We are in a good position to start cutting down emissions hard and fast. I think that paris will help. We know that the trajectory we are on at the moment with the Greenhouse Gas emissions will land about four degrees warming by the end of the century. We will alter the trajectory so we will be aiming more likely that about 2. 7 degrees. Its not enough but its good, but good start. We know we want to stay down below two degrees. How are we going to do that . I started thinking about the drawdown from the atmosphere and i met Richard Branson in 2007. He invited me to his home in the British Virgin islands and he had his we start but the problem. Richard expressed skepticism that humans could act fast enough to reduce emissions. He just thought it was a good happen. He thought what he could do was offer a prize to help Foster Technology and would have the potential to draw at least one part of carving out a deficit every year. We start this thing called the virgin challenge. I sit on the judging panel. Weve had over 11,000 entries so far and theyve open my eyes to the world of possibilities that exist to draw co2 out of the atmosphere. All of them are at small scale relative whats required to do a big tendency to but that you have a cumulative potential. Theres two main streams in what i call the third Way Technologies, technologies that can fix it out of the atmosphere. One is biological. You can also take plant matter and make things with the prior to the advent of the fossil fuels industry, make most of things we need directly from trees, from their sap. That i think another option for drawing co2 out of the atmosphere. A third option is the development of, take plant matter or farm waste, the cardinals did it for quite a long time. All of those technologies are sort of smallscale. In 2013 and wounded thousands of globally so thats a long way from a gigaton. But the approach is there at least. When you go to the oceans and look in the oceans you see something quite different from when. The land area is putting a big burden on already but the oceans offer better opportunities, even though theres many more unknowns. One opportunity concerns seaweed. Theres a proposal just been published luscious as if we could cover and i present the world ocean in seaweed farms we could draw the equivalent of all Carbon Emissions out of the atmosphere on an annual basis as well as provide enough fish and oysters to feed a population of 2 billion is enough high quality protein of you. I thought that sounds fantastic but mr. Thinking about how big is 9 of the world ocean . Turns out about four and half times the size of australia. A big area to cover. Secondly, seaweed is great, there goes 30 to 60 times faster than landbased plants but what we do with all that seaweed . Youve got to turn into something useful and think it is to get out of it and put it somewhere. It turns out there are some options. Bio digesters are wellknown technologies of taking farm waste attorney to do nothing. You can burn the methane for electricity. For those who do that comes out of the smokestack, if youre floating seaweed farms, down into the shallow sediments and because of the overlying water, visio two states into stable state. Its not trying to skip over time. It will eventually form a solid. When you think about it, its the ocean floor that is the ultimate repository for all the excess ear to do it. It precipitates out in the form of limestone. That takes many, many thousands of years. Theres a whole other stream and the third Way Technologies ago basically the chemical strength. Sounds terrible but theres no the good with i can think of for it. That covers a huge range of technologies from carbon negative concretes, concretes that absorb co2 as i said, in take no co2 to make. Concretes are about 5 responsible for the 5 of global emissions of co2 currently. Dealing with the end of which is a very high potential, in my view, thing to do. They are also rocks in the earths crust which absorbs co2. These rocks are formed at midocean region but did he get incorporated. They are mined for various purposes. Theres a company in the netherlands that takes these rocks, grinds them up, puts them in roofing paints a people having negative carbon roofing think that absorb co2 straight to the roof. To our proposals to use these rocks at a beach scale, on beaches. And they will absorb co2. One of the problems with that approach is of course it takes fossil fuels to quarry rocks and crying for. Im kind of a big proponent with a window with a hammer on a. Take clean energy and break them up. If we can do it, we can make a difference. At the far end of the options, other possibilities, and exciting technologies can i tell them i hand a little mobile phone cover, plastic but which was made from atmospheric co2. Currently is the most expensive mobile phone cover in the known universe. You will not want to quantify went with the technology exists to let us do that now. Too much of the extra their breakthrough was announced. A Companies Said that they could make carbon nano fiber strickland from atmospheric co2 at a fraction of the cost of current production methods. That is an extra their thing. Carbon nano fibers will be a big part of the future. They are lighter and stronger than just about any other substance we have. At the moment we use them to manufacture aircraft because theyre so expensive that as they get cheaper it does to competing headon with steel and those are heavy emitters of co2. Imagine to get problem and turned into a solution that competes with other problems. Theres a lot of power in these technology. They are all, however, a long way from the moment. Some of the art test. Com some of the more demonstration power plants. Others are industry stage. It wasnt even a name for these technologies to let us think of him as a whole. I think they will be a huge part of our future. They have to be. C2 is going to get out of the atmosphere unless we use them. We no co2 will be driving ever more adverse changes as the decades gone. Theres a great opportunity for people to build new industries. We will need