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ANDREW MCAFEE: Thank
you for having me.
Thank you all for coming.
I want to start
off by presenting
just a blizzard of evidence
about our relationship
with the planet
that we all live on.
And I want to make the
case that for a while,
for basically the
entire industrial era,
that relationship was
somewhere between exploitive
and actually abusive.
So let me show you
what I mean by that.
Here is a picture of 170 years
of economic growth in the US.
And when your economy grows
at 2% or 3% a year steadily,
you get that nice ski jump
kind of exponential growth.
Here comes the unfortunate part.
This is how much energy we
needed to generate that economy
year after year.
It's almost a
one-for-one relationship.
In the 20th century, our
data got a little bit better.
So let me zoom in
on the 20th century.
Here's the American
economy over 70 years.
And here's how many
natural resources
we required year
after year to have
that level of economic growth.
These were metals, fertilizer.
Almost doesn't matter
what resource you look at.
You notice this incredibly
tight relationship
between the size of the economy
and the amount of resources
that we needed in order
to generate that economy.
So we're taking
stuff from the earth.
It's kind of an
exploitive relationship.
It gets worse, in my eyes.
Here's what air pollution looked
like in the years leading up
to 1970.
We were polluting the
skies and the water
and the land more
year after year.
And when I was
researching the book,
one of the crazy
things I learned
was that up until about the
middle of the 20th century,
it was not widely
accepted that pollution
was anything more than an
annoyance or a nuisance.
The idea that it
might actually really
negatively impact our health
was just not widely accepted
at all.
And in addition to polluting
the world that we lived on,
we took some of the
most majestic, some
of the most amazing animals
on the face of the planet,
and almost wiped them out.
So this was the
number of blue whales.
This was a representation
of the number of blue whales
in the southern oceans in 1900.
By the early 1970s, we had
taken them down to about,
as far as we can tell,
about 500 animals
in all the southern oceans.
So this was just flat
abuse of the planet
that we live on, as far
as I can tell, especially
because when you look at what
we used these animals for,
we killed almost all the
blue whales to make margarine
and lubricants and
nitroglycerine,
to make explosives.
We had other sources
for these materials.
So this was just,
we can all look
at this as some kind
of environmental crime.
And the environmental
movement in the United States
and around the world
was born around 1970
with the first Earth Day.
And one of the things that we
heard, one of the main ideas
that came out of that movement
was this can't continue,
this headlong exponential
growth that we've been doing,
especially in the rich world.
We see the bad
consequences of it.
You can't keep taking
more from the earth.
You can't keep beating
up the species.
You can't keep polluting it.
And the only way around this
is for that exponential curve
of our growth to change
direction, to level off,
and actually-- if you listen
to this school of thought--
to go negative.
In other words, we need a
permanent, ever-deepening
recession if we're
going to start taking
better care of our planet.
The slogan was that the only
sustainable growth is degrowth.
And I want to talk
about the second chapter
of this story of our
relationship with our planet.
The first point I want to
make is that we in America
have really not embraced
degrowth at all.
There's real GDP up to 1970.
Here's what it's
looked like since then.
You have trouble seeing
massive voluntary renunciation
of consumption in America.
Our economy's growing
a little bit more
slowly than it used to,
but it's still growing
at a pretty steady clip.
And where things get
interesting to me
is when we look at what's
happened to this relationship
with our planet.
And in particular, are
we still exploiting it
to the same extent
that we used to?
Do we still need to take
more from the earth year
after year in order to generate
our prosperity and our economy?
And my answer to that, and
the reason I wrote the book,
is no, essentially.
And let me try to make that
case with some evidence here.
Here's what American
crop tonnage has looked
like since the mid-1950s.
We are an agricultural
juggernaut.
The tonnage of crops
that we produce
goes up year after year.
But now let's add on the
main inputs to agriculture.
This is what total fertilizer
use in America looks like.
This is not fertilizer
use per acre.
This is total fertilizer
use in the country.
It used to go up in lockstep
with our crop tonnage.
That's decoupled now.
The same thing is true
of water for agriculture,
and the same thing is true
for the actual acreage of land
that we need to generate
all of that crop output.
Since the early 1980s, we
have given an amount of land
back to nature from
agriculture equal in size
to the state of Washington.
This is a big reversal.
If we look more
broadly, again, this
is the overall size of the
economy from 1900 to 2015.
This is what the paperwork
burden of the American economy
looks like.
We plateaued our total
paper consumption
around the turn of the century.
