Factually! with Adam Conover - Ending Climate Change with Saul Griffith

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

We often frame the fight against climate change as one of endless sacrifice. But the truth is, the real solutions to climate change would both save money and make our lives better. Scientist, inventor, and energy expert Saul Griffith joins Adam to walk us through why electric power is more efficient, powerful, and affordable long-term; how the “scarcity mentality” is a flawed way to view fighting climate change; and how a “wartime mobilization” to electrify our society would both fight the COVID economic slump as well as combat climate change. Saul Griffith's book Rewiring America is available wherever books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover, and if you've been checking the average global temperature lately, you might have noticed it's getting a little bit hot on planet Earth. Apocalypse hot. I won't get into the details, but the possibilities for the future, barring drastic change, sit in a range somewhere between ongoing catastrophe and civilizational annihilation. Somewhere in there. The situation, in other words, is bleak. So what is it going to take to fix it? That's what we've been asking. That's what we've been shaking every scientist in the vicinity. God damn it. Tell us what we got to do to fix this. What is it going to take?

Well, one idea that environmentalists in the past promoted was to just cut back, right? Don't leave the lights on. Don't buy new things. Don't drive. Don't fly. Don't eat meat. And if it's cold in your home, follow the advice of the patron saint of sacrifice, Jimmy Carter, and just put on a sensible sweater. There's just one problem. People hate it when you ask them to do that.

The idea of a world that's been saved from climate change, but in which we're all huddling under a single LED light, slurping cold borscht in our cardigans, has proven unappealing to people for decades because, well, I mean, that world sucks, too, doesn't it? I don't want to live in that world just as much as I don't want to live in the hot eco apocalypse that we're trying to prevent. And on top of that, we're starting to understand that simply asking people to cut back isn't actually going to work as a solution

to climate change. And one of the reasons for that is that our entire economy is actually built on consumption. America is the largest consumer economy in the world. We consume the most in total and per capita. Our economic system is built to an incredible degree around buying shit. And good or bad, that means that there are powerful incentives for people and businesses and governments to not alter consumption since it is, in fact, a pillar of our society.

Now, look, I'm not saying that we should keep buying shit on Amazon willy-nilly. I do think that there is a role for reducing the amount of rampant consumption in our society. But the fact remains that just asking individuals to cut back here or there, buy a little less of this and that, that is never going to be enough to tackle our climate crisis. It just won't as a matter of mathematics. The truth is that, as I've said many times before on this podcast, on TV, making individual better choices can't fix systemic problems.

We need solutions that are top down and societal in their scope. And that means what we actually need to do in order to deal with climate change isn't just to buy a lot of fuzzy sweaters. It's to transform energy production and transmission in our society. energy production and transmission in our society. We have evidence that if we just electrify our energy grid, we can not only cut out carbon emissions, but provide energy that is both cheaper and cleaner. And by so doing, we'd create millions of jobs. If we do it, we'll be living in a future world where not only have we fixed or at least forestalled the worst effects of climate change, we have also made life for people in this country and in the world better rather than asking them endlessly to cut back. And the truth is, we have the technology to do this.

This is not pie-in-the-sky futuristic stuff. This is stuff that we have the tech to do today. The question is whether we can muster the political will to push this world into being. The question is whether we can muster the political will to push this world into being. Well, to describe how we might get there, to go into the math on why this truly is the best approach to fighting climate change and what this cleaner energy world might look like. Our guest today is Saul Griffith. He's an engineer, the winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant. I think that brings our MacArthur Genius Grant tally up to two or three, maybe something like that.

And the co-founder of Rewiring America. Please welcome Saul Griffith. Saul, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. So you're an engineer. You work on climate decarbonization. Let's start from the beginning. Why do we need to decarbonize? Honestly, it's to have a planet that we want to live on in both an aesthetic and in a practical sense. The aesthetic sense is, you know, I don't think we would like to walk around on a denuded desert. On a practical sense, that denuded desert is going to make it hard to produce all the food and conveniences that we enjoy as a civilization yeah so um but i like to emphasize the aesthetic side of it because at some point what we're really

arguing about is you know how many interesting critters and how many beautiful landscapes do we want to live with um because you know you could solve climate change but still kill the oceans with plastics so there's a little bit um to emphasize the the aesthetic is to encourage us to understand that you know the earth nourishes us in more ways than just killing our bellies and and we and i think we should be aspiring to live on the best planet we can. And I think we now have the scientific tools to imagine what that is. And we should hopefully get the political momentum

to go there. Yeah, well, let's talk about how we do that and what that is. I mean, you wrote a book project, Rewiring America, about how we could decarbonize. It's often presented to us in our political conversation as being an immense lift and being something that's going to be really detrimental to our economy. It's gonna be super expensive and, you know, a really onerous task. I think you have a different view. What is your view and your approach?

I think hopefully we get to talk about where the history of why that view prevails. I'd love to. I think it is really interesting. So as well as being interested in the solutions and engineering them, I'm really interested in the history of the conversation around climate, around energy. Mm-hmm. of the conversation around climate, around energy. And from that history, you can see why we are where we are. But in summary, where I have arrived is fairly optimistic. You know, the gloom and doom is easy.

It is a Herculean lift to fix the problems we've created on the timeline necessary to get an outcome we want. So we really need wartime levels of mobilization to hit a one and a half to two degree climate target. One and a half to two degree climate target, people might think that's okay. That's in Celsius. That's really a three to four degree Fahrenheit of average warming. When you say average, that means there'll be a lot of places that are warming eight degrees fahrenheit or 10 degrees fahrenheit that is not good at all at one and a half to two degrees we're only going to save a slither of the world's coral reefs that's kind of a tragedy if you like

me were born in australia and raised on the coral reefs um we're going to lose a lot of things so we now need a herculean effort to get an okay, only an okay outcome. Yeah. In spite of that, I now I can say that the things required to meet that effort are possible. And we could be saving every household substantial amounts of money and improving the air quality and the water quality of those households and the communities they're in while fixing climate change. And we do not need the massive science projects that are promoted as the answer by those who wish to delay the more pragmatic, more pedestrian things that we can do right now.

more pedestrian things that we can do right now. So this is one of those, I think we see this sort of dichotomy in so many different big problems that we have. It's the, well, let's just go back to Elon Musk. I make fun of Elon Musk so much on this show that it's the approach of, okay,

traffic's bad in Los Angeles. What do you do? Elon Musk says, let's build tunnels. Let's have flying cars. Let's have incredible technological solutions. The simpler solution is, Hey, let's build tunnels. Let's have flying cars. Let's have incredible technological solutions. The simpler solution is, hey, let's have more buses. Let's take away some traffic lanes, put in some bus lanes, right?

Like buses are even better than trains, cheaper to implement. It's that sort of thing. There are people who don't want to do the low hanging fruit solutions. And so they postulate instead, let's do some crazy big science project that'll take 10 years. And by the way, my company is going to do it. so i'll get a billion dollars in government grants for my moonshot is that sort of what you're talking about that is true although you know i do enjoy government grants and i do enjoy moonshots yeah i don't want to i don't want to completely diss the category

and i think there is space for it because you know if we don't aren't raising our children on bedtime stories of moonshots we're not giving them hope that they can affect change true and we and and what we forget about moon shots is we did go to the moon and it was good that we did it and so i think the narrative value of those is fantastic um but yes i uh in the longer form of my book so there's a short form available for free on the web called Rewiring America, and then MIT Press is bringing out a copy called Electrify later this year. And in that version, I think we begin with a sentence that's approximately, the billionaires might have the fantasy that we can escape to Mars, but the rest of us just have to stay and fight.

