Climate Change and the Future, with Al Gore

Neil deGrasse Tyson looks past politics to examine climate change, clean energy, the future of life on Earth, and spider goats with environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore, blogger Andrew Revkin, and comic co-host Maeve Higgins.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk and I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I'm also director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. And my co-host today is Mae Higgins.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mae, welcome back.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh. And today we're featuring my interview with Vice President Al Gore. And we'll be talking about, of course, climate change. What else? That's all that comes out of a man's mouth. And of course, the future of the Earth. And I'm not going to do that alone. I know a little bit, but not enough to carry this. So we go into our, our reservoir to our portfolio of experts. And so we've got Andrew Revkin, who previously served as an expert on StarTalk for our, my interview with the head of the EPA. And that was Gina McCarthy. Yes, thank you.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  I guess that was like your audition and then you made it to the radio show.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm very glad to be back. So you're, you're a senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University. That sounds like you made up that title and have Indeed. And have Yes.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Senior, not junior fellow, senior fellow. No, they came up with that part. Of environmental It was like, you know, should I be in communication, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Well, I'm glad you got to declare your own title and you, you founded the New York Times blog, what does it go, dot Earth? Is Earth. Dot Earth. Very, very nice. More than eight years. Since 2007. Yeah. Yeah. So that's almost nine years ago. And you've been writing about climate change like for more than 30 years. And you brought this crusty old weather beaten book with you, Global Warming, Understanding the Forecast, written in 1992. Indeed. Yeah.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  You were only 17 when you wrote that book.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me ask you this, your book, I've read some pages of it, forgive me, I haven't read every page, even though you have put them all online, because it's no longer in print. But one can find all of the content, and you were boasting, off camera, that nothing had to change because your foresight was impeccable. Does that remain the case?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not unique, for one thing, there's been tons of people, the science on global warming, the basics, you know, greenhouse gases trap heat and make the atmosphere warmer, and the world, the oceans will warm up, all that stuff has been clear for, The New York Times said a really good story of this in 1956 by-

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you also wrote-

• 2:44Speaker 02

  By the immortal Waldemar Kampfart, actually.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waldemar Kampfart?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, wrote this article in 1956, and every beat, every beat in that story has been in every story you've written, I've seen about climate change ever since.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Do you know anything about the reaction to that story in 1956?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Where people like, Kampfart's gotta get it together.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Talking crazy.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  That's a good question. There was no social media record at the time of-

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not talking about hydrogen sulfide, that's a geek joke, actually. The active smelly gas in farts. But, so let me ask, in this book, I mean, you're a journalist, right? So you are compiling, basically, the fruits of the research that's going on among scientists around you. But are you the only one putting it together and then making predictions? Are we crediting a journalist for predicting the demise of the Earth, other than the scientist?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  The only thing in this book that I predicted that seems to be unusual is, there's a line in the book where I say, again, I was writing this in 1991, and I said, perhaps Earth scientists of the future will determine that we're in a geological age of our own making, a post-Holocene geological age of our own making, and maybe they'll call it the Anthroocene, I said Anthroocene at the time, and then- I was thinking, but I was thinking this would be like 200 years from now.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Scientists.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not 30, right.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  No, it actually, it ended up being, well, right, it ended up being the year 2000. When two scientists.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only eight years later, so the Anthropocene rather than the.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Right, and you know, but.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like Anthropocene better, fewer syllables.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Anthropocene is nice and clear.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  It's slicker, I still would prefer to have that.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get to my interview with Al Gore. As we know, he's been the leading advocate of the climate crisis. And if you follow him on Twitter, that he's punching it every single time. And that was not just a latter day interest of his. He's been active since the 70s, hardly when anyone else was talking about it on the sort of a global scale. And as I understand it, he held the first congressional hearings on climate change. As his first year as a congressman, so that's cool. And of course, he did the Oscar winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Now, is that now 10 years old, oh my gosh. And so, he was also a co recipient of the Nobel Prize, I forgot about this. For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Right, because he has to share that with a lot of people.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. So let's get to my interview with him. And you know, I start out kind of fun and playful and I knew, but I wanted to make everyone else know that the Vice President lives in the headquarters of the US Naval Observatory. And we just chatted about that a little bit, let's check it out. So how cool was it as Vice President to live in the US Naval Observatory?

• 5:28Speaker 03

  It was fantastic.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody knows that's your home.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  We have telescopes.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. The US Naval Observatory, US at home. This is like the headquarters.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a timekeeping device.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  The atomic clock.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The atomic clock is there, that's your.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  I had.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You live there.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  I had Mr. Hale of the Hale-Bopp Comet come over and give a running commentary, looking through the telescope. That was very cool.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's just a cool thing. I mean, I just wanted to let the world know that the Vice President's residence.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's very cool.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  And even though it's in an urban environment with a lot of light pollution, the longevity of those observations give those telescopes enduring value.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So you go, you and Al Gore buds, right?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Well, he endorsed this old book back when he was still Senator Al Gore in 1992.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says Senator Al Gore.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But 1992, this must have been like split second before he became Vice President.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Right, I'm sure it was when it was going to the printer or something.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  I feel like it would be pressure to be friends with Al Gore, like you couldn't just be like, "Hey, wanna have a barbecue?"

