Achieving sustainability - Stanford institute for the creative arts

It's great to be here especially on sustainability day.

I was reading the news yesterday and I was excited to see that even the CIA is getting into it.

They actually issued a press release saying that all the documents they shred, they used to generate heat for the CIA building.

It's fun to see how many people get into days like this.

It's great to have people here interested in sustainability.

But what I'm going to talk about is the hard part of sustainability and their is probably a dozen things I'm going to cover with you as I talk about that.

You know talking about sustainability is usually pretty easy and a lot of people talk about it.

Getting things done is much much harder.

I heard after the concert here for the sustainability and arts festival Thursday night there wasnt really a sustainable cleanup after they left.

And that's what I mean about the reality of achieving sustainability.

It takes a lot more than good intentions.

It takes a lot of effort.

It takes a lot of serious word to make that happen.

People talk about a green revolution a sustainable energy revolution.

People forget as Tom Friedman has said, that revolutions are generally pretty painful, as we see.

People get hurt and people play a big price, and we're seeing that in certain revolutions in the Mideast today.

The same is true in our business.

In the business of sustainability.

If in fact we're going to achieve sustainability, the people who have a stake in it.

The people that have a state against having it happen will in fact fight pretty hard and they're generally the people with a lot more resources then people who are trying to push a stainability.

Because they are small startup efforts or their social movements or small startups.

Or small new technologies.

They're fighting the incumbents.

So the way I look at it is I don't quite think of myself as an environmentalist.

I often complain about certain things that environmentalists do.

What we need to be to bridge the gap between the best of intentions and the reality of making things happen is to be pragmentalist.

So I say, i'm a pragmentalist not an environmentalist and I'll talk about some of the differences between those approaches.

The problem we have with sustainability is a much bigger problem than we realize.

You know we think we have a problem today.

About 500,000,000 people on this planet mostly in the western world have the energy rich lifestyles.

We have air conditioning, we have nice cars, things like that.

We fly on airplanes.

In fact within 30 or 40 years 5 billion people want that same energy rich lifestyle.

So we cant use less energy, will be using a lot more energy.

In fact if everybody is using the same amount of energy as we do, we'll use 10 times as much to accommodate all the people striving for the same kind of lifestyle we have.

So the problem is much worse than we think it is.

There's about 2 1/2 billion people who live on about 2 1/2 dollars a day.

That's about what's a Stanford student spends in a week.

Five billion people live on about $10.00 a day.

Five billion out of the 6 1/2 billion people on this planet.

The good news is they want economic growth.

Good news is they want lots of economic growth.

Bad news is the environmentalist generally don't like economic growth and they don't want these dreams of these five billion people to come true and that's a fundamental conflict.

Because environmentalists are always arguing against growth.

In fact for those of you who are interested in a good book, written by an environmentalists, called "why we can't leave saving the planet to the environmentalists."

What these guys want these five billion people is "substance not sustainability" and we can't argue with that.

It's a compelling argument.

This other thing I want to talk about before I go to deep into the actual business of sustainability is all the forecasts and pundits you hear about.

I love pundits because they stipulate the past.

They take what happened in the past and assume nothing changes and predict the future.

You hear all these scenarios.

But in my view these pundits, these experts, all the people you see appearing on NBC as experts, the professes you talk to, you here from Whittier econometric models, generally assumed a very static world and the world isn't very static.

Here's what happens.

One of the important messages i want to give you today is do not to pay attention to these experts, all those forecasts you hear about what's going to happen.

One of the important messages I wanna give you today is "do not pay attention to these experts."

All those forecasts you here about what going to happen.

So let me tell you about a funny study that Professor Ted Locke at US Berkeley did.

He decided to follow experts.

He Follow 250 experts across 20 years and about 80,000 separate forecasts.

What he discovered after about 20 years of this fairly rigorous statistic analysis, and all of you should take statistics.

That the average accuracy of experts was about the same as dog training monkeys.

That was the net conclusion of about 20 years of research and so when experts tell you what's going to happen the most "important thing to do is ignore it."

Invent your own future.

Invent your own reality.

Inventing a new future, specially with help of technology.

And I'll talk about that a bit more, is the only way we can bridge the gap of not being able to afford the consequences.

The environmental consequences of the energy use for 5 million people and stretch it to meeting the needs of five 5 billion people and still meeting are environmental needs.

Infact technology I believe is the only lever we have, its not a sufficient lever because we need the right policies, but it is the only large lever we have to bridge that gap.

So let me go on and talk about sustainability first.

The first thing I learned looking at this and I've been looking at it for well over a decade now.

The most important principle in sustainability is economic gravity.

Just like objects on our planet don't defiy the laws of gravity, no effort in sustainability can defy the laws of economic gravity.

Which means those 5 billion people who cannot afford much will not buy stuff that are more expensive and most environmentalists forgets that.

The second thing I wanna say, that the things you hear about, Solar and Wind are not sufficient.

