Gore to get
- 00:11:37involved uh with with the whole sort of
- 00:11:39climate change movement and it was uh
- 00:11:42invented or discovered if you like by
- 00:11:44one of his professors Roger
- 00:11:46Rell and uh what he did was they they
- 00:11:50started to launch in 1957
- 00:11:53balloons um into the atmosphere in the
- 00:11:55middle of the Pacific way way out into
- 00:11:58an area where you know they knew it
- 00:11:59would be uh not affected by uh pollution
- 00:12:03from the land from from countries and
- 00:12:05what they discovered was that the CO2 as
- 00:12:08they measured it seasonally went up and
- 00:12:10down but they started to notice that it
- 00:12:12was just increasing over time well it
- 00:12:15turns out that the reason for this uh is
- 00:12:17simply because of the following if you
- 00:12:20look at a map of the Earth there's a lot
- 00:12:21more land in the north than there is in
- 00:12:23the
- 00:12:24South and the process that's going on
- 00:12:27really is is pretty simple but perhaps
- 00:12:29not all that obvious as the Earth tilts
- 00:12:32towards the Sun as the Northern
- 00:12:34Hemisphere tilts towards the sun in the
- 00:12:36summer um it it gets warm the plants all
- 00:12:39come out and carbon dioxide is absorbed
- 00:12:43by the plants and it has a net lowering
- 00:12:46effect of CO2 in the atmosphere now
- 00:12:48obviously in the southern hemisphere the
- 00:12:51opposite is happening when it when it
- 00:12:53tilts towards the sun in in their summer
- 00:12:56in our winter the same thing occurs but
- 00:12:59because there's less land there's less
- 00:13:01vegetation so there's less CO2 absorbed
- 00:13:03so what happens is the earth tips as the
- 00:13:06southern the Northern Hemisphere tips
- 00:13:08towards the sun in the summer there's a
- 00:13:10big absorption of uh of carbon dioxide
- 00:13:13and there's a small smaller release of
- 00:13:16carbon dioxide in the South as it tips
- 00:13:18the other way there's a a
- 00:13:19correspondingly smaller absorption of
- 00:13:22carbon dioxide and a larger release of
- 00:13:24carbon dioxide in the north so the net
- 00:13:27result is that the the pl Planet sort of
- 00:13:29breathes in and out seasonally so sort
- 00:13:32of each year as it tilts there's more
- 00:13:36carbon dioxide then less then more then
- 00:13:39less and that's really what caused the
- 00:13:41keing curve to occur now Al Gore spent a
- 00:13:45lot of time um over his entire term uh
- 00:13:48in office uh trying to do things like
- 00:13:50getting a Clean Air Act uh implemented
- 00:13:54uh he eventually uh ran for president
- 00:13:56didn't wasn't elected uh finally got
- 00:13:58into the White House enacted the Clean
- 00:14:01Air Act with Bill Clinton all this time
- 00:14:04the Earth was breathing in and out and
- 00:14:07the level of carbon dioxide was going up
- 00:14:09and up and up in the atmosphere this
- 00:14:11curve unfortunately this slide was made
- 00:14:13for Al Gore who is from the south and
- 00:14:16speaks much more slowly than me so it
- 00:14:18has a has a sort of a timing issue with
- 00:14:20it but um you'll see that it just goes
- 00:14:23on and on and on and the atmosphere each
- 00:14:26year is getting thicker and thicker and
- 00:14:28thicker in and out in and out uh up to
- 00:14:31the present day and the result of this
- 00:14:34has essentially been uh melting of
- 00:14:36glaciers and later on Amber church is
- 00:14:38going to be here who's a co-presenter of
- 00:14:40mine and she's studying melting glaciers
- 00:14:42in northern BC and she can really talk
- 00:14:44about that a lot but this is what's been
- 00:14:47going on uh this is what the helm
- 00:14:48Glacier looked like in
- 00:14:511929 this is what it's like was was like
- 00:14:54in 2002 it's even worse
- 00:14:57today similarly the IL silhou Glacier in
- 00:15:00northern BC 1898 nice big Glacier today
- 00:15:05it's gone and you can see how it's
- 00:15:08receded year by
- 00:15:10year in fact if you look at a a graph of
- 00:15:13um uh receding glacies in
- 00:15:16Canada uh it's just a dramatic uh uh
- 00:15:22reduction in in these glaciers over time
- 00:15:24and it's just getting worse and worse
- 00:15:26and worse more examples I'll skip
- 00:15:28through these quickly uh in Alaska then
- 00:15:33now uh again here the Columbia
- 00:15:38Glacier and what's happening is that
- 00:15:40these Glaciers are
- 00:15:43carving off uh pieces of them and it's
- 00:15:47falling into the uh water and draining
- 00:15:50out into the
- 00:15:55sea we'll talk about this a little more
- 00:15:57later on but this is what's causing
- 00:15:59ocean levels to rise it's when landbased
- 00:16:01ice melts and falls into the sea it
- 00:16:03obviously makes the sea go up and this
- 00:16:05is a another problem that we'll talk
- 00:16:07about a bit later on more examples
- 00:16:18here this just a glaci in
- 00:16:22Peru here's the this is a really
- 00:16:24striking shot this is the alala glacier
- 00:16:26in Argentina in 1928
- 00:16:29now it's a
- 00:16:33lake laaz Bolivia this is a huge problem
- 00:16:36what's happening in Bolivia is that in
- 00:16:38laaz uh most of about a third of their
- 00:16:41drinking water actually comes from
- 00:16:43Glacier melt so melting glaciers is
- 00:16:47actually causing huge problems in laas
- 00:16:50because as these glaciers melt there's
- 00:16:52not going to be any runoff and they
- 00:16:53won't have any drinking their drinking
- 00:16:55water supply will be dramatically
- 00:16:57reduced here's a great old postcard shot
- 00:17:00of the hotel beler on the Rome Glacier
- 00:17:02and this is what it looks like now not
- 00:17:04quite such a nice
- 00:17:07view this is a great shot uh this is a
- 00:17:10uh a 5,000 year old man that appeared
- 00:17:12out of a glacier in 1992 when David
- 00:17:15Suzuki when we were at the training in
- 00:17:16the in Montreal saw this shot he said
- 00:17:18our ancestors are coming back to tell us
- 00:17:20to do something about this
- 00:17:24problem more shots the same story I'll
- 00:17:28just skip through these quickly because
- 00:17:29it's just the same story all over the
- 00:17:32world in the Himalayas it's again a very
- 00:17:36very serious problem it turns out that
- 00:17:39um a huge portion of the world uh
- 00:17:42depends on on the Himalayan glacia melt
- 00:17:45for their drinking water you can see the
- 00:17:47Hindus the Ganges River rutra river the
- 00:17:51Salen River the Mong River and the Yi
- 00:17:54River into China the Yellow
- 00:17:57River and and what's happening is that
- 00:18:00these Glaciers are again receding 40% of
- 00:18:05the world's population depends on uh
- 00:18:07water that's running off from these
- 00:18:09glaciers in the Himalayas and as they
- 00:18:11receip this is going to cause an
- 00:18:13enormous uh water shortage uh problem in
- 00:18:16Asia and ironically it's going to cause
- 00:18:19a lot of people who live in Asia to not
- 00:18:21have enough water and it's also going to
- 00:18:23cause a lot of them to be underwater as
- 00:18:25ocean levels rise as a result of this so
- 00:18:27it's a it's a very very serious and
- 00:18:30striking problem here's a great shot of
- 00:18:32kjaro in Africa I was actually there
- 00:18:34around this time and that's what it
- 00:18:36looked like uh this is what it looks
- 00:18:38like looked like in 2000 and then
- 00:18:40recently in 2005 you can see the the
- 00:18:43Snows of kjaro are almost completely
- 00:18:45gone in fact this is a a guy called
- 00:18:48Lonnie Thompson who's a friend of Alor
- 00:18:50that was the only piece of ice he found
- 00:18:51the Spear of ice on on the top of
- 00:18:53kilamanjaro that was all that was
- 00:18:55left uh and here he is um Lonnie
- 00:18:57Thompson has spent a lot of spends a lot
- 00:18:59of his time uh studying uh glaciers and
- 00:19:02drilling ice cores into
- 00:19:04glaciers and uh all over the world Harry
- 00:19:07is doing it in Peru and what they're
- 00:19:10able to do is when they drill these ice
- 00:19:12cores they can actually look at uh the
- 00:19:15The Ice down Through the Ages almost
- 00:19:17like rings in a tree and Al Gore said
- 00:19:20that when he he was shown an ice cor by
- 00:19:22Lonnie Thompson and he could actually
- 00:19:23see with the naked eye when the US
- 00:19:26enacted the Clean Air Act he could
- 00:19:28actually see it with the naked eye in
- 00:19:29the ice core that's how dramatic it was
- 00:19:32and what they're able to do is um
- 00:19:34essentially look uh into these ice cores
- 00:19:36here's another shot of a sort of a side
- 00:19:38view that they they were able to drill
- 00:19:40down you can see that each year it's
- 00:19:41like rings in a tree and they can
- 00:19:43actually look at the comp the
- 00:19:45composition of the little air bubbles in
- 00:19:47these uh in these um ice cores and they
- 00:19:50can determine exactly how much CO2 was
- 00:19:52in the atmosphere at at a particular
- 00:19:55moment in time they can do it very
- 00:19:56accurately and by comparing and I don't
- 00:19:59fully understand this Amber can explain
- 00:20:01it to you better later on but by
- 00:20:02comparing a couple of isotopes of oxygen
- 00:20:04in that little bubble they can actually
- 00:20:06determine the temperature the prevailing
- 00:20:08average temperature at the time so we
- 00:20:10can determine very accurately uh What uh
- 00:20:13temperatures look like and and this is
- 00:20:16essentially what you see here's a
- 00:20:18thermometer and um here's where we are
- 00:20:22now and you can see there's been
- 00:20:24dramatic increases now Skeptics will
- 00:20:26always talk about a warming period in
- 00:20:28the Middle Ages and they're right it's
- 00:20:31right back here but you can see here
- 00:20:34rather it's nothing like what we're
- 00:20:35dealing with
- 00:20:42now the other thing that you see is when
- 00:20:45you track temperature and carbon dioxide
- 00:20:48over a period you see that they match
- 00:20:50almost exactly again it's like the two
- 00:20:52continents example that uh Alor pal
- 00:20:55mentioned in in grade six
- 00:20:59so we've started to do the same thing
- 00:21:00now in the uh Antarctic and in the
- 00:21:02Antarctic we're able to go back uh this
- 00:21:05slide actually goes back 600,000 years
- 00:21:08they can now go back almost a million
- 00:21:10years in
- 00:21:11time um and this is what we see um
- 00:21:15variations fluctuations in uh in CO2
- 00:21:19concentrations and a similar matching
- 00:21:22fluctuation in temperature and there are
- 00:21:25seven ice ages you can count them all
- 00:21:27the way back uh from now you can see
- 00:21:30them and incidentally the difference
- 00:21:33between this and this is a mile of ice
- 00:21:36over your head so this is a there's a
- 00:21:38huge
- 00:21:40difference unfortunately here's where we
- 00:21:43are
- 00:21:45today so we're at almost 400 parts per
- 00:21:50million it's never been higher than
- 00:21:53about
- 00:21:54290 or so parts per million we're now at
- 00:21:58almost 400 parts per million so we're
- 00:22:01almost almost 50% higher than we've ever
- 00:22:04been in recorded
- 00:22:07history and this is an enormous problem
- 00:22:10but it gets worse unfortunately
- 00:22:13because if we carry on the way we are
- 00:22:15after 40 more use years of use of energy
- 00:22:19in the current method this is where
- 00:22:20we're going to be now again you know if
- 00:22:23this is a mile of ice over your head on
- 00:22:27the cold side
- 00:22:29imagine what that is on the hot side and
- 00:22:31imagine what that would be I need Al
- 00:22:33Gore's lifter machine to do this but
- 00:22:35imagine what that would be on the hot
- 00:22:37side it's really it's pretty obvious and
- 00:22:39I have to say that when I saw this graph
- 00:22:41in the movie this was what galvanized me
- 00:22:43I thought this is a big problem I mean
- 00:22:45this is not rocket science when you look
- 00:22:47at it it's really obvious and it's
- 00:22:50really clear that we need to do
- 00:22:51something about
- 00:22:53it this is really what inspired me to
- 00:22:55get involved and and in fact if you if
- 00:22:57you now look at what's happened the 10
- 00:23:00hottest years on
- 00:23:02record uh have occurred within the last
- 00:23:06few years nine of them have occurred
- 00:23:08within the last 10
- 00:23:12years and this is causing um tremendous
- 00:23:15heat waves 50° Centigrade I don't know
- 00:23:18if any of you have ever experienced
- 00:23:19anything like that I was in Las Vegas
- 00:23:21once when it was uh I think 114 which is
- 00:23:24nothing like 15 50° cenate 50° CRA temp
- 00:23:28which is half the boiling point of water
- 00:23:30in
- 00:23:31India 1,400 people died in Pakistan uh
- 00:23:35the same sort of thing 52° temperature
- 00:23:38rises and we're predicting uh annual
- 00:23:41temperature changes in Canada uh to be
- 00:23:43pretty significant and you can see I'm
- 00:23:45going to get Amber to explain this
- 00:23:46because this is a sort of a scientific
- 00:23:48chart that's a little bit cryptic but
- 00:23:50they they tend to measure the they tend
- 00:23:52to measure uh temperature in um uh sort
- 00:23:56of 30e blocks
- 00:23:58uh it's a bit although in the second
- 00:24:00case we haven't we we're talking about a
- 00:24:0220-year block but they're essentially
- 00:24:03saying that uh there's going to be
- 00:24:06tremendous uh changes in
- 00:24:08temperature um in the sort of in this
- 00:24:11area here anywhere that's this these
- 00:24:13sort of colors so you can see what's
- 00:24:15what's going to be going on
- 00:24:19here this is also affecting the ocean uh
- 00:24:22this is a a u this is what you would
- 00:24:24normally expect the ocean temperatures
- 00:24:27to be
- 00:24:29um based on you know normal fluctuations
- 00:24:32that you would expect in ocean
- 00:24:34temperatures uh this is what scientists
- 00:24:37using computer models uh are predicted
- 00:24:40uh that the ocean temperatures could uh
- 00:24:42change to due to human causes and this
- 00:24:45is what's actually
- 00:24:48happened so a a tremendous uh rise uh in
- 00:24:52ocean
- 00:24:54temperatures and this is causing um uh
- 00:24:56tremendous weather events hurricanes
- 00:24:59it's not an accident that we're seeing a
- 00:25:00lot more hurricanes and a lot bigger
- 00:25:02hurricanes the the hurricane this year
- 00:25:04that hit Houston was not particularly
- 00:25:06powerful but it was massively wide
- 00:25:08hundreds of miles wide it was an
- 00:25:09enormous
- 00:25:10storm and uh these storms that caused
- 00:25:13essentially weather is driven by ocean
- 00:25:16currents and ocean temperature so these
- 00:25:18storms are really created uh as a result
- 00:25:22of this I'll skip through this fairly
- 00:25:23quickly because I don't want to use a
- 00:25:24lot of time on this but you can we're
