Largescale farming. The American Renewable Energy summit was held in aspen colorado earlier this year. Up next here on cspan, two keynote speeches from the conference. Well hear from lester brown author of more than 50 books including the great transition shifting from fossil fuels to Renewable Energy. And mike phillips, of the turner endangered species fund. On animal and plant species that are going extinct. [applause] thank you chip. Thank you for organizing our day and thanks for the invitation to come back again. My topic, as i recall, is the great transition. The great transition is a shift from coal and oil to solar and wind. And most of us know about a Little Solar Energy and a little wind farm there. But things are happening very fast now. I think were going to see about a half century of change compressed into the next decade. And were going to see a complete restructuring after the world Energy Economy. A decade from now, the principal sources of energy in the world will be solar and wind, not coal and oil. So its coming and its coming very fast. Just to give some glimpses of the new Energy Economy that we can now see at various places in the world last year denmark got 33 of its electricity from wind. In the month of december, it was 55 . It is the first country to get a major share, the major share, of its electricity from wind. But its not finished. The goal is to take it up to 100 . Portugal spain and ireland are moving fast, with 22 18 and 17 of their electricity coming from wind. In spain interestingly, wind has emerged as the principal source of electricity in the country. And it has overtaken nuclear. In South Australia wind farms are replacing coalfired power plants and doing it very fast. In china windgenerated electricity has not only overtaken nucleargenerated electricity, but if you look at the curves, the nuclear curve looks like this. The wind curve looks like this. Its just a runaway now. Its exciting to see the other largest economy in the world now moving so fast toward wind. There are seven wind megacomplexes under construction in china. Each of which will have at least 10,000 megawatts of generating capacity. Thats 10 Nuclear Power plants. The largest, which is not surprisingly in mongolia, a particularly windrich air will when it is completed, have 38,000 megawatts of generating capacity. 38,000 megawatts is equal to the electricity consumption of poland. This is not smalltime marginal additions to the Worlds Energy supply. This is bigtime. Weve not seen anything like it. And weve not seen any other energy source, including coal and oil and Nuclear Scale up to the levels were seeing with wind, for example, with 10,000megawatt wind farms. Its a whole new ball game. In the united states, iowa and south dakota are the leaders in wind electric generation, each getting about 20 of their electricity from wind. Iowa wants to take this to 50 within the next four years. It may become the first u. S. State where wind becomes the primary source of energy. I should say, of electricity. How is this revolution happened . How has it managed to move so quickly . Incidentally, there was supposed to be a clock here some place, a timer, and i cant where is it . If you can see it, thats fine. The advances have come from Government Policies or indeed subsidies, from environmental groups. The sierra club launched, in the beginning of 2010, a beyond Coal Campaign in this country. At that time we had 530 coalfired power plants. Their goal is to close every one of them. And so far, theyve closed 140. So the 530, now down to 390. Their goal is to close every one not later than 2030. And then we say well, what about china . Well, china is moving very fast. The coal trusts in china faced with the shrinking use of coal are on the verge of bankruptcy. There are six provinces in china which have set their own coalreduction goals. They range from cuts of 5 to 50 between now and 2020. This easy are individual provinces, simply picking it up and saying basically coal has to go, and were going to do our part. There are also a number of cities around the world who are pushing for 100 clean energy, like San Francisco wellington, new zealand, just to set a couple. So a number of cities are setting very Ambitious Goals goals much more ambitious than the goals of the states in which they are located. What about india . India is a major source of Carbon Emissions heavily reliant on coal for electricity generation, for example. But its shifting. They have now designed in india solardriven water pumps that are much cheaper than diesel pumps. Indian farmers currently have 26 million dieselpowered is that ten minutes . Oh, good. They have 26 million dieselpowered irrigation pumps. And the plan is to replace every one of them with a solarpowered irrigation pump. And save a lot of money in the process. The payback time on these solarpowered water pumps is from one to four years depending on the situation and from how far down theyre pumping the water. I mentioned earlier, the scaling up that were seeing with wind farms. Were also seeing the same thing with solar cells. Solar cells can scale up and they can scale down. They can scale down to this little strip on my watch that provides the electricity to run it. And they can go all the way up to 200 megawatts 200 megawatts. Theres really no limit to the size. And there are close to 100 of these large plants being built now in the southwestern