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Well, you know, we, back then...

• 6:34Speaker 01

  What a lovely hot day it is. I mean, sorry.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  You know, back then it was me, journalist, him, congressman, and so it wasn't like friend, friend, but no, we've been in touch over the years often on, for a long time. And it's interesting.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Did you ever go to his house?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Sticktuitiveness is an essential quality if you're dealing with global warming, because this is a very hard problem. So this is not like a one president problem or one pope problem or one...

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now Maeve wanted to know how friendly you actually were. So what was your friend? What was your question?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I was curious, I never knew that the Vice President lived in the, in an observatory.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Does Joe Biden live there now?

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I suppose so, I'd have to have an ask, but I don't see why he wouldn't. But you're wondering if, you're wondering if Al Gore ever invited him to a party?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you're asking. That's really impolite if the answer is no.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I'm really sorry, but were you ever invited to?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  No, no. I've been to, I've been to the White House, but not to the Naval Observatory.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  But don't you think that like that would be a cooler place to live even than the White House?

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's completely way cooler. The White House is a big house, it's not even as big as some rich people's houses are.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, except it's got the underground thing and a helicopter waiting for you to escape. Other than that...

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I was looking online, you know, Cheney, I was curious to know what Cheney thought of the Naval Observatory, because he didn't strike me as that kind of guy who would like the telescopes and stuff. And the only thing I found that was interesting was that it was part of his undisclosed, it was actually one of his undisclosed locations was his house. If, you know, in the term, remember if something was happening to the President? He could stay there, so basically he could stay at his house.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  That's how private he was, that his own house was an undisclosed location.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Maybe it's because nobody knows where the observatory is, they knew it was safe.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in my next clip, I wanted to know just how, where did this interest begin? If you're a politician, you know, often they have a hobby horse, but why was his hobby horse climate change? We just went there, let's find out.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  I always loved science. I can't say that I particularly excelled in it, but I always found it fascinating.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did you major in in college?

• 8:27Speaker 03

  I started as an English major and I switched to be a government major.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  But I took courses in science and it was one such course that really changed my life. I walked into a course outside of my field of major concentration that was taught by a great scientist named Roger Revelle. He was the first scientist to measure CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere. This was back in the 60s. And he described everything that has unfolded since then. He had a very clear vision of it. And that was really the reason why I got involved as a very young man in trying to understand climate science. It was that teacher who opened my mind and fired my curiosity and...

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he still alive today?

• 9:14Speaker 03

  No, he's not.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he know that he had that influence on him?

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. Absolutely. And I became close to his family.

• 9:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it possible that were it not for his influence that you might not have ever gone in this direction?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  There's no doubt in my mind that learning from Professor Revelle was the reason why I got involved in climate science. Absolutely.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just never know in life what single encounters can do.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have a quick Revelle story?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Revelle was amazing. In the 50s, the International Geophysical Year...

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1958, yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  He had the wisdom to assign Ralph Keeling, a name you probably know, to start measuring CO2, carbon dioxide, in a consistent way on top of the Mountaintop Observatory in Hawaii. And that Keeling curve, ever since then, this little wiggly curve, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, faster and...

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it goes to higher frequency, Azir.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Well, it does, meaning that it's the percent per year.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up, up, up, up, up, up, up.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  There's a musician who's composed a piece that charts that. It's actually pretty interesting.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  But anyway, I'll stop.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That usually tells me that musicians are running out of ideas when they got to come to scientific plots. Oh, there's a musical wiggle. Let me make, turn that into...

• 10:25Speaker 02

  You don't have to actually compose.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's one thing to have an interest in it. It's a varied, I think, it's a very different thing to become an activist because now you're committing your life and your mind, body, and soul, and energy, and clout. And so that's a whole other thing. And I wanted to know the transition from just having interest to becoming an activist. Let's find out what Al tells us.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  I always had a focus on the climate crisis and began giving a slideshow before it was computerized. I used to have three Kodak Oh, slide projectors. And, you know, this The carousels, yeah. The carousels and they would go in sequence and then Multimedia. Multimedia, right. And it was, it was pretty cool. But then, when I computerized it, I started going on the road a lot more. And it really kind of morphed into a mission that I can't possibly put down. I had the great privilege of working with our mutual friend, the beloved Carl Sagan, and others who inspired me to do more. And now that's

• 11:32Speaker 03

  mostly what I do. I'm in business and technology, but the majority of my time is as head of the Climate Reality Project and giving slideshows and training people to give slideshows and become climate activists all over the world.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Al becomes an active activist, uses his political clout to engage it. And after he gets out of office, he has a movie that wins an Academy Award for Best Documentary, I think it was, An Inconvenient Truth. Yet there's still people denying. So could you explain to me, you sit at that intersection, you write for the public, yet you read what the sign to say. So what is your insight into that denial?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Well, um