- 00:25:26all familiar with them
- 00:25:29these various uh enormous hurricanes uh
- 00:25:32new record set for typhoons in
- 00:25:38Japan they they you know they never
- 00:25:40thought that we could get hurricanes in
- 00:25:42the South Atlantic well we got one in
- 00:25:442004 it's also increasing the incidence
- 00:25:46of tornadoes in the United States uh a
- 00:25:49new record in 2004 really devastating
- 00:25:53consequences and we're seeing this more
- 00:25:54and more and more almost every year this
- 00:25:56is occurring
- 00:25:59uh multiple tropical storms in the
- 00:26:01summer of 2005 in the uh South Atlantic
- 00:26:04in in the North Atlantic
- 00:26:06rather hurricane Emily here
- 00:26:10Dennis huge
- 00:26:12Devastation this is what the largest oil
- 00:26:15platform in the world the BP Thunder
- 00:26:16horse platform was completely toppled uh
- 00:26:19they never thought that could
- 00:26:21happen another oil platform washed up on
- 00:26:23the
- 00:26:25beach these people S standing on the
- 00:26:27bank thinking what the that's not
- 00:26:29supposed to be there what the hell's
- 00:26:30going on stuck under a
- 00:26:39bridge so as the oceans heat up
- 00:26:42Hurricane intensity
- 00:26:44grows um wind shear grows and more
- 00:26:49moisture is evaporated uh out of the U
- 00:26:52out of the ocean which causes more
- 00:26:55precipitation and then of course uh in
- 00:26:592005 we had
- 00:27:00Katrina uh which this is a great
- 00:27:02animation you see it starting just to
- 00:27:04the south of Florida as it crosses the
- 00:27:06Florida Panhandle and comes into the
- 00:27:08Gulf it hits really really warm
- 00:27:10temperatures look at the size of the eye
- 00:27:12of that hurricane so what happened was
- 00:27:13is the as the eye came over as the storm
- 00:27:16came into the Gulf of Mexico the
- 00:27:18extremely hot I was looking at a a Noah
- 00:27:21uh chart I I wish I had it showing uh
- 00:27:23typical surface temperatures ocean
- 00:27:26temperatures in the Gulf it's in it's
- 00:27:28like bath water it's it can get really
- 00:27:30really hot and so as soon as the
- 00:27:33hurricane hit that water it really
- 00:27:34spooled it up and uh the results were
- 00:27:37absolutely devastating as we all know
- 00:27:39and again I'm not going to beat this to
- 00:27:41death we all know everybody remembers
- 00:27:42what happened it was a horrendous
- 00:27:44horrendous event that America was
- 00:27:46completely unprepared for and then
- 00:27:49completely bungled uh the response to so
- 00:27:53this is a great phrase that uh one of my
- 00:27:55favorite people Winston Churchill said
- 00:27:57the era of procrastin ation of half
- 00:27:59measures of soothing and baffling
- 00:28:01experience uh of delays is coming to a
- 00:28:04close and its place we uring a period of
- 00:28:06consequences he was of course talking
- 00:28:08about Germany at the time and the rise
- 00:28:11of the Nazis but we're in a similar sort
- 00:28:14of a situation now where we've you know
- 00:28:16we really need to act we've got to do
- 00:28:19something um this is not something that
- 00:28:21we can uh continue to just uh ignore and
- 00:28:25I'll skip through these slides again
- 00:28:27really quickly because I want to get to
- 00:28:29um uh the meat of the presentation
- 00:28:36here they ran out of uh letters you know
- 00:28:40they Nam these storms with people's
- 00:28:42names uh in 2005 they ran out of
- 00:28:44people's names they got to zed and had
- 00:28:46to start with the Greek alphabet that's
- 00:28:47how bad it was that doesn't happen very
- 00:28:50often so we got to
- 00:28:53Delta Epsilon went all the way to Zeta
- 00:28:58and the insurance industry has noticed
- 00:29:00this there have been tremendous losses
- 00:29:03as a result of this um and here in
- 00:29:06Canada the same thing um year by year uh
- 00:29:10weather related disasters and losses
- 00:29:12have increased we remember the ice
- 00:29:14storms in Quebec in the late 90s um this
- 00:29:18is an interesting slide because it shows
- 00:29:19you what's going to happen to us so here
- 00:29:23in the Pacific Northwest and in Atlantic
- 00:29:25Canada we're going to get a lot more
- 00:29:27pacific
- 00:29:29itation but basically the precipitation
- 00:29:31patterns are going to change all over
- 00:29:33the world what this sh doesn't slide
- 00:29:35doesn't show so well is that the the
- 00:29:38deserts are actually going to move and
- 00:29:41uh as we get more precipitation uh in
- 00:29:43the north what happens is in in the uh
- 00:29:46in the belts um above and below uh the
- 00:29:49deserts uh above the the Sahara Desert
- 00:29:53for example that's going to actually
- 00:29:54move up so a lot of the um Mediterranean
- 00:29:57areas is are going to have a lot less
- 00:30:00precipitation uh in the north of Africa
- 00:30:03and in the central United States I went
- 00:30:05to a talk by Gwen D earlier this year at
- 00:30:09the Ki Center in North Vancouver in west
- 00:30:11Vancouver and I turned up expecting him
- 00:30:13to talk about conflict in the Middle
- 00:30:14East and so on and uh it turned out the
- 00:30:17whole presentation was about climate
- 00:30:19change and he's just written a great
- 00:30:21book which I'm just starting to read
- 00:30:24called climate Wars he thinks that
- 00:30:25climate change is going to be the
- 00:30:26greatest creator of conflict uh in this
- 00:30:30century and it's a really really serious
- 00:30:32problem as countries become unable to
- 00:30:34feed their populations uh and uh uh
- 00:30:37other place Parts in the world get
- 00:30:39inundated with water uh there's going to
- 00:30:42be a tremendous amount of movement of
- 00:30:44population and that's going to cause a
- 00:30:45lot of friction he thinks so there are
- 00:30:48there are a lot of other effects as well
- 00:30:51uh this is a slide that we did for
- 00:30:52Atlantic Canada there's been a
- 00:30:53tremendous amount of uh uh Rising a
- 00:30:56noticeable rising of ocean levels in
- 00:30:58Atlantic Canada I'm going to skip
- 00:31:01through some of these slides here again
- 00:31:03uh all over the world the same thing's
- 00:31:05happening in Japan huge uh
- 00:31:09rainfall and in uh as Al Gore says it's
- 00:31:12like a uh nature walk through the Book
- 00:31:14of Revelations in Europe these days and
- 00:31:17uh talking to my mom and dad over in
- 00:31:18England they've had a lot more rain and
- 00:31:20a lot more precipitation um than that
- 00:31:23they used to have in the old days
- 00:31:25there's a chap out for a walk in
- 00:31:26Switzerland
- 00:31:29um same thing all over the world so this
- 00:31:33is a pretty obvious pattern it's pretty
- 00:31:37clear what's going
- 00:31:40on in India uh they've had enormous uh
- 00:31:44rainfall uh like they've never had
- 00:31:47before this is Russia in uh
- 00:31:52Mumbai 90% of the city underwater just a
- 00:31:56horrendous situ
- 00:32:00ation in Indonesia the same thing
- 00:32:09Ghana here we are in Mexico same
- 00:32:18thing really all over the world um just
- 00:32:21locally down the road in the chahalis
- 00:32:24Washington there's the
- 00:32:26Walmart mercifully under water but
- 00:32:31anyway Ontario the same thing this is
- 00:32:34you don't want to see this when you're
- 00:32:36uh pushing back to the
- 00:32:38runway doesn't Inspire
- 00:32:41[Laughter]
- 00:32:44confidence apparently these fellows were
- 00:32:47actually recovering license plates for
- 00:32:48some reason in uh in China we don't but
- 00:32:51again tremendous flooding and Sichuan
- 00:32:55look at that poor little chap in the
- 00:32:58being pushed
- 00:33:00along but it can also cause drying uh as
- 00:33:03well so uh as the Earth heats up we get
- 00:33:06a lot more precipitation in some areas
- 00:33:08but we actually get uh drying in other
- 00:33:11areas and um essentially this is what's
- 00:33:14happening is as we get uh uh warmer
- 00:33:17temperatures the ocean uh evaporates but
- 00:33:20also moisture is sucked out of the land
- 00:33:23uh and in Africa this has had
- 00:33:25devastating consequences
- 00:33:28in the Lake Chad uh which was an
- 00:33:30enormous Lake in the 70s when I was in
- 00:33:33Africa uh in the Niger darur region now
- 00:33:36it's basically completely
- 00:33:39evaporated uh removing a very very
- 00:33:42important uh source of water for the
- 00:33:45people and
- 00:33:47fish and it's just a a dried up uh lake
- 00:33:52bed
- 00:33:53now this was a big river in Australia
- 00:33:55now a girl can jump over it
- 00:33:58this was an interesting slide and if you
- 00:34:00looked at all of the water in the world
- 00:34:03that's how big it would be so you know
- 00:34:04when we look at this this is sort of
- 00:34:05obvious really but when you look at the
- 00:34:07Earth it's all blue you know and you
- 00:34:09think well there's loads of water well
- 00:34:10the water is not very thick it's only
- 00:34:12it's it's there's no depth to it
- 00:34:14relative to the size of the Earth so
- 00:34:16there's not really that much water to
- 00:34:18start with in the
- 00:34:20world and that's that's relatively
- 00:34:22speaking how much there
- 00:34:26is which brings us really to the first
- 00:34:28Canary in the coal mine and uh it's the
- 00:34:32Arctic and uh this is the ward hunt ice
- 00:34:36shelf uh in the Arctic um which broke up
- 00:34:40in 2002 it cracked in
- 00:34:43half um here's a a shot of U what are
- 00:34:47called drunken trees in Alaska what's
- 00:34:49happening is the permafrost is melting
- 00:34:51and as a result the trees just fall
- 00:34:54Every Witch Way and uh even graveyards
- 00:34:57all the tombstones are falling over um
- 00:35:01building here collapsed again the
- 00:35:02melting of the building was built on the
- 00:35:04permafrost that ground the Perma Frost
- 00:35:06melted the building
- 00:35:07collapsed um roads are getting heaved up
- 00:35:10as a result of this as well making um uh
- 00:35:14Transit of them difficult uh this is a
- 00:35:16shot of U actually Northern Russia where
- 00:35:19they use ice roads to transport um uh
- 00:35:24goods and um uh and uh equipment for
- 00:35:27their oil uh uh fields and other things
- 00:35:31what's happening is these uh trucks are
- 00:35:33all getting stuck because the ice roads
- 00:35:34are
- 00:35:35melting and it's causing same thing's
- 00:35:37happening in Alaska
- 00:35:40incidentally so what's really going on
- 00:35:42here is that the ice is diminishing in
- 00:35:45the Arctic and this is a a great shot of
- 00:35:47a US nuclear submarine surfacing through
- 00:35:50the ice it turns out that uh the US has
- 00:35:53been studying uh the thickness of ice in
- 00:35:56the Arctic for many many years ever
- 00:35:58pretty much ever since they've had
- 00:35:59nuclear submarines going underneath them
- 00:36:01and the reason for they that they've
- 00:36:02done it is they they can only surface if
- 00:36:05the ice is less than a meter thick so
- 00:36:07they needed to keep track of exactly how
- 00:36:09thick the ice was everywhere so they
- 00:36:10knew where they could poke the Corning
- 00:36:12Tower up through the ice uh all of this
- 00:36:15information was classified and kept
- 00:36:17secret Al Gore actually got to go on a
- 00:36:19nuclear submarine and eventually
- 00:36:21convinced them to release the data and
- 00:36:23the results were really horrendous I
- 00:36:26don't have the graph here I don't think
- 00:36:27but uh again it's a sort of precipitous
- 00:36:30drop off of uh of ice that they've known
- 00:36:32about for a long time but have not told
- 00:36:34anybody about and in fact if you compare
- 00:36:371980 that that was what the ice extent
- 00:36:40looked like in 1980 in the Arctic this
- 00:36:43is what it looked like in the summer in
- 00:36:482007 again uh this is the average
- 00:36:51September ice extent in the
- 00:36:54Arctic there was a record low in 2005
- 00:36:57and some people are now saying that they
- 00:36:59think that the ice is going to be
- 00:37:01completely gone in the Arctic within 5
- 00:37:04years so if you want to go to the North
- 00:37:06Pole you'll need a
- 00:37:09boat here's some comparisons that uh are
- 00:37:13interesting unfortunately we don't have
- 00:37:14one of Canada but uh that's just so you
- 00:37:16can sort of bigle in a bread box compare
- 00:37:18it to stuff that you might know that's
- 00:37:20what it looked like in 1980 which is
- 00:37:22equivalent to that much of
- 00:37:25Europe uh this is what it was like in 20
- 00:37:272005 which was equivalent to all of
- 00:37:30England Spain France Germany Switzerland
- 00:37:33Belgium all of that gone a huge amount
- 00:37:36of ice
- 00:37:39gone here's the chart uh I was wondering
- 00:37:43if I had that and you can see there's
- 00:37:44been a precipitous drop off in 2005 and
- 00:37:47it's actually just going south at a high
- 00:37:48rate of knots it's um um now uh in 2007
- 00:37:55there's been a precipitous almost an
- 00:37:56exponential drop
- 00:37:59off I'll skip through this and get to
- 00:38:05uh here's the als's ice shelf collapsing
- 00:38:08in 2005 at elmir
- 00:38:10Island this is a huge ice shelf so
- 00:38:12what's going on really is the reason
- 00:38:14it's sort of exponential is is the
- 00:38:16following uh the Arctic it really acts
- 00:38:19like a big mirror and most of the uh
- 00:38:22solar radiation that hits it gets
- 00:38:24reflected but as it starts to melt due
- 00:38:26to global warming
- 00:38:28and gets smaller less of the solar
- 00:38:31radiation is reflected actually 90% of
- 00:38:33the solar radiation that hits ice is
- 00:38:35reflected 90% of the solar radiation
- 00:38:38that hits the ocean is absorbed so what
- 00:38:41happens is you get a sort of a feedback
- 00:38:43loop and a runaway effect as the ice
- 00:38:45starts to melt it gets smaller the ocean
- 00:38:47starts to warm up the warmed ocean melts
- 00:38:50the ice faster there's even less of it
- 00:38:52you've got more warm oce and and the
- 00:38:54thing literally sort of runs away which
- 00:38:56is why we think think we're seeing this
- 00:38:58precipitous drop off in Arctic
- 00:39:01ice and of course this is having
- 00:39:03devastating effects on polar bears in
- 00:39:05the
- 00:39:06Arctic um many of them are being found
- 00:39:08at Sea drowned unable to find ice to
- 00:39:11swim
- 00:39:18to this is a great but sad
- 00:39:24shot so it turns out that um
- 00:39:28again you can see the graphic here it
- 00:39:30starts to shrink slowly and then and
- 00:39:32then as the as the ice pack diminishes
- 00:39:36less solar energy is reflected more is
- 00:39:38absorbed by the ocean and it actually
- 00:39:40becomes a a hot spot in fact there's
- 00:39:44more uh heating of the oceans happening
- 00:39:46at the poles than anywhere else on the
- 00:39:49planet and you know this is going to
- 00:39:51have a huge impact uh on uh on our