So I think there is this class of people who can remove themselves from the practical side of the problem and fancy these, a collection of moonshots that will be fun for them to do while civilization burns, whereas the rest of us will just have to stay and fix it. So I'm interested in those of us left behind and what we have to do to make this planet a pretty good place to live. Yeah. So what what are those things that we can do? I mean, you said earlier, very, very attractive little mention to me of we can do it and we can save the average family hundreds of dollars. I think, you know, that runs contrary to the narrative we've been given about how this is going to be expensive and yada, yada, yada. How does that work? What are some of these

low-hanging fruit solutions? It's your show, so I'm a little nervous about derailing you here, but I think this is where we should just do a quick history of how we got from somewhere to here lesson. Let's do it. Lay it on on me man um and so it all starts with nixon speaking of impeached presidents um the oil crisis sorry we weren't were we the oil crisis landed on nixon's desk in 73 and it was a veritable shit show And we literally didn't even know what the magnitude of that crisis was or its effects. There was no Department of Energy. There was no thing called the Energy Information Administration, which is a little known agency that keeps all of the data on how we use energy and produce it. There was no EPA and we just knew that people were lining up and they couldn't get

gas and so there was a thing called the joint committee on atomic energy and it had a whole bunch of uh boffins we would say in australia nerds you might say there that were sitting on it and they were tasked with nixon okay help us identify what the problem is and and give us some answers to fix it. So they ran around and they started collecting all the data on all the ways we used energy, and they realized that the oil crisis was a supply crisis, meaning our supply was cut off for about 10% to 15% of our energy, which was oil from the Middle East. But they realized it was a supply-side solution.

If we could just lower our energy use by 15 then we don't need that oil and that was actually the origin of this term energy independence because they ran a thing called project independence in 1974 which was federally trying to figure out how to solve this problem and the answer was well if all the cars were 15 more efficient and all of the, because at that time a lot of household heat was burning oil for heat, that still is true in a lot of the northeast, if they were 15% more efficient furnaces and boilers, then the problem is solved.

And so the Department of Energy, the Energy Information Administration, was born just as the environmentalist movement was gaining legs, meaning earth day happened in 1970 and they're all like okay we now we've got a million people who are prepared to march for the earth but what do they do and so the what they do came from down high as okay more efficient cars that gave us cafe fuel standards more efficient boilers that gave us cafe fuel standards, more efficient boilers that gave us Energy Star appliances and an emphasis on efficiency. So the environmentalist movement and an efficiency narrative has persisted for 50 years since. And it's the efficiency narrative that none of us really like because the efficiency narrative is like you solve climate change by driving a smaller, slow car and living in a smaller,

colder house and eating less interesting food. Right. Right. Right. My dishwasher takes twice as long now. It's a lot more energy efficient, but stuff like that. Yeah. As you might colloquially express it, if we try really, really, really, really hard and we sacrifice enormous amounts, we're going to be slightly less fucked than we would be otherwise. And that has been the narrative and the thinking around how we find solutions for climate change. But the reality is that you can't efficiency your way to zero emissions, right? That's sort of like literally living without a car naked in the cold because like there has to be some activity so the real problem with climate change is transformation so we have to transform from the economy that has um or transition is the fashionable word in the industry now so we have to transition from fossil fuels away to something else um now there's a whole bunch of noisy answers for what that something

else should be but the the real simple answer that we're we're trying to help people get to is like we need to electrify everything because if you're not running everything off electricity you have to find something else like hydrogen but hydrogen hydrogen is very inconvenient at best as a, as a means to move around the energy. So it's going to nearly everything's going to be electric. And then you start saying, okay, so what are the man? What what's what happens if we think of everything else electric and some of your, well,

hopefully a lot of your listeners already have an electric vehicle and they're enjoying this quieter, faster, accelerating, very pleasant, better than the alternative vehicle, which is this electric vehicle, which it just so happens uses about one third of the energy of a fossil fuel car.

And the energy can be produced theoretically by a sustainable means by solar or or something else, as opposed to like the advantage of electricity being, it can be generated by something which in itself is completely sustainable. Absolutely. We can go with wind, we can go with solar, we can go with geothermal, we can go with hydroelectricity. Some, you know, we could even use nuclear if we want to put that back on the table which i think we should um anyway if you go through all of the things that humans do we also need to electrify our heat we currently you know burn dinosaurs in your basement to keep your home warm which creates an air quality issue and in fact if your child goes to a doctor and reports a respiratory problem, the first question the doctor will ask you is,

do you burn natural gas in your kitchen and in your home? Because we know that these things are bad for our respiratory health. But it turns out there's a technology called a heat pump, which is really the same thing that's in an air conditioner. It's just going the other direction. You put electricity in and you get heat out one side and cold out the other, and you can use that for cooling things or heating things. It turns out that heat pumps are three times more efficient than burning natural gas or oil in your basement in terms of units of energy in for units of hotness and coldness and comfort out.

And if you take, so there's another example of just this inherent efficiency of electrical machines. Turns out if you go through that thought experiment, they happen to be the two biggest users of energy in the American economy. But if you do, if you electrify all of the things we do, which we can, nearly all of them we can, the US.s economy without shrinking the size of your homes or your cars or turning down the thermostat would only need 40 to 50 percent of the energy it uses today so there's a good news story there that these the the focus on

efficiency wasn't good because it allows too many people to have a narrative of like, I don't want that because that makes my life worse. Yeah. But if you can do a Jedi mind trick here, you say electrify everything. I'm really saying everything is going to be way, way more efficient, but I don't have to imply that it's going to get smaller and colder and less interesting. So you could live the American dream on less than 50% of the energy. It just has to be mostly electricity. And that 50% off discount we got is great because that's 50% fewer windmills and solar cells and et cetera that you have to build.

And then you start plugging through the numbers and we should be able to provide all of that electricity to run your American dream for you at a significant discount from powering your American dream on dead dinosaurs. And that future exists today. I think the famous science fiction quote is the future is not evenly distributed or something. The future is already here. It's not evenly distributed. Yeah. The problem with this is the future is not evenly distributed or something. The future is already here.

It's not evenly distributed. Yeah. The problem with this is the future is already here. It's just not in one single place. And what do I mean by that? Australia made a couple of clever decisions three or four years ago that means that today I could go out and get three bids to have a solar installer show up at my house

and they would install the solar at a cost of $1 per watt. You don't really understand what $1 per watt means, but after I pay for it and finance it, that translates to electricity that is made on my roof for 5 cents per kilowatt hour. That's probably a unit that your listeners recognize. I've heard of this kilowatt hour that's probably a unit that your listeners recognize i've heard of this kilowatt hour yeah everyone in listening to your show pays to their utility every month 10 to 25 cents per kilowatt hour for their electricity so i just told you something pretty magical the cost of rooftop solar in australia is cheaper than the cheapest retail electricity in the United States. The cheapest electricity in the world is solar, could be solar on your roof.

What's crazy is only one quarter of that $1 per watt for the Australian solar is the cost of the solar modules. The rest is the installation and the pieces of aluminum and the bolts that hold it down and the other things, things called soft costs. The problem in the US is those soft costs are enormous. It's nearly $1 extra for the permitting and inspection. And because that dollar makes solar so expensive, it costs another 50 cents to a dollar to find you and sell you solar and convince you that it's going to be economic. Because the reality is in most zip codes in America, rooftop solar is more expensive than the grid.

So in America, the average price for installation solar is close to $3 a watt, which pencils out at 20 to 25 cents a kilowatt hour. More expensive than the average electricity price in the US, which is 13.8 cents. So one piece of the three legs of the trilogy we need is we need the policies because it's not because of labor costs. Australian rooftop solar is going in with minimum wages over $30 an hour. So you can't blame labor. So it's other costs so one leg of the trilogy is you get the australian rooftop solar policy and you deploy that in

america and that will give a lot of people a lot of very cheap electricity california has great incentives and is building out good infrastructure for electric vehicles and california and norway are basically crushing it and leading the world on electric vehicles so and even the triple a which is not known as a climate forward organization the american automobile association not really that they admitted in 2019 that the cost of ownership of an electric vehicle is lower than the cost of ownership of a gasoline vehicle. So it would be even better if I could use the cost of Australian solar to power my electric vehicle, then it's way, way, way cheaper. And you'd be saving a lot of money. The third thing you need is this thing called the heat pump. So we need heat pumps heating our hot water and heat pumps heating our space heat in our buildings. And if you did that, the countries that are doing very well at that are Germany and South Korea and Japan.

So if you could take residential heating from South Korea, Australian rooftop solar, and Californian EV policies. And you can apply that across the whole American economy. And we use, you know, it'll take us a few years to get there. So then we use the price that batteries will be in 2024. That recipe, then the average household in America would save $2,500 a year. Wow. So that's important.