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And should we blame you?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  No, I, I thought of this in the eighties, I figured, okay, it's another pollution problem. And then I figured, okay, it's a technology problem. And then I figured it's a communication problem, which I think Al Gore thought it was too, because he, they did the documentary. But it's, it's much more profound than that. When you look at the energy trends, energy needs, it's not just about denial.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Do you think it's like something to do with like how humans don't do what's good for them? Like this fundamental thing where even as individuals, we know what we're supposed to do, but we don't do it?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, in the waiting room there, if there was a pile of apples along with the cookies, I think we still all would have been reaching for the cookies.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because cookies taste good.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  That's right. And apples are kind of fibrous and stuff.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  And also, there could be some pesticides on the skin.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, I mean, that, that's

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. There are no pesticides in my homemade chocolate chip cookies.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  That period, the sort of 2005, 2006, was when, when this really became political. And Al Gore, completely well-meaning in his approach to the issue, still is, was a politician and still framed it, even in the film, there's this sort of partisan aspect.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He had a politician's baggage going into that film.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And by the way, most documentarians have some kind of political baggage, even if it's not from their, from elective office.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one ever accused, uh, who's the other guy who made-

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Michael Moore?

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michael Moore of being Republican, right? They, they know he's coming from, from the Democrats worldview.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Regardless, right?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  So they're, they're kind of like political scientists and sociologists have studied like what happened and, and part of what has happened is it became a political badge. It's like abortion or gun rights and there's global warming.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that means people have to see the politics more than they see the facts. And that's dangerous because sometimes you can have a political leaning and maybe that leaning is correct, right? Just because you're a politician doesn't mean you're lying.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Although it gets to, uh, you know, and-

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should I tweet that? Should I tweet that? Just because you're a politician doesn't mean you're lying.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Right. And Al, you know-

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what he did, and, and, and while in office, he had this dream of having a, a earth monitoring satellite-

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would continue to get data on this very problem. I don't think it was, wasn't ever, just recently launched, right? And a little bit of a tribute to him after the fact-

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was called the Discover satellite, which is a, a cheap acronym really, but what do we, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, D S C O V R. Just you leave out a vowel, you, you play with it, you get the Discover satellite.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  He's always had the putting in extra vowels and leaving out vowels. He's had that, hasn't he? Wasn't he the potatoes guy?

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Oh, that was Dan Quayle.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was Dan Quayle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  I always mix up-

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's foreign, so she, she'll, she'll, give her a couple more years in country and she'll get all her points.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I'm so sorry, Al Gore.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so we, I had to, in my conversation with Al, it had to go to that point because it had, it had been launched and we had some good data. So I wanted to get his, was it one of his babies that he's now proud of? Let's check it out.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  That was in January of 1998 when I proposed putting a satellite out at the L1 point, where of course the satellite will remain between the Earth and the Sun and co-orbit the Sun. And now it's out there, a million miles from the Earth roughly.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just parked there? And it's just looking at Earth?

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The side of Earth that happens to be facing the Sun. So it's always full Earth?

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. So you get 14 blue marble-style photographs every single day. They can simulate the rotation of the planet now.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a single image satellite, but you piece together the images and make a movie of the rotating Earth.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can see storm systems form and take shape.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just congratulations that it finally got launched.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Thank you very much. I'm very excited about it. And in 2016, they will have finished calibrating one of the other instruments on this satellite, which will give us for the very first time the planetary energy balance. We've never had that. We can measure the energy coming from the Sun to the Earth because it's a single source. But the energy that's radiated back out and reflected back out into space is over 360 degrees. So we've never been able to measure that. That will give us a much, much more precise way of understanding the climate crisis because we've been focused on temperature. But most of the extra heat content goes into the oceans and it has long residence times

• 16:43Speaker 03

  there. Whereas the energy balance day by day will now be able to be measured precisely.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's as scientifically literate as you could ever hope a politician to be. And speaking about the total energy balance over the full surface of the Earth rather than in one region or another. So Andrew, just give me your reflections on this. On him as a politician, on these projects, on the future of the world.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Well, everything he just said reflects something that's essential in figuring this problem out. One is sustained observation, and we're really bad at that. And this is with stream gauges, the US Geological Survey, or acid rain levels, or CO2. It's been a fight just to sustain that measurement of CO2 on that mountain. So having a long-term vision, like, you know, he wouldn't even be in office when the satellite would be deployed, and having the ability to harness Congress to budget that.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Harness Congress?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Well, to...

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds kinky.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's sort of work with Congress. Yeah, it's a...