And as we've moved deeper
into the smartphone era,
our total use of paper
has declined by about 20%.
We see the same thing with
other forest products.
So we're just starting
to build this narrative
about taking less from the Earth
to generate our prosperity.
I want to show you the story
about metals use in America.
And before I do that, I want
to take on the counter-argument
that the reason that
resource use is declining
is because we're outsourcing
all of our resource use
to China and other countries.
I hear the argument pretty often
that this dematerialization
story that I'm telling is
really an offshoring story,
and if you try to account
for that properly,
you won't come to
the same conclusion.
The main reason I
don't buy that is
that the United States remains
a manufacturing powerhouse.
We hear about the decline
of American manufacturing,
and there's some elements
of that that are true.
But this is actually what our
total manufacturing activity
looks like over a pretty
long space of time.
Whether you look at a
more general production
index or a manufacturing
one, we are
a large and growing
manufacturing powerhouse,
number two in the world.
China's passed us.
But when we look at our
total consumption of metals,
we see a really
different pattern emerge.
And in the years
since Earth Day,
our use of our total consumption
of a lot of important metals
plateaued and is now on a
generally downward trend.
I do want a little bit
of credit for trying
to make the metals
lines the same color
as the metals themselves.
I'm weirdly proud of that here.
So we've just seen this
really, this very, very broad
decoupling of economic growth
from resource consumption.
And it was almost
totally unanticipated.
As I've gone back and looked at
the literature and the schools
of thought around Earth
Day and afterward, I
didn't see this
cropping up anywhere,
anybody saying,
hey, don't worry.
We're about to substantially
divorce our economic growth
from our exploitation of the
planet from resource use.
Let's switch now.
Let me do one more.
Let's look at total energy use.
Remember, here was the
line up until 1970.
And this is what's been
happening since then.
The American
economy is about 25%
bigger than it was at the
end of the Great Recession.
Our energy use has hardly
ticked up at all over that time.
Again, I didn't know anybody
that was anticipating it.
We are finally on a downward
trend with our total CO2
emissions, in large part
because of the substitution
of natural gas for coal
for electricity generation.
I don't want to sound like
I'm complacent at all.
Global warming is real
and bad, and we're not
doing enough to fight it.
But it is also true that this
style, this kind of pollution,
is now on a downward trend even
after you take into account
the fact that we've
outsourced and offshored
a lot of our manufacturing.
So here's our old
pollution graph,
what's been
happening since 1970.
The story is an
incredibly positive one.
The air in America is, I
think, about 90% cleaner
than it was 50 years ago.
The measures we've put in
place to clean up our skies
have been fantastically
effective.
We have to talk
about global warming.
When I think about global
warming and greenhouse gases
as another flavor
of air pollution,
things get a lot
conceptually simpler to me.
We've had amazing success
at air pollution reduction.
Reducing greenhouse
gases will be
difficult for a lot of reasons.
But it's not mysterious.
It's another category
of air pollution.
And if any of us have
economist friends,
we know that economists
agree on absolutely nothing.
I have never seen broader
agreement across the economics
discipline than on the
best tool for fighting
global warming, which is to make
carbon expensive via a carbon
dividend.
3,500 economists and
counting have signed on
to a letter espousing
this as the smartest thing
for us to be doing.
So again, global warming
is real, and it's bad,
and it's going to
be tough to fight.
It is not a mysterious problem.
It's a pretty well
understood one.
And then the last set of
pictures that I want to show
are about our
friends, the whales.
Their populations are
actually coming back--
nowhere near where they were at
the start of the 20th century,
but the trends are in
the right direction.
And when we look at other
threatened species--
the bison, the beaver, wolf,
white-tailed deer, black bear--
populations are growing, at
least in the rich world here.
So we hear a lot
of gloom and doom.
And we should focus on things
that aren't going well.
There are a lot of very positive
trends in our relationship
with the planet.
And in the book, I talk
about why they're happening.
And this is my
shorthand explanation
for what's going on.
We're using fewer
resources because companies
that are locked in nasty
competition want to save money,
and the digital age
offers all kinds of ways
to swap out atoms
and swap in bits.
That's the combination of
capitalism and tech progress.
We need an aware public to
say, stop polluting our skies,
and stop killing all the whales.
And we need responsive
governments to listen to that
if we have them.
And I call these in the book the
four horsemen of the optimist.
It's delicate.
You've got to put them in place.
You have to be
vigilant about them.
