StarTalk Radio - StarTalk Live! Water World (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 31, 2015

Navigate the stormy seas of greed, politics, economics and the science of water with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugene Mirman and their guests Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Gyalwang Drukpa, Dr. Tess Russo and Jason Sudeikis in Part 2 of our show from The Beacon Theater. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. We're back live at the Beacon Theater in New York City! StarTalk Live. We are talking about water in all its forms, in all the consequences of too much water, too little water, dirty water, clean water, tests. You've also studied disruptions to the hydrologic cycle. What are

examples of disruptions to that? I would say changes, not really disruptions. Okay. What's an example? If you build a dam on a river, you are... Like what beavers do. Exactly. Humans do it too, but we learned it from beavers. Yeah. Right. Okay. So that's an example of disrupting the flow down the river. All right. Is that always bad? No. Okay. So what else would disrupt it? If you pumped lots and lots of water out of the ground. You might be a redneck.

I don't know where to go from there. Shout out to Jeff Foxworthy right there. Okay, so continue. So pumping lots of water out of the ground could lower the groundwater table. It could start pulling water from the rivers and the streams down into the ground. So water that used to make it all the way to the ocean now gets sucked into the ground. I never knew that. Are you saying if you pull water out from other places, your river now might leach into those places that it didn't go before because there used to be water there? Right. So that drains your river before it even gets to

the ocean? Yeah. So the surface water and the groundwater are connected, even though you don't see the groundwater or the connection. Okay. And so some of the hidden costs of climate change would include what, would you say? Well, changing the water availability. So changes in precipitation patterns are going to change how much water seeps into the ground and recharges our groundwater. It's going to change how much water flows down our rivers. Temperature changes are going to change how much water we need, which is a big problem. And as you melt glaciers, sea levels rise. So that's another. Yeah. Flooding, if you're melting glaciers too quickly. Okay. So if the sea level rises, might that force water back up rivers and make it brackish? Yeah. When it wasn't

that way before, is that something that can happen as well? And you can have seawater intrusion into the aquifers so now you're pushing salty water into our groundwater and then no one wants to pump it anymore. Contaminating the wells that people might drill from. So it sounds like most of the

problem is beavers. Alright, so I'm fascinated by hearing this and hearing Bobby give the recitation of geopolitical conflict. Your Holiness, is there any history of how water is dealt with spiritually, water as ritual? Is there any traditions that you could share with us about how people think about water beyond just something to drink? I just wanted to ask you that question. Since you are a scientific man, do you really think that there is some sort of a connection with the spirituality, a spiritual connection with the water? There's a quote from jfk john kennedy the president he spoke of returning to the water's edge he was a boatsman as we know by getting this wrong correct me here and when asked why do you come to the ocean and he reflected on the fact that life on land started in the ocean

Reflected on the fact that life on land started in the ocean and he hypothesized that this point of origin of life continues to call to us and in its calling We are drawn to the boundary between land and water and we gaze upon Who here hasn't stared at the waves coming in? Not even in conversation with anyone, just transfixed by nature and how it moves water towards the land and away. And so I don't know if that's a spiritual reference to water as much as sort of a biological one, but it's a comment that I've never forgotten ever since I've heard him speak those words. To my understanding, the older elements has the spiritual existence.

Definitely. The water represents the energy, energy of the growth, the prosperity. And of course, the fire represents something else. I don't want to take much of your time to tell all these things. But that's kind of why we have you here it's kind of you do not want to take up my time why won't you tell us the secrets of wind do you ask for the secrets of wind I did okay that's well known George Bernard Shaw said wind is caused by trees waving their branches. Disprove that one.

Right, okay. So the water definitely has spirit. We call it naga, which is, of course, the holder of the water. When we pollute the water, these guys are not happy. This is from a superstitious point of view. When it works, I believe. When it doesn't work, I don't believe. We are all happy to learn that you lead an evidence-driven life. Yes, okay. So, if I share some example, up in the the Himalayas there is a village that has a very beautiful lake and the beautiful rivers and then they were contaminating the river and the water.

They don't have that many stuff to dump in water but when people die the dead body goes in there and horse goes in there and the dead yuck dead sheeps they all dump in there because you know it's easier for them and I've noticed that so many people are sick especially skin disease and every doctors goes there they can't help so they want me to help so then I thought okay there must be a something to do with the water. So then I said, let's experiment. Then I asked them to clean the lake, to clean the river, and I asked them not to throw the dead body there. Please cremate in a cemetery. I create a cemetery for them, and within two years, the whole entire disease stopped.