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I wonder something. Wait, wait, wait. So, you can say all that you're saying.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what matters is whether people who vote, and people who represent those who vote, who vote, understand and agree with it. If they don't agree with it, you can talk out your ass, and it doesn't make any difference. So, I've tried, I failed. So, now I blame you, journalist. Andrew the journalist.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  I think there's something interesting in the sticking to it thing, and the same, the consistent and working over years, rather than some kind of, like, spasmodic Hercules move. So, is there something that, like, normal people can do each day to, like, work towards helping? Like, it seems like that's what he's trying to do.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Well, there's a guy named Michael Sevack at University of Michigan, who studies transportation, and he just recently calculated what would the one thing be that everyone in America could do that would make the biggest difference. And it's like an order of magnitude difference. It's drive.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for other, for normal people, that'd be a factor of 10 difference?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Sorry, yeah.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said order of magnitude.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Sorry, sorry.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's fine. Jargon.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  So, it's time, a multiple.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  It's driving.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Either driving a car that's twice as efficient, or driving half as much. And that's a 5%...

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or not at all.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Well, I'm right in New York City, or wherever you can. So, that'd be a 5% reduction in the country's emissions of carbon dioxide. Everything else, like making your house more energy efficient, whatever, is like, literally, 10 times less impactful.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's America, Jack.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Oh, I know. And Texas is a big, long state with lots of driving to do. So, it's kind of like, and by the way, incremental change is not going to get you there. You know, that's why, since that same period, 2006, I've been writing about our utter disinvestment in the basic sciences that you would need to foster to take our emissions of... This gas to zero later in the century.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When StarTalk continues, we're gonna take on other topics such as where are we with clean energy? Where is it now? Where is it going? What's on the horizon? What new technologies will enable it? I've touched on some of them. I've been to some clean energy conferences. It's kind of fun to see what human ingenuity can come up with, but is it enough or is it too late? When StarTalk continues. Welcome back to StarTalk. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson and I'm with my co-host Maeve Higgins.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you still just off the boat or do, when do we stop saying that?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  No, I've been here for two years now, so.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a 10-year mark makes you a New Yorker, apparently, so just eight more years.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Have you eaten a hot dog off the street corner yet?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I thought you were gonna say off the street. I think the ultimate meal is like a slice of pizza crouched over a trash can.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I've definitely done that.

• 20:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've definitely done that, so we'll count you among us. And of course, we've got environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, who's been thinking about this almost his whole life. And we're featuring my interview with Vice President Al Gore. And we talked about how he got started, what prompted him to care about any of this at all, his activism, and wondering whether there are any sort of solutions that exist to solve the climate crisis, which is basically a CO2 crisis because our sources of energy are fossil fuel-based primarily, especially transportation. So what came naturally in the conversation was just to talk about solar energy. I mean, why not? And let's just see where that went. Check it out. What have you seen coming up on the horizon?

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I don't think anybody's gonna change until the sun is cheaper than coal.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Until that happens, you can beat people on the head. This is America, Jack. I'm not gonna do anything you tell me to do unless it's cheaper.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Well, I have good news for you.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what's that?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  It is now cheaper in a growing number of places around the world and in a growing number of regions here in the US.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the trend line is good.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  The trend line is good, and it's not only a trend line, it's a trend exponential curve. Okay. And we both know that in some areas of science and technology, like computer chips, for example, or digital cameras, or LEDs, they yield to R and D, and the technology gets better and cheaper at the same time. And the performance goes up. Performance goes up. Think about cell phones. I remember the first big clunky cell phones. Shoulder-mounted cell phones. Yeah. Back in those days, 1980, AT&T, then the only phone company, really, asked McKinsey to do a world market survey. How many of these can we sell by the year 2000?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  And the answer came back, 900,000, almost a million. And when the year 2000 got here, they did sell 900,000 in the first three days of the year. And now there are almost 7 billion of them around the planet. And the interesting question is, why were they not only wrong, but way wrong? For one thing, they didn't understand how quickly the price would come down, sort of like computer chips. They didn't understand that the technology would dramatically improve as it got cheaper. And in the regions of the world where they didn't have landline telephone grids, all those folks could leapfrog and get telephones for the first time. Same thing is happening with solar. The price is coming down, the quality of the product's going up.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  And in those parts of the world that don't have landline electricity grids, wow, they are really installing these things so quickly. Now they can have power when they never even had it before. That's correct. That's exactly right. So that's the number one most exciting new technology. It continues to get cheaper every single month. It is now way cheaper than electricity from coal in many regions. Within three years, in 47 of the 50 US states, it will be cheaper than electricity from coal. Wind is already cheaper in most of the US and the UK than electricity from coal. Efficiency doesn't have the same kind of sex appeal because it's a lot of things.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  But the new digital tools and the internet of things that are helping us become way more efficient, way more quickly. Managing. That's reducing. Yeah. The same thing that the internet did for bits of information, we're now seeing an electra net that's doing that for electron.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Andrew, you do you share that optimism?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  There's great stuff happening with with those technologies.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, just to be clear, because as given my physics background, I must disclose this, that wind power and hydroelectric power is also solar power. Because the sun is driving both of the the sources of energy from both of those.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  And coal and coal is too. It's just been in the ground for a hundred.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. But it's not renewable.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  No, no, I know.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. It's all traceable to the sun at some point. Um, well, actually, volcanoes are not traceable to the sun. We had geothermal energy. That's all. That's all Earth.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  From.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tap it from within.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, solar solar is great and and the deployment rates are way up and the incentives are great. But you go to Germany, which has got the greenest sheen of any country right now. And you look at their fossil fuel use, both oil, gas and coal, two different kinds of coal, one of which is pretty darn bad. And it's hardly been blunted. They're basically turning off their nuclear power and they've been substituting renewables, which is great for them in terms of their priorities. I I differ with the the nuclear issue. But but when you look at that fossil, if if Germany can't really blunt its fossil fuel use, then you look at the global trend.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, I missed what you said. You're saying in Germany.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are there. The rise of renewables is real.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're only replacing the sources of power that they otherwise had, but were not fossil fuels.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  And also not producing greenhouse gases. Yeah, it's a policy decision that Germany has been freaked out more about nuclear power than a lot of other countries. So but then take it to. So that's the German case.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could email you some or actually go to dot earth, my blog, and you'll see some.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wait, wait, wait, wait. I got you right here. Don't be sending me to your blog.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  All right, all right.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have the man right here. I ain't going to your blog. Just can we establish that?

