COP21 talk at the Sorbonne
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:02Elon MuskThank you for having me. It's great to be here. Paris is one of my favorite places in the world. And it's actually on the first trip that I went out of South Africa.
0:13Elon MuskParis, that was where I went when I was a little kid. Well, my parents brought me when I was like 6 years old. So I've loved Paris ever since.
0:22Elon MuskSo thank you for having me. What I'm going to talk about today is just in general terms, what is needed to address the climate crisis. And this is the thing that if we do, what actions can we take that will accelerate the transition out of the fossil fuel era?
0:45Elon MuskSo where we are today is. Let's see if this is worth it, maybe not. Ok. All right. We have the present era where we have the carbon cycle. My apologies if some of you already know all about this, but I think some of these things are maybe not as obvious as they may seem.
1:05Elon MuskSo there's a certain amount of carbon that is circulating through the environment. So it's going into the air, being absorbed by, and then getting absorbed by plants and animals and then going back into the air.
1:17Elon MuskAnd this, this carbon is just circulating on the surface. And this is fine. And it's been doing that for millions, hundreds of millions of years. The thing that's changed is that we've added something to the mix.
1:31Elon MuskSo this is what I would call the turd in the punch bowl. So we added all this extra carbon to the carbon cycle, and the net result is, is that the carbon in the ocean's atmosphere is growing over time.
1:49Elon MuskIt's much more than can be absorbed by the ecosystem. It's really quite simple. We're taking billions of tons of carbon that's been buried for hundreds of millions of years and is not part of the carbon cycle, taking from deep underground and adding it to the carbon cycle.
2:08Elon MuskThe result is that a steady increase in the, the carbon in the atmosphere and in the oceans, which doesn't look like much if you look at it on this chart, but when looked at in the context of history, it actually looks like this.
2:25Elon MuskSo the carbon parts per million has really been bouncing around the 300 level for around 10 million years. And then the last few hundred years, it went into a vertical climb.
2:39Elon MuskThis is the essence of the problem. This is very unusual and a very extreme threat, as you can see from this rate of growth. Then this is accompanied by a temperature increase, as one would expect.
2:59Elon MuskAnd this temperature increase, if people talk about 2 degrees or 3 degrees, it's important to appreciate just how sensitive the climate actually is. To temperature. And it's important to look at it in terms of absolute temperature, not in degrees Celsius relative to zero.
3:16Elon MuskWe need to say what is the temperature change relative to absolute zero. That's how the universe thinks about temperature, it's how physics thinks about temperature. It's relative to absolute zero.
3:27Elon MuskSo for small changes result in huge effects. So New York City under ice would be minus 5 degrees. New York City underwater would be plus 5 degrees. But looked at as a percentage relative to absolute zero, it's only a plus minus 2% change.
3:51Elon MuskSo the sensitivity of the climate is extremely, extremely high. We've amplified this sensitivity by building our cities right on the coastline. And most people live very close to the ocean.
4:07Elon MuskSome countries of course, that are very low lying and would be completely underwater in a climate crisis. So we've essentially designed civilization to be super sensitive to climate change.
4:29Elon MuskAnd the important thing to appreciate is that we are going to exit the fossil fuels era. So it is inevitable that we will exit the fossil fuel era because at a certain point we will simply run out of carbon to mine and burn.
4:46Elon MuskThe question is really what? When do we exit the era? Not if the goal is to exit the era as quickly as possible. That means we need to move from the old goal with the pre industrial goal which was to move from chopping down forests and killing lots of whales.
5:11Elon MuskThe old goal was to move from chopping wood and killing whales to fossil fuels, which actually in that context was a good thing. But the new goal is to move to a sustainable energy future.
5:28Elon MuskAnd we want to use things like hydro, solar, wind, geothermal. Nuclear is also a good option in places like France which aren't subject to natural disasters. And we want to use energy sources that will be good for a billion years.