Why is that important? Because I want $2,500, Saul. That's why it's important. If you tell anybody, if you do this, you get $2,500, they'll probably do it. I agree. And we start to appeal to everyone in the middle for whom the dollars count. Yeah.

Australian solar penetration in Australia is more than 50% of rooftop's now. Why is that? It's because it's cheaper than the alternative. It's only a couple of percent in the US because it's not cheaper than the alternative. So we still got to get to where appealing to your pocketbooks. And the reason, just to give you some numbers, and then you'll start to laugh at why I even know all of these numbers. I guess that's what I do. But the average US household's post-tax income or spending is about $61,000 a year. Of that, they spend $4,500 on energy.

energy, the $1,950 they spend on average on gasoline is more than they spend on education. The $1,500 they spend on electricity is more than they spend on fresh fruit and vegetables. And the $400 they spend on natural gas for heating the home is more than they spend on dentistry. Wow. So if you can make that $4,500 bill for the average household get to a couple of thousand dollars, save that $2,500, that is meaningful and impactful. And if you add it up across the entire economy, we would be saving $350 billion a year. So this then makes you wonder, why in hell did we try and sell the Green New Deal and tell people about its top line cost of $20 trillion instead of, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, this Green New Deal is amazing.

It's going to pay for itself. We're going to be saving $350 billion a year. And I'm going to be creating jobs in your zip code because, you know, installing those solar cells and putting a heat pump in your basement, you can't export jobs to China or Mexico if they're on your roof or in your basement. Yeah. Those installers work in America no matter what. Yeah. So, you know, I, what we are, what I'm trying to do and my wife has allowed me to, I'm doing a little bit less engineering this year and a lot more proselytizing because I think we just don't have enough voices in this conversation that are telling us that we can win, we can win soon. And, you know, we have to play our cards right.

But these are no longer heroic technical problems. You know, the problem is in the local city hall and the building codes. The problem is that in your state, the rate structure of the regulated utilities is broken. Well, and it's stuff like, I mean, I have a lot to say. I let you talk for a while and I have a whole lot to say. I know, that was a monologue. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was fascinated.

I wanted to hear all of it. But, you know, one piece of it is that, you know, I live in a new home here in Southern California. And I realized only a little while after I moved in, I was like, oh, hold on a second. We got natural gas, hot water heater, natural gas furnace, natural gas stove. Didn't really blink at it because it's like, yeah, natural gas stove. That's what you have. You got the blue flame. That's what we all get. Cause it's like, yeah, natural gas stove. That's what you have. You got the blue flame. That's what we all get. You know, I only, it's a very clean blue flame. Think about the, the, the brainwashing that all of those beautiful blue flame advertisements on the

TV did to us all. Yeah. That blue flame, that blue flame can't kill you. That can't give your children asthma. It's a beautiful blue flame. Yeah. It's when in fact it's leaking fumes into your house. Like the other day, me and my girlfriend were like, why does it smell like gas in the whole house? We thought we had a gas leak. It turned out it was just our stove working kind of normally like and release it. We had to open all the windows and everything. And it's releasing, you know, like we have one of our building codes in California here is that there's mandatory ventilation in new construction now because of the fumes that are released from gas. But what I found out only

recently is that the reason this new home was built with these things is that SoCal Gas, which is the natural gas provider, not a utility, just a private company, has been lobbying in different cities around Southern California to prevent them from incentivizing or mandating electric furnaces, electric stoves, all those things, because they currently are selling people natural gas and they don't want to stop. They don't want to lose those new hookups. And so it's literally just this extremely well-ized, you know, legacy business who, unfortunately, they need to transition to selling people electricity instead for the good of the planet. But, you know, they're sitting around. They don't know if we allow that to happen.

We're fucked. There's a lot of people believe that the enemy in climate change is coal and there's some good reason to believe that but in the reality of where the fight is the fight is natural gas is the new coal and it has much more powerful what killed the coal industry was the natural gas industry yeah it wasn't renewables it wasn't the other thing it was fracking it was natural gas and they are extremely powerful and they're extremely large and they are lying to you and they are lying to regulators and they're telling story about their costs that are only true because they are also preventing the other future from being cheaper they are not playing nice yeah we need to not play nice back what does not playing nice back mean it means that you know two things are true

um the first is when you hear all of these climate people talk about the targets and like let's how do we hit 2050 or 2030 etc etc there's an easier way to express this there's a there's a concept in the climate circles called committed emissions. So you just bought a new home. You're a perfect example. It's got a natural gas heater in the basement. On average, they last 20 years. It's got a natural gas stove. On average, they last 15 years. It's probably got a natural gas heated water heater. On average, they last 14 years. Your house is going to emit carbon dioxide until those things die yeah it's baked in it's baked in that's what committed emissions is the world has baked in

committed emissions that already take us close to two degrees wow what does that mean no one can buy a natural gas furnace ever again. No one should be buying a gasoline car ever again. Yeah. So the mental model we need to get to and the thing that society needs to get to as fast as possible is to make sure that anytime anyone is buying these pieces of infrastructure, and I'm using infrastructure carefully here. In the 20th century, thought infrastructure was roads and dams and transmission lines. In the 21st century,

infrastructure is your car, your stove, your furnace, and your hot water heater. Yeah. And we need to think about, because these are decisions, like you've just realized,

the average person makes these decisions once every 10 or 15 years. Yeah. I didn't even make this decision. I was not aware of this when I got the home and, uh, and even if I had been, well, I moved in and the stove was already there. That's right. But we just need to make sure that we can get a climate outclimb that's

reasonable. If we make sure that starting as soon as we can, everyone, the next time, when you replace that furnace, when you replace that hot water heater, they are electric and they're powered by renewables. And that's in a succinct way as possible. That's where we need to get to. So we need everyone's next car needs to be electric that means it'll take 20 years to turn over the 250 million vehicle fleet yeah you know there's 128 million homes in america we need everyone's next furnace needs to be an electric heat pump everyone's next hot water heater needs to be an electric heat pump everyone's next stove needs to be an induction stove and so we need to make it easy now remember we've had 120

years of those fossil fuel companies writing regulations and building codes that suit the world that they were creating so they're part of the problem we need to go out and we need to overturn all those building codes and make the favorable building codes so that you can only build with electric we need you. We need to start writing legislation that's in favor of helping every American and everyone around the world make these small number of decisions correctly. And I'm sorry, wow, you really got me on my monologue today.

I'm crushing the monologues. No, no, no worries. Well, first of all, I got a lot of questions for you about this right after the break, but I want to point out one point that you made a lot earlier, which is that we've been locked into this kind of scarcity mentality, this efficiency mentality, where we think of the transition that you're talking about as being fundamentally a negative one, one based on sacrifice, one based on cutting back, and we're going to have to make do with less.

And you're saying, no, no, no. If we make these changes, it is better. All these things are better. And it honestly reminds me of when I quit smoking. Like I read this book, The Easy Way to Quit Smoking by this guy, Alan Carr, famous book. His basic thing in a nutshell is if you cut back smoking, oh, I'm going to only have one or two cigarettes a day, right? You feel like you're deprived of the cigarettes. You feel like you lack something. You know, you treasure those one or two cigarettes and you're angry that you don't get to smoke them for the rest of the day because you think they're giving you something. Right. But he says, no, no, no. Here's what you do. You throw

the pack away. You go through the week of withdrawal and then you realize, holy shit, you are so much happier now. You know, you're like, I don't I'm not spending money. I'm not wasting my time, not hurting myself. And in fact, I have that amazing feeling of relief, just like I just smoked a cigarette every single day now because I'm no longer addicted. This is this is my own experience. I'm not saying this be anybody else's. But that's the point is saying, like, don't cut back once you're on the other side.

It's better. Yeah, I don't want to overextend your metaphor and various you know heap here but i'm also going to try and sell you that electrification is like a giant tub of cbd oil and a big joint as well i love it i love it it chills you out man and it And it's healthy. Exactly. Well, well, let's take a really quick break. I got more. That was that was our Seth Rogen moment right there. We nearly had it.