united states. At the end of last year, the world had 139,000 megawatts of solargenerating capacity. Thats equal to 139 Nuclear Power plants. But its growing by an extraordinary rate. Between 30 and 70 per year. One of the most exciting things happening now is actually an Economic Development where rooftop solar panels generating electricity are now producing electricity cheap enough to not only compete with but to undercut the local utility. And what happens in this situation is, as more and more people learn that a rooftop installation of solar panels will provide cheaper electricity than the utility, they begin installing them on their homes. Then for the utility, the market begins to shrink. So they have to raise their prices. And when they raise their prices even more people put solar collectors on their roofs. And its called a suicide spiral. But there are many utilities now in this country and elsewhere in the world particularly in germany, where theyve invested very heavily in solar cells, the two largest utilities in germany are really on their knees. Their net market value for the two of them has dropped 56 over the last four years, which says something about the markets assessment of utilitygenerated mostly coal generated electricity. So the markets are beginning to pick up these changes. In 2013, 33 of denmarks electricity came from wind. In iowa and south dakota, it was 25 . Texas is pushing hard on wind. Last fall, a block of nine midwestern states got 20 of their electricity from wind. The state of oklahoma in october, got 32 of its electricity from wind. Im getting these examples and these glimpses just so we can begin to see whats happening. I mentioned chinas seven wind complexes. I mean, this is bend generation on Wind Generation on a scale weve never seen before, when you talk about 10,000megawatt plants at a minimum and some going up to 38,000 megawatts. There are four states in north germany that get half of their electricity from solar cells. And then the exciting thing about having a rooftop solar generator is that you cannot only run your household you can also run your car with solar energy. Youre going to need an electric car or a plugin hybrid, but theyre coming. And this also is going to be marketdriven and its going to move much faster than people think, for the simple reason that the cost of electricity as a fuel is about onethird that of gasoline. And thats going to become clear, i think the more and more people in the years immediately ahead clear to more and more people in the years immediately ahead. We have seen an interest for several years now in using corn for ethanol. Im not sure thats the best use of land. If you have an acre of land growing corn you can produce 1,000 worth of ethanol. But if you put a wind farm on that acre of land, it will generate 300,000 of electricity. So we can begin to see where the balance of where the advantage lies as we look ahead. I mentioned iowa. One sort of wild thing about iowa that reflects the extraordinary piece of agricultural real estate we have in the u. S. Midwest iowa produces more grain than canada. And at the same time, more soybeans than china. Thats a double wow. But it i mean, u. S. Midwest is why the u. S. Is the food superpower in the world. Theres no other country close to us in terms of production and exports and part of this is the good fortune of having inherited some extraordinarily productive soils. What about Nuclear Power . I have two minutes to go. What about Nuclear Power . Nuclear cannot compete economically. The technology is there. With eknow how to do it we know how haud it to do it, but the costs are just not there. So its not the technology. Its the economics that has led to the decline in both u. S. Nuclear generation and worldwide nuclear generation. Both are on the way down. Nuclear is on the way out. I dont see anything reversing that. Weve seen a number of things contributing to this transition. One is advancing technologies have lowered the costs of solar and wind energy. Another is mounting public concern about Climate Change that sort of underlies the thinking and the shaping of policies in this area. And weve seen some people with money, a lot of billionaires, really begin to plow money into Renewable Energy. Warren buffet. 15 billion a couple years ago. More recently, another 15 billion going into wind and solar development. Ted turner, five solar plants in the south now and a wind farm coming in minnesota. Phil anschutz, a denverbased guy who made his first billions in oil and gas, is billing a 3,000 megawatt wind farm in wyoming, and a transition line so he can ship that wyoming wind energy to california basically in the form of electricity. Were beginning to see all sorts of new developments now. Im down to my final minute. Were seeing some stranded assets along the way of this transition. Coal mines not worth anything anymore. The french firm, a big energy company, invested 11 billion. They just pulled out and wrote the whole thing off. Oil refineries fewer and fewer now. The Corner Service station, as gasoline use in the u. S. Declines because of more efficient cars and were driving less. My Corner Service station just went two weeks ago. Its gone now. And this is happening in many parts of the world. So service stations, gasoline service stations, will be an important part of the stranded assets. Oil refineries, a lot of them theres just not enough