American Renewable Energy (ARE) Day Panel Talk
“If we can control population, we can control climate change. If we can’t control climate change, we WILL control population.”
I had the honor of attending this years ARE Day with some profound thinkers and do-ers. The credentials of the speakers and the range of topics discussed was impressive.
The theme was the Hydrogen Economy and the future of renewable energies.
As you can read from my Twitter feed, I was struck by both the urgency of our collective need for a carbon-neutral future and some of the ideas on how to do it.
My talk focused on who and how we can bring about the change we desire. The “who” is the largest population – Millennials. The “how” is through their mobile phones with well designed, compelling, meaningful digital experiences. My point was to persuade the audience that the energy transition is also a design challenge, not just a market, infrastructure and economic one.
More on my talk is provided at the end of this post. Before that, however, I’d like to provide some juicy nuggets from the conference that got me jazzed.
The Call Is Urgent
On the urgency side, we need to empower people to take action and not numb them into apathy. This is the great danger to our planet at this moment in our shared history – that we do nothing. Can we act to lead corporations and governments towards the right path without immediate economic gain? Per Espen Stoknes thinks so by “nudging people to do the right thing by engaging the lust centers of the brain.”
Espen is a “global TED speaker”, a title I never knew existed. I can honestly say – he deserves it. He delivered a compelling talk based on the one shown at TED. It turned the conference conversation from policy and technical jargon to one that addressed the human soul.
We know that fatigue can set in when humans are bombarded by climate change / disaster news resulting in overall paralysis and apathy. The dialogue must be overhauled to move towards action and optimism. Please watch.
Got Ideas?
On the optimistic side where folks were in engaged in actively addressing the issues, there was Tom Chi of Google X lineage. He has one company that is machine-gun-firing tree seed pods into the soil from a drone. The ambition is to plant 2.2 Trillion trees at a pace of something like 5,000 seed pods an hour.
Carbon sequestration definitely has a hero in Tom Chi.
One speaker identified a massive energy resource that is persistent, free, and carbon neutral. 14-miles off the Florida coastline sits a vast ocean flow that is an untapped American energy resource. 44Gw of potential. Read more at Aquantis.
Courtesy of Amory Lovins from Rocky Mountain Institute
Entrepreneurs Leading Innovation
I sat (actually stood to try and wake the audience up from a post lunch stupor) on a panel titled - Entrepreneurs Leading Innovation. The panel members were terrific.
The panel consisted of moderator Frank Rukavina of Sustainable Innovations Operative, LLC; speaker Dan Powers of CO Labs; and Gail Levy of HFactor Water.
Here’s a clip from my bit to give some flava followed by the full version captured by the ARE Day team:
Tweets
Here are some tweets I sent out during the conference that give a sense of both the opportunity and the urgency. Thanks for reading.
Methane emission is the top priority. It is technically possible to reduce the global methane cycle by 75% by just closing flares and fixing leaks! @AmoryLovins
Last year global energy demands grew at its fastest rate. Ever. 5G is goingto bring 50B devices online. The energy demands will be staggering. Support hydrogen- based energy production that is carbon free.