- 00:39:54climat and on our weather and so on and
- 00:39:56so forth and we'll talk about this a
- 00:39:57little more in a second here it turns
- 00:40:00out the climate is a nonlinear system uh
- 00:40:02this is essentially what's going
- 00:40:05on uh the the when as the globe heats up
- 00:40:11um heat is really transferred from the
- 00:40:14equatorial regions to the pole that's
- 00:40:17how that's how the heat is dissipated
- 00:40:19and this transfer of heat really creates
- 00:40:22ocean
- 00:40:23currents so the it's really the Delta
- 00:40:26the difference in between the
- 00:40:27temperature at the equator and the
- 00:40:29temperature at the pole that's really
- 00:40:30the pump if you like that's driving uh
- 00:40:33these ocean currents well in 2000 uh the
- 00:40:37average temperature of the Earth in 2006
- 00:40:39was 15° Centigrade if we had a 3° uh
- 00:40:43rise in global temperatures this
- 00:40:46actually translates into a one degree
- 00:40:49rise at the pole at at the equator
- 00:40:52excuse me and a 7 degree rise at the
- 00:40:54pole it's not evenly distributed now
- 00:40:57that's a huge difference that's a
- 00:40:59massive Delta and what's going to happen
- 00:41:02as a result of this is really uh sort of
- 00:41:05unknown I'll give you a little demo here
- 00:41:07this is where my presentation can go
- 00:41:09horribly wrong actually but this is this
- 00:41:11is this is an idea so what happens is if
- 00:41:14you imagine the currents is sort of
- 00:41:16being sort of going like this when you
- 00:41:18get that big a change they start they go
- 00:41:21they'll suddenly flip they can just go
- 00:41:23like this so we really have no idea uh a
- 00:41:27of this magnitude we have absolutely no
- 00:41:30idea uh what's going to happen it's not
- 00:41:34really very well understood uh how the
- 00:41:36ocean currents uh go where they do
- 00:41:39anyway uh but what we do know is that
- 00:41:42it's driven by this change in
- 00:41:43temperature and if that changes that
- 00:41:46dramatically um it's difficult to know
- 00:41:48what's going to happen it's not going to
- 00:41:50be good though that's pretty
- 00:41:52obvious and one of the things that this
- 00:41:54is affecting is uh a shift in the season
- 00:41:58so um this was a study done in the
- 00:42:01Netherlands you can see in April uh 25
- 00:42:05uh that's Peak bird arrival time in June
- 00:42:073rd that also coincides with the peak uh
- 00:42:11bird hatching and the caterpillar season
- 00:42:14well what happened was that uh as as
- 00:42:16things started to warm up uh the the
- 00:42:20there was actually a
- 00:42:21shift in the caterpillars started to
- 00:42:24come earlier because it was warmer the
- 00:42:26birds tried to catch up but couldn't so
- 00:42:30now the bird populations are in Peril
- 00:42:31because there's not there aren't enough
- 00:42:33caterpillars uh to feed them they're
- 00:42:34coming too late the caterpillars have
- 00:42:36already
- 00:42:37gone so these sorts of effects are
- 00:42:40really um causing enormous problems and
- 00:42:43it's resulting in a um in a really a
- 00:42:46change in invasive species and a a
- 00:42:50classical example of that right here in
- 00:42:52BC is Western pine beetle damage I don't
- 00:42:53know how many of you have driven to
- 00:42:54Colona recently but I drove I hadn't
- 00:42:56been there for a while I drove drove
- 00:42:58there a couple of weeks ago I was
- 00:42:59absolutely horrified just from the
- 00:43:01highway you can see the devastation
- 00:43:03that's been done by Western pine beetle
- 00:43:05and I'm told that if you fly over
- 00:43:07Northern British Columbia it's much
- 00:43:08worse it's absolutely horrendous now
- 00:43:10what's really bad about this is that not
- 00:43:13only is it killing the pine trees which
- 00:43:15that's bad enough but it turns out that
- 00:43:17the pine trees when they're absorbing
- 00:43:19carbon dioxide that carbon is stored in
- 00:43:21the tree when you kill the tree all that
- 00:43:23carbon gets released so it's a double
- 00:43:25jeopardy situation so not only are these
- 00:43:27trees being killed by the pine beetle
- 00:43:29not sucking up CO2 anymore they've now
- 00:43:32flipped and all the CO2 that they had
- 00:43:34sucked up is now being released so it's
- 00:43:37a it's a really horrendous uh
- 00:43:40situation uh it's also causing species
- 00:43:43Extinction the the yellow frog um is uh
- 00:43:46going extinct it may very well result in
- 00:43:49Canada's first uh species major species
- 00:43:52Extinction the Perry Caribou is likely
- 00:43:54to go extinct here in Canada
- 00:43:58so it turns out that these changes are
- 00:44:00actually causing a massive uh species
- 00:44:03loss we're actually in the middle of an
- 00:44:04Extinction event that's as bad as when
- 00:44:06the dinosaurs died out 65 million years
- 00:44:09ago so there's a massive you can see the
- 00:44:10way this curve has gone a massive uh
- 00:44:14impact on uh uh on species coral reefs
- 00:44:17are being badly affected the thing that
- 00:44:19makes coral reefs colorful is is a is a
- 00:44:22um a creature called Zeus aneli I hope I
- 00:44:24said that correctly but there are they
- 00:44:27actually uh uh sort of cling to the uh
- 00:44:31coral reefs and give it its color what's
- 00:44:33happening now is because of changes in
- 00:44:35ocean temperature and ocean chemistry
- 00:44:37they're being killed and the the reefs
- 00:44:39are getting bleached out uh which and
- 00:44:42which is obviously impacting on
- 00:44:43fisheries and local economies and so on
- 00:44:46and so forth we're also seeing enormous
- 00:44:47algae blooms because of changes in ocean
- 00:44:50temperature uh it turns out that there
- 00:44:52are some massive jellyfish that are
- 00:44:54being seen in Japan that were never seen
- 00:44:56before uh that like the change in Ocean
- 00:44:58chemistry so they're doing very very
- 00:45:00well but they're eating all all the fish
- 00:45:03they're damaging the
- 00:45:04Fisheries
- 00:45:07um vectors for emerging infectious
- 00:45:10diseases um all sorts of things um uh I
- 00:45:15remember visiting Nairobi U many years
- 00:45:17ago in Kenya which was has been
- 00:45:19specifically placed so it's just above
- 00:45:21the mosquito line so you don't get
- 00:45:23bitten by mozzies in Nairobi because
- 00:45:24it's at I think 5,500 feet well now you
- 00:45:27do because everything these these
- 00:45:30everything's warmed up the mosquitoes
- 00:45:32have come up uh and so so a lot of
- 00:45:35cities that have been specifically
- 00:45:37placed so that people won't get bitten
- 00:45:39by mosquitoes now they're in the they're
- 00:45:41not it doesn't work anymore people are
- 00:45:43getting bitten by mosquitoes it's
- 00:45:44causing death and disease and so on
- 00:45:49um we're seeing the emergence of many
- 00:45:52many new diseases since
- 00:45:551976 and again I go through them because
- 00:45:57we've got a lot to do cram cram in in an
- 00:45:59hour here um the West Nile Virus um
- 00:46:04really unknown in North America uh it's
- 00:46:07now moved right across the
- 00:46:10continent um so that it's extending now
- 00:46:14all the way from uh the east coast of
- 00:46:17the United States right out ahead of
- 00:46:21Vancouver something that we never had
- 00:46:25before so this brings us us to the other
- 00:46:27canaran the coal mine which is the
- 00:46:30Antarctic um again we're seeing the same
- 00:46:33sort of thing a tremendous warming in
- 00:46:35the Antarctic impacting on
- 00:46:38Penguins uh here's a something that
- 00:46:41merer said um turns out this is
- 00:46:45happening um we're seeing a tremendous
- 00:46:48breakup of the ice shelves uh in the
- 00:46:51Antarctic in particular the um in this
- 00:46:55peninsula up here
- 00:46:58uh the Lassen B ey shelf in particular
- 00:47:01um uh was just collapsed a few years ago
- 00:47:07um and it really mystified scientists
- 00:47:10because it happened so quickly uh you
- 00:47:12can see these little black uh spots here
- 00:47:15they look like um we're seeing through
- 00:47:17the ice we actually not they're little
- 00:47:19melt pools that um people observed they
- 00:47:22The sests observed in the ice and what
- 00:47:24happened was the ice all all of a sudden
- 00:47:27started to break up now these uh if you
- 00:47:31were to look at these uh uh ice shelves
- 00:47:33this is what they would look like they
- 00:47:35stick 700 ft out of the ocean and if you
- 00:47:38were to fly over it in a helicopter this
- 00:47:41is what you'd see these Majestic uh ice
- 00:47:45shelves this is what's starting to break
- 00:47:47up and melt so this isn't like a skating
- 00:47:49rink this is this is uh the bit that you
- 00:47:51see above the water is 700 ft high and
- 00:47:54then the piece below these are thousands
- 00:47:56of fet thick massive massive ice shelves
- 00:48:00now these ice shelves are floating but
- 00:48:03if you look behind about 25 uh
- 00:48:06kilometers Behind These ice shelves at
- 00:48:08the mountains back here these ice
- 00:48:10shelves are holding landbased
- 00:48:13ice on these uh back on these mountains
- 00:48:17now when the ice shelves melt it doesn't
- 00:48:19make the water go up it's a problem but
- 00:48:20it doesn't make the ocean go up but as
- 00:48:22the ice shelves move away and this land
- 00:48:24base ice starts to fall into the sea
- 00:48:27that's going to uh cause a problem and
- 00:48:29again we'll talk about that a bit more
- 00:48:30later this was the breakup of the lass
- 00:48:32and ice shelf which in a period of just
- 00:48:34a you know about 30 days just completely
- 00:48:37went away and scientists uh thought at
- 00:48:39the time that this ice shelf would take
- 00:48:41at least 100 years to break up uh even
- 00:48:44with global
- 00:48:46warming uh the same thing on the other
- 00:48:48side of the peninsula the Wilkins eyce
- 00:48:50shelf earlier this year hereis some
- 00:48:52great shots done taken by the BBC it
- 00:48:54looks like pieces of Styrofoam but again
- 00:48:56these are 7even or 800 feet high and
- 00:48:58extending almost a th000 feet thick
- 00:49:01Wilkins ice shelf just uh broke up and
- 00:49:05we got a little animation here that you
- 00:49:06can see a shot from the
- 00:49:10air this is a really really great shot
- 00:49:14and
- 00:49:14again again these are 700 ft above the
- 00:49:18water but thousands of feet thick you'll
- 00:49:21see some pieces um on their side in a
- 00:49:23minute and you can see the blue bit
- 00:49:25there uh this bit bit is the bit that's
- 00:49:27below the water this is the bit that
- 00:49:29you're seeing sticking up so these are
- 00:49:32enormous enormous ice shelves that are
- 00:49:35breaking
- 00:49:40up again I'm going to skip through this
- 00:49:42because um we're running short on
- 00:49:46time and again as these ice shelves
- 00:49:49break up land Bas
- 00:49:51ice eventually can start to fall into
- 00:49:54the sea and this is a problem it's going
- 00:49:57to cause a rise potentially in in ocean
- 00:49:59temperatures um obviously this is a sort
- 00:50:01of graphic that explains what's going on
- 00:50:03if if if a cube of ice melts in a glass
- 00:50:05the water level doesn't go up Archimedes
- 00:50:07principle but if you have stacked Ice uh
- 00:50:10sitting on the bottom that's supported
- 00:50:11by something other than the water when
- 00:50:13that melts the water level goes up and
- 00:50:15it's impacting uh Pacific communities
- 00:50:18that are being
- 00:50:19inundated uh the malds and so
- 00:50:22on this is a great shot here this is the
- 00:50:25south of England England where from is
- 00:50:27not supposed to be like that this is a
- 00:50:28train running along the the
- 00:50:32beach in Alaska we're getting a rosion
- 00:50:34as a result and in Atlantic Canada uh
- 00:50:37Coastal erosion is starting to occur
- 00:50:39which is causing all sorts of
- 00:50:43problems again in uh in London the Tams
- 00:50:46barrier has been raised uh more times uh
- 00:50:49you can see this graph I mean it's
- 00:50:51really horrendous this is a ma a very
- 00:50:53obvious and major increase
- 00:50:58now it turns out that the area that
- 00:51:00we're worried about is this area
- 00:51:02here it turns out that if that area
- 00:51:05would
- 00:51:07go the West Antarctic ice sheet what
- 00:51:11would happen is ocean levels would go up
- 00:51:14worldwide 3
- 00:51:17m and unfortunately we're starting to
- 00:51:20see problems much of this
- 00:51:22ice is U some of it is is partially
- 00:51:26orted some of it is floating some of it
- 00:51:30is actually on land and some of it is
- 00:51:32sort of a little in between it's sort of
- 00:51:34floating but it's stuck on the top of of
- 00:51:36sea mounts under under that are under
- 00:51:38the ocean so the water the ocean can
- 00:51:40actually flow underneath it and we're
- 00:51:41starting to see uh extensive snow melt
- 00:51:44uh
- 00:51:46happening and it's a it's an area the
- 00:51:48size of the State of California this is
- 00:51:50a big big big
- 00:51:53area it turns out there's another area
- 00:51:56that's just about as big Greenland and
- 00:51:59that has similar problems as well if if
- 00:52:03Greenland would have melt again ocean
- 00:52:05temp ocean levels got 20 feet three 20
- 00:52:09feet 6 meters I'm sorry I think I
- 00:52:10misspoke earlier if the West Antarctic
- 00:52:12ice sheet melts they go again 6 M if
- 00:52:16half of each melted we're looking at a
- 00:52:18six meter rise so this is a very very
- 00:52:19serious uh
- 00:52:24issue I'm going to skip forward here a
- 00:52:26little bit so I know we're running short
- 00:52:29of time uh what we're seeing in um let
- 00:52:32me just skip through this I'm sorry
- 00:52:34because we I know we're going to be
- 00:52:35short of time this is a just a graphic
- 00:52:37that explains the uh the ice melt and
- 00:52:39the process that's going on essentially
- 00:52:41what happens is pools of water uh appear
- 00:52:45on the ice and remember what I was
- 00:52:46saying earlier when uh the sun rays
- 00:52:49strike water 90% of the energy is
- 00:52:51absorbed so as soon as you get a little
- 00:52:52pool started it sort of start it runs
- 00:52:54away and gets bigger and then these
- 00:52:56pools melt and actually tunnel down
- 00:52:59through the ice and in Greenland they
- 00:53:01call what they create what are call
- 00:53:02Mullins which are these huge tunnels
- 00:53:04going right down to the uh the bottom of
- 00:53:06the ice and they in effect um undermine
- 00:53:10and lubricate if you like uh the uh the
- 00:53:14ice Mass that's sitting on the Bedrock
- 00:53:17uh causing it to break and eventually
- 00:53:19slip off and potentially fall into the
- 00:53:24ocean and we're seeing a a a tremendous
- 00:53:27increase in glacial earthquakes in
- 00:53:28Greenland uh as a result of this doubled