But when all four are
in place, I actually
am very confident
that we can eliminate
the trade-off between
our prosperity
and a healthy state
of nature, and we
can have both at the same time.
This is shameless
pandering, but I
want to show you one final
piece of evidence about how
things can be better over time.
This is not Photoshop.
This is an actual
picture of a whale
off the coast of New York City.
They're coming back to that
part of the country now.
KATE BRANDT: So
you've shared with us
several of the trends
that you've seen,
several of the trends that
you've studied and shared
in your book.
A lot of this is tracing the
various industrial revolutions
that we've been through
in the US economy,
in our global economy.
And many people would
say, today, we're
in the fourth
Industrial Revolution.
So tell us more
about, how do we think
about those four industrial
revolutions that we've been to?
And how do you define the
fourth Industrial Revolution?
ANDREW MCAFEE: First
of all, the proper term
is the Second Machine Age.
And I think we all need to
be very clear about that.
When you write a
book with that title,
you prefer it to the fourth
Industrial Revolution.
But the reason I wrote this book
is, I started to think there
was a three-chapter story
about our relationship
with the planet that we live on.
The first chapter was prior
to the Industrial Revolution,
when we could not take enough
resources from the Earth
to meaningfully increase our
population or our prosperity.
We really did live in this
weird Malthusian world,
where there is this hard ceiling
on how prosperous we could be.
The Industrial Revolution
completely changed that story.
And we unlocked the
energy in fossil fuels.
And you just watch the
trajectory of human population
and prosperity completely
change direction.
It just goes almost vertical.
But that second chapter,
the industrial era,
we were kind of
hard on the planet.
We took resources from it.
We exploited species.
We polluted in a
kind of wanton way.
And the great triumph of
the environmental movement,
I think, was to say, we
can't keep doing this.
You have to stop and
to demand action on it.
And the chapter that I think
we're in now is a much more
encouraging one where, in the
United States and in other very
wealthy technologically
advanced economies,
we're seeing that trade-off
between increased human
prosperity and taking
better care of nature--
we're seeing that
trade-off fade.
And I think it's going to
be in the rear-view mirror,
if we play our cards right,
even with the real and present
danger of global warming.
We can solve that problem.
I'm very confident we can.
That's different
than saying, we will.
But I think our
tools are adequate.
KATE BRANDT: Yeah-- so when we
were preparing for [INAUDIBLE]
conversation--
I serve as our sustainability
officer here at Google.
And you said you feel
like people don't always
really define
sustainability that well.
So I'm so curious.
People always ask
me this question.
But I'd love to ask
you this question.
How do you think about the
role of sustainability?
What does that mean?
How does that factor
into these trends
that you're sharing in the book?
ANDREW MCAFEE: I find
it a really fuzzy word.
And I tend not to use it a
lot, because it very quickly
turns into a hammer for people
that make everybody else do
what they want them to
do, whether that's ban
plastic straws or sign up for
the Green New Deal or whatever.
If I think about the
word, though, what it
means to me is,
what are we doing
that will not be sustainable?--
that's demonstrably not
sustainable.
And I can think of
two main things.
Number one is, take all the
resources from the earth.
Use these as inputs.
Number two-- have so
many bad side-effects
from our economic activities
that we screw up the planet
and we screw up our
health and our prosperity.
I'm really worried about
the second one of those two.
Pollution is real and it's bad.
And global warming is the most
scary global kind of pollution
that we face.
One of the weirder
conclusions that I came to
as I was writing the book is--
resource scarcity
is not something
that we need to worry about.
KATE BRANDT: Hm.
ANDREW MCAFEE: We've been
worrying about it for 50 years.
We've been panicked about it.
There was a book called
"Limits to Growth," written out
of MIT in 1972 that
said, the global economy
is going to grind to a halt,
because of resource shortages.
Well, no.
And when you look at the prices,
the affordability of almost
any resource, any physical
building block for the economy,
things get more affordable
over time, not less.
So for me, we can take
that off the table
of sustainability concerns.
And let's focus on the real
issues, which are pollution
and fencing off
parts of the world
so that our fellow
creatures can live on them
and replenish themselves.
Let's not put everything into
the capitalist machinery.
Let's put parks outside,
put whales outside,
and be mindful about that.
KATE BRANDT: OK, so I'm curious.
I'm a big proponent of the
concept of Earth Overshoot Day.
So there is a
great organization.
It's right across the Bay
from where we are here today
in Sunnyvale.
They, every year,
calculate, when have we
exhausted nature's resource
budget for the year?