That's where the saying, don't throw your dead horse in the water comes from. The very first biochemical warfare ever, it was figured out that if you had a carcass of some farm animal that was sort of putrefied, If you had a carcass of some farm animal that was sort of putrefied, and you managed to dump it into the well of your enemy, you would then contaminate their water supply and basically make them all sick and possibly kill them. This is biochemical warfare in its earliest phases. So in this case, they're waging biochemical warfare on themselves, contaminating their own water supply.

That part I believe because I saw with my own eyes. But there are many things that we can talk about, religious, blind faith and all these things, superstitious, that I don't believe. Many things that are not believable. What more of a spiritual journey exists than existing on earth like water does, ascending to the heavens, hanging out there for a few days and then coming back down and then helping people out again that seems like a pretty common spiritual journey at least Catholicism I mean like that water cycle is you know the trend there's a you know threes magic number schoolhouse rock etc etc etc etc there's another point about water. Water is a very stable molecule.

It's really hard to break the H2O apart. Really hard. It takes a lot of energy. In fact, the inverse of that fact is what drives what was once the engines of the space shuttle. The big orange tank, fuel tank, is hydrogen separated from oxygen. You don't see it, but there are two tanks inside that tank. One of them is twice the size of the other. The one that's twice the size has hydrogen, H2. The other one's half the size is oxygen.

Those two chemicals funnel out of the engine, and when they combine, they release release energy an exothermic reaction it's called and there in is rocket fuel and that energy is the energy you'd have to put back into water in order to break it apart again so because it's so stable every water molecule you ingest has basically been around since the beginning of the earth. So you want to talk about spirituality. You take a swig of water. It contains water molecules that have passed through the kidneys of Abraham Lincoln.

Of Genghis Khan. Of Jesus. Pick your person from the past. Be they holy or otherwise. Bill Russell. Bill Russell. Yeah. No, he's not far enough in the past.

Because the water, you have to drink it. It has to come out of you. It goes in the groundwater. It goes to the river. The river goes to the ocean. The ocean circulates. It comes up as rain, comes back on the... So it takes a while. William McKinley? No! 150... No. When will we get to drink William McKinley?

That'd be great, like you start selling water, then this pass through whomever, yeah. That'd be great. So of course my broader point is that water is communal internationally communal for that very reason yes water molecules don't carry passports they will move from one part of the world to the other i've never been more scared in my life than moments in water like when you're in a wave you know you're there having fun and then you get caught it's the time i've been most afraid of my life and I've been on the highway in LA and it's still it's still being in the ocean yeah I mean we fear death yeah and that's a very spiritual moment oh no here I go so there's water that can bring life yeah

and death yeah we all need some contact with wilderness with the wild part of the earth and if you want camping And if you've gone camping or if you've been on whitewater or sailing or whatever it is, there's kind of a spiritual renewal that takes place and that everybody can document. Everybody knows that. One of the things that the water keepers do is we focus on waterways that go through our major cities. This country particularly was founded on the idea, Frederick Jackson Turner said that an American democracy came out of the wilderness. And it was a whole movement in this country after the revolution of our artists and our cultural

leaders who were telling the American people, you have to build public parks in your city, like Frederick Olmsted, our great painters painted these vast landscapes, usually including water, to tell the American people that you don't have to be ashamed because you don't have the 1,500 years of culture that they have in Europe, because you have this relationship to the land and to the water and wilderness, and that's the undiluted work of the creator. That is the distinction that you're going to have as a nation. That's where your values and your virtues and your characters of people are going to come from. We do a little bit of that. We have the national parks. Are you not happy with how we've divided up the landscape here in America?