Well, we got to take a really quick break. I got so many more questions for you about this. This stuff's fascinating. We'll be right back with more Saul Griffith. I don't know anything. We're back with Saul Griffith. So you made the point, Saul, that from here on, everybody's next car that they buy should be an electric car. Everybody's next stove they buy should be an induction stove or an electric stove, et cetera, as much as possible. I have to say, though, that that's not the case. Right.

Like there's going to be a couple thousand cars sold today in the United States. I don't know the exact figure, but at least a couple thousand. It's it's 16 million divided by 365. OK, that is. There you go. So a lot. A lot. Yeah. And it's going to be a couple hundred thousand then, sounds like.

It's not, those are not going to be electric cars, right? 44,000 today, and only 40,000 will be, only a few thousand will be electric. Yeah. Only a few thousand are going to be electric. Of course, Tesla is, you know, doing very successfully financially at the moment that we record this, who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. That thing is like Bitcoin. But, you know, I think that Tesla, I've talked a lot of shit about Elon Musk and did a segment on our show, Adam ruins everything about electric cars. I do want to say that I think the most successful thing that Tesla did was popularize the point of view that you're talking about, which is that, hey, the electric option, the sustainable option can be the better option.

The cooler option, the one that you actually prefer to have, the one that's quiet and all that. So like a lot of that marketing job has been done, but still, despite that, most of the cars sold in the United States are not electric. And in fact, you've got a lot of major American car manufacturers, like, I don't know what Ford's plans are for like electric pickup trucks,

but they're not even selling sedans anymore, right? It's all F-150s until the end of time with them. So, and you know, you got the major hybrid makers like Toyota is also not doing all electric yet. So, you know, a lot in a lot of ways, we don't have the ability to to follow up on this, to follow up on your stirring call to action as we would want to how do we bring about a world where where people are actually able to make the choice that you're talking about um you either elegantly or inelegantly depending upon where you thought we were going to go next segue to why i use wartime mobilization as the analogy so um when hitler marched into france, Churchill got real scared

and called Roosevelt and said, we're screwed. And we need your help. And this is a war that's fought in the air and with tanks. It's a war of machinery. We don't know how to make enough. And Hitler's got his whole industry set up and can make tons of them. And if Hitler takes England, he's going to take our Navy, and if he takes our Navy, it's a short hop for him to America,

so you need to be worried because he will beat you with our Navy. And Roosevelt was scared, and then if you did a survey of America in 1939, was scared and then if you did a survey of america in 1939 we had such a shortage of guns in the military military that they were using ice cream trucks as fake tanks and and brooms as rifles when the army was doing practices this is the ninth one there was we were a total production of airplanes was about a thousand and they were mostly two seat training aircraft roosevelt led what was called the arsenal of democracy realizing this was going to be a war with machines he called up henry ford and he said henry ford can you help me out produce the germans and henry ford said no don't choose me because

I was going to make a horrible joke about anti-Semitism that I realized was too Well he was making it that comes from Ford was making a tidy sum selling cars to Germans in technology

so Roosevelt called on another guy called Henry Knudsen who was working for the competitor, Ford, and Knudsen said, I'll come to Washington and I'll run something called the Wartime Production Board and I'll help you get up to speed. Ford took a few years to come around and did and ended up building aircraft factories.

But by 1943, America was producing more than 50 000 giant bombers biggest aircraft ever built a year we were producing the tanks the guns the munitions etc the whole of american industry rallied behind it we converted the economy around and produced not only enough uh you know america produced the weapons for all of the allies right right, because France and England's industrial capacity was screwed. And they outproduced Germany, and that's why we won the war. So we are in a similar situation today, but it's not batteries we need. It's bullets, and we need them in similar quantities. We need to scale up.

No, it's not bullets we need up no sorry it's not bullets we need batteries thank god yes i was like well we don't need bullets so i'm not trying to shoot the people from socal gas i'm trying to i want to pause the show just for one second because i was trying to figure out how many bullets how many batteries you needed to make for a year and then i did a little bit of investigation of how many bullets we make every year. And we make about 90 billion bullets a year in the world, which is like, we make enough bullets to take 11 shots at everyone on the planet every year and miss. Jesus Christ.

And I'm going to contextualize that we make about 10 to 20 billion Lego pieces a year. And if you wanted to have one statistic, which describes what is wrong with the human race, it's that we make five, five times more bullets than Legos. And we already have too many Legos. I mean, exactly.

So many Legos. I mean, no, that's where I was. Yeah. That's where I was going with that. Not too many bullets, but too many Legos i mean no that's where i was yeah that's where i was going with that not too many bullets but too many legos um anyway you could ramp up and you would need that type of level of effort to the you know even if you want to buy an electric car today you're probably not

driving one home from the lot you're probably on a waiting list because there's a supply chain shortage for all of the battery components for all the companies it's why you know it's why we this they're still paying off the debt of the 300 000 people who signed up for model three right um so we need to ramp up the supply chain for batteries we need to ramp up the supply chain for solar we need to ramp up the supply chain for heat pumps. We need to ramp up these things. The world could do it with a coordinated effort in three to five years, and then it would be possible. So you can actually do the numbers. We need to be producing wind turbines about 10 times as fast, solar about 12 times as fast, batteries about eight times as fast. So all of those injuries are going to double,

then double again, and then double one more time. And we need to do that as fast as possible, as fast as possible, looks like three to five years, the tenure of this administration. So that's what, you know, I'm glad that Biden stepped in. I'm glad that one of the first things he says was rejoin Paris. And he has, you know, he now says climate and fixing climate without wincing, which is a hugely good thing. Yeah. But the level of ambition is not yet where it needs to be.

The level of ambition is like wartime economy, doubling all of these critical industries, train, you know, we're short two million HVAC technicians and electricians in America if we're going to have enough feet on the ground to install these things in every home and put two cars in every garage. But that's the level of effort and ambition we need to hit the climate targets we need to hit.

But that's also the opportunity. If America does that, they're going to own those critical 21st century industries. If we don't do it, China will. And so you can play that fear angle, but if we did a core study, if you do that, it would create 25 million near-term and 10 million long-term new jobs. We just decimated the american economy and the global economy with covid there's only one project that's big enough to absorb sort of this downturn and turn it around yeah and that's world war uh that's you know world war zero or war on climate or whatever however you want to phrase this thing and And, you know, to try and give you some optimism,

there was some advantage that 1939, when Churchill called Roosevelt, came at the tail end of a very difficult long-term Great Depression and economic downturn. All of the New Deal programs, so the unemployment in 31 or 32 was 20%. All of the New Deal programs by 1939 it only got it down to 15 or something within one year of launching the arsenal of democracy the unemployment was back down to one or two percent yeah the giant employer of note was this huge project and that very low unemployment not only lasted through the war but as we rebuilt after

the war through the 50s and 60s and you know the america that the the marga people want to return to was that post-war america winning economy because we did this heroic thing to save the world right that there's a narrative for make america Again that I, you know, I don't think that's a red or blue argument. That's purple all the way. And I think you can now build this incredible argument. We rebuild after COVID. We create these 25 million jobs. We not only shoot for the Paris target, but we encourage the whole world to follow us to do way better. target, but we encourage the whole world to follow us to do way better. And, you know, this is, and then, and on the way, by the way, your children will be healthier and you'll save $2,500 a year that you can spend on whatever you want. Hot damn. I mean, God, that makes a lot of sense, you know, the, an interesting argument that I've talked about on my show before is the idea that, you know, the idea of America as the greatest, most powerful nation in the world, the sort of super superpower, economic military superpower came directly out of those years. It came out of the Depression leading to the New Deal, plus World War Two, plus American post World War Two economic hegemony, which was directly caused by America's victory in World War II, plus American post-World War II economic hegemony, which was directly caused by America's victory in World War II. And that victory was caused by that massive mobilization

that you're talking about. And, you know, sort of part of the point of that story sometimes is that, hey, this is not a foregone conclusion that America would have this role in the world. Maybe that's the blip, right? That is the story of how America got that popular and we could sink down below again. You know, it was a result of those decades of action. The point that what you're saying makes me realize is like, yeah, we can do it again though. Like if we mobilize on that same scale, we can do that again.