- 00:53:32in in the period 1993 to 1999 and then
- 00:53:35much worse doubled again more recently
- 00:53:38so Greenland is starting to
- 00:53:43melt and this is really graphic and
- 00:53:50obvious it's affecting Canada of course
- 00:53:53um uh both at Sea I ice packs are
- 00:53:57breaking up this is a great graphic this
- 00:53:59would this shows you what would happen
- 00:54:01um with a uh 6 meter rise in Vancouver
- 00:54:05not surprisingly Richmond and ladar
- 00:54:07completely
- 00:54:08underwater uh right up into the valley
- 00:54:10completely underwater so it would cause
- 00:54:12tremendous problems in Vancouver we'd
- 00:54:14have to build a new airport for
- 00:54:18starters and this is what would happen
- 00:54:20in
- 00:54:23Florida much of Florida would be
- 00:54:25inundated again uh in uh other parts of
- 00:54:29the world Beijing the same sort of
- 00:54:36thing Shanghai
- 00:54:40similarly now this is going to cause
- 00:54:42immense dislocation of
- 00:54:45populations and this is sort of you know
- 00:54:47this is the sort of stuff that's
- 00:54:48starting to worry people like
- 00:54:50gwind in
- 00:54:53Kolkata many you know the people they
- 00:54:55got enough problem already with they're
- 00:54:57impoverished and so forth they're going
- 00:54:58to be
- 00:54:59inundated Bangladesh the same sort of
- 00:55:03thing and this is what's going to happen
- 00:55:05to populations and literally hundreds
- 00:55:07and hundreds of millions of people are
- 00:55:08going to be
- 00:55:10displaced so there are really three
- 00:55:13factors causing this problem the
- 00:55:15population explosion the scientific and
- 00:55:17technological Revolution and our way of
- 00:55:19thinking now the population explosion um
- 00:55:24is is is pretty obvious but it's it's
- 00:55:26really within one generation we've had
- 00:55:29uh this sort of change a massive massive
- 00:55:32change in in the earth's
- 00:55:34population I'm going to slip through the
- 00:55:36slide quickly this is what Sarah Palin
- 00:55:38calls the first modern humans
- 00:55:41but and uh there we go 250 million years
- 00:55:45ago in the Middle Ages that's where we
- 00:55:47were in the 1776 in the in the war
- 00:55:51second world war 2.3 billion so just
- 00:55:54within uh I was born in 1951 so just in
- 00:55:58my lifetime it's gone from you know
- 00:56:01about 3 billion to 9 billion it's
- 00:56:05tripled and it's all happening of course
- 00:56:07in the in developing nations
- 00:56:11predominantly and they're going to
- 00:56:13suffer the most from climate
- 00:56:20change food demand is going to go up
- 00:56:22Gwen diet talked a lot about this this
- 00:56:24is an enormous problem uh as count
- 00:56:26become unable to feed their populations
- 00:56:28it's going to cause tremendous stress uh
- 00:56:31and uh water demands and so
- 00:56:35forth um here's where where energy is
- 00:56:39being produced
- 00:56:40currently and again I want to skip
- 00:56:42through this fairly quickly um very
- 00:56:44little renewable energy uh little bit of
- 00:56:47hydro um a lot of gas a little bit of
- 00:56:51nuclear a lot of oil and a lot of coal
- 00:56:54we need to change this because this is
- 00:56:56this is not a good scheme this is uh
- 00:56:58this is causing a tremendous amount of
- 00:57:00pollution um it's also causing forests
- 00:57:03to be devastated and cut down this is a
- 00:57:07great shot this is the Dominican uh
- 00:57:09Republic um um uh it's actually the
- 00:57:12border between Haiti and the Dominican
- 00:57:14Republic so you can see what a
- 00:57:15difference uh political policies make so
- 00:57:19on the one side they've allowed
- 00:57:20everything to be chopped down on the
- 00:57:21other they haven't it's a striking
- 00:57:24difference uh he Brazil in
- 00:57:291975 um here's what it looked like in
- 00:57:352001 this is a sort of a shot that just
- 00:57:37shows the impact that the the impact of
- 00:57:40animals and farming on the
- 00:57:43land um
- 00:58:14so that was Bolivia same sort of thing
- 00:58:16happening forests are being burned
- 00:58:17causing
- 00:58:20pollution again in Brazil tremendous
- 00:58:24Devastation trying to find more land to
- 00:58:26feed to plant crops to feed people and
- 00:58:29then of course we've had tremendous
- 00:58:31wildfires in North America and we all
- 00:58:32know about what happened in Colona where
- 00:58:35we had tremendous wildfires started by a
- 00:58:37lightning
- 00:58:38strike
- 00:58:40um but fueled by a constant wind much
- 00:58:44stronger wind than than we normally
- 00:58:45would have expected and and a very very
- 00:58:47dry summer um a series of dry Summers
- 00:58:50over the decade pre preceding this
- 00:58:52similarly in uh Georgia and Florida
- 00:58:55again I'll skip through this La huge
- 00:58:57fires just recently again huge fires in
- 00:58:59LA in Malibu uh these fires were caused
- 00:59:02by high tension wires being blown
- 00:59:03together by the Santa Ana winds that
- 00:59:05were much stronger than usual and caused
- 00:59:07the wires to Arc that's happened again
- 00:59:09this year this is a great shot that I'm
- 00:59:12going to show you this is a a composite
- 00:59:14image created by the US Air Force um
- 00:59:17taken at night uh the red spots are
- 00:59:21actually here in Africa are actually
- 00:59:23cooking fires which is really
- 00:59:25fascinating
- 00:59:27uh the white spots are light street
- 00:59:30lights uh these yellow spots are
- 00:59:32actually gas flares from oil uh wells in
- 00:59:35Northern Russia and these blue dots here
- 00:59:37are the lights from the fishing fleet in
- 00:59:40the uh off the coast of Asia there it's
- 00:59:43a it's a wonderful shot here's a gas
- 00:59:47platform in um northern Russia you can
- 00:59:49see that's what you're seeing from the
- 00:59:52air so the second Point scientific and
- 00:59:55technological Revolution obviously
- 00:59:57science is great and it's done a lot for
- 01:00:00us um but uh there's a problem when you
- 01:00:04combine old habits with old technology
- 01:00:07you get predictable
- 01:00:09consequences when you combine old habits
- 01:00:11with new
- 01:00:13technology you get dramatically altered
- 01:00:17consequences so again you know in the
- 01:00:19old days when people went at each other
- 01:00:20with Spears and so forth the result was
- 01:00:23fairly predictable gruesome but somewhat
- 01:00:26predictable it's the Battle of aen cor
- 01:00:29World War
- 01:00:38II little different when you start using
- 01:00:41new
- 01:00:42technology again uh food and agriculture
- 01:00:45it's the same sort of problem in the old
- 01:00:47days with traditional farming methods uh
- 01:00:50you know we got good use out of the land
- 01:00:52but we didn't really rape it in the old
- 01:00:54days this is what a looked like um today
- 01:00:59this is what it looks like so um and and
- 01:01:03this is the late even bigger this is at
- 01:01:05the tar Sands I believe in Fort McMurray
- 01:01:08massive shovels that are causing
- 01:01:10tremendous Devastation and
- 01:01:13Mining fishing uh again you know long
- 01:01:17liner fishing nets have devastating
- 01:01:19consequences and especially when these
- 01:01:21Nets become break or become loose
- 01:01:24they're drifting around the sea
- 01:01:26untethered to anything just catching
- 01:01:28stuff constantly it causes tremendous uh
- 01:01:31Devastation of the Fisheries of the
- 01:01:32ocean life this is a a great a graphic
- 01:01:35that shows you uh um how Fisheries have
- 01:01:40just devastated this is insane I mean
- 01:01:42we've completely devastated the
- 01:01:45Fisheries all over the world by over
- 01:01:49fishing again an enormous uh problem
- 01:01:52irrigation is a great thing but when you
- 01:01:54overdo it it puts tremendous demands on
- 01:01:57the water
- 01:01:58supply Colorado River then Colorado
- 01:02:02River
- 01:02:03now this is the ARL Sea in Russia um
- 01:02:06Russia was uh this sea was formerly fed
- 01:02:09by Two Rivers uh that the Soviet Union
- 01:02:12decided to to divert to uh for
- 01:02:15irrigation for cotton crops and the the
- 01:02:19Aral Sea which was the I think the
- 01:02:21second or third largest Inland sea in
- 01:02:23the world dried up and as the shoreline
- 01:02:26receded the fishermen dug this canal
- 01:02:29desperately to try and be able to get
- 01:02:30their boats back to port and back out to
- 01:02:33the Sea and eventually uh they lost the
- 01:02:35battle so you have this bizarre uh shot
- 01:02:38of ships in an apparent desert uh which
- 01:02:42was once a great sea again with um in
- 01:02:46the old days this is how we used
- 01:02:48fire uh this is what we're doing
- 01:02:52today there's a great story about this
- 01:02:54shop we were looking at this in the
- 01:02:55presentation and one of our
- 01:02:57co-presenters Peter Corbin saw this shot
- 01:02:59and he said that looks familiar to me
- 01:03:01and then he realized that he actually
- 01:03:02used to live in one of these houses and
- 01:03:05his father actually helped build these
- 01:03:07uh plants apparently he's now moved on
- 01:03:09to Nuclear So
- 01:03:11Peter little embarrassed about it but uh
- 01:03:14this is at Celler fields in Britain it's
- 01:03:16a huge Coal Fired power
- 01:03:20station and this is again a great night
- 01:03:22shot you can see what's going on at
- 01:03:24night how many lights have being lit
- 01:03:26tremendous amount of energy being used
- 01:03:28to uh light all these lights up every
- 01:03:32night this is a great slide this
- 01:03:34actually shows you it's a sort of
- 01:03:36computer generated slide where we've
- 01:03:38expanded I'll play it over again we've
- 01:03:40expanded the uh continents to show their
- 01:03:44relative impact on global warming so of
- 01:03:47course not
- 01:03:48surprisingly uh the US is uh is a bad
- 01:03:52culprit um this is what it looks like
- 01:03:56per
- 01:03:58region in terms of carbon dioxide
- 01:04:00emissions the US of course is the
- 01:04:03greatest um but we really shouldn't feel
- 01:04:06smug in Canada because uh when you look
- 01:04:08at it on a per person
- 01:04:10basis this is what it looks like and in
- 01:04:15Canada we're actually just as bad as the
- 01:04:19us so we really need to do something
- 01:04:22about this in Canada
- 01:04:27that's the average for the world so
- 01:04:28we're way way way above
- 01:04:30average again this is a a great slide
- 01:04:33that shows Regional greenhouse gas gas
- 01:04:35emissions by province I was a bit this
- 01:04:37is a projected growth so this isn't an
- 01:04:40absolute number this is the projected
- 01:04:42growth of greenhouse gas emissions by
- 01:04:44province and I was surprised to see that
- 01:04:47BC uh has as high a projected growth as
- 01:04:49it does but it's apparently because of
- 01:04:51oil and the various other things and of
- 01:04:53course you know now with the uh the pine
- 01:04:55be
- 01:04:56uh um it's actually could even be worse
- 01:04:59than
- 01:05:02that Canada increasing 26% it's just not
- 01:05:05good enough I mean the Kyoto targets
- 01:05:07were measly to start with and we're not
- 01:05:08even Meeting those and I'll talk a
- 01:05:11little bit about that in a minute um
- 01:05:14grass emissions by province of course
- 01:05:16Alberta is the worst and the biggest
- 01:05:18offender of course is the tarand project
- 01:05:21now when we were being trained with Al
- 01:05:23Gore he was he was much more
- 01:05:26open about this issue in private than he
- 01:05:28would would be in public because it's a
- 01:05:30it's a bad it's a political uh issue but
- 01:05:33the tarand is a disgraceful uh you we
- 01:05:36can't put in any other way it's a
- 01:05:37disgraceful
- 01:05:38exploitation uh uh of uh of uh of the uh
- 01:05:43of the resource and uh they're
- 01:05:45disgracefully damaging the environment
- 01:05:48in Alberta and something really needs to
- 01:05:49be stopped here are some s taran's facts
- 01:05:52that I dug up I'm just in the middle of
- 01:05:53reading a great book uh by Andrew Nicor
- 01:05:57that I'll show you later about the
- 01:05:58tarand but um one barrel of oil or its
- 01:06:01equivalent produces 20 to 60 barrels of
- 01:06:04conventional oil in the tar Sands it
- 01:06:08only produces four to five barrels of
- 01:06:10bitumin so the tarand is a highly highly
- 01:06:13inefficient way of trying to get
- 01:06:15oil uh here's a Sy the syr mine in in
- 01:06:19Alberta uh every barrel of Taran bitumin
- 01:06:22creates three times as much carbon
- 01:06:24dioxide as it convention Barrel a barrel
- 01:06:26of conventional
- 01:06:29oil and it uses three barrels of water
- 01:06:32which ends up in tailor ponds it
- 01:06:33actually uses about 13 barrels of water
- 01:06:36from the Athabasca river which is one of
- 01:06:37the greatest watersheds and most
- 01:06:39important watersheds in the in the world
- 01:06:41we're draining 13 barrels of water out
- 01:06:43of it to make every single barrel uh of
- 01:06:47uh of of oil of ban and three of those
- 01:06:51barrels end up getting dumped in these
- 01:06:53horrendous tailing ponds that are so big
- 01:06:55that you can actually see them from
- 01:06:57space um and there was recently a um a
- 01:07:00situation where a flight of ducks
- 01:07:02because they can't tell the difference
- 01:07:03landing on the tailing spawns 500 Ducks
- 01:07:05died and in fact every year thousands
- 01:07:07and thousands of ducks and um and water
- 01:07:10foul die by accidentally landing on
- 01:07:13these uh tailing sponds thinking they're
- 01:07:15Lakes um just a few more facts uh oil
- 01:07:19and gas destined for the US accounted
- 01:07:22for a third of our increase in
- 01:07:24greenhouse gas
- 01:07:26uh this was from Canada's environment
- 01:07:29commissioner now that's approximately
- 01:07:32the same amount by which Canada failed
- 01:07:34to meet its Kyoto targets so this oil
- 01:07:36and gas that we're digging up damaging
- 01:07:38the environment ruining our ability to
- 01:07:41meet kyot targets we're not even using
- 01:07:43it we're actually importing oil and gas
- 01:07:46uh it's going to the United States now
- 01:07:48when youan gelinas wrote a fairly
- 01:07:51scaling report on this of course she was
- 01:07:53immediately fired uh as you would expect
- 01:07:57and uh that was the end of her so you
- 01:08:00know this is what a tailing pond looks
- 01:08:02like it's absolutely horrific it's
- 01:08:04horrendous these things are miles wide
- 01:08:07uh they originally thought that the clay
- 01:08:09would settle out fairly quickly that the
- 01:08:11mixt they put a mixture sort of clay and
- 01:08:14oil and heavy metals and general nasty
- 01:08:16Gunk into the pond they originally
- 01:08:18thought that the clay would settle out
- 01:08:19and they'd be able to clean it all up uh
- 01:08:21they've now concluded that they were