You're making me look like a malcontent. The most important environmental issue is that we have livable cities. Instead of investing in huge highways and subsidies that go out to settling the landscapes around our cities, we should be investing in police protection, in great schools, and great healthcare in the city, making people wanna live here, and then saving the landscapes to filter water. And that's what they do in Portland, which is consistently the most livable city

in the United States. They've made an urban boundary. You're from the Pacific Northwest, right? Mm-hmm, I used to live in Portland, which is consistently the most livable city in the United States. They've made an urban boundary. You're from the Pacific Northwest, right? I used to live in Portland. You miss that about Portland? I do. I loved living there. You know, in Portland, you can take a bus at the end of the line, and you're in a city, and you can step out of that bus and walk into a redwood forest, you know, with Sitka spruce that are 30 feet around at the base. And, you know, you see the eagles and everything else, and it's accessible to the poorest person in the city. Whereas in New York, when Robert Moses designed the parkway,

the whole point of those parkways was to get New Yorkers out to their parks so they could renew this relationship with the roots of the democracy. But he specifically made the bridges on the Hutch and the Merritt low enough so that a Greyhound bus couldn't pass under them because he didn't want black people from New York visiting the parks. And that's how they are today. And it's one of the most important civil rights issues that we have in this country is the access of poor people and minority communities to public parks. And they're always the ones who shoulder the disproportionate burden of environmental and so

if you've seen those Parkways all the bridges are very low so all you have to see is a black person in a really low Lamborghini coming through his head would explode he wouldn't know what would happen there. Lamborghini buses are the solution to this problem. Many of us are old enough to remember when you didn't just buy water in the store. It means somebody owns access to water and is selling it to you. Your Holiness, does that offend you when someone says, I have declared this water something I own, and now for you to have fresh water, I'm going to sell it to you well he controls all the water Are you mad other people own Subwater as well?

Alright, let me make it a bigger question here. Your Holiness, from your understanding of human nature, are you hopeful? Because sometimes I'm not. I am very optimistic, but we have to educate. And also, me coming from Himalaya, the waters are all running down to the world. The biggest river, the Indus River, is just next door to me. It's going down.

And elsewhere, if there's some sort of tragedy that is connected with the weather and the so-called natural disaster, of course it is not a natural disaster, it is a man-made disaster. But when I hear these sort of disasters elsewhere, I feel, oh-oh, is it us who created? So we feel very big responsibility. We means we people who live in Himalaya. We feel very big responsibility

to take care of all these water and the elements. Then here, we are talking about selling and buying all these things, and also the people in the city, they bath a lot. I was sharing with Kennedy the other day that people are having shower like for hours. You know, they don't need to. That's not a real thing. Yeah.

In the name of enjoying, they just stand there for a long, long time. Wasting a lot of... We don't know anything about that. Three hours shower. I feel like, egoistically speaking, oh, this is my property, you know. wasting a lot of... We don't know anything about that. Three-hour shower. I feel like, egoistically speaking, oh, this is my property, you know? Water is not belongs to one person. It belongs

to everybody. So we have to be careful and we have to be thoughtful. Good. That's good. So, Bobby, you've occasionally said a positive thing this evening. About the future of our species. Do you think World War III would be fought over water? You know, the Pentagon's done two assessments over the last decade,

and in both those assessments, they said that global warming, and particularly water shortages, are the principal threat to America's national security because of the disruption to global political systems and populations that it's going to cause. In the last 10 years, water privatization has become a trillion-dollar industry. Trillion-dollar industry? Trillion-dollar industry, according to the World Bank. We've already seen water wars fought all over the world in Bolivia and Cochabamba and Belize and many other countries where foreign companies have come in, privatized local water supplies,

and then raise rates and literally kill poor people who can't afford those higher water rates. You know, the interesting thing, Neil, is to look at nations that have water and those that don't. The nation that has the most water of any in the world is Canada, which has about 20% of the global water. Russia has probably somewhere around 20%. We have almost as much as Canada, but we have 300 million people. There's only 30 million people in Canada. What you're going to see is a very, very strong demand from the southwestern cities that are drying up right now to get a hold of the Great Lakes water, to put a pipeline down from the Great Lakes water. And these proposals are constantly being made. And the Canadians will say, well,

part of that water is ours. So that's the kind of conflict you're going to have even in what we call the first world. But in other places in the the world a scenario you described before where you have poor farmers migrating the cities it's not that they're making demands on government these are people who are gonna die and somebody who is gonna die has nothing to live for any of them are gonna decide to die violently that is where civil wars come from hmm you're bumming me out again. Man. You asked him how World War III would start. His answer is pretty accurate. If you were like, what's your favorite flower,

maybe you wouldn't be so sad now. All right, before we go to Q&A, let me end with a rephrased question. We have some geopolitical ideas. Okay. What they all said, but happier. His Holiness said something we all embrace and agree with, that education is key.