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, fine.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. A. B. Isn't it true that half or more of all energy use is in transportation? And transportation does not have an obvious electrical option except for um passenger cars. But a truck, I mean, a Tesla, for example, most of its weight is battery.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You cannot have a truck. Carrying any kind of meaningful cargo if most of its weight is in its own batteries.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if that's the case, then yes, you swap out everything else, but you're still stuck with.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless we have some other new way to move stuff.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Well, there, there's, uh, there's work being done on fuels coming directly from solar energy. Um, there's, there's, it's a big, long leap to do that biofuels that exist. You know, theoretically, you're taking CO2 out of the air, putting it in a plant, putting, putting it in a fuel, putting it back in the air. So you're not adding CO2. But, um, when you look globally, uh, the energy demand of the world is, is up, up, up. There are 300 million people in India, that's the population of the United States, who don't have any electricity. They don't, can't turn on a light bulb.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  That, is that who he was speaking about when he was saying that they would skip?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and here's the issue.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whole countries where that's the case.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. But that would be the case if they're all going to stay in rural villages. But we're on an urbanizing planet and you need jobs in those urban areas, uh, whether it's manufacturing or services.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why can't solar power leapfrog them?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  It's just not like, it's the information, you can have an information revolution in a heartbeat.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say after the fact.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know that it happened.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Well, no, I know.

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can happen in a heartbeat.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  But, but electricity and, uh, energy systems have much more historically, they've had way more inertia in them. And it's, you know, I would love to just sort of do that.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you just interviewed Bill Gates.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  I did.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did anything come out of that related to this conversation?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, very much so. He's, you know, he's making the point that all of the gains we're making with renewables right now are great. But looking ahead to a world of nine billion people by 2050, uh, we don't know if it's going to be beyond that. And hopefully most not poor, meaning.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if they're not poor, that means they'll all use an electricity in ways that, that abject poor people in developing countries today are not.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  And, and, and, and here's another physics thing, uh, well, it's a chemistry and physics thing. CO2 is a durable gas. You release it, it stays in the atmosphere, it stays in circulation. So it's building and building and building. You, you can't. Stop global warming by just slowing emissions. You have to go to zero by sometime this century.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or find a way to take it out of the atmosphere.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Right, well, that's one way to go to zero, meaning net. And he's investing some of his own money and he's recruited other billionaires, ranging from Tom Steyer, who's a very liberal, progressive billionaire, to Elon. Actually, I'm not sure if Elon Musk is one of them. I can't remember. At any rate, he's trying to get people to focus on this investment gap for these long throw... But he gets punished because it feels like a Hail Mary, kind of like wishful. He calls them "energy miracles", which I think is kind of a mistake.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  It makes me think about, like, in the 1950s when Ireland was being... There was like a big rural electrification drive, and these two old farmers that lived across the road from us thought it was a phase. They were like, "This isn't gonna..."

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's electricity thing. They should ride it out, but we'll be back to candles and beeswax.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These electrons.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  So believing what Bill Gates has to say, and if he's putting his money there.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but there are two sides to this. There's whether people will embrace it. That's the Ireland 1950 problem, I guess, that you're describing there with your neighbors. Your neighbors didn't have electricity? Did you have electricity?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this was when my dad was a kid, and they had electricity. And then, these two old bachelor farmers refused.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's one hurdle, right? Will people embrace it? But I don't see that so much as a problem today, if it's in front of them and it's cheap. But another one is, of course, is the politics of it. And I couldn't have a conversation with Al Gore without talking about the politics of things. And so, let's see how he reads the politics of clean energy. Check it out. What do we need your sermons for if the marketplace is gonna take it there anyway?