5:51Elon MuskSo how do we accelerate this transition away from fossil fuels to a sustainable era? And what happens if we don't? So if we wait and if we delay the change, the best case, the best case is simply delaying that inevitable transition to sustainable energy.
6:16Elon MuskSo this is the best case. If we don't take action now, at the risk of being repetitive, there's going to be no choice in the long term to move to sustainable energy.
6:27Elon MuskIt's tautological. We have to have sustainable energy or we'll simply run out of the other one. So the only thing we gain by slowing down the transition is just slowing it down.
6:37Elon MuskIt doesn't make it not occur, it just slows it down. The worst case, however, is more displacement and destruction than all the wars in history combined. These are the best worst case scenarios.
6:50Elon MuskSo then we have about 3% of scientists that believe in the best case, about 97% that believe in the worst case. This is why I call it the dumbest experiment in history ever.
7:07Elon MuskWhy would you do this?
7:12Elon MuskThe reason that the transition is delayed or is happening slowly is because there is a hidden subsidy on all carbon producing activity. In a healthy market, if you have, say, €10 of benefit and €4 of harm to society, the profit would be €6.
7:32Elon MuskThis sort of makes obvious sense. This is where the incentives are aligned with a good future. This is not the case today. But if you have the incentives aligned, then the forcing function towards a good future, towards a sustainable energy future, will be powerful.
7:52Elon MuskIn an unhealthy market, you have your €10 of benefit, you have your €4, but the €4 isn't taxed. You have an untaxed negative externality. This is basically economics 101.
8:06Elon MuskSo you have basically unreasonable profit and a forcing function to do carbon emitting activity. Because this, this cost to society is not being paid. The Net result is 35 gigatons of carbon per year into the atmosphere.
8:29Elon MuskSo this is analogous to not paying for garbage collection. And it's not as though we should say, in the case of garbage, have a garbage free society. It's very difficult to have a garbage free society, but it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection.
8:51Elon MuskSo we need to go from having untaxed negative externality, which is effectively a hidden carbon subsidy of enormous size, $5.3 trillion a year, according to the IMF. Every year we need to move away from this and have a carbon tax.
9:18Elon MuskBut this is being fought quite hard by the carbon producers and they're using tactics that are very similar to what the cigarette industry or tobacco industry used for many years.
9:35Elon MuskThey would take the approach of having. Even though the overwhelming scientific consensus was that smoking cigarettes was bad for you, they would find a few scientists that would disagree and then they would say, look, scientists disagree.
9:50Elon MuskSo that's essentially how they would try to trick the public into thinking that smoking is not that bad. The solution obviously is to remove the subsidy. So that means we need to have a carbon tax and to make it sort of something which is neither a left nor a right issue, we should make it probably a revenue neutral carbon tax.
10:19Elon MuskSo this would be a case of increasing taxes on carbon, but then reducing taxes in other places. So maybe there would be a reduction in sales tax or VAT and an increase in carbon tax so that only those using high levels of carbon would pay an increased tax.
10:40Elon MuskAnd moreover this, I mean in order to give industry time to react, this could be a phased in approach that maybe it takes five years before the carbon taxes are very high.
10:53Elon MuskSo that means that only companies that don't take action today will suffer in five years. But there needs to be a clear message from government in this regard because the fundamental problem is the rules today incent people to create carbon and this is madness.
11:10Elon MuskAnd whatever you incent will happen. That's why we're seeing very little effect thus far. And depending upon what action we take, will drive the carbon number to either extreme or moderate levels.
11:33Elon MuskI think it's pretty much a given that the 2°C increase will occur. The question is whether it's going to be much more than that, not if there will be a 2 degree increase.
11:45Elon MuskSo then the question is, so what can you do? I would say whenever you have the opportunity, talk to your politicians, ask them to enact a carbon tax. We have to fix the unpriced externality, talk to your friends about it and fight the propaganda from the carbon industry.
12:04Elon MuskSo that's the basic message I have and I'm happy to take questions.