It's always the key, for sure. I don't know that education necessarily makes people less violent when pressed into violence. So what would you say, in addition to education, is the most important thing we all need to do going forward with regard to water for all? What bit of wisdom can you share with us? We want to be responsible citizens, but we don't always know how Knock it off. We got him. We got him.

I mean, it's true. Veganism is a part of it. Let's not get carried away. So what would you... Education to me is that people have to understand how important the water is. That's all. That's it. That's it. Water does what?

When you have an abundance, you don't know how important it is. That's all. That's it. That's it. Water does what? When you have an abundance, you don't know how important it is. That's true. And the water now, right now, people, almost like a majority of people, thinks that the water comes from the tab. But it is not true. Water comes from elsewhere. And the tab. And the tab. Technically. You know? And it comes from the mountain and the river. I don't want to go through all the details, but of course you have to know much deeper than the tab. So it's hard to know that by being told it. Perhaps maybe Americans should travel more to other... To To Himalayas. Are we all invited? More invited. I mean, we don't know. No, no.

I mean, jokingly, I'm saying travel to Himalaya, but they don't have to go to Himalaya. They just go to a little mountain they have here, and they have to walk around, and they have to talk with the trees. They have to really be like, really, the trees will talk to you. Trees will talk to you. Plants will talk to you, trees will talk to you, plants will talk to you, flowers will talk to you, and water will talk to you, everything.

Really you just have to be friendly with them, you know, stop being rude to them, abusive to them, that is the thing. You have to be respecting them. Nature needs to be respected. Like all us, all of us, we all need respect. We have to understand the good about everybody. Not only me, me, me, I. Everybody has a good thing.

Everybody has something to offer. And nature definitely has many things to offer. Not only that, we survive in the nature for example supposing leave there's no tree in this world there is no oxygen I mean I don't know please correct what green life gives us true yeah it's a byproduct that's it yeah it's their waste product is our life product that's it yeah that's the education I'm talking about, you know, that we should know how to respect the nature.

We should know how to respect the animal also. We don't know how to respect the animal. Animals are the owner of the world. We are not the only one owns the world, but the animals owns the world. Only one owns the world, but the animals own the world. But we always, always somehow abuse the animal in the name of, I don't know, superior. They can't talk, so therefore we just kill them, chop them, abuse them very badly. So we should respect them, not only from the point of view of Buddhist or religion, the

Christianity or something No, we shouldn't talk about any other religion. We just talk about the reality. So this is the religion This is what? We should be we should always be with the reality this is what I'm thinking I don't know. You should correct me again. Yeah, Neil, you should correct him. I'll set him straight, Neil. First of all, please are good listeners, but not good talkers.

No. Your holiness, there is nothing I can add or subtract from what you just said. Thank you. Thank you. Let's get a round of applause for our panel here. I keep thinking there's some Kumbaya song that we should be singing at the end of that. Does anyone need a quick potty break before we do a Q&A? We're good up here? I'm not going to use more water.

No. Today is the last day I use any water. Today is the last day I use any water. We're going to open this up to you to find out just what questions and comments you might have. There's a microphone on this aisle here. Sir. Yes. Beyond the importance of protecting the scarce resource of a small fraction of 1% of fresh water that's available to us,

is desalination an option or desalination plants in order to try to reclaim part of the 99% that isn't, especially for some areas in the Middle East that are pretty arid? Forgive me for not even raising that topic during this hour and a half. So let's go straight to Tess on that. Tess, why can't we just take the salt out of the ocean? That would solve all our problems. So desal is, I think, going to be one of the solutions. The problem is it's still really expensive. It uses a lot of energy. The other problem is you have to still have a water source. So, that works for people on the coast. But, like, I think Neil said earlier, water is heavy.

And so, moving that water inland to the people who live in the middle of the country is not efficient. Okay, so it's a regional solution not a global solution right yes um you said that there was a point where water is liquid solid and gas at the same time so So what properties would it have? Wait, wait, wait. How old are you? Just like... He's 74. No. Ah, little Benji button. Call me out on what I said. All right. So yes, maybe I wasn't clear. It's not a new kind of water that's all three in the same spot.

