Paleontologist over the last couple of decades we often started looking backwards in time. One by one we are becoming forward facing individuals, thinking about what they have learned about the past and how it informs the future. Thats the thrust of the recent Strategic Plan we have put out for the Museum Published a couple weeks ago, Natural History of the time if he was there isnt that how we and gym about the Natural World from all our study of the last couple hundred years and played up forward. We are sitting on this incredible moment in human history, been around for 200,000 years and plans on this generation to watch the population curve go to the sky and watch all of the impacts of that Large Population play out around the comments. A lot of us are used to think about what happened 70 million nurses who are now what about the next 70 . Interesting. One of my guiding lights is this guy tim flannery from australia to ive been following for 25 years. Issue of South Australia. I never met him when i was illustrated by these the kind of scientist the rights amazing books, very accessible, insightful books. The book he published in 1994 called the future eaters, about how people are eating their future. He gives the example of the invasion of australia about 45,000 years ago by a group of people that made it onto the continent and ate their way through the continent. We saw this happen again in new zealand in the year 1200, and the consumption of most of the father, people go places and eat their own future. Kinfauna. Our actions are so profound were making our own weather which is something very few of us, any of us can see that before the 70s. This idea that humans can change the climate is a remarkable thing. He continues to write books, is written about 20 books or more. These a prolific writer in many ways and one of my favorites, theres appreciation, Something Like the harvard australian Scholar Program and to extract some for austria and plunk them in massachusetts for you. This happened to tim. He was the scholar and erode the most insightful book about north america after one north america after one year but it really annoyed me because heres a guy who visited for a year and brought his outside perspective dont north america. His story started 70 million years ago and it makes the premise north america is a continent of immigrants. Not just and the last couple hundred years but in the last tens of millions of years. North america is a room with three doors, adore to south america, adore to asia, and earlier a door to eurasia across what was then a more narrowed north atlantic Northern Canada through greenland over what would become iceland into scandinavia. These three doors are opened and animals and plants migrate into north america and have their fate made out to the north america. The eternal frontier published in 2002, definitely worth your checking out. His actions do not go unnoticed in his own country and he was given great acclaim and has won many awards. He was named australian of the and 2007. We dont have what you call ausa of the year award at all. Tim is not necessary to paleontologist. Hes a memo just the studies of mammals of a different australian islands and studies animals that of an isolated by various forces and evolve into these amazing different groups of mammals. A long history of somebody whos interested in paleontology. Eventually and 2011 he was given a postindustrial in government on the australian Climate Change commission, one of the chief commissioners of the australian governments attempt to tackle Climate Change on the continent and the countries of australia. He was in that position for two years and the incoming government had to change in mind and sacked him, which means fired in english. In five days he was able to crowd source and ultimate venue which is to think of the australian Climate Change commission, the ostrow Climate Council in which he became the chief counselor. He lost a week buddies back at it now. His latest book is called atmosphere of hope, its really about the third way to take another challenge of Climate Change. I would like tim flannery to the podium and let them give you a introduction to book and then we will have a conversation and then take questions from the audience. We are being filled so when you, to make your questions please come to the aisle and speak into the microphone. So tim flannery, please welcome him. [applause] well, until for that wonderful introduction. Thank you all for being here this evening in these great institutions. I love museums. I was a Museum Director for seven years and i know how important these institutions are. This is where we have stored our record of how weve got to where we are today. I think museums are just going to play an ever more Important Role in terms of our understanding of our role on planet earth. What i wanted to speak about this evening was did a brief overview of where we are at in terms of Climate Change science, what might happen in paris at the meeting, a big climate meeting, and then going to discuss some of the new options that have developed just in the last months really that i think will be important for our future. I guess the place where in the moment in terms of Climate Change is not a very good one. For the last decade the emission of Greenhouse Gases has been tracking the worst Case Scenarios since the ipc scientists and economists and others thought might eventually. So its been right at the outside edge of possibility up on the bad side of things. And that has left a legacy. Last year just as an example humanity immediate about 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide. Most of it coming from the burning of fossil fuels. Its a mindbending volume of co2, to try to understand buddhism grasp how big it is