- 01:08:23wrong and they think it's going to take
- 01:08:24a thousand years for the clay to settle
- 01:08:27out of these tailing ponds so these are
- 01:08:28just at
- 01:08:29carbunkle uh uh on the face of a
- 01:08:32landscape in Alberta what's even worse
- 01:08:34is they're digging up Pete bogs and
- 01:08:37boreal forests which are huge carbon
- 01:08:40sinks and absorbers of carbon and
- 01:08:42replacing them with h this so it's just
- 01:08:45a it's got to stop I mean it's just a
- 01:08:47disgraceful uh situation uh the Alberta
- 01:08:50Government is completely out of control
- 01:08:52on this issue they're holding security
- 01:08:54deposits of $5,000 an acre uh uh for
- 01:08:57from people if they want to if they want
- 01:08:59to mine the tar Sands uh the only area
- 01:09:01that's ever been cleaned up and it
- 01:09:04didn't even have a tailings pond cost
- 01:09:0646,000 bucks an acre so you can see
- 01:09:08where this is going uh you know also you
- 01:09:11know we're burning huge amounts of
- 01:09:13natural gas I mean this is what's so
- 01:09:15nutty some people say it's like burning
- 01:09:16a Picasso to heat your house they're
- 01:09:18burning huge amounts of natural gas to
- 01:09:20get this very very dirty oil out of the
- 01:09:23ground we know that there isn't enough
- 01:09:25natural gas available we have used up
- 01:09:28all the natural gas long time before all
- 01:09:29the oil sands have been dug up out of
- 01:09:31the ground so now they're saying oh well
- 01:09:32no problem we'll just put a bunch of
- 01:09:33nuclear plants up there you know to
- 01:09:36solve the problem so this has got to
- 01:09:37stop it's completely uh completely out
- 01:09:39of control and it's a disgrace for
- 01:09:42Canada so we really need to change our
- 01:09:44way of thinking and this is a great
- 01:09:46graphic that Al Gore used in the movie
- 01:09:48here's the Frog turns out if a frog
- 01:09:51jumps into a pot of boiling water he
- 01:09:53immediately jumps out again
- 01:09:56but if you put that frog into a pot of
- 01:09:58cool water and heat it up he sits there
- 01:10:01and waits and waits and waits and waits
- 01:10:04and
- 01:10:06waits until he's rescued because you
- 01:10:09have to look after the Frog there he
- 01:10:12is so here are some misconceptions um is
- 01:10:16there disagreement among scientists
- 01:10:17about whether the problem is real or not
- 01:10:19no there is not uh uh there is not uh
- 01:10:24the debate's completely completely over
- 01:10:26uh everybody agrees that this is a
- 01:10:28problem even George Bush laterally
- 01:10:31agreed that this was finally an issue
- 01:10:32and I was running out of time in in
- 01:10:34office uh it's the strongest consensus
- 01:10:37that's ever
- 01:10:39developed uh you know we've badly
- 01:10:41underestimated the degree of damage from
- 01:10:43the risks of climate
- 01:10:45change um and everybody has to do
- 01:10:47something about this particularly in
- 01:10:49Canada we really really need to get on
- 01:10:51the on the case here in Canada and deal
- 01:10:53with
- 01:10:54this has a great stat the number of
- 01:10:56scientific studies dealing with climate
- 01:10:58change uh published in scientific
- 01:11:00journals over the previous 10 years it's
- 01:11:01more than that now this was from uh
- 01:11:042004 um the number
- 01:11:07disagreeing uh they did a sample the
- 01:11:09number that disagreed with the global
- 01:11:12consensus that greenhouse gas pollution
- 01:11:14has caused most of the global warming
- 01:11:16zero not one so there's this is not
- 01:11:20something that's in dispute there are
- 01:11:22some great sites on the internet so if
- 01:11:24any of you run into skep ICS who say
- 01:11:26well yeah what about this and what about
- 01:11:28that I won get maybe we can get into if
- 01:11:29we have time for questions but there are
- 01:11:31some great sites on the internet that go
- 01:11:33through hi Amber I can see at the back
- 01:11:35there that go through uh some of these
- 01:11:38things and uh you can find out a lot of
- 01:11:40the answers to those
- 01:11:42questions um this was a great uh uh uh
- 01:11:46of course this is L thankfully we're
- 01:11:48hoping with Barack Obama in the White
- 01:11:50House this is all going to become
- 01:11:51something we don't need to worry about
- 01:11:53but uh the Bush Administration as we we
- 01:11:55all know behav disgracefully on this
- 01:11:57whole issue and this was something that
- 01:11:59the uh tobacco industry did more doctors
- 01:12:02smok camels so uh when you listen to
- 01:12:04guys like James enoff the ridiculous
- 01:12:07senator from I'm not sure where he's
- 01:12:09from talking about global warming these
- 01:12:10guys are dinosaurs and uh luckily I
- 01:12:13think they're all going to be gone
- 01:12:14mostly gone or at least out of power
- 01:12:16fairly soon so in fact what's happening
- 01:12:19is that what the Bush Administration was
- 01:12:20doing is they were going from the old
- 01:12:21tobacco industry Playbook and uh uh they
- 01:12:25were actually fairly successful again uh
- 01:12:29number of reviewed scientific articles
- 01:12:30number that said there was a doubt zero
- 01:12:34but if you look at the
- 01:12:35media you know when you get CNN saying
- 01:12:38we've got somebody for we've got
- 01:12:39somebody against it's almost uh evenly
- 01:12:42divided so the media is very good at
- 01:12:45taking a ridiculous position and a
- 01:12:47sensible position a ridiculous position
- 01:12:49that almost nobody believes in a
- 01:12:51sensible position that almost everybody
- 01:12:52believes in and they put two people and
- 01:12:54give them equal time well the public see
- 01:12:56this and they think well this is this
- 01:12:58seems like sort of even you know so
- 01:12:59maybe you do maybe you don't Point
- 01:13:01Counterpoint well you know and it's
- 01:13:03really misled uh the
- 01:13:06public uh when they're interviewed so
- 01:13:08it's no wonder that people are confused
- 01:13:10by this this is a great saying by Upton
- 01:13:12Sinclair it's difficult to get a man to
- 01:13:14understand something when his salary
- 01:13:15depends upon his not understanding it
- 01:13:17you know George Bush put a former oil
- 01:13:20lobbyist in charge of the environment I
- 01:13:22mean how ridiculous it's it's an insult
- 01:13:24to to everybody's
- 01:13:26intelligence um do we have to choose
- 01:13:29between the economy and the environment
- 01:13:30of course we don't uh this is a great
- 01:13:33slide from the Geniuses at the uh press
- 01:13:35office in the white house uh this slide
- 01:13:37down here in particular uh from a press
- 01:13:39briefing it's sort of a funny one and Al
- 01:13:41Gore talks about it in the movie where
- 01:13:43they've got this uh balance you know
- 01:13:45with gold bars on one side and the
- 01:13:47planet you know it's pretty tricky
- 01:13:49decision here we need somebody with a
- 01:13:51clipboard to figure it all out and take
- 01:13:53notes it's a ridiculous uh argument of
- 01:13:56course it's a completely ridiculous
- 01:13:57argument and in fact as we're now
- 01:13:59discovering uh you know the green
- 01:14:01economy is really where we need to go um
- 01:14:04you know we're all hearing a lot on the
- 01:14:06uh news right now about General Motors
- 01:14:08and Ford and the big three automakers
- 01:14:09going bust um this is part of the
- 01:14:12problem right here here are the few
- 01:14:15economy standards uh around the world
- 01:14:18there's Canada here's the US pathetic
- 01:14:21you know these and this is driving the
- 01:14:22car companies this is the oil Lobby
- 01:14:24causing the
- 01:14:26California uh tried to enact an
- 01:14:30amendment uh this is China
- 01:14:32incidentally
- 01:14:34uh to increase uh the uh mile per gallon
- 01:14:40requirements of cars the oil companies
- 01:14:42fought this in court because it was
- 01:14:44obviously they said a completely
- 01:14:45ridiculously high uh objective that uh
- 01:14:49you know we would have to Within by 2016
- 01:14:52make cars that are not quite as good as
- 01:14:54the cars that China makes today
- 01:14:56obviously that's completely ridiculous
- 01:14:58and unachievable well it it's absurd I
- 01:15:01mean uh GM were talking recently I mean
- 01:15:05as recently as a few years ago the the
- 01:15:07president of GM was saying that he
- 01:15:08thought hybrid cars were a silly idea
- 01:15:10you know um this has got to stop and the
- 01:15:14result is it's going to the market
- 01:15:15forces are going to take care of it
- 01:15:17because um these companies are simply
- 01:15:18going to go out of business if they
- 01:15:20don't change their
- 01:15:23ways and you know generally speaking
- 01:15:26we'll skip through these but generally
- 01:15:28speaking U the CEOs and chairmans of big
- 01:15:31companies are getting it they're now
- 01:15:32starting to realize that uh you know a
- 01:15:34green economy actually is a good thing
- 01:15:37and uh uh you know it's going to be
- 01:15:40something that we have to do I think
- 01:15:41it's probably going to be the creator of
- 01:15:43the the biggest creator of jobs um in
- 01:15:45the latter part of this
- 01:15:47Century so the other problem that people
- 01:15:49say is well oh you this is so big I
- 01:15:51don't think we can even fix this anyway
- 01:15:53so uh it's just disaster well it turns
- 01:15:56out that's completely wrong the good
- 01:15:59news about this whole problem is that we
- 01:16:01already have all of the technology that
- 01:16:03we need to fix this problem today we can
- 01:16:06do we have everything that we need uh
- 01:16:08with the wind farms uh with
- 01:16:11solar uh Al Gore used a came up with a
- 01:16:14great stat that I thought was really
- 01:16:17really really wonderful he said that if
- 01:16:18you uh if you made a solar Field 100
- 01:16:21miles by 100 miles and stuck it in the
- 01:16:23desert somewhere where the the sunshines
- 01:16:26that would create enough electricity to
- 01:16:28power
- 01:16:29America so that's not very big you know
- 01:16:31I often fly down to LA and Las Vegas for
- 01:16:34trade shows and so forth and when you
- 01:16:35look out of the window of the airplane
- 01:16:37you can see vast
- 01:16:39areas uh of gravel where the Sun's
- 01:16:41shining all day long with no people in
- 01:16:43them so if we were to start building
- 01:16:45these solar Fields um it would we could
- 01:16:48fix the problem we have the and it would
- 01:16:50create huge numbers of jobs so this is
- 01:16:53this again is not rocket science we
- 01:16:54don't need to invent uh uh nuclear
- 01:16:58fusion or or cold fusion or anything
- 01:17:00like that we can do it this way I mean
- 01:17:02and we've got all the technology to do
- 01:17:03it we can create jobs doing it uh and
- 01:17:06it's it's absolutely
- 01:17:08flexible so this is uh this is where we
- 01:17:11need to get
- 01:17:12to again this slide is pretty
- 01:17:14self-explanatory it's the Renewable
- 01:17:16Energy Future and you can see that um uh
- 01:17:19this is where we're at
- 01:17:22today um
- 01:17:25here's how we can reduce it by uh having
- 01:17:29some uh electricity end use efficiency
- 01:17:31things like little things like turning
- 01:17:33your thermostat down a bit if you have
- 01:17:35electric heat unplugging appliances that
- 01:17:38are drawing power a lot of appliances
- 01:17:41TVs for example anything with a remote
- 01:17:43control draws electricity all the time
- 01:17:45even when it's turned off so if you
- 01:17:46start unplugging those or stick them in
- 01:17:48a power bar and just switch them off
- 01:17:49when you're not using them uh
- 01:17:51transmission if we changed out swapped
- 01:17:53out the transmission grid to to more
- 01:17:55efficient transmission lines we could
- 01:17:56get a tremendous amount of uh efficiency
- 01:17:58increased efficiency uh in in
- 01:18:01electricity and
- 01:18:03use uh we can reduce it this much uh
- 01:18:07going to better passenger vehicles just
- 01:18:10you can still have gas powered cars but
- 01:18:12make them be little cars instead of big
- 01:18:14cars something you really notice in
- 01:18:16Europe is everybody drives smaller cars
- 01:18:18even here in Canada you really see it
- 01:18:20everybody's driving around in little
- 01:18:21tiny cars in in in Europe a lot of them
- 01:18:24I stood on the street corner where my
- 01:18:26mom and dad live in Southern England I
- 01:18:27was watching the cars go by and it
- 01:18:30seemed like about a third of the cars
- 01:18:32were not only little they were diesel
- 01:18:34powered where you get double the fuel
- 01:18:35economy so we need to just start doing
- 01:18:37that sort of thing more particularly in
- 01:18:39America in the US they need to do it
- 01:18:41again the other Transportation
- 01:18:44efficiencies uh renewable energy of
- 01:18:46course solar wind uh geothermal and so
- 01:18:49on and we're back down to where we need
- 01:18:51to be we're back down here when we were
- 01:18:53in the 70s so we can EAS get there just
- 01:18:55by doing these things and if we did some
- 01:18:58grander things like the solar field idea
- 01:19:00it would make a massive massive
- 01:19:02difference carbon capture and
- 01:19:04sequestration and Supply efficiencies
- 01:19:06even more there are some issues around
- 01:19:08carbon capture and sequestration that we
- 01:19:09can talk about later it's not quite as
- 01:19:11clear that uh it's as benign as some
- 01:19:14people might think so but still there
- 01:19:16are things that can be
- 01:19:18done so now the question is uh you know
- 01:19:21what can you do well there's here's a
- 01:19:22bunch of
- 01:19:23ideas and you can can save energy at
- 01:19:25home um you can switch to uh energy
- 01:19:28efficient light bulbs uh we did our
- 01:19:30whole house in westbound with these
- 01:19:32bulbs and it's it's great the new ones
- 01:19:34have exactly the same light quality as a
- 01:19:36regular the old you know when they first
- 01:19:38came out it you looked like you were in
- 01:19:39a sort of La laundromat you know when
- 01:19:42you put them on the new ones aren't like
- 01:19:44that they're actually really quite good
- 01:19:45so you can you can switch off the lights
- 01:19:48when you leave the room that's a real
- 01:19:49simple solution uh trying to get that
- 01:19:51done in our house is a little tricky but
- 01:19:53uh uh I now go around I just I'm
- 01:19:56constantly turning the lights off
- 01:19:57because we've got lights burning in all
- 01:19:58sorts of rooms with no people in them
- 01:20:00you know so that's a really simple thing
- 01:20:02that you can do and it'll make a big
- 01:20:03difference um you can um take shorter
- 01:20:07showers something I'm learning learning
- 01:20:10to do with my my wife's insistance you
- 01:20:13can if you want to if you're really