Oh. But a bucket. bucket yeah i'm sorry yeah yeah that would have been cool though something that is simultaneously solid liquid and gas i don't know what that would look like but when we talk about the triple point of water or of any other substance, a bucket of it would just be happy having ice cubes, water, and that water will be boiling, creating steam. And the ice and the boiling water are just fine. And the boiling water doesn't melt the ice. The ice is just happy.

And so that is what we mean by the triple point of a substance. And if you can have something that was simultaneously solid, liquid, and gas, that would be an awesome superhero or something. That's usually what happens to me under Taco Bell. I call it the triple crown. So, right here. Besides desolidation, are there any other promising technologies for improving people's access to clean water? Yeah, good. Tess?

I think there are a lot of really simple, low-cost technologies that we can improve the way we capture water and can store it using managed recharge into the groundwater. What's managed recharge? It's managing the recharge of the aquifer. Duh! So you're basically capturing the water and retaining it, so you give it more time to go into the aquifer, or you actually pump it in. So instead of pumping out, you're pumping in.

Nice. There are a lot of technologies out there right now that, if they were widely used, would dramatically reduce the amount of water that's needed. For example, agriculture. There's drip agriculture, where you have these very, very inexpensive probes that can measure the moisture in the ground and then turn on computers that tell you exactly how

much water the plant needs and you can reduce water and agricultural uses by upwards of 95% so we over water almost all agricultural water is is wasted by 95 percent yeah that's huge 95 because you only need water that's actually going to the plant what you do is you saturate the whole field with water right most that water either evaporates or it goes into the ground which we spent such hard energy trying to get out right in the first place close to 20 of the water that is used goes to dyeing cotton. It's a huge use of water. And there are now water-free dyeing methodologies that are being adopted by businesses. And you should make sure that when you buy clothes that they're using either low water or water-free dyes.

It's a consumptive use because the water is so polluted at the end of the dyeing process that it can't be recovered except by the highest end clothing manufacturers. Can I add that the point about the agriculture is right on. And we need to emphasize that if we can save even a little bit of water in agriculture, we're actually saving a huge amount of water because agriculture uses the most water. So if you're saving 5% in ag, it's much more water than 5% of drinking. We can save up to 95% of it. Yeah.

Without knowing any math, that is around something. Let's go to another question. Yes. Hi. So every seven years, the International Panel for Climate Change gathers together all the leading scientific data and compiles it into some conclusions. And 2013 was the last one. And I think they concluded that even if the human race stopped polluting, stopped releasing greenhouse gases, cold turkey, the average temperature of the Earth would raise 1.1 degrees Celsius.

And at 2 degrees Celsius, it's irrevocable damage. So clearly it's an issue that we should be thinking about. What's the best thing we should be doing as regular people? The most important thing that you can do is to vote for a politician who believes in global warming. It's much more important to change your politician than your light bulb or your automobile. Because they're making the rules that will incentivize good behavior. Free market capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised. But it has to be harnessed to a social purpose. Otherwise, it will lead us inexorably down the path of environmental destruction and oligarchy and corporate kleptocracy,

which is what we're headed for right now. Kleptocracy? Yeah, that's where the Koch brothers run everything and steal everything. We're the wealthiest country in the world. We create the most greenhouse gases, and we have the capacity to change that. We shouldn't punish people. We shouldn't reduce our quality of life. We should incentivize business people and others

to make the right choices and to make sure that you can make money in this country by doing good things for our community rather than forcing people to make money by poisoning the rest of us. Right here, next. You were talking about how the pressure on the ice gate affects ice, but I thought the jury was still out on how ice is slippery.

That's it. That's all I got. Oh, so this has been eaten at you the whole time. There you go. Yes. It's possible for ice to be so cold that even if you try to compress it, you don't succeed and then you cannot skate on it. So ice is not slippery because it's ice. Ice is slippery for an ice skater because it is converted into water by squeezing it.

Why is it then slippery for just when you're walking on it on your little path to your house and then you fall? With no ice skates, because no one skates into their home. There's a temperature below which, if you skated, you would not melt the water, or the water would melt briefly and freeze quickly, and you wouldn't be able to move. We're referring to the act of skating. Yeah, yeah, but just walking around. Yeah, but he asked why it's slippery. I don't think it's unfair what I'm saying. You know, because I don't wear skates. You know, I've only worn skates like five times in my life, but I've slipped on ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, in physics, it's called

the coefficient of friction, which is how one material intersects with the other, and if you look close in, if one is very smooth and the other is smooth like Teflon against some other surface, then the friction is low. If the surfaces are not smooth like rubber on asphalt, the rubber gets in so then you have a high coefficient of friction and that's why cars have rubber and their roads are made of asphalt rather than Teflon on cows. Yes, ma'am. Hi. Fracking is probably one of the most divisive issues that we have in the country today, with over 500,000 wells in the country now that use probably 3 to 5 million gallons of water per frack.