This year, in 2019,
that day was July 29.
So what we know is,
everyday since July 29,
we've been drawing down
local resource stocks,
emitting more carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere that
can't be absorbed.
So what that means
is, we need 1.7 earths
to support today's consumption.
How do we square that
with your research?
ANDREW MCAFEE: I'm less of
a fan of that organization
than you are.
KATE BRANDT: All right.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Because what I
think they're doing is loading
everything onto the
carbon budget and saying,
we cannot continue to
emit this much carbon.
Great.
I'm all about reducing the
amount of greenhouse gases
in the air.
But the notion that we're
using up 1.7 earths and we're
doing that year after year--
if that were the
case, I think we would
have run out of earth by now.
I just can't make
the arithmetic work,
the way that they're
looking at it.
So again, we have to
reduce greenhouse gases.
We're not doing nearly
enough on that front.
But these other worries
about using up the earth--
I just don't think
they're well-founded.
KATE BRANDT: All right.
So on the topic of
de-materialization--
you talked about
that a little bit,
that that's a big role
that technology has played.
You showed a stat about paper.
Talk a little bit more about
what de-materialization means
to you and what you see
as the big drivers that
have enabled that.
ANDREW MCAFEE: The
single best example
of this broad trend of being
able to satisfy all of our
wants and needs,
all of our desires
to consume, while taking
less from the earth,
came from a retired newsman
in Buffalo, New York.
And this guy's
idea of a good time
was to wander around
yard sales in Buffalo
and see if anything reminded
him of the history of that city.
And he bought a stack of
newspapers of the Buffalo News
from 1991, took them home, and
started flipping through them.
And he found a Radio Shack
ad in the back of one
of the sections of a newspaper.
And he had this
wonderful insight.
He said, there were
15 items, 15 devices
on this ad from
RadioShack from 1991.
13 of them have vanished
into your smartphone.
And do you carry around
a camcorder anymore?
Do you carry around
a film camera?
Do you carry around a scanner?
Do you have a tape recorder?
You have an answering machine?
Do you have a fax ma--
I don't have any of
these things anymore.
And if you weighed
those 13 devices,
they would weigh a lot.
They were kind of
resource intensive.
They would consume a
lot of electricity,
as you used them
throughout the year.
And they've all just vanished
down into the smartphone.
And I think that's a very clear
example of a phenomenon that's
happening in the foreground
and the background
of every industry
that I can think of,
which is just not
out of altruism
but out of a desire to
satisfy consumer demand,
while spending less money.
It just impels us to use less
stuff from the physical world.
Every additional molecule,
you typically pay for.
Every additional bit,
you typically don't.
KATE BRANDT: So we're
here today at Google,
on that smartphone
that's de-materialized
all those devices
you just mentioned.
A lot of people are using Google
products, like Search, Gmail.
And as we know, the way that
we deliver those products
to all of our users is
through our data centers.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Yep.
KATE BRANDT: Our
data centers are
the heart and soul of Google.
They operate 24/7
around the world
to deliver those products.
Now, we've been very
focused on making those data
centers highly sustainable.
We've been a carbon
neutral company since 2007.
We're matching 100% of our
energy with renewables.
We're driving on
energy efficiency.
Nonetheless, people still
often ask me the question--
and I'm sure they ask you too--
how do we square that circle?
Are all of these new
technology solutions
that we're putting
out into the world--
what's enabled this
de-materialization-- what
about that back-end energy use?
And also, what about
ICT infrastructure?
ANDREW MCAFEE: That's right.
KATE BRANDT: How do
you think about that?
ANDREW MCAFEE: And I get
asked exactly this question.
I was really ambushed the
first time I heard it.
And somebody said, your
industry is part of the problem,
not part of the solution.
And your industry has grown
so quickly in the 21st century
that--
I hear this complaint that
the digital industries
are massive energy sucks in
America and around the world.
And I hadn't heard that.
And I was interested.
Luckily, thanks
to Google, you can
go find evidence on
a lot of questions
that you're interested in.
So I drew a graph of, again, the
size of the US economy-- it's
always my favorite baseline--
and then the total electricity
usage over the
course of the 20th
and the 21st
centuries for America.
And it's a super weird picture.
Because again, electricity
use just went up in lockstep
with the overall
size of the economy
until about 10 years ago.
And I had no idea.
But total American
electricity use
has been flat for
about a decade,
even as you and your
peers have become bigger
and more influential companies.