• 30:06Speaker 03

  Well, because there is a determined effort to slow down this revolution, not only in the US but in a lot of countries. The old coal and oil and gas and utility companies are using their legacy political power.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the border of West Virginia, is there a mugshot of your face saying, "Stop 'em", before he comes in?

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Actually, you know, West Virginia is one of the places where solar panels are being installed very rapidly now. Let's take the example of the case of Florida, where the Sunshine State, the head of the big coal-burning utility there said, "Well, it's also the partly cloudy state." They actually make it illegal because the state legislature is in cahoots with the big carbon polluters. They actually make it illegal to buy solar electricity from somebody that installs a panel on your roof. It's one of only four states where that happens. But there are lots of other obstacles that the old companies are throwing up, and we need to work with the old companies. This shouldn't be a war.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my point.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  We should get on with this.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a former politician, you would know better than anyone. You can't just bust into a state.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Recovery.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on the 10th step of your 12-step program?

• 31:16Speaker 03

  There's a difference, yes.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just bust into a state where people have legacy jobs from multiple generations doing whatever it is they're doing without having some kind of transition plan.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right, and we should take care of the coal miners, for example. I've long proposed that. But this is happening anyway. The coal companies are going bankrupt. We're seeing China turn away from coal. We're seeing all over the world this massive revolution. One of the questions for those of us who live in the United States of America is, shouldn't we be leading this? We invented and developed these technologies. Do we want all these things made in China? Shouldn't we get a lot of those jobs here? There are going to be jobs all over the world. They can't outsource who's going to install a panel on the roof. It's going to be in a local community. And actually, the way...

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't outsource a construction job.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well...

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's as American a job, not yet.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  The robots can't do most of them yet, but...

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here come the robots off the container ship.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll be an interesting day.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Well, that's another conversation, but this is an opportunity, Neil, to lift the prosperity of the global economy in a way that no other project can. It's the most massive business opportunity in the history of the world.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Andrew, what countries in the world recognize this as a business opportunity and are taking the bull by the horns?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Well, they're recognizing it as an energy opportunity too.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me some countries.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Bangladesh.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bangladesh?

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Through the process of the climate negotiations, one of the things they pledged to do was to see what we could do with solar. And they have really ambitious targets and numbers there. And what I heard from...

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the United States is not going to say, "We're going to do this now because it works in Bangladesh."

• 33:02Speaker 02

  No, no, I know.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Because I'm wondering, based on what you know in your journalistic explorations, are there certain countries that if they do it, then they will shame other countries into doing it? And then you have a whole domino effect and then the whole world converts overnight?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Uh, no. I don't think that's going to work that way.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's not that we haven't converted. We used horses for 10,000 years. And within a 10-year period, nobody uses horses anymore for anything.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Essentially, just for entertainment. That happened like between 1890 and 1920.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I arrived here on horse.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  I traveled by horse, but...

• 33:41Speaker 02

  There was the manure crisis.

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the manure crisis. Now, who would have thought that something so permanent could be swapped out so quickly? Because something came around that was relatively affordable. As Henry Ford said, he wants his workers to be able to buy what they're building on the assembly line. And so, maybe it's... All this, I tried to get there in the conversation with Al, but it didn't land. Maybe it's simply economic. The day you can show me something cheaper that uses renewables, I'm there. Not because I gave a rat's ass about the environment, because I'm saving money.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely, you're right. It has to be that smooth. If it isn't, and also in some cases, like we have this huge infrastructure for gasoline to put in cars, you know, and so whatever, this is why there are some people still thinking we need a liquid fuel, whatever it is. Because the infrastructure, you can't do the horse thing in America the way we're with all of our cars and stuff. It's not quite that fast. But there's a guy named Nate Lewis at Caltech, a solar scientist, who conveyed this to me best. The big challenge here, and this gets, this is what you said... He said, we're not trying to, he said, it's not like going to the moon. You know, in the comparison to the moon shot kind of thing. It's like going to the moon when, when Southwest Airlines is already flying there handing out peanuts. He said, he said this to me a while ago.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  In other words, we have an energy system. It works. It's like you plug stuff in and, and that's, so it's a substitution for an existing system. And that's why if it isn't cheaper, every effort so far to make the dirty fuels more expensive.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're talking about the overhead in our infrastructure will make it that much harder to convert. Now, now they did it with LEDs. They got LEDs now that have screw, screw bottoms, right? Then when they first came out, that's not how they, that's not their native state. They have an Edison bottom, right? And so, and then maybe new homes would have, be built in with DC and not use.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but my, see, my, my nightmare as a journalist is I'm constantly like looking at what people are saying and looking at the data as much as I can. New York City, what is this sobering statistic? I gotta say it. Mayor Bloomberg.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm drunk right now, so I'm waiting to be sober from that. Okay, go. If it's sobering, we will measure that.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  You're gonna walk in a line.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  The Bloomberg administration did a survey of all.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bloomberg, the mayor of New York.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, former. They, they looked at all the building, buildings in New York. There's more than a million. And they concluded, based on what there is, is understand about turnover, that in the, the buildings that exist in 2050, 80% of the buildings that exist in 2050, they found, exist right now.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  So, you know, we all have this vision of a transformed world in 2050. It's basically what you see out the window.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, how can there be a million buildings when there's eight million people? That means we're averaging eight people per building.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  I didn't fact check that, but, but it's, it's in the.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't believe it.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't believe those two numbers juxtaposed as they apply to this city.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Follow up with you.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  At any rate, well, you have your office.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I grew up in a building that had 5,000 people in it.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was just a regular apartment building.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Supposedly there are a million.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the Bronx.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but anyway.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  So just think of that stat, though. 80% of the buildings in New York City in 2050 exist now, which means it's a huge retrofit.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Regardless of the number, that's, it's the percent that matters.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not like some magical new energy, zero energy world will be there. We have to work at it in a very, very sustained way. Uh, the efficiency stuff that, that former vice president talked about is challenging to, to do and that kind of thing. And then the, the, there is opportunity in, in the other countries that haven't built their giant cities yet. So, but that's hard too. It's all hard.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dreamers, all of them.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  You have to be, everyone, but this requires sustained work at every, every level from the guy I've met.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Works it's not gonna happen because people follow their pocketbook and not philosophy.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  I'm talking about innovators.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Innovators, sure.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Not, not every person.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a guy in India, Hari Shanday, who's developed a very successful business going to villages and saying, what are your energy needs? And they'll come in with a little solar panel that's enough to power some sewing machines and that changes lives. And they get on the internet and that changes lives.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They shouldn't ask, what are your needs? They should ask, what are your wants? That's very different. When Startalk continues, more of my interview with Vice President Al Gore.