- 01:20:14fancy you can buy one of these new uh
- 01:20:16fancy shower heads where less water
- 01:20:18squirts up but you still get a decent
- 01:20:20shower um again um simple things you can
- 01:20:24buy energy star appliances so whenever
- 01:20:26you buy a fridge or dishwasher make sure
- 01:20:28it's an energy star Appliance we're just
- 01:20:30in the process of switching out our
- 01:20:31furnace at home we've got an Old Furnace
- 01:20:33that isn't actually broken but I want to
- 01:20:36get a new one and we're going to switch
- 01:20:37it to a new energy star efficient
- 01:20:38furnace and it's it's I'm told it's
- 01:20:40going to be almost 40% more efficient
- 01:20:42than the original furnace because our
- 01:20:44furnace is about 20 years old so that's
- 01:20:46something it's expensive but it's
- 01:20:47something that you you can do and it'll
- 01:20:48make a big difference if you have a
- 01:20:50house um uh other things that you can do
- 01:20:53I talked about this you can reduce
- 01:20:55standby power waste unplug those things
- 01:20:57that anything that has a remote when
- 01:20:59it's off it's still on so you need to to
- 01:21:02to some extent so you need to unplug
- 01:21:04them to reduce standby power waste uh
- 01:21:06you can buy a more efficient vehicle um
- 01:21:09you know if you can't afford to do that
- 01:21:11you can just buy a Caron offset for the
- 01:21:13one you've already got I've done that on
- 01:21:15my car I drive a mini and my wife
- 01:21:17unfortunately drives a much larger car
- 01:21:19she'd rather have a she wants a hybrid
- 01:21:20but we can't afford it right now but
- 01:21:22what I have done is I've offset all the
- 01:21:23cars
- 01:21:25um so you can actually go to a place
- 01:21:26called Terra pass and you buy an offset
- 01:21:30where you actually you actually pay
- 01:21:31money you go to the website and it asks
- 01:21:33you how what sort of car you have and
- 01:21:35how many miles you you drive a year and
- 01:21:37it calculates the amount of gas that you
- 01:21:39would use and then you can actually buy
- 01:21:41uh a carbon offset uh for that car uh I
- 01:21:44think this is a really really great idea
- 01:21:46because if you just sell your car and
- 01:21:49buy a more efficient one that car is not
- 01:21:51going to go into a scrap Heap unless
- 01:21:53it's a really old car somebody else is
- 01:21:54going to just start driving it just like
- 01:21:56you were so I I think there's a lot to
- 01:21:59be said for not selling the car and and
- 01:22:04buying a h and buying a hybrid it's
- 01:22:06expensive to do anyway hybrids are great
- 01:22:07don't get me wrong but it's expensive to
- 01:22:09do that there's a lot to be sent for
- 01:22:11just offsetting the car that you already
- 01:22:12have make sure it's maintained properly
- 01:22:14pump the tires up a little bit more uh
- 01:22:17you know everybody laughed at marack
- 01:22:18Obama at least the Republicans did when
- 01:22:20he told people to pump their tires up
- 01:22:21well it turns out it makes a it does
- 01:22:22make a difference and if everybody did
- 01:22:24it it would would make a difference it's
- 01:22:25it's good science so there are things
- 01:22:27that you can do these Terra pass things
- 01:22:30are surprisingly inexpensive I think my
- 01:22:33mini was like 60 bucks for the whole
- 01:22:36year or something so and essentially
- 01:22:38what happens is when you buy the carbon
- 01:22:40uh uh crit the carbon offset um that
- 01:22:44money goes to uh uh renewable energy
- 01:22:47planting trees and so on so you're still
- 01:22:49creating the carbon dioxide but you've
- 01:22:51actually paid money to offset it so I
- 01:22:53think it's a really great thing to
- 01:22:55consider um obviously use mass transit
- 01:22:59you know the mass transit is getting
- 01:23:00better and better now in Vancouver with
- 01:23:02the new line to the airport and um in a
- 01:23:04lot of cities in the world where I come
- 01:23:06from in London everybody uses mass
- 01:23:08transit all the time I mean you know uh
- 01:23:10I I have a pal in New York I was talking
- 01:23:12to him about cars and his eyes were
- 01:23:14glazing
- 01:23:15over and uh and he said to me well
- 01:23:17actually I don't drive and I I thought
- 01:23:20what and he said well I've never I just
- 01:23:23never bothered you know and a lot of
- 01:23:25people you don't so you know use public
- 01:23:27he just used public transit all his life
- 01:23:31um so that's something that can be done
- 01:23:33uh fly less flying is a night I fly far
- 01:23:36more than I would like I'm flying a lot
- 01:23:38less now um you know and I I say to I
- 01:23:41say to guys who are in business like me
- 01:23:43you know everybody's quick to jump on a
- 01:23:45plane and fly across hell's off acre to
- 01:23:47do a meeting often times if you just do
- 01:23:50a conference call you can use Free
- 01:23:51Conference it's even free you can use a
- 01:23:54you you don't need to go you know if you
- 01:23:56get yourself a good conference phone
- 01:23:58eliminate the flight it's less wear and
- 01:24:00tear on you and much less wear and tear
- 01:24:01on the
- 01:24:02environment uh frivolous flying is I got
- 01:24:05a real problem with I won't get into it
- 01:24:07now but I call it frivolous flying where
- 01:24:09people are just flying all over the
- 01:24:10place uh there's so much to see just
- 01:24:14right here in BC you really don't need
- 01:24:15to go anywhere I you know I know a lot
- 01:24:17of people do want to travel and I did
- 01:24:19when I was in my 20s too but there's so
- 01:24:22much to see just around here so try fly
- 01:24:24less uh and it's really all about this
- 01:24:27uh I talked about buying offsets already
- 01:24:29another this is a this is actually my
- 01:24:31grandfather's Kettle so my mother says
- 01:24:35this is a good English saying she says
- 01:24:37buite cheap and you'll buy twice so buy
- 01:24:40stuff that's good and make it last this
- 01:24:43Kettle was actually his father's Kettle
- 01:24:46and for a while it was buried in the
- 01:24:47garden and used it as an antenna for his
- 01:24:49radio right and it still works and I
- 01:24:53polish it we have't front of our
- 01:24:54fireplace but it actually works
- 01:24:55perfectly so if you buy something of
- 01:24:57quality it it it just buy less stuff buy
- 01:25:00good stuff so it'll last you and you
- 01:25:03know this renew just constantly buying
- 01:25:05stuff and chucking it out and buying
- 01:25:06again chucking it out buying again don't
- 01:25:09do that this is a much better
- 01:25:11idea uh actually uh eat less meat it
- 01:25:14turns out that um uh creating protein in
- 01:25:18animals uses creates way way more damage
- 01:25:21on the environment than if you ate
- 01:25:23vegetables so we're not saying don't eat
- 01:25:24eat meat we're not saying everybody
- 01:25:25become a vegan or a vegetarian but just
- 01:25:28eat a little bit less meat and more
- 01:25:30vegetables and that's good for the
- 01:25:32environment U buy Goods that are made
- 01:25:34locally as well you know again uh buy BC
- 01:25:39cucumbers not the ones that are made
- 01:25:40that come from Mexico because there's a
- 01:25:42huge amount of fuel used so just take a
- 01:25:44little bit of time when you're in the
- 01:25:45shops and just say Okay I want to buy
- 01:25:47it's good for our economy and it's good
- 01:25:49for the
- 01:25:51environment composting we've got one of
- 01:25:53these in our garden is great to do I
- 01:25:55don't don't know if any of you have
- 01:25:56Gardens but composting is a great thing
- 01:25:58to do it's great for the garden and it's
- 01:25:59uh less stress on
- 01:26:03landfills having said all of that if we
- 01:26:05do everything that we can do we can
- 01:26:07really only impact on about a third of
- 01:26:09the problem as individuals and as Al
- 01:26:11Gore says big problems uh need big
- 01:26:13Solutions so really the most important
- 01:26:16thing uh is we have to make sure that
- 01:26:18people we electing to government are
- 01:26:20doing the right thing because they have
- 01:26:21the biggest impact U on what we do um
- 01:26:24and it's just essential um that we uh
- 01:26:28are individually each one of us is
- 01:26:30really a catalyst for change um part of
- 01:26:32the reason that I'm here doing this
- 01:26:33talking to you I'm hoping you'll go and
- 01:26:35talk to other people and I'm hoping that
- 01:26:37some of you maybe will even know another
- 01:26:39group that you can get me a gig to go
- 01:26:41and talk to as well everybody needs to
- 01:26:43talk to everybody else and and just get
- 01:26:45the awareness up that's what this
- 01:26:47presentation is really all about it's
- 01:26:48just raising people's level of awareness
- 01:26:51uh to the problem you've got to take
- 01:26:53political action
- 01:26:54we've got to have people running this
- 01:26:56country who get it and the current group
- 01:26:58don't get it they they're Rel I mean I
- 01:27:00think with Barack Obama being elected
- 01:27:02into the US they're starting to have to
- 01:27:03move a little bit more his way and I
- 01:27:05think he's going to do the right thing
- 01:27:07but the current gang don't get it the
- 01:27:09Alberta taran's project is a is a a
- 01:27:12stark example of how badly they don't
- 01:27:14get it so uh we need to make sure that
- 01:27:17um people that you should
- 01:27:20vote for people who are going to do the
- 01:27:22right thing but you also need to speak
- 01:27:23out and get other people voting for
- 01:27:25people who are going to do the right
- 01:27:26thing uh here's everybody who ratified
- 01:27:28Kyoto and Steven Harper was even talking
- 01:27:31at one point in time about
- 01:27:33unratified it although we've made a
- 01:27:35pathetic attempt at trying to meet our
- 01:27:37targets uh was not ratified by the US
- 01:27:40and Australia Australia had an election
- 01:27:44uh they're on board and now it looks
- 01:27:46like the us is going to hopefully get on
- 01:27:49board as well with Barack Obama in
- 01:27:51charge we can only hope we need to make
- 01:27:52sure that we do our part though and
- 01:27:54Canada uh locally we're doing pretty
- 01:27:57well with all of these municipalities on
- 01:27:59board uh federally not so good but
- 01:28:02locally the will is
- 01:28:06there you know so and I won't again we
- 01:28:09won't belab this but the point here is
- 01:28:10this is supposed to be a sort of an
- 01:28:12inspirational slide where we're saying
- 01:28:13look we've done all this other stuff
- 01:28:15let's fix this problem and it absolutely
- 01:28:17is something that we can
- 01:28:19fix
- 01:28:21um it's just an issue of will it's not
- 01:28:23an issue of Technology it's simply an
- 01:28:26issue of will nothing more or less than
- 01:28:29that again uh you know some big changes
- 01:28:33have have occurred as a result of
- 01:28:36effort we'll skip through these very
- 01:28:38very quickly a man on the moon if we can
- 01:28:40do that we can surely uh fix this
- 01:28:42problem uh the CFC the whole in the
- 01:28:44ozone uh was an enormous problem many
- 01:28:47people thought it was
- 01:28:48unfixable um now uh as a result of um uh
- 01:28:53of effort that have been made there's
- 01:28:55been a tremendous success story and
- 01:28:58chlorofluorocarbon uh production has
- 01:29:00dropped dramatically and we're well on
- 01:29:03the way to fixing the
- 01:29:07problem so uh this is the um this is
- 01:29:11really the uh the point
- 01:29:14here this is a great shot here um if I
- 01:29:17can play it of um again this was taken
- 01:29:21by the Galileo spacecraft as it was uh
- 01:29:24heading out into space Carl San said
- 01:29:26turn the cameras around let's get one uh
- 01:29:28one more shot and then later on when it
- 01:29:30was I think 45 million miles out in
- 01:29:33space he took this shot back pointed the
- 01:29:35cameras just before it went out of range
- 01:29:36back at Earth and there we are here this
- 01:29:38is the car San's famous famous pale blue
- 01:29:42dot and uh there's a lot of space around
- 01:29:45us that's our home it's our only home
- 01:29:48and we got to do our best to look after
- 01:29:50it it's absolutely critical
- 01:29:55so that's really it what I'd like to do
- 01:29:56now is um take any questions and Amber
- 01:29:59church is here Amber why did you come up
- 01:30:01so Amber is a probably would have been
- 01:30:04better if she'd given the presentation
- 01:30:05but anyway you got me instead but
- 01:30:08Amber's here as well Amber is uh was
- 01:30:10also trained by alore in Montreal and uh
- 01:30:14what are you now you're studying uh
- 01:30:16glaciers what did I got it wrong right
- 01:30:18so um I'm a master student here at SFU
- 01:30:20and I study glacial Retreats and climate
- 01:30:22change in the Yukon I brought in the big
- 01:30:24guns for the question period you see mic
- 01:30:27uh yeah I study Glacier Retreat and
- 01:30:29climate change in the Yukon and the
- 01:30:31effects on Northern River systems as
- 01:30:33well um my two second brief background
- 01:30:37is I am also a climate action
- 01:30:40facilitator for the ministry of
- 01:30:41environment for the BC Ministry of
- 01:30:43environment here in Metro Vancouver I
- 01:30:45was trained with Al Gore with with Nick
- 01:30:49um I was part of the official uh youth
- 01:30:52delegation International youth
- 01:30:54delegation for the United Nations
- 01:30:56climate change meetings so I have
- 01:30:57negotiated climate change as an
- 01:30:59international level uh as part of the
- 01:31:02official youth delegation to those
- 01:31:04meetings and I also work on adaptation
- 01:31:07to climate change with a group here at
- 01:31:09SFU and lots of work with Nos and works
- 01:31:12with climate projects so that's who I am
- 01:31:14and why I'm now standing up here as well
- 01:31:16good so Eddie let's see if we if you
- 01:31:18anybody's got any questions we'll do our
- 01:31:20best to um I'll do my best to get abber
- 01:31:22to answer them
- 01:31:25so oh no I'm just kidding I'll try
- 01:31:33to
- 01:31:35right get um I think with this issue um
- 01:31:40it's obvious that like right now in the
- 01:31:42world we've reached a uh carrying
- 01:31:44capacity in various aspects and this is
- 01:31:47one kind of dimension of it sorry my
- 01:31:49voice is really bad right now and um I'm
- 01:31:53just curious um when it comes to the um
- 01:31:56International you know e economy it's a
- 01:31:59competitive playing field and this is a
- 01:32:01Cooperative initiative
- 01:32:04sorry terrible anyways um I'm just
- 01:32:08wondering if if that is something that
- 01:32:10needs to be considered is cooperation is
- 01:32:13required for this and right now we're in
- 01:32:15a competitive International economy and
- 01:32:19so it's completely two different
- 01:32:20paradigms for individuals and businesses