That tells me that you actually
are part of the solution,
instead of part of the problem.
Because what's happening is
that people are using all
that computing power
and all of your data
centers to go save
money on electricity
elsewhere in the economy.
And if that weren't
the case, that line
would not have leveled off.
I can't think of
another explanation
for that phenomenon.
KATE BRANDT: Yeah,
you're absolutely right.
And a study that
I often cite is--
Lawrence Berkeley National
Lab put out this study in 2016
that said, over--
actually, I think it
was the previous five
years-- data center
energy has basically
held flat, even though
there was huge growth
in the number of data centers in
the US, huge growth in compute.
And we know, we've
seen here at Google
that, compared to
five years ago,
we're now getting seven
times more compute
for the same amount
of electricity.
So we're very much
seeing that phenomenon.
But I wanted to ask you--
I haven't seen another
study since 2016
that really dug into this.
Is this something
that you've looked at?
Or that you guys
might study at MIT?
ANDREW MCAFEE: I want
to dive in deeper
on a couple of
these issues and try
to paint a more
systematic picture,
because I think we're
getting some pretty
fundamental things wrong.
We're walking around with
the Industrial Age notion
that our consumption
and our growth
has to be more resource
intensive over time, has
to be harsher on the
planet over time.
And everybody from Vaclav
Smeal, who's one of my heroes--
he's written these amazing
books about our consumption
and our use of materials.
Everyone from him to Naomi
Klein to Greta Thunberg,
the young Swedish
activist, is now
saying a modern version
of the de-growth argument.
They're saying, economic
growth has to stop.
To me, that's exactly the same
as saying that human prosperity
cannot increase anymore
around the world.
I really have a problem
with that argument.
And I think it's
wrong on the merits.
I think we are now
demonstrating that we
can increase human prosperity
and take better care of nature.
To the extent that's true, we
do not need to stop growing.
Indira Gandhi said
in 1972 that poverty
is the greatest polluter.
I think that's absolutely right.
So my prescription
is the opposite
of a de-growth prescription.
It's, let's help the rest
of the world get rich.
They're going to go through
the same transition we did.
And they will start lightening
up on the planet as well.
KATE BRANDT: So you
talked about climate.
You acknowledge that climate
is a crisis that we're facing,
that it's something that
has to be addressed.
And of course, you
shared some stats
around ecosystems that
have bounced back.
Like, you talked
about blue whales.
But also, we know
there are ecosystems
that, because of
climate, are collapsing,
like ocean acidification
that's ruining our coral reefs.
How do you square that
with this argument, where
we see-- obviously,
you've acknowledged
climate is a big issue.
But climate is caused by
consumption of fossil fuels.
That's fueled this growth.
But that's something we
haven't yet tackled at scale.
And it is also hurting
our ecosystems.
Where does that fit in?
ANDREW MCAFEE: I agree
with every word of that.
And I got a lot of insight
from William Nordhaus,
who won the Nobel Prize
last year in economics,
and Marty Weitzman, another
really good economist.
And they both said kind
of the same thing, which
is that there's a huge
uncertainty about how bad
global warming is going to be.
And some people think, well,
because we don't know for sure
and it might not be that
bad, to heck with it.
And these guys said, no.
You're thinking
about it all wrong.
The tail risk from
global warming--
the 10% or 15% tail
risk-- is catastrophically
bad for the planet.
When that's the case, we have
an obligation, a fiduciary--
any kind of obligation-- to
deal with that magnitude of risk
when the tail is that fat.
And so again, what Nordhaus said
was a revenue-neutral carbon
tax is the first tool that
we should be reaching for.
And that just means
that we tax carbon.
Companies run away from
that additional cost.
But instead of the government
keeping that money,
we just pass it right back to
people in the form of a carbon
dividend.
And that will have all
these wonderful effects.
It frustrates me that,
as far as I can tell,
none of the
presidential candidates
are putting that
front and center.
And I don't hear a global
movement for the one thing
that 3,500 economists
can agree on.
We know something is
fundamentally important
when 3,500 economists
can agree on it
KATE BRANDT: Yeah, so
you're highlighting
one of the
interventions that you
see as being important
from a policy perspective,
from an economic perspective.
What other role do you see
policy playing or businesses,
NGOs, individuals-- where do
people fit into this vision?
ANDREW MCAFEE:
And in the book, I
kind of lay out prescriptions--
KATE BRANDT: Yeah.
