A Case for Optimism

0:00[Music] I trend towards the optimistic side, uh and it's because I've been doing this for a little while and I've seen, you know, unbelievable innovation in this space. If you asked me in 2015, I think I would have said it is maybe possible and almost certainly not going to happen, but now I can say that I'm much more optimistic about addressing the challenge than I've ever been because we're getting the right ingredients to The Climate Success Soup. Um, we're getting all of the actors who drive economic decision-making demand that we address climate change and we do it in ways that are going to make sense for the whole world. We've got innovators who are thinking about this. We've got young people who are motivated by this throughout their whole lives and their

1:08education and that's what they're choosing to commit their intellect to. You've got policy makers who are really making decisions based on voters demanding that climate change be a real consideration. You have investors. You have consumers. You have employees at big companies.

1:26The world is demanding that action happen, and we're starting to really understand what action needs to happen. The question is are we going to make the right decisions over the next decade. Our track record for innovation is incredible as a species and, uh, I don't believe that there's any one of these problems that we can't solve. But it's going to be the hardest thing we've ever done. So I'm optimistic because I think that we got to a point where we all realize that this is serious, that everyone needs to take part of this, and that if we don't do it, there's not a Plan B. This is the only planet that we have. We have seen the fires, and we have seen the floods, we have seen the droughts, we have seen people really suffering, and this is the time to act. We

2:32have a small window opportunity to do the right thing for the people, for the planet. There's enough scientific evidence that we are facing a huge challenge, and I think that each time more people are understanding that this is something serious, that this is not something from a, for just a small portion of the population, that we all are going to be affected. So I'm optimistic because I believe that we got to a point where we are really stepping up to the challenge. Of course, there's a lot of challenges on the way to full deurbanization, full solution to climate change but what makes me hopeful is that there are a lot of companies like ours and entrepreneurs like myself that are working on solving these hard

3:26problems. Aviation is a problem, hard-to-abate sector. It's becoming larger and larger portion of the uh overall climate change footprint and we are responding to the challenge, uh, there are other people that are responding to the challenge as well. The ingenuity of the private enterprise driven by the right types of incentives is not to be underestimated. Historically, um, humanity has overcome its challenges. Um, it, uh, sometimes required a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hard work but, uh, we always did, so we think, um, we're going to do it again. Innovation gives me hope. New practices, new ways of working, new ways of doing things, all give me hope. We're a very small company, I think there's there's less than 160 of us,

4:18and we've developed a technology that has the potential to reduce one of the hardest to obate, uh, sectors in the world and if we can do that, I'm sure there's other companies all over the world looking at other industries and developing new technologies and new ways of working that can help us as a global population reduce our carbon emissions.

4:43I am surrounded every single day by entrepreneurs who are striving, who are running, towards addressing the climate challenge. There are many different ways they're tackling the problem, and there's just no way that you can't pick up that enthusiasm, that excitement, and realize that there's so many of us working on this. We are trying so hard and we are going to get this done. You have to have that. It's the fundamental premise when you work on climate change. So many of the things that we need to do to address climate change are things that we would really, in an ideal world, want to do anyway. Cities that are greener— literally greener with more trees, more plants, uh, green rooftops... You know,

5:37they are beautiful visions of the world that we could have, that we should want. So, you know, I think instead of seeing the action we need to take for climate change is this huge burden, we should think about how it might be better than the world that we have today, and try to get there.

6:01You know, as a scientist, I have confidence that we can develop the technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or to limit carbon emissions to the atmosphere. So it's not a question of if we can do it, but whether we want to do it as a society. You know, we can invent the technology, but unless people want us to deploy it, want us to be working with them, then all the technology in the world doesn't do us any good.

6:34There's a lot of reasons why people should be optimistic about our ability to solve climate change. If you think about, you know, just kind of how we've dealt with and addressed so many massive problems in the world and how technology, how innovation, has given us breakthroughs that, you know, allow us to do things that today we take for granted. It's remarkable. The idea that we are developing long duration storage technologies that can actually firm up renewable resources that have gone down dramatically in price and can now be paired with storage so it won't matter if the sun is shining or the wind isn't blowing, you can still have power just like you would from a traditional fossil fuel-generated, you know, source. The idea that companies in our portfolio

7:27are making massive progress in crazy things like fusion. The idea of unlimited, very cheap energy, uh, is available. Like, that's what gives me a lot of optimism and I know many people don't have exposure to that, but I get to see that—that that pipeline of things that's coming, that's developing. And who knows what one of those is really going to be the solution that makes the biggest difference, but I can tell you, I can see 80 companies doing that right now and, you know, that's building to 100-150. Um, the enthusiasm from, from so many people that have joined in this journey—it it really gives me a lot of hope. I'm a father with young kids and they ask me about this all the time, and I tell them, "Boy, there is a lot of

8:12progress that's being made." And if you could just understand how far we've come in just that short period of time from when we started doing this work—boy, you would be optimistic too.