demand for oil to keep them going. So a lot of those are also going to be going. Final point. Chevron, exxon mobil and shell invested 120 billion last year in trying to expand oil production. With that 120 billion investment, they only succeeded in preventing further decline. They were not able to increase it at all. The stock market is not looking favorably at the oil companies. The s p 500 index went up 40 last year. Sorry. Over the last three years. Exxonexxon, mobile and chevron went up 11 . Shell went down 2 . When i see the oil ceos now they dont quite know where to go. Its an entirely new world. Instead of the companies expanding, theyre actually shrinking. Its an indication of the kind of thing that were going to be seeing in the years immediately ahead, and im not talking about 20, 50 years from now. Im talking about the rest of this year and next year. The Energy Transition i call it the great transition because its going from fossil fuels to solar and wind energy will be the defining element of our time. This is a historic development. Thank you very much. [applause] one of the most important developments in modern human history. Now id like to introduce mike phillips. He is one of the gentlemen who have been keeping his pulse on the biodiversity conversation. And mike comes to us from the turner endangered species fund. Im really looking forward to your presentation. Thank you, mike. Right here. Im good. Good morning. Im going to dive right in, because 15 minutes is not a lot of time. I caught my first gray wolf 34 years ago. Not long after that thats not supposed to be the first slide. That is. There you go. Okay. Not long after that, i had the good fortune to lead a red wolf to the southeastern united states. This little female, known as 344, was the first red wolf born in the wild in many decades. After that, i had the good fortune in the effort to restore gray wolves to Yellowstone National park. After that, i had the good fortune to saddle up with ted turner and his family to launch what has become the largest private effort in the world to redress the extinction crisis. I wish i could say that well, ive been involved with the extinction crisis since 1980. I wish i could say that i didnt have much to say to today because the work was done, but thats not the case, unfortunately have you ever heard of whipples, or narrow cats paw, tennessee ripple shell diving beetle, easy yellowfaced bee, true pig toe . All of those are species that have gone extinct in the recent past in the united states. Have you ever heard of martha . Thats martha. Martha was a passenger pigeon. She died at the cincinnati zoo at 1 p. M. On september 1 1914, at the ripe old age of 29. Martha was not an extraordinary passenger pigeon. She just happened to be the last. Passenger pigeons were fan fanatically gregarious creatures. Consequently, they were very easy to kill. The decline happened fast. In the early part of the 1880s, big flocks, including millions of birds were known. Before the end of that decade groups of 200 were noteworthy. The last wild bird was shot by a 14yearold boy in ohio on march 24 1900. After that the species was only known in captivity. And martha was the last of that crowd. Upon her death marthas small body was frozen in a block of ice and shipped to the smithsonian. Ironic, isnt it . Billions of passenger pigeons have been killed with no attention to their biology or their anatomy or their ecology. But upon her death, marthas little body was seen as precious, in accord with the scarcity theory of value. Like other extinction crises the one that were currently involved in operates across a massive scale. Every year, thousands of species and attendant interactions finetuned by time and place disappear at the hand of man losses so severe that the redundancy is being stripped away, exhausting the lives of millions. Without doubt, the current extinction crisis is one of humanitys most pressing problems. And on par, on par with the five great waves of extinction that have swept across this planet since multicellular life first arose a billion years ago. The first extinction crisis occurred in an era about 440 million years ago. That event emptied the oceans. The fifth crisis occurred during an era, about 66 million years ago. During that crisis dinosaurs disappeared in a geologic instant as an asteroid measuring about six miles across slammed into the earth, traveling at 45,000 miles per hour. The sixth great extinction crisis began in the latter part of the 18th century at the onset of the age of man. Like all of these waves of extinction, ours is characterized if you want to define an extinction crisis, its characterized by untold numbers of species disappearing around the world. These arent isolated events. At a rate that greatly exceeds the normal geological rhythms of life and death. During an extinction crisis, all bets are off. The normal darwinianbased rules of survival of the fittest those rules become irrelevant. The change is brought about by these waves of destruction, so fast and so complete that the very notion of darwinian fitness is rendered moot. Species that survive this is important are not so adapted as simply lucky. Think about the power of a Destructive Force that is so overwhelming that survival of the fittest, that tried and true approach for life marching inexorably in the direction of persistence is rendered totally irrelevant. Imagine forces so