ANDREW MCAFEE: --for all
those different groups--
policymakers, individuals,
and families, not-for-profits,
and the business community.
And your industry
is taking the lead
on identifying the problem,
saying that it's real,
and finding good solutions.
You're carbon neutral.
I think other high tech
companies have either
achieved that or have, in
a realistic way, signed up
for that.
I hope that spreads.
I sense a wave of consumer
sentiment building
that is going to
call companies out
on their bad carbon practices.
I desperately hope
that continues.
But the main thing that I try
to tell individuals and families
to do is, in
addition to changing
some of your activities,
we have to inform ourselves
about the best tools available
to fight these battles.
We have to be evidence-driven.
And that sounds really anodyne.
We're not evidence-driven.
We're super tribal.
We're all biased.
We love our intuition.
Nuclear power activates an ick
reflex among almost everybody
that I talk to.
Nuclear power is absolutely
part of the solution for dealing
with global warming.
And the fact that it's off the
table in so much of the world
is absolutely bizarre and
super frustrating to me.
KATE BRANDT: Yeah--
so earlier, you
told me you don't think
in industrial revolutions.
But nonetheless,
what do you think
is this next era that
we're moving into?
Are we at the
beginning of an era?
Are we at the end of an era?
Where do you see
us going from here?
Situate us a little bit.
ANDREW MCAFEE: About once a
century, a wave of technology
comes along that's
so powerful that it
changes the march of progress.
It happened with
the steam engine
in the first
Industrial Revolution.
It happened about
a century later,
with internal combustion
and electrification
and indoor plumbing, which
is massively valuable.
Eric and I and a bunch
of our colleagues
think that we're in another
one of those periods right now.
It's not going to
happen overnight.
Productivity is still lousy.
These are decade or decades
long transformations.
But how different is the
world going to be in 50 years?
I hear it pretty often
that the way we live today
is not that different than
the way we did 50 years ago.
I think there's
some truth to that.
50 years hence?
We're living in a complete
science fiction world.
So we're in the early innings of
another one of these very deep
transformations.
And I just think
it's exciting that I
get to try to think
about it, talk about some
of the trajectories
that we're seeing,
and inject a note of
evidence-based optimism.
Elite conversations-- we
try to out-gloomy each other
at Cambridge dinner
parties, where I live.
And I don't want to
be part of that trend
anymore, because I don't think
the evidence supports it.
We have challenges.
But if you go to
OurWorldInData, which
is one of my favorite websites,
and you just browse around,
you walk away happier actually.
Most of the things-- not all--
most of the things that I
know you would care about
and I would care
about are trending
in the right direction.
We need to emphasize that.
AUDIENCE: I was just curious
about where population growth
fits into all this?
ANDREW MCAFEE: Yeah,
it's a great question.
Because population growth was
another one of those things
that we really started to
worry about around the time
of the first Earth Day.
And Paul Ehrlich wrote the book
"The Population Bomb," in 1968.
I think it started off saying,
hundreds of millions of people
are going to die in a famine.
And there's nothing
we can do about it.
That was his opening
for the book.
Hundreds of millions of people
did not die in a famine.
And what I think we've learned
in the half century since then
is that it's wrong to think
about these additional human
beings as passive
mouths that need
to be fed or just passive
resource consumers.
Instead, they are
problem solvers.
They're innovators.
They're entrepreneurs.
They're part of this engine
of ingenuity that we have.
And if you look at the
trends around incidence
of famine, calorie
availability, human health,
they're all heading in
exactly the right direction.
Even as we've
added, I forget how
many billion people since 1970.
So the thing I'm more
worried about over the course
of the 21st century
is that we're not
going to have enough people.
And in particular, the
ratio of working age people
to elderly people is going
to shift a lot in the decades
to come in most countries
around the world.
That's going to put stress
on our pension systems
and things like that.
But I still read
reports once in a while
that say, oh, my heavens,
can we feed all the mouths
that will exist in 2050?
I find that unbelievably
frustrating.
Yes, we will feed them better
than we're feeding them today,
even as the planet warms.
I'll take that bet all day long.
AUDIENCE: So I'm
all for progress.
And I like the story.
But sometimes, there
can be these effects.
And you mentioned pollution.
I think, extinction
is another aspect.
So you have these traditional
Chinese medicines.
And now these
economies get richer.
And suddenly, there can be
demand for ivory and rhino
parts and jaguar parts
and everything else
that they couldn't
afford before.
ANDREW MCAFEE: That's right.