That means that they're running at capacity every day. They're wasting our drinking water at a number of 2.5 trillion gallons of water per day. And that's only in the United States. In the context of the amount of water you use for agriculture or in dying cotton, which thank you, I learned that today. Is that a significant number? Because in my mind, it seems insane. I wonder that as well. Thank you for that question. We could argue about one topic or another, but if it's a tiny percent of the total problem, we're sort of wasting breath. So I want to know the answer to that question too.

With this fracking, it uses water. It's about 1% of the total water consumption in the US which is not trivial no like you said it's trillions of gallons but it's nowhere near what we're using for agriculture or industry. One of the answers to your question is that it depends where you are like in New York State the water consumption is something that we don't have a lot of grounds complaining about there's other reasons to oppose fracking but the water consumption is probably not a good one because other energy uses use more water per kilowatt hour produced. For example, the Indian Point Power Plant uses a million gallons a minute of water. In the Western States, water would be a huge

issue, particularly when they have a drought as they do today. I would love to use that issue to sue somebody on. We have time for a few more questions. Yes. So my question is along a similar vein. Is there a scientific consensus on the dangers of fracking to individual water supplies? It depends if you ask the gas companies. If you you say is there a consensus and you're asking whether we agree with the gas companies no there's some gas companies that are honest that will admit that they're causing big problems but the gas industry trade associations that will say there's no proof that our production chemicals or the produce water is actually getting into waterways. But the science says otherwise. And where rigorous science has been done in Wyoming, for example,

Dimmock, Pennsylvania, EPA has done very exhaustive reports and found out there is tremendous leakage from the gas wells of benzene, toluene, xylene, produce water, salt, and all of the chemicals that go into the fracking fluids that they can then fingerprint and identify in the groundwater. So the science is very clear that it is happening, although the industry still will say that they don't believe it. A repeating pattern in so much of the world. Yes? that they don't believe it. A repeating pattern in so much of the world. Yes?

I would like to know if this climate change and water pollution, it's proven that it's happening, why is it such a big political problem? Why does everyone have to debate about it when we know that this is happening, other than greed? Is greed not enough? Why would we need to debate on something that we know is happening and that we know will affect us in the future? I would say that it is a failure of democracy.

In a perfect democracy, you would have policy that was driven by science and by objective criteria and by empirical data. But in our democracy at this point, policy is driven by moneyed interests and by investing a little bit of money in a politician and then some money in these so-called free market think tanks and they fill them up with these phony tobacco scientists we call biostitutes, who will say there's no such thing as global warming.

That's what biostitutes? Biostitutes, that's it. I like that. Yeah, that's good, that's good. I think the answer is greed. Greed. Yeah, plus we seem to live in a world where people want something to be true, whether or not it is.

And that's a peculiar state of a democracy because it is an unstable foundation for anything that would follow. And so I keep wondering whether we just have to collapse as a civilization and from that state have all our pistons aligned and move forward together. The best template for what's going on now in a massive scale is what happened

to the tobacco industry. Here was an industry that was killing one out of every four of its customers that used its product as directed, and yet they were able to avoid regulation for 60 years by creating these phony think tanks and generating this phony science, buying politicians, subverting the political process, capturing the agencies that are supposed to protect us from the polluters and from the bad guys and making them sock puppets for the industries they're supposed to regulate and they developed this whole template they had a pr firm called hill and nolten that went out developed all these strategies for them and those strategies

have now been adopted by the carbon industry that have a lot higher profits at stake than big tobacco ever did. And you remember eight years ago when Congressman Waxman's committee, the heads of the seven tobacco companies, the CEOs, stood before Congress, raised their right hand and swore under oath that they did not believe that cigarettes caused any health problems to human beings. And everybody knew they were lying, that they did not believe that cigarettes caused any health problems to human beings. And everybody knew they were lying, but they did it anyway. Why would they do that? They did it, as you said, because of greed. Eight years ago, I was being sued by third graders for the demotion of Pluto. So I had other... Just so you know.