Yeah, I relocated to Australia for a host of reasons during COVID, including aging parents. And so I'm now, have spent a few months in Australia watching the politics of America play out from here. And the retail conversation in the grocery store line in Australia, where by the way, you can go unmasked because there's zero community transmission and we have test and trace succeeding and it is possible to do these things but when people hear that i have a little bit of an american accent because i spent 20 years there they're like you know we feel so sorry for our american friends we just can't understand what they have

done what they've done to themselves like there is no narrative in the rest the only there's no narrative left in the rest of the world of american greatness you have to win it back and but like you've just said like it is winnable you did it before but it wasn't like some natural born um skill or inherent to who americans were it was this heroic effort that maybe is what americans could be, but like, it's a choice. You got to choose to want to do that and be that audacious and define the future.

Well, hold on a second. First of all, that's great. Sorry. I just dropped a whole lot of heavy shit on you. I'm sorry. No,

that was great. That was great. And incredibly stirring. And I was moved by it, but I also want to ask what, what part of your accent is American? Can you tell me? The long R I have now and like the wrong.

Australians have really short vowels. And we put an O on the end of every sentence and every name. So, yeah. You would. Well, I guess Adam's hard, but you'd probably be Adam-er. every sentence and every name. So yeah, you would, you, well, I guess Adam's hard, but you'd, you'd probably be Adam. And I'd be solo and you're Devo and you're Roscoe. But yeah. Anyway,

my friends here or my people I don't know in Australia are like, so where are you from? And I, you can imagine what an insult it is to return to your homeland and people ask you where you're from. But so they think I sound American. Uh, you think I sound Australian? I mean, that reminds me of when I, you know, the first time I I grew up in New York, I live in California now and I flew back to New York city and I checked in at the hotel and the guy behind the hotel desk said, Oh, you just get here from, from Los Angeles. And I was like, how could you tell? What is it about?

No, I'm from here. How could you tell? He was like, I can just tell by looking at you. You're, you're, you came from California. I'm like, no, horrible. But that's what it is. That's what it is to live. You know, it wasn't until you said New York and I'm like, oh, I can totally pick up on it. He does sound like he's from New York. But until then, I also assumed you were one of those hopelessly liberal tree-hugging Californians. No, I'm a hopelessly subway-hugging New Yorker. Nice. Well, look, let's talk a little bit about how do we make that mobilization a reality? that mobilization a reality i believe in the power of narrative a lot um and i think we can start to tell ourselves the stories that get us there and i have spent the you know i started an

organization with a wonderful friend called alex lasky called Rewiring America last year, and where we were making it our goal to figure out what we have to do politically to make what I just said come true. Yeah. How do we get an FDR president? Who's going to play the role of Henry Knudsen and get the American industry to work? Who's going to do the workforce training? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And really that's an exercise in narrative and becoming the most convincing and telling your story. Anyway, we were pretty successful. We even got some of our policy prescriptions written into the Biden climate plans, tiny bits. And I don't give us full credit for any of these things, but you can have a tiny bit of influence. And we sort of, we now believe we have a tiny bit of influence.

So I think it's all about storytelling and here's i'm gonna this is where i'm gonna experiment with you on a new idea um please the strongest force in american politics today isn't the nra because they're bankrupt giggle giggle um but the aarp american association retired people huge membership you know most of you think about it as a discount coupons for ihop but what that aarp does very successfully is make sure that a whole bunch of aarp volunteers and some some lobbyists go to the utility regulatory hearings in some given state to represent the interests of retired people. And they make sure that their interests of retired people are represented in the conversation about health care, et cetera, et cetera. And they're hugely influential.

And the joke in Washington is that the AARP has their own zip code in Washington. It's that large an organization. So then why do I say that about the AARP? What would the A aarp for climate look like right so the traditional climate conversation has room in it for the two percent of people who can afford to pay first class ticket for teslas and overpay for the solutions right and the other two percent of people who can afford to fight for climate change can afford to chain themselves to fences,

otherwise unemployed enough or young enough or something to be the radical activist. There's never really been a place in the climate change. And this is not just true for America, this is global. But where does the middle class, whether it's the upper middle class, the middle class or the aspirational middle class, Let's call it the 90%. Where is the climate organization for the 90%? And so when I think about what we need for climate, we need that because Biden and Harris can say all they want, but unless there is that giant political middle prepared to go to bat for these things and provide coverage, they're not going to get bipartisan quorum for the level of audacity we need. So how do we create that AARP? And I think the evidence is there. So we can sell them on your life will improve, your children's air quality will be better, your energy bills will

go down. And in exchange, what we need is for you to become a movement that shows up to City Hall to make sure the building codes are amenable to installing solar on your roof and the electrical codes are not going to artificially increase the cost of putting an induction stove in. And we need you to go to the State Regulatory Commission to stop those evil monopolies who are also trying to sell you natural gas from selling you more natural gas instead of more clean electricity. sell you natural gas from selling you more natural gas instead of more clean electricity right so you might think our climate policy needs to be federal but the federal isn't the really big impact here the thing that's making this expensive and not happen yet is a lot of state codes and a lot of local building codes and regulatory work so i think we can start telling ourselves a story that's engaging it's like you know you you once upon a time you may have been able to afford to tie yourself to a tree to protest

climate but now you've got a comfy house in los angeles and a couple of kids and a mortgage you still want to be a climate activist but you know hard to get you out to the keystone pipeline or wherever it is to protest but you can protest maybe a couple of times a year for a couple of hours by showing up to this regulatory hearing, fixing this, fixing this, and then making sure that you are telling your friends and you yourself when your, when your furnace breaks to get a heat pump. And so I think the answer lies there. We need to say, you know,

political movement, giant political movement, which is the satisfying answer to the end of Al Gore's movie, because it tells you what to do, right? The problem with all of these big climate movies and climate actions is the end of the day, they say, and the answer is stainless steel, water bottles and recycling. Yeah. And like, we all know that that's not the answer yeah we all know that it's a little bit bigger than that um but how about an honest climate organization that says it's not your fault it's not the utility's fault it's all of us we've all enjoyed this western

lifestyle and we all want to roughly keep it so So let's just all work together. And here's your task, right? There's eight things you're going to purchase in the next 20 years. Two of them are cars. One of them is a furnace. One of them is a heat pump. One of them is a rooftop solar installation. One of them is a battery in your basement. And then there's other thing called a load center, which is an invisible gray box that ties it all together. Just make sure that when you make those decisions in the next 20 years, you choose the right ones. Oh, by the way, also show up to the regulatory commission hearings and make sure that the utilities are installing renewables and they're not trying to screw you. Right now that's, uh, and, and so let me just say, it sounds like the next step for you is doing interviews like this one, like spreading that message. Like that's, we just need to fucking do the ground work of telling people this and like

getting them involved. I think I need to do a lot more interviews like this, where it's like these six monologues get reduced into four sentences. No, we're doing the Lord's work here. Saul, this is, we're solving it right now.

This is, this is what we're putting into practice. No, I, I, I hear you on this. I'm curious about you sort of put two things together in what you just said in terms of the individual buying decisions and the regulatory framework and the, you know, the wider scale reforms that need to be made. Now, in my view, a whole lot of a whole lot of the problem with

the environmental movement the last 20 years has been the overemphasis on individual choices. And I think that even goes to Tesla, you know, because my criticism of Tesla is they tell you, hey, all you got to do to solve the climate crisis is buy one really nice car. You know what I mean? Right. And like, which is also not true. Yeah. And by the way, you know, we did a segment on it where part of the part of the problem with climate is people buy cars too often. They don't use their cars for long enough. And if you get rid of your brand new hybrid too quickly, right, you are, you know, financing the creation of another car, which has there's the embodied missions of building the car in the first place. of another car, which has, there's the embodied missions of building the car in the first place.

And, you know, so my view has been, what I've tended towards is what we really need to be doing is, you know, the further upstream, the more structural reforms, you know, we need to be getting SoCal gas to knock it off with the lobbying rather than shaking our fingers at people and telling them to change their buying decisions. But you are sort of, you know, persuasively making the case that there's a couple of big decisions that people could make that would have an outsized impact. And if you're going to look at one buying decision, you could focus on your next furnace. I'm just curious how you how you weigh those two competing messages. It's hard to get people to buy a new thing before the old thing breaks. The reason I used infrastructure earlier

in the conversation is I want you to focus on those eight buying decisions for those things you buy every decade, including your car, and to make sure that when they break or when you're buying those big ticket items, you're doing the right thing. Just think about it.