AUDIENCE: And now, they could
afford enough to wipe out
these species.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Yes.
AUDIENCE: What do
we do about that?
ANDREW MCAFEE: Amazingly enough,
I think the trends there,
in exactly the areas you
mentioned, are positive trends.
I want to acknowledge
the problem, though.
You bring up that low-income
people, relying especially
on some kinds of
traditional medicine,
as they become more affluent,
they can put real pressure
on those animals.
Absolutely.
China is my exhibit A for the
happy version of an outcome
there.
China has what they call
three strict bans in place
now on the sale of rhino
and tiger products.
It's illegal to buy them,
sell them, or own them.
And they either
have put in place
or are about to put in place a
very strict ban on the carving
and the sale of ivory.
So my story for that is,
as those people became
more affluent, their circle
of empathy broadened.
And they actually
decided to take
better care of these creatures.
In addition to which, I
think, last year China
was contemplating relaxing
those three strict bans
on rhino and tiger products.
And around the world,
an outcry ensued,
led by environmental groups.
And China walked away from
relaxing that ban and said,
we're going to
leave that in place.
So I think, both
internal desire to take
better care of the
environment, external pressure
from watchdog groups
and environmentalists--
I'm not saying it's going to
solve the problems everywhere
in the world.
But I see some really
encouraging signs,
in exactly the places that
we were worried about.
AUDIENCE: In regard
to de-materialization,
are there industries or sectors
that are slow to catch up
or haven't really
taken a positive trend?
I'm thinking, maybe,
airline travel or fashion.
Fast fashion is a very,
very big consumer thing,
where people are buying
almost too many shirts, shoes,
and that's thing that
they really need.
And that's still very
impactful to the environment.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Yeah,
there are definitely
industries that are farther
along on this trend.
And you bring up apparel and,
in particular, fast fashion,
where especially younger, more
style-conscious people now
can buy clothes
that are designed
to be worn a very
small number of times
and then throw them away.
Again, as long as we are dealing
with the bad side-effects
of that--
when you make
clothing, you generate
a lot of chemicals
and dyes and you have
to dispose of those correctly.
In the rich world, we
have safeguards in place.
We have restrictions on
polluting that are enforced.
In the developing
world, we don't.
My solution-- again, make
those countries more wealthy.
Their people will start
to demand solutions.
But if we can deal
with the pollution that
comes from making clothes--
I don't mean to be
blase, but we are not
going to run out of cotton,
wool, and artificial fabrics.
We're just not.
So I don't see the environmental
problem from fast fashion,
leaving aside pollution.
That's a very serious problem.
We're not going to
run out of holes
in the ground to put waste in.
And we're not going to run out
of things like cotton and wool.
So again, I'm struggling to see
what the real problem is there.
Sometimes, I think people
just don't like the trend.
And so they find
reasons to oppose it.
AUDIENCE: What is your
thoughts on cobalt,
like the battery charger?
Do you have any opinion that you
can share on the resources end
from that?
ANDREW MCAFEE: There's
a constant conversation
about the resource that
is about to become scarce.
And right now, we talk
about cobalt a lot.
We talk about lithium,
because we're all
expecting a battery revolution.
What's interesting
is that conversation
has been going on forever,
or at least as far back
as the first Earth Day.
And every resource that
I've been able to track
has gotten steadily more
affordable over time.
And what I mean by that is,
if we look at the world's
average person, how many
minutes would that person have
to work to be able to
afford a pound of cheese,
a pound of wool, a
pound of cobalt--
whatever.
And the number of minutes has
been trending downward very
steadily over time.
So we do see price spikes.
So that's what happens
with commodities.
Their prices are very spiky.
But what also happens is,
the instant cobalt becomes
red hot and the
price goes up, there
will be a lot more cobalt
prospectors out there
in the world.
And I guarantee, we're going
to uncover some vast cobalt
deposit somewhere or other.
So I'm not worried, even
about resource shortages
of rare earth minerals and
cobalt and things like that.
History tells me that that's
not a thing to worry about.
Now again, the
thing to worry about
is that, right now,
cobalt is being
mined in very
low-income countries,
in very unsafe and
environmentally unsound ways.
That is a super
hard problem to fix.
We can put pressure
on those countries.
We can put pressure
on the companies
that buy cobalt, so they sign
up for sustainable practices.
We can absolutely do that.
My fundamental solution?
Improve the incomes
of those countries.
Their people will start
to demand a cleaner world.
AUDIENCE: Thank you [INAUDIBLE]
for coming to us today.