• 38:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to Startalk. I'm with Maeve Higgins, my co-host, Maeve.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Andrew Revkin, do you, do you tweet? I do. You, what's, what's your Twitter handle? At Revkin. At Revkin, R E V K I N.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  I wish it was something really inappropriate. You're like, I can't say.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a professional here, okay? I teach Twitter, too. Uh, before the break, we were talking about clean energy and possible tech solutions to it. And we all dream of a world of limitless energy, right? Why not? In fact, in the 60s, when we imagined a future, what we didn't really get right was that information would be unlimited, but not the energy.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what we didn't get right. And if you have unlimited energy, then flying cars are a nothing, right? Just fly your car.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I wonder, can we have a world with limitless energy? Brought it up with Al, let's see what he had to say about it.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  So the calculation goes as follows. The world gets as much energy from the sun in one hour to power the entire global economy for a full year. So it may not be literally limitless, but that's close enough. And as we improve the fraction of that energy that we can harvest profitably, then we do approach a point where energy is abundant and very cheap. And to use a geeky economic phrase, it has zero marginal cost, meaning.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Of course, that after you build the solar installation, the next kilowatt hour is for free. That's not the same as with a coal-fired generating plant. You've got to back up the train. Hey, you've got to buy the coal, you've got to do all that stuff. And you've got to deal with the pollution also. We're now dumping all that pollution into the atmosphere as if it's an open sewer, 110 million tons every day. We've got to stop that. It's not working for us. But, again, on the opportunity side, if these new renewable energy sources get cheap enough, then projects like desalination become a lot more Which are energy-intensive, yeah.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, limitless energy, what a future that might be. So, I have to clarify something that he said. Yes, you can add up the total energy we receive from the sun and say it would drive our in an hour, but of course, some of that energy is actually keeping our plants alive. You can't just take all the solar energy that's hitting Earth and then drive human needs, right? The rest of life on Earth lives off the sun, so...

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Maybe give them 20 minutes, and then the rest of them, nom, nom, nom, nom, take that sun energy.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll take the rest of that, dammit, because we're the humans. Just to be clear, there are parts of the world that need the sun. But, and of course, you took away all the sun, then all the light, then Earth would plunge into darkness and cold, right? So, just to be clear. But the calculation is still fascinating to do, to get a sense of how much energy there is. So, as a journalist, have you thought about this and you've seen any downside to this?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  To having basically as much energy as we need?

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  No, no, I did write a piece a few years back where I kind of had this dream, I literally had a dream, what if we had the perfect energy source? You know, it's like Saran Wrap or something, and it just does that. You've got energy wherever you need it. Does it end all of our problems?

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does it have to do with Saran Wrap?