The environmentalist movement has had you in incapacitating guilt in the supermarket. You're like, I'm going to solve climate change with my supermarket basket today. And then you're presented with a whole field of tins of tuna, all different colored brands, and you can't tell which one killed the fewest dolphins. And then you move to the cereal aisle and you can't tell which one killed the fewest dolphins yeah and then you move to the cereal aisle and you can't tell which one killed the fewest lowland gorillas right it's all having yeah and then when you check out you're trying to do the math in your head i can't remember whether the plastic bag was better than the paper bag and if i have to launder my fabric bag that i've brought along to the laundry detergents offset the use of the paper bag or the plastic bag and like we're all just like! Whereas if you make those eight decisions

correctly and we fix the generation infrastructure energy system, you're solving climate change every day just by doing what you do. And I do want to bring it back. I don't think you want to blame the consumer wholesale and you don't want to say that all you have to do are these eight yuppie Tesla purchasing decisions because the reality is 40% of people sale and you don't want to say that all you have to do are these eight yuppie tesla purchasing decisions because the reality is 40 of people buy an air conditioner or a hot water heater under financial duress and 50 of american homes have less than a thousand dollars in the bank yeah so it's a pretty tall ass to say to americans you're going to solve climate change by buying

these eight things that cost a few thousand dollars each yeah it's expensive difficult decisions so you also then have to be like and i actually think this speaks to the you know to complicate this conversation even further there's a lot of climate justice and equity conversation that goes along with fixing climate change now yeah so how do you help all the communities and to me that is a question of financing and credit access and point of purchase. You have to make it easy for those busy people who are single mums who are struggling financially in a country that doesn't pay enough to healthcare workers and teachers. And they've got to make a decision in the moment of which hot water heater to buy so that they can have a hot shower tomorrow.

And if they have to listen to a long exposition on solving climate change and buying an extra expensive heat pump hot water heater instead of natural gas one, like we don't win that way. So that is to also emphasize that the equity conversation is about access. The reality is you don't solve climate change if only 50% of people can afford it. So we also need to focus on how do you make sure that we structurally, society-wide, lower the cost of all of these things and make it the easiest decision? Because right now, those eight decisions are harder than the incumbent. Because the incumbent is i'm socal

natural gas i'll subsidize your natural gas water heater tomorrow because i'll make it up on the back end etc etc etc yeah and the the structure of the whole system is against you and that's why we need a retail army that want to advocate for their best interests and their children's best interests which is help us make these things the cheapest, best, easiest finance option so that we can all do it over the next 10 or 20 years and we can all be marching together towards success. Yeah. I think that's a really persuasive argument because that thing, you know, again, the focus on being in the supermarket aisle and looking at the different things like, okay, I could pay more for the sustainable thing.

But is it really sustainable? A lot of people, when faced with that, they say, fuck this. This is bullshit. I'm just going to buy whatever. I'm not doing this. It makes them mad because. How do I get out of this Whole Foods and where's the Costco? That's where you end up. Yeah, exactly. And it's a better approach is what you're describing uh and there are cases where hey just a little bit of education will be helpful you know again moved into this home uh had to buy a dryer clothes dryer went to the appliance store they were like okay same model comes electric and gas gas and they said to us gas one works a little better and we said okay we'll get the gas one i don't fucking know you know what i mean i was not keyed into this in the same way

four years ago um and now i wish i hadn't done that right they actually cost the same i assume they they dry your clothes just the same it was i had a 220 volt out outlet there i could have used it you know um but so there was there is a case in which all right that would have been a meaningful purchase decision um i do want to ask for folks but what but what the person who's selling you that in that moment their cousin is an installer yeah right and their their cousin installs natural gas because there's a bigger supply chain and they they know the brands and right like it's something they've done more so like this is like we won't succeed unless we solve all of those little cultural, social, real frictions. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, and there you are, the last place on earth you want to be is in a big box store buying a dryer. Yeah. You're like, I have to make this decision in seven minutes. Otherwise, the fluorescent lights are going to kill me and I have to make this decision in seven minutes. Otherwise the fluorescent lights are going to kill me and I'm going to turn it off. And then you're like, okay, just give me the fucking natural gas so I can get out of here and breathe some fresh air. And then you did it. And now there's 20 years of that thing emitting emissions that it didn't have to.

Yeah. Well, let me just ask again, I just want to really put a fine point on this, Well, let me just ask again. I just want to really put a fine point on this. The embodied emissions issue, right? Like say I'm the person who I am the Tesla buyer, right? And I've heard this podcast and I've got all my appliances in my house that are all natural gas. They're all a couple of years old. And I say, you know what? Saul is right. Let me throw all these out, right? I'll kick them to the curb and I'll get myself an induction stove and an electric heater and electric hot water heater and electric dryer. I'm going to buy four major appliances all at once when the old ones could have worked for an extra 20 years. You know, there's the there's the there's the environmental cost of manufacturing all those new appliances. Right. It's the of transporting them, of mining the minerals that, you know, go into building them, things like that. Is there any sort of

hazard in making that replacement too soon? Is the, you know, are people better off using their old shit into the ground before they electrify? I think the easy answer is the market signal of people buying the electric good right now has higher value than the small marginal cost of retiring something a little bit early that may not be true for your car in round figures you use 50 to 60 percent more energy to make an electric car than energy to make an oil car so you got it uh about half of the the energy used in the car is used before you drive it the first mile that ends up meaning the car needs to drive 50 to 100 000 miles before the electric car beats the gasoline car on energy wow but you so you know i would encourage you if you if you're gonna buy a gasoline car tomorrow and you could instead keep your gas car going now for two more years and then buy an electric car in two years when there's more choice and they're cheaper i'd recommend

delaying that one probably but that's because in some respects, the electric vehicle industry is the most advanced and on the best trajectory of these things. It's not even really a conversation yet about the electrification of your stove and your hot water heater and your furnace. Right. Most people don't have those at all

and they're much less available. Right. Much less available. And it's a much less sexy thing. But we need to send a strong signal to that industry to scale up because this is where we're going and these are the things we need. And we need to develop, you know, we need to do bodybuilding in the workforce that can do all of those things. um and so yeah the other reality is is that most of these decisions are made either when you refinance your home you buy a new home or you move address and really they're the opportunities because what comes with that house you're unlikely to

change over or modify hugely that's the nature of the market. So I think the other thing is, and I don't have exact answers, but we've got to collectively just admit that these are when these things get fixed, these pieces of infrastructure change over, and let's make sure that we're making the right decisions there. But back to the embodied emissions in them, the reality is we're going to electrify industry quickly. That means that the goods will be made with clean electricity,

and then you care a little bit less about this, and that is more and more true over time. And the only way we scale that up and make that more true is by buying the electric things. So if you just moved into a brand-new house with brand-new appliances that are run on natural gas, I wouldn't replace them. the electric things. So if you just moved into a brand new house with brand new appliances that are run on natural gas, I wouldn't replace them. But, you know, if you're that Tesla owner and they're a couple of years old and you want to be good and you can afford to pay a bit more

by the Tesla owner paying a little bit more now, they're reducing the price for the single mom who's going to be making that decision two or three years from now. Yeah. These are, I mean, what I fall back into, as you explain this, thank you for that detailed explanation. But I, you know, you're able to answer all that and understand all that because you're an engineer about these things. You're talking about on the margins, every single one of these decisions could go one way, could go the other way. You have to look at all the factors.