- 01:32:24and uh governments so I'm just curious
- 01:32:27if anybody's like kind of thought about
- 01:32:29that go for it go for it yeah yeah all
- 01:32:32right so a couple points there in terms
- 01:32:35yeah no worries in terms of the
- 01:32:37competitive economy uh I don't if you
- 01:32:40guys have heard about what Europe is
- 01:32:41doing with their cap and trade system so
- 01:32:45we are now essentially working in a
- 01:32:48system in many countries of the world
- 01:32:50where there is not only a price on
- 01:32:51carbon but it it's traded in the same
- 01:32:55way that we trade anything on the stock
- 01:32:57market so there's a value and what
- 01:32:59happens is essentially in the cap and
- 01:33:01trade system the idea is that there's a
- 01:33:03certain amount of credits that are
- 01:33:05varable carbon credits essentially a
- 01:33:06right to pollute and everybody has a
- 01:33:09certain level of those if you are a
- 01:33:11green company you don't need those you
- 01:33:14can sell them to the highest bidder if
- 01:33:16you are a company that is polluting it's
- 01:33:18going to cost you to buy them from
- 01:33:19someone else each year the number of
- 01:33:21credits available goes down so the cost
- 01:33:23of carbon goes up eventually it it makes
- 01:33:27more economic sense in a competitive
- 01:33:29market to improve your industry and the
- 01:33:32amount you're emitting that does to keep
- 01:33:35emitting emitting so essentially we
- 01:33:37putting up price on pollution the um
- 01:33:40carbon taxes that we've got here in BC
- 01:33:42are attempting to do the same thing but
- 01:33:43they're doing it blanket across the
- 01:33:45board so you are also charged for
- 01:33:47example for driving your car
- 01:33:50so uh many areas are actually implying
- 01:33:52both so that in both targets consumers
- 01:33:55but also essentially industry ends up
- 01:33:57getting a double charge because the ca
- 01:33:59trade goes for the big industrial
- 01:34:01polluters so that's one way to work
- 01:34:03within the competitive system it's
- 01:34:05working incredibly well in Europe they
- 01:34:07people are making a lot of money off of
- 01:34:09it now uh here in BC we do have the
- 01:34:11carbon tax as you know they tried to
- 01:34:13bring it in federally if the Liberals
- 01:34:15had come to power the Liberals did not
- 01:34:17come to power so we will not yet have a
- 01:34:19federal carbon tax although some
- 01:34:21provinces are inating one BC being the
- 01:34:23first First Ontario is working that way
- 01:34:25as well uh we also in terms of cap and
- 01:34:28trade California has been spearheading a
- 01:34:31cap and trade system for North America
- 01:34:33BC has signed on to that uh so as
- 01:34:36Manitoba and I think Ontario is getting
- 01:34:38involved as well and quite a few US
- 01:34:40states so I think within the next few
- 01:34:42years we will see uh this go
- 01:34:45International uh various areas of the
- 01:34:47world have their own Australia has their
- 01:34:48own system the difficulty we're working
- 01:34:51through now is trying to figure out how
- 01:34:52to do it internationally so there's one
- 01:34:55set price on carbet internationally so
- 01:34:57that's in terms of your uh competitive
- 01:35:00market that's the answer there in terms
- 01:35:03of cooperation I think internationally
- 01:35:07there's a very strong recognition for
- 01:35:08that and that's what the UN process is
- 01:35:10about so the United Nations framework
- 01:35:12convention on climate change is what you
- 01:35:15guys hear about every every year with
- 01:35:16their they're called the cop meetings
- 01:35:18which are the convention Convention of
- 01:35:20the parties uh the next one is in
- 01:35:22Copenhagen uh starting in a few
- 01:35:25weeks that's where all of the parties
- 01:35:27come together every country pretty much
- 01:35:29every country in the world comes
- 01:35:30together to try and negotiate the
- 01:35:31international process and it is all
- 01:35:33about cooperation it is very very slow I
- 01:35:36have literally watched a room full of
- 01:35:39incredibly brilliant people discuss the
- 01:35:41word the for three hours and that sounds
- 01:35:44awful and insane and it's incredibly
- 01:35:46frustrating uh when you know how fast
- 01:35:49the action needs to occur occur but that
- 01:35:51word the means something very different
- 01:35:52to Saudi Arabia than it means to China
- 01:35:54than it means to Canada and in order for
- 01:35:57cooperation to work it there is a
- 01:35:59certain amount of it does have to go at
- 01:36:02a certain Pace because you actually need
- 01:36:04everyone on board if you don't have
- 01:36:06buyin from all the parties it won't make
- 01:36:08any difference that's what happened with
- 01:36:09kyota we didn't have all the Buy in from
- 01:36:11everybody involved when the US didn't
- 01:36:13sign we didn't have a hell of a lot of
- 01:36:15leg to stand on to be honest so we need
- 01:36:18to we're working towards consensus based
- 01:36:21decision making to make sure that
- 01:36:22everyone Buys in everyone agrees and
- 01:36:23everyone moves forward hopefully now
- 01:36:26with the change at government in the US
- 01:36:27we should see some really good forward
- 01:36:29movement in Copenhagen because they've
- 01:36:31been the ones dragging their feet the
- 01:36:32most Canada is now the ones dragging
- 01:36:35their feet the most so if you really
- 01:36:37want to do something right now you
- 01:36:38should be writing to our politicians now
- 01:36:40and asking them to take positive action
- 01:36:41in Copenhagen because suddenly we're the
- 01:36:43ones left out in the cold going no we
- 01:36:45don't want to do it Go yep thanks Amber
- 01:36:49so I mean we're the Bad Boys and I'm I'm
- 01:36:50hoping that um you know I think the way
- 01:36:52the Taran problem is going to be fixed
- 01:36:55is by forcing them to pay that you know
- 01:36:58what they should be paying uh for the
- 01:37:00carbon that's being emitted because the
- 01:37:01true cost of uh of taran's oil doesn't
- 01:37:05include fixing up the environment
- 01:37:07they're not factoring that in which you
- 01:37:09know somebody's going to have to pay for
- 01:37:10that it's probably going to be us you
- 01:37:12know um and uh the as I showed you on
- 01:37:16one of my slides it's incredibly
- 01:37:18polluting so this really needs to be
- 01:37:19done but carbon credits are going to be
- 01:37:20traded in Chicago right on the yes which
- 01:37:23is is great I'm working on just starting
- 01:37:25to work on a project I need to talk to
- 01:37:27you about it in Africa actually and uh
- 01:37:29there are tremendous opportunities in
- 01:37:31Africa for developing countries to plant
- 01:37:33crops where they were not planting them
- 01:37:35before and get carbon credits and create
- 01:37:37jobs and so on and so forth so there's
- 01:37:39you know when you start thinking about
- 01:37:41the green economy I'm an entrepreneur
- 01:37:43when you start thinking about it from an
- 01:37:44entrepreneurial standpoint it's it's
- 01:37:47just actually it's you know best at
- 01:37:49times worst of times I mean there's
- 01:37:50going to be huge opportunities um for
- 01:37:53for both us here in the developed world
- 01:37:56and in the developing world to actually
- 01:37:57s of get on our bikes and do something
- 01:37:59about this and create a lot of you know
- 01:38:01work and wealth in the
- 01:38:04process anyone else
- 01:38:09yeah we've got a mic coming your
- 01:38:14way thank you uh I guess this question
- 01:38:17is kind of related to what you talked
- 01:38:18about now I'm just thinking about
- 01:38:20developing countries in the way that
- 01:38:22what they care about the most in those
- 01:38:24countries will be cheap energy uh and um
- 01:38:28I'm just we we are talking about a lot
- 01:38:31of solutions here that that are
- 01:38:32expensive but that people here can
- 01:38:34afford but how how can we provide these
- 01:38:38solutions to people who currently cannot
- 01:38:41and how can we make this this beneficial
- 01:38:43for them to buy great question for sure
- 01:38:47so that's an amazingly good question and
- 01:38:49it has a huge number of facets
- 01:38:52um to start off you do hear a lot of
- 01:38:56things in the news about people yelling
- 01:38:57about China and India because of their
- 01:38:59population expansion and you hear old
- 01:39:02coal plant a week in China and it's true
- 01:39:05but as you guys saw in the slideshow
- 01:39:07their per capita emissions are
- 01:39:08incredibly incredibly low
- 01:39:11so we are doing much more damage per
- 01:39:13person than they are that plays into how
- 01:39:17can we help them get to our standard of
- 01:39:19living without going through the same
- 01:39:22process we went through
- 01:39:24because we're actually now we don't want
- 01:39:25to lower our standard living but we do
- 01:39:26have to change our carbon uh footprint
- 01:39:30and we need to get them to our standard
- 01:39:31living without getting them to our
- 01:39:33carbon footprint how do we do that okay
- 01:39:36so part of the UN process is
- 01:39:38specifically to deal with that and for
- 01:39:42example uh the penalties involved in not
- 01:39:46meeting your targets part of that was to
- 01:39:49shift those funds to the developing
- 01:39:51world to be able to help them make those
- 01:39:54advances uh the when Nick mentioned the
- 01:39:57green economy the green economy is
- 01:39:58becoming a very very real reality very
- 01:40:01quickly and the developing world is very
- 01:40:04aware of that China has actually already
- 01:40:05switched 18% of their National economy
- 01:40:09to a green economy Canada is nowhere
- 01:40:11near that yet so they are partially it's
- 01:40:14partially they are well aware of it and
- 01:40:15they're going there first they're
- 01:40:17actually starting to lead the way
- 01:40:18because they need to because they need
- 01:40:20to um but that doesn't mean we should
- 01:40:23shouldn't be helping them get there and
- 01:40:25we very much have a moral and ethical
- 01:40:28responsibility to get them there because
- 01:40:31they are the ones that are going to be
- 01:40:32most adversely affected by climate
- 01:40:35change uh you've seen pictures of
- 01:40:37flooding and sea the areas where sea
- 01:40:39level rise is going to wipe out in some
- 01:40:42cases whole countries tuvalu will lose
- 01:40:44their entire country with one meter of
- 01:40:46sea level rise there can you imagine
- 01:40:48your whole country being gone so this is
- 01:40:51we have a responsibility and we should
- 01:40:54be working through our foreign
- 01:40:55assistance programs to get the money to
- 01:40:58them and to Target it towards things
- 01:41:00that will help them with this emerging
- 01:41:03well it's not an emerging issue with
- 01:41:04this
- 01:41:06issue I I I think I agree 100% I mean I
- 01:41:09think we it's now Our obligation we've
- 01:41:11had the big party and made a huge mess
- 01:41:14and now it's their turn and it's Our
- 01:41:15obligation to help them we have to help
- 01:41:17them um and um yes so I mean that it
- 01:41:21it's it we just got used to it we got to
- 01:41:24help them but again there are
- 01:41:25opportunities there you know we could we
- 01:41:27we could in here in in North America we
- 01:41:30could be developing technology and uh to
- 01:41:33help fix these problems and help
- 01:41:35generate uh green energy and so on and
- 01:41:38the other sort of point to that is that
- 01:41:41we can actually make money helping them
- 01:41:43through uh carbon economies and through
- 01:41:45offsetting programs for example a lot of
- 01:41:47people in Canada even right now are
- 01:41:49making money through like their business
- 01:41:51is offsetting and so they are are
- 01:41:53actually offsetting our carbon footprint
- 01:41:55by helping install technology in
- 01:41:57developing countries so for example
- 01:41:59often if you buy an offset right now
- 01:42:01what it's going to do is put in wind
- 01:42:04farms in a developing Nation or switch
- 01:42:06over uh to high efficiency wood burning
- 01:42:09stoves right now a lot of countries in
- 01:42:11Africa uh just have very very low
- 01:42:14efficiency wood burning stoves and even
- 01:42:16just switching to a high efficiency wood
- 01:42:18burning stove almost Cuts their carbon
- 01:42:20footprint in half there's actually a
- 01:42:21high school in North vanan that has set
- 01:42:23up their own offset uh program for their
- 01:42:26students and uh community members and
- 01:42:29those donations are going straight to
- 01:42:30schools in Africa and switching over
- 01:42:32their stoves and they've been very
- 01:42:33successful there's huge numbers of
- 01:42:35programs out there that are trying to do
- 01:42:37this while still actually you can make
- 01:42:39money doing this you can make money
- 01:42:40helping them so I mean you know you that
- 01:42:43slide that I showed of the cooking fires
- 01:42:44in Africa they shouldn't be cooking on
- 01:42:46Fires they should have a little stove of
- 01:42:48some sort which could be easily
- 01:42:50manufactured and provided to them and it
- 01:42:52would it would enable then they wouldn't
- 01:42:53require as much fuel it would be better
- 01:42:55for cooking um I remember when I was in
- 01:42:58Africa and I think they're still doing
- 01:42:59this they were cooking on a plow wheel
- 01:43:01where they get up get a wheel offer an
- 01:43:02old wheel off a plow which has three
- 01:43:04holes in it to fix it on the plow they
- 01:43:06put three bolts one in each hole and
- 01:43:08that's what it's sort of like a walk and
- 01:43:09they light a fire underneath it and cook
- 01:43:11on that well it works but it's not very
- 01:43:13efficient so we could for not much money
- 01:43:16provide them with something like that
- 01:43:18and it would make a big difference uh to
- 01:43:20their lives but there's a Hu there are
- 01:43:21huge opportunities I think that you know
- 01:43:23we're going through a time uh that's
- 01:43:25really
- 01:43:26transformational uh where we have to
- 01:43:28make these changes it's not optional and
- 01:43:30it creates an enormous uh uh opportunity
- 01:43:33uh for for for business people and for
- 01:43:36engineering for engineers to figure out
- 01:43:38figure out new technologies and new
- 01:43:40products so um I think we're actually
- 01:43:43entering one of the most exciting times
- 01:43:46um for a long time in terms of Entre
- 01:43:49entrepreneurial development I actually
- 01:43:51think that the green economy is going to
- 01:43:52take over from the you know the computer
- 01:43:53the whole computer thing was what I grew
- 01:43:55up with and where I made my living and
- 01:43:57that was the big the big deal you know
- 01:43:59of the 20th century I think the green
