Hi, it's megryan here. Guess testing to day, if you want to learn how to take real, lasting climate action, like i do, i want to invite you to join count down, ted's new global initiative to accelerate solutions to the clima crisis. Now here's a conversation from the count down global launch event between engineer and investor john doer and climate policy expert pal harvey. To hear more of these ideas and get involved, check out count down dot ted dot com and subscribe to the count down podcast wherever you're listening to this.

Hello, hal jon. It's nice to say you not o si se wo do so, john, we've got a big challenge. We need to get carbon out of the atmosphere. We need to stop omitting carbon, drive it to zero by 20 50. We be half way there by 20 30. Where are we now?

As you know, we're dumping 55 billion tons of carbon pollution in our precious atmosphere every year as if it's some kind of free and open sewer. To get half way to zero by 20 30, we're going to have to reduce annual emissions by about ten % a year. And we've never reduced annual emissions in any year in h stry of the planet. So let's break this down. 75 % of the omissions come from the 20 largest emitting countries, and from four sectors of their economy. The first is grid, second transportation, the third from the buildings, and the fourth from industrial activities. We've got to fix all those at speed and at scale. We

do. And matters are in some ways worse than think, in some ways better. Let me start wheth the worse. Climate change is a wicked problem. And what do i mean by a wicked problem? It means it's a problem that transcends geographic boundaries. The sources are everywhere, and impacts are everywhere, although obviously some nations have contributed much more than others. In fact, one of the terrible things about climate changes those who contributed least to it will be hurt the most. It's the great inequity machine. So here we have a problem that you cannot solve within the national boundaries of one country. And yet international institutions are notoriously weak. So that's part of the wicked problem. The second element of the wicked problem is it transcends normal time scales. We're used to news day by day, or quarterly reports for business enterprises or election cyclist about the longest we think any more. Climate change essentially lasts for ever. When you put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it's there, or its impacts are there, for a thousand years. It's a gift we keep on giving for our children are geving children and dozens and dozens of generations beyond. There sonts like a tax we keep on paying. Tat is it is. You sien once you pay forever. And then the third element of its being a wicked problem is that carbon dioxide is bedded in every aspect of our industrial economy. Every car and every truck and every airplane and every house and every electrical socket and every industrial processes now emits carbon dioxide.

So what's the recipe? Well

here's the shortkit. If you de carbonize the grid, the electrical grid, and then run everything on electricity, de carbonize the grid and electrify everything. If you do those two things, you have a zero carbon economy. That would seem like a pipe dream just a few years ago, because it was expensive to create a zero carbon grid. But the prices of solar and wind have plummeted. Solar's now the cheapest form of electricity on planet earth, and wind is second. It means now that you can convert the grid to zero carbon rapidly and save consumers money along the way. So there's leverage.