Most of us can't hold that in our heads. It's really a matter of, again, as you're saying, creating this broad based movement that is going to create the incentives for the whole industry to change. And then for the rest of us, just to remember, hey, when you're buying one of those eight things, make sure you try to get the electric one if you can. It's really helpful. And that's why our sour messaging is rewire america electrify everything yeah right every decision you make choose electric electrify everything we've got to get that simple um and at the end of the day a huge number of these things

just to touch it on another issue that i'm really i think is really interesting and really important is finance which you know if we haven't lost your audience members talking about heat pumps and furnaces then we're totally going to lose our audience our audience revels in the details that is why they listen oh fantastic because most people just want to talk about how fast their electric car is but But, you know, back into the history books, one of the most profound things that FDR did was in 25% of the unemployed people in 1934 were from the construction industry. And there was not enough money in local regional banks to put the construction industry back to work to solve the unemployment problem, the Great Depression. So they created the Federal Housing Authority, which invented,

literally, the modern 30-year mortgage. Before that, mortgages had balloon payments every five years. And the reason why the stock market crash in 30 destroyed so many livelihoods is because a lot of people lost their house because the balloon payment came up and you couldn't pay it. So the genius was inventing the 30-year mortgage, which by the way, was based on the innovation that Alfred P. Sloan made in financing cars because Henry Ford didn't believe in usury. So he wouldn't sell you a car until you could pay cash. General Motors crushed it. They invented auto financing and then the American populace could afford cars. The federal government cribbed from that and created Fannie Mae.

Fannie Mae was the American government declaring that the suburbs and American homes were national infrastructure, infrastructure that qualified for special government-guaranteed infrastructure quality, low cost of financing finance, right? And you can wax lyrical about all of the technology innovations of the 20th century, but the two innovations of the 20th century that made the biggest difference was helping everyone afford a car and a home. Unbelievably profound. You cannot imagine the modern world without auto financing and home financing. Yeah.

Now, both of these things were implemented in racist and otherwise, you know, not perfect ways, but they had a huge influence. So, again, I carefully use those words infrastructure at the top of the call because what happened when the American government created fannie mae and declared the suburbs infrastructures they created the largest pool of capital in the world ever to exist and still today that's the american home mortgage argument it's at the bottom of every portfolio it's where all the money is and solving climate change will be expensive which is why people who want to say it's going to be expensive they say it's going to cost cost $20 trillion. We can't afford the Green New Deal. But that's

because they're thinking about it like a home is expensive, costs you a million dollars for a home. But it's cheap if you think about the finance cost of the home and it beats renting and you've got to live and blah, blah, blah. So we need financing mechanisms to afford this future so that every household can save $2,500 a month or $2,500 a year on their energy prices or their rent, if you like. And so I really think that we have to do everything that we've said, scale up industry, build the retail movements at lower costs, but we got to get the financial innovations and the financial industry behind us here.

And they've got to figure out the financial products that makes sure that when you are there making the decision between natural gas and heat pump electric, the better financing product that makes that thing cost less. And the decision easier at the point of purchase is the clean car, you know, decarbonized electric thing. is the clean decarbonized electric thing. And it's awful for an engineer to end up saying that, you know,

the secret to solving climate change is finance. It cuts at my soul and my ego. But, you know, at the end of the day, none of us can afford to solve this in cash today, right? Yeah. Like who can afford to go out and buy two electric vehicles for their you know one for you one for your spouse yeah the average home has two cars who can afford to buy two electric vehicles today an electric induction stove the electric furnace that no one yeah it's only a few families it's a hundred thousand dollar

box of goodies for christmas yeah so the only way we're going to afford fixing climate change is with creative financing to make the future cheaper than the alternative is there any technology that we need to develop i mean so far we open this conversation and let's bring it in for a landing but i do want to ask before we do, we opened this conversation by saying, hey, you know, we don't need a big technological, we don't need, you know, terraforming or whatever big geomancery projects to, you know. Geomancery is the best malapropism I've heard this week. Geomancery, yeah.

Like we don't need to summon a wizard to do earth magic to fix the climate crisis. We don't need, you know, we don't need that kind of moonshot. We need, you know,

we need good policy and we need to adopt it quickly and we need to spend money. But is there technology that helps solve this problem as well? Are there advancements that you're hoping to see either in engineering or science? Is there technology that helps solve this problem as well? Are there advancements that you're hoping to see, either in engineering or science? I'll first say that an original sectoral analysis that the DOE was built around in the 70s put us in this big solution mindset we need a solution for transportation we need a

solution for industry we need a solution for commercial and electricity um and i think that has made the conversation not retail enough the reality is that 40 of our emissions are decisions that are made around the kitchen table. So what is the gasoline? What is the fuel that drives your car? What is the fuel that drives your furnace? Another 20% of our emissions is those same decisions made in our small business. So what is the fuel running the small business's truck? And what is the fuel heating the small business's office or retail space?

So you get a huge way, like 60% of the way, just focusing on those things that has been the large part of our conversation today. And we know that we can do it with the price that lithium batteries will be at in a couple of years, and we can do it with the price that solar is already at, and we can do it with the price that wind is already at. So all of those, we're there with those.

But then what about the other emissions? Well, the other emissions is industry making you all of your stuff. And in fact, just by making green electricity on the grid, the industry will reduce its emissions. And then our other emissions are in agriculture. Agriculture's a little hard, so we're going to pump that in a second, and I'll give you a bit of optimism on it. But industry, everyone has made this conversation

and the hand-wringing over industry is about cement, steel, and aluminum. We need all of those things in great quantities. Like, there's for every human in the world today, there's one ton of concrete poured every year. And so, cement and concrete makes, yeah. I'm imagining that being poured around my body and myself dumped into the ocean. Is that correct? Is that what happens to that ton of concrete?

I can imagine some natural gas executives who I'd like to visualize that with. some natural gas executives who I'd like to visualize that with. But, you know, we don't really have a perfect answer for concrete yet. But steel and aluminum we do. We now know the carbon emissions from aluminum is actually from the electrode they use, which is carbon, when they're doing the reduction or getting rid of the oxidides. We can fix that. And steel looks like it's going to be amenable to electrification or a little bit of hydrogen so i actually think you know we do need to focus on

those things and they but they're the last 10 of problems um certainly those retail problems i mentioned the 60 that will get better if the batteries get better there's a thing called solid state batteries someone will make that happen that's going to make the battery catch on fire less and have four times as much energy i'm pretty pretty sure if you look at the literature that's in the bag that's going to be amazing um and then the rest of the problems are things like cows burping uh too many fertilizers and these are creating not just climate problems but other like you know it's the amount of land that cows use and consume is a big problem yeah pigs are all fucking up our

water supply with their pig shit i'm glad you mentioned it as massive chickens aren't exactly guiltless either um so the chooks the pigs and the cows are a problem um but you know i think we do need some science answers there but i see encouraging things there's an australian group that just showed that they can feed seaweed to cows that modifies the gut of the cow and reduces 80 of the emissions wow so maybe the veggie burger will win or maybe the cow seaweed burger will win who knows um and but you know i think the things are happening i'm pretty encouraged on you know your friend elon musk announced this morning that he's going to donate 100 million dollars for the person with the best carbon dioxide sequestration technology.

I just, I think that's good that he wants to spend his money and I hope he spends a lot more doing good things. I just want to put some realism around that. Yeah. Yeah. That, um,

yeah. How, how realistic is it? By the way, wouldn't that person need the a hundred million dollars in order to come up with the idea? Why do they get the money afterwards? I know.

Don't get me started. The X Prize was the problem. They started this idea that people will work for free to win a million dollars, where it would realistically cost a team of talented people $10 to $20 million to win the prize. Yeah. So, yeah, I would prefer that he, that he yes please elon if you're listening like you go you show up to work they're not like hey if you work here you might win a 10 000 bucks no pay me just 200 for being here motherfucker yeah why don't you keep playing these free gigs until you're famous okay hold on a second that's what actually happened to me. That was my career

as a comedian in my early 20s. I know, and I said it specifically. Don't worry, it's my current career as a scientist. Okay, well, talk shit on this planet a little bit for me. The average American,

we move a profound amount of materials of humanity one quarter of of the material the stuff right so we we move a lot of dirt we move a lot of fossil fuels we move a lot of rocks yeah um one quarter of the stuff we move is fossil fuels. When you burn it and oxygen is added to it, that's how the carbon goes to carbon dioxide, it increases in size and weight. The amount of carbon dioxide that humanity moves every year is the same size as every single other thing we move. So to impact carbon emissions by sucking it out of the air or sucking it and burying it means you need to create an industry as large as all of the other industries working today, moving as much material and figure out a hole big enough to bury it in. Because you're saying we imagine that carbon dioxide, that's a gas, it's weightless. Just suck it out of the air and put it, whatever you're saying.