- 01:44:01economy is going to be the big deal of
- 01:44:02the 21st century so that's where people
- 01:44:04where you need to be thinking about
- 01:44:05getting jobs and working in firms is
- 01:44:07it's going to be an enormous uh as we as
- 01:44:10we have to Green up the world it's not
- 01:44:12optional uh you know as Amber said in
- 01:44:14China the reason that they're doing it
- 01:44:16in China is not because for altruistic
- 01:44:18reasons or because they heard Al Gore's
- 01:44:20presentation it's because they haven't
- 01:44:21got enough energy
- 01:44:23they need to do it they they don't have
- 01:44:25any choice so there's an enormous
- 01:44:28opportunity there yeah and in terms of
- 01:44:31that opportunity I think uh my
- 01:44:33generation and the majority of most of
- 01:44:36you are in that generation as well we're
- 01:44:39in many ways the first generation that
- 01:44:40grew up knowing we were going to have to
- 01:44:42do something about this I was writing
- 01:44:43political letters at 5 years old and I
- 01:44:46know I'm not the only one who was and
- 01:44:50the paradigm shift is coming with us
- 01:44:52because we we care enough to do it and
- 01:44:54now we're lucky that there are people in
- 01:44:56the generations before us that get it as
- 01:44:57well and are helping to support us but
- 01:44:59we are now coming into a phase of Our
- 01:45:01Lives where we are the people running
- 01:45:02the businesses we are the people running
- 01:45:04for office and we are the ones who are
- 01:45:06going to be making this change and
- 01:45:09unfortunately we are also fully
- 01:45:12responsible for that if we don't make
- 01:45:13the change well we'll probably be past
- 01:45:16the Tipping Point so it's a little bit
- 01:45:18heavy to put on our shoulders but we
- 01:45:19don't have a choice we have the choice
- 01:45:20to rise to the occasion or to stand back
- 01:45:24and watch it
- 01:45:27burn Dan yes take at the back but then
- 01:45:30we okay I have two questions um first of
- 01:45:32all um is there a rising political
- 01:45:37person in Canada that we should be
- 01:45:41supporting and and who should we be
- 01:45:43writing to with those letters more
- 01:45:45immediately that's my first question
- 01:45:48okay uh well we'll do that one first
- 01:45:51there was a rising political person he's
- 01:45:53just resigned the liberal leadership um
- 01:45:56unfortunately Stefan actually was
- 01:45:58incredibly incredibly Progressive um he
- 01:46:01just couldn't manage to project that to
- 01:46:03the Canadian public and he wasn't
- 01:46:06particularly he didn't do particularly
- 01:46:08well coming across on a television
- 01:46:09screen he did incredibly well in public
- 01:46:11in person if you ever got a chance to
- 01:46:12see him
- 01:46:13but uh that's no longer an option so
- 01:46:16we're going to have to wait and see what
- 01:46:18happens with the liberal leadership race
- 01:46:19and in terms of what they come out if
- 01:46:21the green shift is still a reality or if
- 01:46:23they're going to move a different
- 01:46:24direction uh
- 01:46:27obviously the conservatives are not
- 01:46:29there yet Elizabeth May is incredibly
- 01:46:32incredibly well spoken very smart and
- 01:46:34very intelligent unfortunately the green
- 01:46:35party probably isn't going to take power
- 01:46:37yet and the NDP sits somewhere in the
- 01:46:39middle so I know that know that's
- 01:46:40particularly great news um in terms of
- 01:46:44those letters you should definitely be
- 01:46:45targeting them to the minister of the
- 01:46:47environment our current Ministry of the
- 01:46:48environment and our prime minister
- 01:46:50because those are the people who will
- 01:46:52actually be representing us and
- 01:46:53negotiating for us at cop uh especially
- 01:46:56the minister of environment that's
- 01:46:57actually one of his duties so definitely
- 01:47:00you should be bombarding him um that
- 01:47:03said you can also write to the
- 01:47:05environment critics for the other
- 01:47:06parties because they will all also be at
- 01:47:08cop and they'll be doing everything they
- 01:47:10can they won't be the official voice but
- 01:47:12they'll be doing everything they can
- 01:47:13behind the scenes and in the back rooms
- 01:47:15so if you give them their support that
- 01:47:17gives them just that much more incentive
- 01:47:19to try and do everything they can I you
- 01:47:21know it looks like I was listening radio
- 01:47:23this morning Michael nnaf has thrown his
- 01:47:25hat in the ring and looks like he's
- 01:47:26going to probably be it for the liberals
- 01:47:28so he needs we need to start writing to
- 01:47:30him I obviously you've got to write to
- 01:47:32the person that you think's going to get
- 01:47:33elected sadly I mean Elizabeth May was
- 01:47:35great but she's just not going to get
- 01:47:37elected uh Jack Leighton was pretty good
- 01:47:40but although he softened on the tarand
- 01:47:42thing a bit I was a bit disappointed
- 01:47:44with by that you know he he was like
- 01:47:46looking good for a while then he then he
- 01:47:48lost the plot a bit I think he did a few
- 01:47:50things at the end that was was not too
- 01:47:52good so I I you know so you know you've
- 01:47:55got to you've got to you've got to write
- 01:47:56to the people you think are going to get
- 01:47:57elected and if none of them are any good
- 01:47:59you should run for election you know
- 01:48:00what we need are new people uh doing it
- 01:48:03these old guys are are not they don't
- 01:48:06get it you know they so we need some new
- 01:48:08blood in the system so I don't know what
- 01:48:11Trudeau's son is running I don't know
- 01:48:13what he's I haven't heard much about him
- 01:48:14is he is he Justin Trudeau is a very
- 01:48:17good option uh he definitely has a very
- 01:48:21strong environmental and social
- 01:48:22conscious and so he's we've got some
- 01:48:24hope there um I wish he'd Run for the
- 01:48:27leadership yeah he's he might eventually
- 01:48:29I don't think he'll do it yet not yet
- 01:48:30but he is now in office there's he did
- 01:48:34win during the last election his writing
- 01:48:36um yeah Elizabeth May um for very moral
- 01:48:41reasons chose to run in a writing that
- 01:48:43she was knew she wasn't going to win
- 01:48:45it's been
- 01:48:46conservative for Generations like it's
- 01:48:48actually been past father to son in Nova
- 01:48:51Scotia that writing hasn't has been
- 01:48:53conservative for almost 60 years but she
- 01:48:55felt it was important to run in her home
- 01:48:57writing now that said I think she did a
- 01:48:59pretty good job of stirring things up at
- 01:49:00the debate but um at the moment we are
- 01:49:03in a slightly tricky political situation
- 01:49:06in terms of voting as well that in many
- 01:49:09ways we have a two- party system uh that
- 01:49:11said the block can control Quebec and
- 01:49:13the block actually has much more
- 01:49:15Progressive in terms of environmental
- 01:49:16opinions than um than the conservatives
- 01:49:18so we're actually better off with them
- 01:49:19in power there um the NDP takes a
- 01:49:23portion of the seats but they'll never
- 01:49:24they're never going to they they
- 01:49:26probably aren't going to win and so we
- 01:49:29have and The
- 01:49:30Greens at this point don't have a seat
- 01:49:32so we have this issue that we've got two
- 01:49:34parties and we can split our left Vote
- 01:49:37or we can strategically vote and there
- 01:49:39was a huge move to to strategically vote
- 01:49:42in the last election and it did work
- 01:49:43very well it definitely kept the
- 01:49:45conservatives in a minority people think
- 01:49:47that that was probably the reason that
- 01:49:48they did not win their majority was the
- 01:49:49Strategic
- 01:49:51voting but we still need a party to win
- 01:49:54enough to become the leading party so
- 01:49:59we're we're in a frustrating situation
- 01:50:02right now the but the more pressure you
- 01:50:04put on the more public voices they hear
- 01:50:06on an issue the more likely they are to
- 01:50:08act on it what do you think about
- 01:50:10proportional representation I'd like to
- 01:50:12I was a bit disappointed I mean they we
- 01:50:13made a mess of that you know it wasn't
- 01:50:15explained to people properly uh does
- 01:50:17everybody in the room know what
- 01:50:18proportional representation is do people
- 01:50:20get it yeah yeah okay um we'd have some
- 01:50:23green MPS if we had proportional
- 01:50:25representation so basically instead of
- 01:50:26everybody you know we're in this
- 01:50:27ridiculous situation in Canada we're not
- 01:50:29supposed to talk about political stuff
- 01:50:30but we're in this ridiculous situation
- 01:50:32in Canada where where the where the
- 01:50:34majority of people don't vote for the
- 01:50:36party that gets elected that's in charge
- 01:50:38you know so proportional representation
- 01:50:40is a system that they have in other
- 01:50:41countries they have it in in Ireland for
- 01:50:43example in southern Ireland in the
- 01:50:44country of Ireland and um it basically
- 01:50:47means that you vote for the person You'
- 01:50:49like most and then the person you'd like
- 01:50:51next most I mean that's the simple
- 01:50:53explanation of it so and then uh and
- 01:50:56then so people that are a lot of
- 01:50:58people's second choices can actually get
- 01:51:01elected and actually get a seat so um I
- 01:51:05think something like that would
- 01:51:06personally that's my personal opinion I
- 01:51:08think that would be a good idea because
- 01:51:09then we could get you know I think it'
- 01:51:11get more people engaged and you get
- 01:51:13people like Elizabeth may actually being
- 01:51:15in the house which would be great one
- 01:51:18more question I know we're getting short
- 01:51:19on time because I know you had your hand
- 01:51:20up this will be the final question we'll
- 01:51:21have to wrap up
- 01:51:23thanks but you are welcome to ask us
- 01:51:25questions after afterwards absolutely
- 01:51:27Yeah well yeah um I think it's much
- 01:51:29easier to take my own responsibility
- 01:51:32instead of persuading um those P hats in
- 01:51:35the government um well I just I've been
- 01:51:37wondering um how is it possible for us
- 01:51:40to reduce our emission level to zero and
- 01:51:43even we do um how how can we start
- 01:51:47removing carbon dioxide from atmosphere
- 01:51:51okay
- 01:51:53um how do we get to
- 01:51:55zero at the moment uh there are people
- 01:51:58living carbon neutral Lifestyles but
- 01:52:00they are doing that uh with a heavy
- 01:52:03Reliance on offsets at the moment we
- 01:52:05aren't quite there in terms
- 01:52:08of not the technology not being there
- 01:52:10but the technology being publicly
- 01:52:11available and affordable um to be able
- 01:52:14to do it completely on your own so a lot
- 01:52:17of people right now who are car there
- 01:52:18are people quite a few people out there
- 01:52:20who are carbon neutral but they do have
- 01:52:21to offset to get there so that's what
- 01:52:23you can do right now um all of the
- 01:52:25things that Nick listed are ways that
- 01:52:27you personally can get there so changes
- 01:52:30in your electricity use in your water
- 01:52:32use in your eating habits local organic
- 01:52:36uh less Reliance on meat if you want to
- 01:52:38go there vegetarian if you want really
- 01:52:40want to go there vegan all really do
- 01:52:42make a huge difference uh 8% of the
- 01:52:44global greenhouse gas emissions are from
- 01:52:47cattle that we
- 01:52:48eat it's a huge chunk right there it's
- 01:52:52it starts to rival the amount from
- 01:52:53Transportation uh changes in your
- 01:52:55transportation uses all of those things
- 01:52:58will start to get you there and you can
- 01:53:00offset the rest to get to neutral uh as
- 01:53:04uh our governments continue to push and
- 01:53:06the public continues to push and more
- 01:53:08importantly the business sector who is
- 01:53:09going to push regardless of if the
- 01:53:11government or the public do anything
- 01:53:12because it makes Financial sense for
- 01:53:14them it will become easier and easier to
- 01:53:16do that without
- 01:53:17offsetting
- 01:53:19um I'm sorry I think there was a second
- 01:53:21part to your question and I I've missed
- 01:53:22it yeah I was asking how can we start
- 01:53:24removing how can we start removing okay
- 01:53:27um there are
- 01:53:31some there's actually a huge amount of
- 01:53:32research coming out of Alberta uh mainly
- 01:53:35because of the tar sands on how to pull
- 01:53:37carbon out um some people push for the
- 01:53:41carbon capture and storage which is to
- 01:53:43pull carbon out and store it uh for
- 01:53:45example in oil wells uh other people are
- 01:53:48now looking at there was some cutting Ed
- 01:53:51Edge research in University of Alberta
- 01:53:53and University of Calgary that's looking
- 01:53:55at other ways that they they think they
- 01:53:58found ways that technology can draw it
- 01:54:00out and store it in other forms that's
- 01:54:03at the experimental stage
- 01:54:06so uh it is starting to push their
- 01:54:08carbon capture and storage has been
- 01:54:10shown to work so that is one way that we
- 01:54:13definitely will be going I'm sure at
- 01:54:15least and I'm sure part of the solution
- 01:54:17although there are issues around it it
- 01:54:20will probably still something that will
- 01:54:21come into effect so we will be using for
- 01:54:23example old oil wells tailings piles
- 01:54:25from mines at least certain minerals
- 01:54:28actually react with the carbon in the
- 01:54:29atmosphere and pull actually can be
- 01:54:31incredible sinks forests are incredible
- 01:54:33sinks uh there are issues with using
- 01:54:37planting trees as
- 01:54:39offsets um but that said Forest uh
- 01:54:43vegetation plant life does draw down CO2
- 01:54:45so there are huge tree planting
- 01:54:47campaigns as well for example the
- 01:54:49province has just started something
- 01:54:50called trees for tomorrow it's a 5 year
- 01:54:52plan and they're giving out grants of
- 01:54:54huge amounts of money for uh Urban
- 01:54:58spaces so schools and
- 01:55:00universities everyone should listen up
- 01:55:02there uh hospitals institutions green uh
- 01:55:06public green spaces to have planting
- 01:55:08campaigns and they will give you
- 01:55:10everything you need to do it so that's
- 01:55:12another place where people are trying to
- 01:55:14make for uh progress is urban a
- 01:55:17forestation thanks sber thank you very
- 01:55:19much thank you thank you very much
- 01:55:23[Applause]
- canvi climàtic
- energia renovable
- glaciars
- escalfament global
- emissions de carboni
- acció individual
- impacte ambiental
- Al Gore
- Nicholas Miller
- presentació