that it is worth doing a thought experiment. Lets imagine we are tasked with drawing onetenth of that city out of the atmosphere through planting trees. Trees are going to a great way to capture city from the atmosphere. The power source is free. Photosynthesis as a sufficient process and trees are really not a lot more congealed to carbon dioxide. Lets imagine thats the task were given. Have become very which you need to plant to take in onetenth of the annual emissions of co2 . It turns out you need to plant an area around the size of australia. Its all a bit smaller than the contiguous 48 states of the u. S. A. On average over a 50 year. You would draw out just for gigatons as you do. In doing that you would change earths ostrow has a lot of grasp services that help reflect sunlight into space. To replace those with a tree canopy, you would end up warming the earth even though you pulled out some carbon dioxide. We have put huge volume of co2 into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution, much in the last 30 to 40 years. So much easier to that lets imagine we all welcome tonight, dont get in our cars and drive because that would burn fossil fuels. You have tiger solar panels jalandhar like to even if we could do that we would still have been of co2 in the atmosphere to increase Public Interest to 1. 5 degrees celsius the next few decades, save at around 2050. We know we will not be able to do that. We will keep burning fossil fuels for two decades. That means it is extremely unlikely we can avoid more than two degrees of warming because the carbon budget is so tiny the remaining carbon budget to avoid to decrease the burning fossil fuels at current rates for example, will reach that limit by 2028. We are in a difficult position to i should just it would the world look like . One thing you wont see us of the Great Barrier reef. It simply cannot survive 1. 5 degrees of warming according to the scientists who study it. Thats good news for me. Ive of the Great Barrier reef. Its an integral part of my countrys heritage i know its already doomed. Theres not much we can do about it. So where were are we at this very moment . It turns out a couple of things have happened quite recently that allow us to begin to imagine were getting off that worstcase trajectory scenario violate the we are all over of Climate Change do. Wherever i go and talk to people i meet people for no Climate Change as i really. Its not like 10 years ago when they had to do a presentation with graphics and big Scientific Data to convince people about Climate Change. They now know it as an experience and thats important because that Community Support or understanding can lead to Political Support that can lead to the change that we need. Second cause of optimism for me is a report from the International Energy agency, the iaea is not known for its reviews are things, conservative group. They produced a report earlier in the year that really astonished me. What they said was effectively that Global Economic growth had finally decoupled from emissions growth or the growth of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. And that the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels had stalled in 2014. And missioncentric and needed to grow a pretty much every year. Something new was happening. We think part of the reason that happened was theres been a strong appetite of wind and solar technologies. Investing in renewable has outpaced investment in fossil fuels for the last three years running. Something is changing. The second thing that happened is the efforts of individual people like you and me, billions of people around the world doing Little Things like changing their light bulbs or cycling to work for canceling the house, that all add up to a drop in demand for energy. So the big oil demand, peak coal demand has eased back as well. So between renewables and actions of individuals in cities and others come and i should just say, retrofitting cities is a 2 trillion a year industry. We are starting to see i hope that i can only hope because we will not know for a few years that weve passed the peak emissions year much earlier than anyone would have dared hope. If thats the case we are in a good position to start cutting definitions hard and fast. I think paris will help. We know the trajectory we are on for Greenhouse Gas emissions will land about four degrees awarded by the end of the century. Paris and the pledge will alter that so we will be aiming more likely at about two points of a degrees of warming. Its not enough but its good, good start. We know we want to stay down below two degrees so how are we going to do that. I started thinking about the drawdown from the co2 when i met Richard Branson in 2007. He invited me to his island home in the British Virgin islands your we started talking about the problem. Richard expressed skepticism humans but act fast enough to reduce emissions. He just thought it wasnt going to happen. He thought what he could do was offer a prize to help Foster Technologies that have the potential to draw one gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere every year. One gigatons its about 3. 