a number of different tools but it think its important we do. I think that by 2050 these technologies at a very conservative estimate might give us the capacity to be drawn about 40 of current emissions out of the atmosphere every year. Thats not counting some of the things like seaweed farming. Thats taking a conservative view across the portfolio. When i think of 2050, i sometimes run into a problem. Its a lack of imagination. The only way i will come to terms with this is play a trick on myself and say, why dont you imagine you will be living in 1950 instead of 2015 . You try to imagine 1950s to 2050. If you that its amazing what you see because 1915 in washington it would be horsedrawn power on the street, you would have a very, very rudimentary electricity grid providing lighting economic ills. There would be a war going on in europe with cavalry charges. Theres no tanks on the battlefield. The first biplanes are not dangerous for combat, just for a bit of surveillance and the generals are saying are they as good as the horses we used used for surveillance up until now . Theres not a single communist state in the world. The whole of the mess you look at to understand where you were on the planet was colorcoded to represent the great european empires that had been there for centuries. 35 years later that looks like an antique. 35 years later this nuclear power. Theres jet aircraft. Theres half the world pretty much living under communism. The horse is retreating from its last vestiges probably in minnesota and some of the farms out there. Its a different world. 35 years on. The ones we we have is that the one certain we have is it is increased. When you think about 2050, we have to give space for our imaginations in order to foster the vision and enterprise we need to solve the problems that we know are going to be there for our children and their children. Thank you very much. [applause] its a far cry from the rain forest. It is, thats right. Spent tell us a bit about your past. How did you get to where you are . I started off being a very porcine in some ways. I went to a catholic boys school, and i wasnt all that happy to. It was one of the old school to run with a strap, you know . I didnt do very well so i couldnt do a science degree. Instead i went and did english and history degree. I found i loved it. I really loved history. I learned how to use primary sources and documents, and i loved writing and reading. I was going to be a teacher at the end of that time, but i remember precise a group of 15yearolds in this thing teachers have been my hero. It would take so much courage to do the stuff. At that time in australia it was my old mentor said to me, they are so desperate for geologists and might even take you. Why dont you go and see what they say of the university . So i went there and i was accepted as a student. Had to do some catchup courses in geology. From there i went on to get a ph. D in paleontology and then i got a job at the Australian Museum as a curator of mammals and is the best i ever had. Sometimes a what if i ever left a. From there i went on and had a stint at harvard, conduct was chilly, became a Museum Director. Started working with government also local issues, environmental issues, climate related issues and that was with the beginning to shift away from Pure Research to what i do know. I still tried to do some Pure Research. Where in your career to the climate issue become something that was significant to you . I had known for the 90s it was an issue really, but my time with focus on my research. You know what its like when he really focused upon your research and you tend to read the literature for the area and nothing much else. It was nagging away at me. I had seen things indicated that worried me. I was working then as a field ecologist in new guinea. That was a bit of an Early Warning sign. Been in 1999, to a conference in japan with the most extraordinary men called professor Steve Schneider from stanford university, a statistician who really has worked on im itching for a long time. In one lecture steve changed my life. He just laid it out in a way that was so compelling i couldnt turn away. I couldnt look the other way. I knew that i had to do something. I was a Museum Director at the time working and cover. I realize no one understood issue. Even i didnt understand properly. I started reading all the back issues of science and nature and looking for the climate articles trying to get a handle on what does thing was. This was an advanced by the way of the third assessment. I realized i had to write something that the all those and came up with the widow makers, and that was it. Never looked back. I havent been able to get away from it since. What do you think we can expect in paris in december . Well, i think we know reasonably well what we will get. I should just say i was pretty deeply involved in the copenhagen meeting so somehow that unfolded. There were flaws i in the syste. Things are different in paris. Weve got a bottom up approach which really is the brainchild of president obama. Remember when he met with the leaders of five other countries in copenhagen, things are going nowhere and he would. He just took a one page to them and said can we at least agree on these . The webpage says go back to work countries look at what kennedy missions made consistent with her own economy and fudge those together for some future meeting. Thats where we are now. What you get out of paris we can already see. Its already a success. The unequivocal unilateral pledges are on the table that will get us on the path consistent with 2. 7 degrees. China and u. S. Are leading on the. We need a few things for to happen. We need to develop the poorest countries on the planet to allow them to survive and adapt to what will be what will appear to change. We need a short review period. At the moment the process is such that countries make a pledge not for 2020 and the its all out by 2030. Thats a 15 years, too long. We need to have three review period so as technology changes, as governments change, countries can become more ambitious. Im hopeful but i think its a big job still. As i think about climate i think about it in two parts, 1. 