We emit so much of this stuff. If we're sucking it out of the air, making it solid, just like dealing with that physical mass of stuff is as much stuff to move as all the other stuff. We like fucking t-shirts, uh, you know,

logs being, being wheeled around like every container ship that's going around earth we're talking about that amount of stuff again that's what you're saying yes holy shit it doesn't really sound reasonable it's not reasonable but there's a few good news it's not reasonable so let's just start with this you know this can play at the margins and it would be a good technology to have and it will help a little bit what you really should be setting an expectation as is we're going to use the next hundred years to do agriculture properly. So every year, instead of the dirt emitting carbon to the sky, the dirt absorbs carbon. The oceans and our soils are the two biggest carbon sinks in the

world. The problem with putting more carbon in the ocean is that you make it more acidic, which is part of the problem that kills the coral and all the other little critters in the ocean. The other problem is that it's heating up. But so really really the only place that we can sensibly put that much carbon is back into the soils, but you can't grow the stuff fast enough and put it back in the soils fast enough because biology isn't fast enough. So it's going to take a hundred years. And so let's set our expectations. The problem with Elon, I think it's good that he wants to spend money. I think it's a worthy area of scientific research. And maybe someone will come up with an idea that breaks the physics that I just said.

But we should set our expectations that it's not going to save us. And that we have to save us by doing all the sensible things that aren't moonshots. We have to do everything. We literally need to do, I'm not, yeah, I'm not going to tell Elon not to spend his a hundred million dollars, but we,

but let's not say ever that we should do that instead of doing everything else that you've described. That's right. We, we should do the things that we know work that already worked today. And we should focus on the boring aspects of making them cheaper and easy. And let me just say, according to you,

we can do it. Like it's not only doable, it is a better world in which we do it. Everyone has more money in the bank. Uh, everyone's shit works more efficiently. It's all together it's a win win win win win win win the only problem is the natural gas executives and i'm gonna and i'm

gonna bring that up as one last crazy idea please so why are the fossil the oil and natural gas people still fighting us on this and it's because because back, I can't find the exact date, but somewhere between 1890 and 1910, the first oil baron financed the next well on the oil that hadn't come up from the last well. So I want to drill a new well. I want to get more oil out. I don't have enough cash.

You go to the bank, you say, see my other well, it's producing this amount of oil. So you loan me this money. That oil well will pay this one off. And thus we invented proven reserves. And so fossil fuel companies are financed on the, are valued by the amount of energy they have in the ground. If we burn the amount of fossil fuels that companies have already financialized we already trade are already sitting at the bottom of your 401k

we're all screwed yeah so we have to keep that in the ground and that's the origin of this divestment conversation that you hear like my university won't invest in fossil stocks or fuel stocks. So that now the other, so the, the roughly right now there's a fight being picked consciously or subconsciously that wants to send all of the fossil companies bankrupt by devaluing those fuels by calling them zero value or divesting. Let me say that the analogy to this ended in civil war so the slave problem was not unique to america britain also held slaves britain decided to buy out the slave owners so to purchase the slaves from the slave owners and the the British government built a coalition of banks

to borrow enough money to buy out the slave owners. And it was not until 2018, like more than a century later, that all of those debts were finally paid off. But that was a pretty good investment because Britain didn't end up having a civil war over slavery. So the crazy thing that I finish with is let's just acknowledge what the problem was we have already invented money out of stuff that we haven't pulled out of the ground and because that value exists people are going to fight tooth and nail to defend it because

that's already money in there in the fossil fuel natural gas guy's pocket so the insane idea that is probably a much better idea than carbon sequestration of all of those very fossil fuels is let's just buy them out. Let's give them money. Say, yes, you did a great job. Thank you for the 20th century. It was spectacular. Many of our lives improved enormously. Let's stop picking the fight and demonizing them saying, you know what? let's stop picking the fight and demonizing and saying you know what you have the largest workforce of competent people who understand the energy energy system and know how to drive

white trucks and turn wrenches you know what that sounds exactly what we need to build the future we're going to buy you out and you're going to be the most capitalized companies on the planet ready to fight and then we're going to buy you out if you then turn all of those resources and that new cash that you have on hand to marching with us in lockstep to fix this problem. We need a grand bargain. I don't know if that's exactly it, but it's got to be around that space. Yeah.

Right? We can fight against those interests and that financialization of fossil assets until the end of time. Or we can figure out a way to turn it around and have them fight with us. Because, yeah, it's a massive problem. It's like there's these enormous companies, some of which are basically countries in themselves, like Exxon, you know, essentially has a foreign policy like a nation does. like Exxon, you know, essentially has a foreign policy like a nation does. And yeah, they've got their entire value is based on this shit that we can't possibly allow them to burn. But if we zero it out, that's going to fuck up a lot.

It's going to be. Yeah, that's harder. That is that is your retirement fund. You need to figure out a solution for this because it's your pension fund and your retirement fund. And it sits at the bottom of everyone's portfolios and that's the challenge and i don't think anyone's going to be super happy to hear hey we're going to buy out exxon mobile we're gonna but you got to find a way to make it palatable because there needs to be a solution to this there's got to be a solution because that problem is enough to cause even more trauma to the global financial system than the last two traumas that we've had in the last two decades that have been pretty bad yeah so we just got to be honest with ourselves say that's the problem okay how do we

get creative okay look there's even precedent the british government bought out the slave owners yeah um yeah that was messy and imperfect and there's a lot of people who resent that fortunes were made on the interest rates of buying out slaves. But like, you know what? I'll take a deal that saves the planet. Right. Yeah. But the other comparison, I think that comparison to slavery is so apt and I've heard it before and I think about it all the time because the other piece of the comparison to to slavery, at least here in the US, is that the entire economy is built on this thing. Like people, what's often underappreciated is people in the North, in the United States,

their economy was built on slavery too. It was the economic engine of the entire country and it was since the founding of the country. And that's why it took hundreds of years, people saying, we have this weird idea that like oh back then everyone was into slavery no they weren't they were abolitionists the whole fucking time there were a lot of them they were writing books and essays and they were voting and they had political candidates and they were saying no no no we must stop this the entire time it took

hundreds of years it took longer to end slavery than we have currently lived without it. And that's because it was so. Well, we got we got two years to solve this. Holy shit. Yeah. But that is the scope of the problem that's ahead of us. That's how big it is. It is truly massive. But again, I want you to add us an optimistic note. Your argument is that we can do it. We can absolutely do it. We could be, it will create jobs, a lot of them. It will renew entire economies.

It will save every household money. And as a side effect, you'll get cleaner water better air nicer national parks and we'll keep the coral reefs in the polar bits i mean you know i think we just got to it's going to be hard but that is what is that is the prize that's there to be won and um unfortunately there's no demon like hitler so we've got to offer, it's a carrot, we've got to offer not the stick. The carrot is the prize of a livable planet Earth. And you can, you could even cynically interpret Elon Musk's carbon prize as technology that he'd like to terraform Mars. But if you read the works of Kim Stanley Robinson, it's a thousand year project to make

Mars livable. Let's not pretend that that is an option. There's one planet for us to live on. We've got it already. It's beautiful. That's the prize to win and keep winning. And we can do it. We just have to make the decision collectively that we want to, and we have to make it retail politics, not specialty politics. Amen. Thank you so much, Saul, for coming on today to talk to us about it. It's rare that you talk to someone who has such a clear idea of how big a problem is and has such clear solutions on what to do about it.

So I can't thank you enough. And you said we have two years. Let's check back in in a couple of years and see how we're doing. Go team, go team, get to work. All right. Thanks so much, Saul. Well, thank you once again to Saul Griffith for coming on the show. I hope you got as much out of that conversation as I did. I want to thank our producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Roudman,

our engineer, Andrew Carson, Andrew WK for our badass theme song. The fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible gaming PC that I am recording this very podcast on. They're wonderful folks. Check them out if you're in the market for a new PC. You can find me online at adamconover.net or at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media. That's it for us this week on Factually. Thank you so much for listening.

And remember, stay curious.