powerful that the whole of living nature, the whole of living nature, with the wisdom of the ages, has insufficient time, resources and knowhow to adapt. What then are we to make of the sixth great crisis before us . Its most important to note that its not a speeding asteroid but, rather, it is us marching inexorably in this direction in a most powerful way to do one thing. To domesticate the planet. Thats what is driving this crisis as we speak today. What does this have to do with Renewable Energy . Well, i think the extinction crisis, above all else, is a clarion call for changing our relationship with one another and the planet earth. Why is this so . Why is the extinction crisis is clarion call . Because its loud and its clear, as all clarion calls must be. It certainly allowed for those who are willing to listen. I can imagine that with each passing, theres a celestial bell that rings endlessly in the heavens, marking the passage of yet another miracle. And its certainly clear. It provides clear evidence, unequivocal evidence that something is amiss. Be mindful over the long sweep, a billion years of multicellular life, there have been five events that rival the extinction crisis that were in today. If thats not evidence that something is amiss, then i dont know what amiss means. We understand the cause of the extinction crisis. Its humaninduced habitat degradation, habitat loss, habitat modification, invasive species, and other the last few decades, Climate Change. So you wonder, what does this have to do with energy and Energy Policy and Renewable Energy . Well, if we can Mainstream Renewables as a way for redressing the extinction redressing the Climate Change problem, it will double as a redress for the extinction crisis as well. The transition that we should consider should align us with the great thoughts of the ecotheologian, thomas barry, who imagined a transition from a period of human devastation of the earth to a period when humans would relate in a more beneficial manner. We need a transition to a heavy reliance on renewables a transition to a restorative economy. We need a transition to fairness within and between generations a transition to peace amongst ourselves and all other creatures, great and small. The growing momentum of the extinction crisis makes clear were running out of the time. Soon we wont have anything to transition to. Without immediate and substantive changes, we are not going to have a world that were proud to give to our children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. A step in the direction of necessary change would be to redouble our support for the federal endangered species act. This would be a direct way to respond to the extinction crisis. Increasingly it seems that the endangered species act is incapable of doing anymore than simply buying us a bit of time before the permanent losses are registered. What do you do on behalf of the endangered species act . First, you thank your lucky stars that you live in a country where votes matter. Then i would ask that you redouble your involvement in electoral politics. We ex elect officials who are willing to remedy environment degradation, remedy misguided fossil fuel Energy Policies that increasingly favor a few at the cost of many. The degraded condition of our by earth screams out that we redouble our efforts. We must be part of a movement that puts a stop to politicians flagrant disregard for science on matters of great importance, like biodiversity, Energy Policy and Human Welfare in general. Now, i know and you probably do too, that were imagining a Massive Mission to effect this great transition. Massive missions always require a mastery of politics. There is simply no other way to marshal the requisite resources. We could more fully master politics, we could more fully ensure a certain transition if more of us showed up to serve in elected office. Now, you may agree that the world is run by those who show up but youre not the least bit inclined to show up to serve in the irrational world of politics. Well, you know, i found that politics is not all that irrational. I served as a montana representative. Its a world defined by a bunch of knuckleheads, but theyre not irrational. [laughter] more importantly, i have come to believe that at its core, our political system favors folks like us. It favors people that believe that facts and knowledge and scholarship and determination matter. Why do i believe this in this age of hyperpartisanship . Because of the way in. Our country was founded. During the formative years, from 1786 to 1788, the founders recognized that there was no way on the heels of the hardfought revolutionary war to establish a republic that resolved the problems related to the rights of the federal government versus the rights of state governments. There was no way to resolve the problems related to the rights of women, the rights of native americans, the rights of slaves. At the time of our nations founding, those problems were insolvable. So our founders created a political system and political parties, as institutionalized channels for ongoing debate, which permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treesson act but as a legitimate voice in an endless argument. The constitution provides a framework for debating salient questions endlessly if need be. We will not succeed in ending the
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