You were saying that nuclear
power is part of the solution.
And I would like you
to expand on that.
I really think
that so many people
think that nuclear
has any incidence
on global warming,
which is totally crazy--
or it's too dangerous.
When you compare it to
wars in the Middle East,
it's totally crazy
to think that.
So I just want you
to expand on that.
ANDREW MCAFEE: And is that
a French accent that I hear?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
ANDREW MCAFEE: And
your country just
announced, in a very brave way,
that they're going to build--
what is it-- a handful of new
reactors in the years to come.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, the
[INAUDIBLE] one.
And we see Germany as well,
which is stopping nuclear power
and increasing their
carbon consumption with--
sorry-- with coal.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Do any of
you know who Yann LeCun is?
One of the AI rock
stars, a French guy.
And I follow him mainly
to get his AI thoughts.
He posted a great
graph a while back
that showed how much
energy was generated
in each European
country and how carbon
intensive that energy was.
And you look at Germany.
It's a big economy.
Their carbon intensity
is pretty lousy.
France was generating
about as much electricity,
every day for the
period they studied,
and the carbon density was so
much lower for your country.
And we have exactly one energy
source in the world today that
is very green, very
potent, very scalable,
not at all intermittent-- and
here's the part people have
trouble with--
safe.
The track record
of nuclear power
is by far the best track
record of any energy source
that we have to deal with.
When you look at death rates
caused by accidents or death
rates caused by pollution,
it's absolutely not even close.
And this surprised
the heck out of me.
I got freaked out
by Three Mile Island
when I was a kid and
Chernobyl and Fukushima.
I just watched the Chernobyl
mini-series on HBO.
It's terrifying!
It's also fiction.
The actual death
toll from Chernobyl,
which was about as bad a nuclear
accident as you could imagine.
I read the reports.
The death toll was real.
And it was bizarrely low,
given how bad the accident was.
So I think, our aversion
to nuclear power
is not grounded in the evidence.
And in the book, I
just make a plea for us
to be evidence-driven about
the things that we support.
I think the crazy is winning
the argument on nuclear power
and on GMOs.
And those are two areas where
we really need for the crazy
not to win the argument.
AUDIENCE: Many people focus
on personal plastic use,
water use, et cetera, in
the face of climate change.
Yet, 100 companies
and their investors
create 70% of the
world's CO2 emissions.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: How do we
hold them accountable,
as well, and get away from this
solely individualistic mindset,
which itself is a
driver of capitalism?
ANDREW MCAFEE: Carbon dividend--
if you want companies to
change their behavior,
change their costs.
Change their incentives.
When a company faces a sudden
change in its cost structure,
it will run from that
cost like a gazelle
will run when it smells a lion.
It's amazing how quickly
their behavior will change.
So if we want these companies
to change, lecturing them
feels good.
It accomplishes almost nothing.
Change their incentives.
Change their cost structure.
And we have very well-designed
tools, very precise tools
for doing that,
developed by my friends
in the world of economics.
The reason that the
air pollution in the US
went down so quickly was because
we put in place a cap and trade
program, which is just another
variant on making pollution
expensive in the US.
We saw how much air
pollution improved.
And the cost of doing
it was about 1/4 or 1/5
of the originally estimated
cost for industry.
So what happens when you
change the cost suddenly
is businesses become a
lot more willing to invest
in cost-reducing activities.
And they fund R&D in
a very different way.
And I think everyone
agrees that we
need a massive wave
of R&D investment
in clean and green energy.
By far the best
way to get that is
to start making the old energy
expensive for companies.
AUDIENCE: Can you summarize
some of the evidence
for why your story is
not an offshoring one?
ANDREW MCAFEE: Simply
because, that story only
makes sense to me if US
manufacturing were declining.
It's not declining.
We still make stuff.
We make more stuff every year.
But we make it while using
fewer metals, fewer resources
from the natural world.
So we are outsourcing
to China, absolutely.
And our manufacturing
growth has slowed down.
Our manufacturing growth
is still positive.
Our metals use has
trended negative.
I can't attribute 100%
of that to outsourcing,
given those facts.
AUDIENCE: OK.
KATE BRANDT: All right--
Andrew McAfee, thank you so much
for the great discussion today.
The book is "More from Less."
ANDREW MCAFEE:
Thank you all for--
KATE BRANDT: Thanks for--
ANDREW MCAFEE: --coming.
KATE BRANDT: --being here.
ANDREW MCAFEE: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
