The Climate Solutions Worth Funding — Now | Jonathan Foley | TED

So I'm a climate scientist

and I've devoted my entire life to this topic.

Why on Earth would anybody want to do that?

Well, it's because science can help us.

It was, after all, science that first told us

that this planet was warming

and we were the cause of that.

But science can also help us find solutions to the crisis.

And we need this more than ever.

Because right now,

everybody seems to be telling us about their favorite climate solutions.

There's so much noise, so much confusion,

all these ideas out there.

How do we sort it out?

How do we figure out what works and what doesn't

and where we should focus?

Well, this is where science can help us.

We can do what's called a meta analysis,

where we collect all the evidence,

all the data, and look at it

and figure out which solutions are the biggest,

which ones are the most effective and which ones are ready to go now.

And here's the good news.

Evidence tells us what we should focus on.

And there are lots of good climate solutions available right now,

ready to go.

Let's focus on these

and less on the ones that are kind of a distraction right now.

Science can also help us figure out the economics of climate solutions.

And what we can do is build what's called a cost curve,

where we stack up climate solutions from left to right,

from the cheapest ones all the way to the most expensive.

And here's the amazing thing.

When we do that,

we find out that about 80 percent of these climate solutions

are actually really cheap.

They're cheaper than what we do already.

They're cheaper than fossil fuels,

they're cheaper than polluting industries,

they're cheaper than destructive agriculture.

And these cheap climate solutions are the best bargains in human history.

They save money now and prevent disaster in the future.

And we should be deploying the hell out of these things.

So science has shown us the “what” of addressing the climate crisis:

What solutions we have, what they’re going to cost,

what we can do.

But we also need help with the how, when, where,

in what ways do we best deploy these climate solutions

to be the most effective.

So let's go build that science of how.

To do that, we've got to go back to the basics.

To stop climate change,

the biggest thing we've got to do is bend that big red curve,

the emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing the problem

in the first place.

And we've got to bend it really hard and really fast.

We've got to cut emissions drastically in the coming decade

and keep cutting them and keep cutting them

through the middle of the century.

But we're also going to need a little bit of carbon removal

to address any remaining emissions.

And together, a whole lot of emissions cuts

and a little bit of carbon removal will help us get to net zero

when we stop climate change from going any farther.

But in all of this work,

the most important variable

and the one that people often forget is time.

That's because climate change is a cumulative problem.

It builds up over time.

The temperatures we're seeing on Earth today

are due to the buildup of greenhouse gases

over the last 150 years.

Well, it turns out that the problem is cumulative

and climate solutions are too.

Let me show you what I mean.

If we cut emissions now into the next decade,

we can prevent that much carbon, that whole blue area,

from ever going in the atmosphere.

And if these emissions cuts are permanent,

then we keep adding to it the next decade

and the decade after that,

building up to a huge impact in stopping climate change.

That's incredible.

This decades emissions does that much work in stopping climate change.

Well, we can cut emissions again in the 2030s

and again in the 2040s,

but the longer we wait,

the less effective these actions are going to be.

They simply have less time to work on the atmosphere.

Well, carbon removal is important too, but it faces an uphill battle

because it starts basically at zero

and it's going to take years to go to the gigaton scale that's required.

So it is important,

but overall it's total cumulative impact is pretty small.

And when we do the math correctly

and we do what's called the integral

or the area under the curve in assessing climate solutions,

we find something kind of extraordinary.

Emissions cuts are really most of the story here.

Ninety-six percent of what it takes to get to net zero is cutting emissions.

And three quarters of this comes from the first decades of emissions cuts.

That's amazing.

Early action matters a lot.

Carbon removal will be part of the story, but overall, its impact is pretty small,

about four percent.

What this tells us is there's a time value of carbon,

just like the time value of money.

Early investments pay off in the long run.

It also tells us about the kinds of solutions we need

and how they unfold over time.

For example, we're going to need a hell of a lot

of emergency brake climate solutions.

Solutions that have no delays

and instantly work on the atmosphere.

Things like plugging methane leaks or stopping deforestation

or big gains in energy efficiency in today's infrastructure,

while we build out tomorrow's infrastructure,

and we're going to need a lot of new infrastructure and power systems

and transportation and buildings.

But infrastructure takes time.

We also need nature-based climate solutions like planting trees,

restoring ecosystems.

But trees and soils take decades to build up carbon

and will be delayed.

And of course, we will need some new technologies.

But these might not show up for a long time,

and the longer we wait,

they are much less effective.

So when we think about climate solutions,

we need to make sure we emphasize the solutions that are ready to go now

so they can start building up their impact over time and not wait.

This is why we say now is better than new

and time is more important than tech.

Science can help us in other ways too.

It can help us geographically focus our efforts

to make sure we're doing them in the most important places.

Science and big data can, for example,

point out where methane plumes are pouring into the atmosphere.

These are satellite images showing specific pipelines

and refineries where methane is pouring into the sky,

causing climate change.

Let's go there and fix these leaks

and make sure that they're not contributing to climate change anymore.

And we can use big data to target other climate interventions,

whether it's deforestation

or closing the dirtiest power plants in the world,

to make sure that every action counts

and can be most impactful right away.

Science can also make sure that we look for solutions that help people,

especially the most vulnerable and poorest people on Earth.

And I can't think of a better example than looking at fossil fuels.

We know that fossil fuels are the biggest contributor to climate change,

but they're also the biggest contributor to air pollution,

particulate matter and smog, right now.

And this air pollution is killing people.

Harvard epidemiologists have estimated

between eight and nine million people a year

are dying prematurely because of the air pollution

caused by fossil fuels right now.

That's more than warfare, guns and tobacco combined.

So when we phase out fossil fuels,

not only do we save us from a climate crisis,

it also saves us from a health crisis here today.

This is a win-win for the world,

especially through the lens of equity and justice.

We can finally then use science

to kind of orchestrate all of these different things,

to make sure that we're aligning our efforts with the atmosphere

and with the carbon problem.

So we have to do lots of different things.

How do we know how to do them in the right kind of proportions,

and build a portfolio of actions that works best?

Well, again, science can help us out here.

This portfolio here shows us what we need to do,

mainly cutting emissions in those big six sectors

like electricity and food and industry.

And also count on a little bit of carbon removal to close the final gap.

So this is what we need to do to get to net zero.

How does that compare to what we're actually doing?

Well, not so great.

When we look at the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States

of where we're putting our money,

or even more disturbingly,

where the private sector is putting money,

in this case, venture capital going into climate solutions.

Venture capital put two thirds of its money into one technology:

Electric vehicles and scooters.

That's two thirds of the money

going to what's basically a five-percent solution.

This kind of mismatch between our capital and the carbon

needs to be fixed in the long run,

so we make sure we put our resources in the best possible places.

At the end of the day, though, science gives us six pillars for effective action.

First, we've got to make sure that solutions are based in evidence,

not just hype and rhetoric.

We also need to make sure climate solutions are cheap

so we can do a lot of them.

And we should look for solutions that are ready to go now,

so they have the maximum impact possible over time.

We can also geographically focus our efforts

to make sure they're most impactful

and ensure that they are helping us through the lens of equity and justice

and are truly beneficial to people, too.

We also, though, can align all of this so our portfolios are lined up

with the carbon in the atmosphere.

In the end, if we do these things, we can still stop climate change,

but only if we do them all.

We still have a narrow window of opportunity to stop climate change,

but we've got to make every day,

every move and every dollar count like never before.

But if we redouble our efforts and truly listen to the science

and step up to be the best people we can be,

I know we can solve this problem.

And with your help, we will.

Thank you.

(Applause)