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Well, it's like some kind of super-cheap material, you just sort of put it around and

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Have limitless energy.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have limitless computing now, right? We don't even think of it. You have, you know, we have, we have birthday cards that have chips in them that sing happy birthday to you, that has more power than... You never got one of those? No. Okay, yeah, go on.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  But what you said, actually, I hadn't thought about it, but it's true. It's like this wonderful thing, the World Wide Web, which is supposed to connect us. If you don't use it in a certain way, it actually isolates you from everyone. Because you just cluster with your own type, wherever they are in the world. So, energy is the same. If you don't use it, if you have abundance, and you don't think about things like biodiversity, or what do you do with the salt from that desalination plant? Or those kinds of things, you could still have a world that you would not be proud of necessarily.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just wonder if there's no end of unforeseen consequences? Because it's one of these, be careful what you wish for.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Right, because as well, the immediate thing I think of, if there was like unlimited energy, is like all the time that you would save, and like say if you could just, like having a dishwasher, and you could save all that time. But I also think people are bad with time on their hands.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's true. No, no, no, no. No, but that's where you come in, entertainment.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so that stock in entertainment goes up?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Actually, I've been asking people recently whether sustainability, in a world like where we're all not poor and all energized, you're going to need entertainment more than ever. So actually, I thought it's really a sustainability thing to think about entertainment. It's like a part of our sustainable development is to think.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, entertainment is kind of on the rise. Look at, you know, the rise of, the re-rise of television, and what role it's playing in people's lives.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  All these people who used to be coal miners would be like YouTube stars now. How to get the coal out of your face.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Melinda Gates, you know, Bill and Melinda, they put out their letter every year, and I did this interview, I didn't talk to her, but her part of the letter, Melinda Gates, Bill's wife, who runs their foundation, her whole part of that letter was about time. Because in developing countries, the kids are getting the firewood and not going to school, and the girls are not going to school, and so time is precious.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my last clip with Al Gore, we just explored, how do you balance ethics with this? Because if you don't have the power to make a decision, that could be good in one way, but maybe not ethically the right thing. So let's get a politician's, an informed politician's perspective on this.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Well, I'll give you one concrete example. When I presided over the legislation that did the Human Genome Initiative, we required that 2% of it go into ethical studies to make sure that there was adequate attention being paid to that. And they have done a lot of impressive work. But it's not that simple. We all have to be prepared to engage in conversations about some of the difficult choices that will soon be available to us, like trait selection, like crossing species boundaries. You know about spider goats? I'll give you a quick example.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds interesting.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, well-

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spider goats?

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Spider silk is very valuable. It has the tensile strength and lightness. It has unique characteristics, and it's sought after. But you can't farm spiders. They're cannibalistic and aggressive, and that's, those are only two of the reasons I don't want to farm spiders.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So by spider silk, you mean that with which they make their web?

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right, that's right. So here's what you can do now, and it is being done. You can splice the genes from orb-weaving spiders into goats and produce spider goats, which mercifully look like goats. But they secrete spider silk in their milk through their udders, where it can be strained and retrieved in large quantities. And then there are now herds of spider goats. One of them's in Utah. You okay with that?

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Okay, some people-

• 45:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Some people wonder, okay, so-

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's a reminder-

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -of the commonality of all life on Earth, that we all share DNA in fundamental, deep ways.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  It is, however, I'm okay with that too. But there's some things that you and I both might think press the boundaries of what we think needs a little more thought and study. What about genetic modification of human babies to enhance this function or that function or-

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmetic or otherwise.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Pick the eye color, the hair color, whatever.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Designer babies.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm-

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that gets creepy.

• 45:56Speaker 03

  I'm not so creepy. And creepy is the word that comes up a lot.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But here's an example. The people who say, "Don't cross species, that's not-"

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's like, pause. Suppose, I'm making this up now, but suppose- We go to the newt and we find the gene that enables it to regenerate its limbs.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we go to the veteran and say, "I'm putting a newt gene in you. Now your limbs get regenerated that had just been blown off serving us in the military."

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is anyone gonna say no to that? Of course.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  No, of course not. And that's why when you opened your question with the concept of fear, I wanted to right away say, "Let's look at the fantastic and exciting opportunities." But yes, there are some things that we need to be cautious about.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Andrew, if I understand the data correctly, you advised the Pope on his recent encyclical?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  That's way overplaying.

• 46:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I have a quote here.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a quote here that came out of those collaborations. Nowadays, man finds himself to be a technical giant and an ethical child.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  That was spoken by a cardinal who's one of the Pope's posse.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  He's from Honduras.

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like someone who's just afraid of technology.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  But it was a great meeting and it articulates, yes, you need to have an argument of where the science is in the same room with people who are exploring those other components. The Vatican, 2014, ahead of the encyclical, they had a meeting with Nobel Prize winners and economists and philosophers. And in the end, one of the world's great oceanographers echoing this, I asked him, Walter Monk, I said, "What, how's this gonna work out?" He said, "It'll take a miracle of love and unselfishness this century."

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  And I thought, okay.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or just a new invention. So Maeve, what's your take on this?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Well, I was thinking if we do save all this time by getting all this new energy, then we could devote that time to thinking. Philosophizing.

• 47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, we can think again. Oh my gosh.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  That's my takeout.

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Back of my horn.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, we will end on that note. Maeve, you've been listening and possibly even watching this episode of StarTalk featuring my interview with Al Gore. Andrew Revkin, thanks for once again being on StarTalk. And Maeve, always had good to have you back, Maeve. Love having you. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.