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide. We started this thing called love virgin challenge. I sit on the judging panel. Its a 25 millionpound prize for technologies that can achieve peace. Weve had over 11,000 entries so far and it opened my eyes to work the possibility that exist to drop co2 out of the atmosphere all of them small scale relative to what you hardd to do a gigatons to do but to give potential. Theres two main streams in what they call the third Way Technology, the technologies that can take co2 out of the atmosphere. One is biological, trees are a great example. You can also take plant matter and make things with it. Partied at the other fossil fuels industry, kimes would make the things we need directly from trees. That i think another option for drug co2 out of the atmosphere. The third option is a tank plant manner or form waste, mineralized it, buried in so and the carbon will stay there for a very long time. All of those technologies is sort of smallscale but in 2013 they only made 1000 tons global. Thats a long way from a gigatons. The approaches are there at least. When you go to the ocean and looking oceans you see something quite different from the olympic the land area is putting a big burden on already. One opportunity concerned seaweed farming. Theres a proposal just make published last year this is wicked cover 9 of the worlds oceans and seaweed farms with the drug equivalent of all current emissions out of the atmosphere on an annual basis as well as provide enough fish and reuters defeat of the population of 10 billion. High protein every year. I thought that sounded fantastic but then i started thinking, how big is 9 of the worlds oceans . Its about 4. 5 times the area of australia. Second i thought the seaweed is great. It grows faster than landbased plants but what would we do with all that seaweed . Once youve got youve got to turn it into something useful and then get the co2 out of it and put it somewhere. Turns out there are some options. I digester bio digester. If you have floating seaweed farms, put it down into shallow sediments and because of the overlying water the co2 stays in a stable state, not trying to skate like co2 is when its put in a landbased box. Album when you think about it its the ocean floor that is the ultimate repository for all the excess co2. It precipitates out. That takes many, many thousands of years. There is a whole other extreme in the third Way Technology is medical basically the chemical strength. Sounds terrible but as to what a good thing i can think for it. That covers a huge range of technologies from carbon negative concrete, concrete that absorbs co2. It takes no co2 to make. Concretes are about 5 responsible for the 5 of global emissions of co2 currently. So dealing with them in that way is a very high potential in my view. That are also rocks in the earths crust which absorbs co2. These rocks are formed at midocean regions by the duke it mind for various purposes. Theres a company in the netherlands that takes these rocks can price them up and puts them in working paint and those people carbon negative growth pains. Absorbs co2 into the roof. There are proposals to use these rocks at the big scale on beaches pixley but the sand grains on beaches, let them whether and they will absorb co2. One of the problems with of the problems with that approach is of course it takes fossil fuels to grind them up. Im a big proponent of a windmill with a hammer. Five or six gigatons of rocks ground up, capture about the gigabit of carbon. At the far end of the option of the possibilities theres been an excitinexciting technology. I felt in my hand a little mobile phone cover, plastic but which was made from Atmospheric Co2. Currently its the most expensive mobile phone cover in the known universe. You will not want to go and buy one but the technology exists to let us do that now. Too much ago an extraordinary breakthrough was announced. The company said that they could make carbon nano fibers directed from Atmospheric Co2 at a fraction of the cost of current production methods. That is an extra big thing. Carbon nano virus 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 and manufacture. As they get cheaper they will start competing head on with steel and those are both heavy in matters of co2. Imagine taking the co2 entering into a solution that competes with other problems. Theres a lot of power in these technologies. That are all a long way from scale of the moment. Some of them are desktop, some of them are demonstration stage. Others are early industry stage. Until i will buy but there wasnt a name for these technologies to let us think of them as a whole. I think there will be a huge part of our future. They have to be. Co2 is going to get out of the atmosphere unless we use them. This is a great opportunity. We will need a number of new tools to do that but i think its important we do. I think by 2050 these technologies might give us the capacity to be drawing about 40 of current emissions out of the atmosphere every year. Thats not counting some of the things like seaweed farming, take a conservative you just 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 youre living in 1915 instead of 2015 and are trying to imagine 1915 instead 2050. It be that its amazing what you see. 1915 in washington with the horsedrawn are on the street. You would have a very, very rudimentary electricity grid providing lighting and not a lot else. There would be a war going on in europe that spot with cavalry. There are no tanks on the battlefield. The first biplanes are nothing disregard that, just for shipping. The generals are saying arguably as good as the horses . Its a different world. Does not a single economist state in the whole world. The whole messy look at to understand what you were was colorcoded to represent the great european empires that have been there for centuries. 35 years later that looks like an antique. Theres nuclear power, jet aircraft, half the world pretty much living under communism. The horse is retreating from his last refuge, probably in world minnesota but its a different world. 35 years on. The one certainty we have is that the rate of change in the 20 has increased over that of the 20th. When we think about 2050 we had to give space for our imaginations in order to foster the vision and the enterprise we need to solve the problems that we know are going to be there for our