0 as a direct impact of humans on the planet whether its overharvesting, that kind of thing, and 2. 0, the indirect impacts, climate or a certification of the ocean. Im always curious about when climate 2. 0 overtakes one point over do you have an opinion wind indirect impacts will be greater than our direct impacts . You think about it that way . I do. I do, and im going to go out, ill talk about some science but never published it at all. I think the early in backs when 2. 0 overtook, might have been about 40,000 years ago or even earlier in the Northern Hemisphere as the great herds vanished. Because what may have happened if this is a hypothesis that hasnt been tested. I think what might happen was those great herds kept the tundra fairly open environment so that ate a lot of the education that it wasnt a big regulation at that time every summer there was soil that was fair, one early and the plants would grow and then they would be beaten down again. Once they vanished i think it became the end of these layers which have carbon in them. If you look back at the warmest bikes that follows the golden compass about 20 parts per million of its youtube are missing from that spike that were there in previous interglacial periods. I wonder if that 20 parts per billion or so didnt disappear into the tundra, big dogs and permafrost and also into the oceans spewing this is mammoth visit to the grasslands as opposed to the tundra lands speak with right. Thats a naked hypothesis but i think impacts maven a bit early to even think of conventionally today your. Tell me a little about the role that humans point in discussing climate in australia when you were a Museum Director. Museums have been completely central to our understanding of Climate Change impacts on biodiversity. Their studies around the world, probably the best example isnt are mostly but from the u. S. I think it was an analogous working in california early in the 20th century who did some very extensive surveys on mountain ranges over there. They had been repeated in the last 10 or 20 years, and we have been able to see how things have changed. Mammals have moved hundreds of meters upslope from where they were. Thats just one small example but i think as we go on and look at the broad impacts as a whole rather than just Climate Change, what we will poin find is we han archive and museum selections with an unparalleled level of what was actually happening do everything from shrinking genetic pools to have a toxic metals, heavy metals uptake, through to changing co2 that was in the atmosphere, sort of things i have been thought of yet. I think we will see a really interesting history written through the records we have accumulated in museums today. Are museums in austria a Pretty Healthy situation or are they Something Like museums and other countries, including like this one . I know you reckon youve got a tough job. It in South Australia i had a bloody tough job. China to you why . That Little Museum that i had very typical of us just museums, its based on the old british museum. To both Natural History stuff and even a collection of everything right into. Its sitting in an isolated city, its nearest neighbor 600 kilometers away with a population of 1 million people. Thats your tax base to support the museum. Can you imagine supporting a place like this washington only had 1 million taxpayers and it . It would be a really tough job. The only way we survive is we got the premier drunk occasionally i do pledged a little bit of money and we reminded in the morning about that. Thats seven years gave me just about in to be honest with you. A lot of museums are in the same position. They struggle. For me keeping research of life was the key. We had to keep them maintained that the exhibitions, we can get other people to pay for them. To our sponsors who want to do that by the hard work as you probably are finding this will is just keeping the road from falling in over your research capacity. To me museums are very much to of the 19 tools of american century. Was other tools have been long since replaced by technologies that we find yourselves into his situation to be th be in the hof these collections which are irreplaceable. You can never go back and get them again. The experts that wrap themselves around those collections and yet the challenge of keeping these entities up and running in a world that is technologically being disrupted at tremendous rates is an interesting challenge. Will begin to in our strategic plan, tuition. One, the impact of the planet, never to come solutions impact on museums. Museums can be a part of associate if you can figure out to keep them in good health to become part of the toolkit for the 21st century. The money that is required, actually its. I remember when i was a director of the museum when i first arrived we had the minister for transport was also responsible for the museum through some haphazard visit this is a good but accessible, i really want some money to hire for my review researchers and everything gets some money from university so to make joint appointment. She was a very lovely woman, diminished at the time she went away and came back and said ive got a solution. We are building a new runway at the airport. Im going to shorten it by one meter and the money i will say doing that will give you which was fantastic but it just showed me how small it was and yet how hard it was to get that money. I think people dont appreciate museums. Museums in some way are the own worst enemies. I remember when i first went to the museum, went out and asked him the curators if they give a public talk on what to do. There was one have been studying beetles to some obscure kind of beetle. Nothing too flashy, for 60 years. I went down to his office and said what you get a Public Lecture . The fella rushed off like a cockroach in the light. It was kind of terrifying to do. Changing something a little bit, as a curator of science when the challenges talk about Climate Change, ther