In fact they're mostly in material.

If we had 10 times the amount of solar that we have today.

1000% growth.

If we had 10X the amount we had today, it would still be largely in material.

So we have to talk about the 80% that's the hard part, not 10 or 20% that's easy.

I can easily see solar growing from 0.5% of the world's energy to 5% but does that matter?

The reason it won't grow more is because it's expensive, because it doesn't give a rate of return to anybody who invest in it.

They don't get their money back fast, and we all know we live in a world where people don't like putting money out and having to wait a long time to get paid back.

So let me give you some examples of economic gravity.

I apply what I call that chIndia test to any new technology that shows up.

Which is, "will the average person in India or China buy this technology?" because if they won't, it won't scale.

You know it's easy for those of us living in San Francisco or Germany or at least five or 10% of us living in San Francisco or Germany who can afford technologies and are willing to pay more for are conscience to adapt to these technologies.

But lets not mistake them for a reality that is most people's reality.

They barely have enough and refuse to pay any more just because somebody else can have a more sustainable lifestyle.

This is both the bad news and it's also good news.

In fact when I looked in the U.S. and I looked at the kind of things we talk about in sustainability solar and wind.

Surprisingly nobody in Mississippi is buying them.

I call that the Mississippi test.

Unless technology is getting adapted by people who are not here in green San Francisco, or the green bay area, or the north east of the United States, they are not going to scale.

So we have to be very very conscious of that.

I suspect, I haven't been able to check the facts, that most prius are sold in Berkeley and not in Mississippi and there's something wrong with that picture.

Though the rate, the basic principle that it's not economic, if it doesn't scale applies.

The basic principle of being pragmatic about these, being pragmentalist not environmentalist applies.

Unfortunately when I heard a talk from the CEO of Exxon a few years ago, he said the following in front of a senate hearing.

"Those environmentalists can worry about 5% of our energy that's renewable, I'm going to worry about the remaining 95%."

I'm going to worry about the cheapest form of energy I can get and unfortunately he's more right than wrong.

When you apply it to the five billion people I talked about on this planet and that's the technological challenge.

You love electric cars but they don't matter until their five times cheaper than how much they cost.

The good news, in my view and all talk a little more about this, is that most of technology can be reinvented.

Things you cant imagine can be reinvented.

I recently started to look in some esoteric areas.

Can you applied technology to agriculture?

Turns out you can in droves.

So many areas for innovation, even in a hard area.

I'll give you a good example.

Most people don't realize when we eat our steak, that a kilogram of beef on your table takes 15,000 liters of water to produce.

1 kg of beef.

That's A-lot of water.

Turns out it takes 7 pounds of corn to produce 1 pound of beef.

Animals are pretty inefficient at converting plant protein to animal protein that us humans like to eat.

But Infact Technology can make that process five times more efficient.

There are people starting to work on clever designs for new foods, new ways, new foods, new proteins, new nutrition.

Infact what our system of agriculture was built on which was not enough calories, is no longer a problem on this planet.

That it's the reverse problem of too many calories and not enough nutrition.

So we can reinvent agriculture.

We can Infact reinvent how we farm and produce stuff.

I've been very intrigued with the simple idea of what if plants were tolerant of saltwater.

Suddenly a lot more length would be available to produce food.

Now that's just a bit of genetic engineering, engineering that people are working on.

So that's what I mean about technology being a huge resource multiplied.

Having giving you all the bad news about how many people want energy rich lifestyles and food rich lifestyles.

The good news is that in fact we have all the tools specially if more of you would do technology and help with this problem.

So let me talk about environmentalists for a bit.

I generally found they do a very, very good job of finding the problems and defining problems and Infact surfacing problems.

They do a relatively poor job of designing solutions to problems.

So I find often they get in the way of solutions.

Because they're too idealistic.

They're not pragmetalist, they're not pragmatic.

I've also found lots of people with their consciences, wanna work on nonprofits.

But generally those have problems scaling.

Addressing most of these problems can only be done by a capitalistic approach to things.

It's really hard to scale without appealing to basic human instincts around to greed.

Fortunately I think the problem can be framed if people can be motivated.

To solve these problems in their own self interests.

Which is the fundamental promise of capitalism.

Specially if you put enough checks and balances on that capitalism.

I think the key is to achieve balance.

I have another pet peeve with environmentalists you see.

I have a lot of friends that are environmentalists and I get along very well with them, but there seldom realistic.

I find people generally interested in sustainability, get more prone to fashion, and susceptible to fashion, I should say.

I recently saw an ad for eco bekines.

Now small bikinis may be nice but there's nothing eco about them.

I saw an ad for sustainable toxins, that shell actually put out.

A real ad.

I'd be embarrassed to put that ad out.

So with both extremes all of these silly fashion statements getting on the bandwagon.

Many of you who care about sustainability probably care about things like "organic food."

Let me give you some statistics.

Organic milk requires almost twice the amount of land that ordinary milk does.

Releases 20% more greenhouse gases.

Releases 60% more nutrients into the water.

Organic tomatoes required twice the amount of energy that regular tomatoes do.

This is a study by the UK Dept of environment.

So being pragmatic about this is not important.

I already talked about the amount of water beef takes to produce.

So when I hear people talking about taking shorter showers to be environmental.

I say just become a vegetarian

It's going to have two orders of magnitude more effect than taking a shorter shower.

Now some people have other reasons not to take showers but we won't go into that.

People love solar power, people love wind power.

They forgets that what they love more than solar power and wind power is watching their favorite TV show or NFL game when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.

And when you worry about the infrastructure of a society. or a city.

You have to make sure that you have power all the time.

You can't be impractical about it.

I suspect some of you here own a prius.

Now a prius is a fashion statement.

No different than an expensive pear jeans.

You're going to pay $5000 more for a preous to be more sustainable and have less carbon emissions.

I can tell you that painting your roof white on your home will save just as much carbon over 10 years as a preous will and it only costs $200 and Saturday afternoon.

So we have to be realistic about what we push and pragmatic and separate the fashon.

My favorite is Sheryl Crow who says "we should only use one sheet of toilet paper when going to the lid."

Im sorry if everybody switched from using two sheets to one sheet I don't think it would save the planet or even make a noticeable difference.

I have a real beef with the sort of fashon statements.

My favorite is a group in Australia, it is pushing for kangaroo meat instead of cattle beef because it emits 20% less greenhouse gases then cattle beef, to have kangaroo meat.

It may give you another example of what practale action means.

Al Gore is a good friend of mine.

He's done a great job of defining the problem.

That we have with green house gases.

He's giving it a lot of visibility.

He's define the problem well. But when it comes to solutions he mostly talks about what people should do, not what people would do.

Given up to their own devices.

I've had many a conversation saying.

The people who matter in this debate don't listen to him.

If they're environmentalist they pay attention they packed the halls.

Ask any Republican if they care what Al Gore has to say.

And what is very important is the vast majority of people.

In the United States at least they care about the environment,

but not enough to do much about it

They're not the ones that say climate change doesn't exist.

Reaching them, bridging out to them.

Not with a religious approach.

But with rational arguments and practical Outreach, and practical conversation, not moralistic statements about what they should do.

Is what's really really important.

Creating that bridge is more important than creating the edges of either the complete sustainability bigot or the climate change doesn't exist bigot.

In fact was two extremes almost don't matter in the debate,

everybody already knows where they stand.

Let me try and finish with a few statements.

This is hard stuff.

But the good news is what I found in my life.

The most fun stuff to do is the most hard stuff.

Easy stuff sorta gets boring after a while.

When you're doing really hard challenges, when you're working hard at it, even after 20 30 years of doing it, you're still motivated, because you're still challenged

I always believe that challenge is always the most fundamental part of life.

It's the part that leaves the most satisfaction.

It's the thing I encourage everybody to do.

Many ideas that seems outrageous don't seem outrageous after you worked on them for a while.

My favorite is a quote from Jordan Bernard All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

And the second one for Martin Luther King who is that human salvation lies in the hands of the Creatively maladjusted.

In fact that sort of approach in life to solve the hardest problems even as hard as the climate problem.

But also important to me is your willingness to try new things,

which means your willingness to fail.

I always say that my willingness to fail at things gives me the ability to succeed.

In fact it's the only thing that gives me the ability to succeed.

Because it gives me the ability to take risk and try new things.

In fact I saw a quote from Larry Page recently who said the only two failures Is not attempting the audacious.

Even if you fail and you're ambitious thing he said, It's very hard to fail completely so you will achieve something.

But I also tell people only try things that are worth failing at, because failing doesn't matter, but if you succeed It better be something worth succeeding at.

And that's important.

So don't just become a banker or Google or Facebook employees.

So do new things.

Which is one of the greatest things about the Bay Area.

There's so many role models of people trying outrageous things.

So let me tell you what I believe we will achieve in a very short time.

Like in the next five or ten years.

I suspect that every bulb you see will take 20% less electricity to produce the same amount of light.

Will produce 5X more light with the same amount of electricity.

Well produce 5X times more the amount of air conditioning and be 80% more efficient.

That goes a long way to bridging that 10x gap of 500 million people - 5 billion people.

No question that engines will be 100% more efficient and use half as much oil.

Then replace most of that with renewable sources.

That is the kind of technical advances that are conceivable today.

When I think of what's possible over 20 years.

I think it's hard to imagine.

To imagine 20 years from now, my guess is you would have to look at today and imagine today in the year 1950 or so.

Because of the rate of change and the rate of progress.

So in fact my end message is a very optimistic one.

I'm truly an optimist and maybe a technology optimist.

But it is in fact the single most important thing we can do. If we don't do it we have a huge problem. It's very doable so we should do it. It's also fun and rewarding to do it.