I don't always have the same issues that you do. We just have time for a couple more questions. All right, well, thank you. I would like to talk about energy. What do you think is the real future of energy? I mean, I guess to the scientists on the panel, I'd like to say for a theoretical far-fetched question, do you think 100 years from now we'll have contained fusion

and be able to use that? but in a more practical contemporary sense what's the real status of the renewables particularly solar and wind I did an op-ed recently with David crane who's the head of NRG was the biggest energy producer in the country he has coal plants gas plants new plants oil and wind and solar. And he says that if he has $100 million to spend on a plant, he will build a solar plant. Because solar energy now is so cheap, it costs under $3 billion a gigawatt to generate energy. Coal costs $3 billion a gigawatt.

Nuke costs $15 billion a gigawatt. I'm talking the capital cost of building the plant. Wind cost about 3 billion. So they're all the same. But once you build a solar plant, it's free energy forever because the photons are hitting the earth every day for free. Once you build that oil plant, now you got to go to Saudi Arabia, punch holes in the ground, bring up the oil, refine it expensively, genuflect to the sheiks who despise democracy and are hated by their own people, bring it across the Atlantic with a military escort, and guess what? Exxon doesn't pay for it, you and I do. Spill it all over the Gulf, spill it all over Valdez, burn the oil, and poison everybody who breathes the

emissions and raise the sea level and everything else. And have a nice day. How many gigawatts to go back in time again? 2.22 gigawatts. Gigawatts. Oh, sorry. The flux capacitor needs that energy. Right here. Classic.

The flux capacitor needs that energy. Right here. Classic. Given that the Middle East has such low water and they spend a lot of their agriculture watering watermelons, it seems kind of silly. Why don't they plant things that don't require watermelons? I mean, less water-intensive crops. Exactly. Why don't they just eat bees?

Not that, but they end up exporting a lot of the watermelons because they're subsidized. So it's a combination of economics and science. So why don't they ever collaborate? Let me go to tests on that. Tess, are people planting the right stuff around the world? Typically, no. Okay, no. They're definitely not, but what is stopping them? Why are they being subsidized?

So it depends on the country. So like if you're talking about melons being grown in the Middle East, you could look at Jordan, who has no water, and they're growing melons, and they shouldn't be. And then they're exporting, so they're losing all that water. If you look at northwest India, for example, the government has told the farmers to grow rice and wheat. They say, we'll give you a guaranteed price for these crops. You don't have to worry about market fluctuations, nothing. So the farmers

say, great, I'm going to grow rice and wheat, even though we don't have enough water for it. So they're pumping their groundwater faster than they can use it. And it's all because the government is saying, this is what you should grow in this part of the country. So you're right to bring it up in that it seems like we should just be able to talk to the politicians and change what crops they should grow. And that's something that we're working on. And the politicians in these areas are starting to realize it

because they're seeing their farmers facing the point where they're not able to keep farming. That really doesn't answer the fundamental question of why. Oh, why were they wrong in the first place? Yeah, so what created that discrepancy between what is allowed and what is not allowed? I don't know. Some politician said,

I think I can make a lot of money for growing rice, and so they picked rice for Punjab, and they shouldn't have. Greed? Maybe just greed? Greed. That's the answer to all of this. Forgive this long line here, but we have time for only one more question. We're going to take it from the gentleman in the second row there. Please, go. Thank you. Is there any point where we could get to a point where there were enough natural and man-made disasters that basically all of our accessible water could get to a polluted there were enough natural and man-made disasters that basically all of our accessible water

could get to a polluted point beyond repair? And if that's the case, could we as humans adapt to compensate for that? Wait, so you're saying... Yes, but a lot of us would die. It would just be this. This room would live. Everyone else, bye-bye. So you're saying we pollute the whole planet and then just evolve to thrive on polluted water.

Is that... Basically. Or adjust our genome so that polluted water is just fine for us. I mean, it would take time for evolution, but is it possible? So, may I field that? I mean, I hope the answer is yes, but it's not great. I would just say that it's not a good plan. Right. It's not the solution

to this problem. Bobby, that was your most succinct answer this entire evening. All honest, though. Believe it or not, I think a lot about those kinds of issues. Because the question is, what is easier though believe it or not I think a lot about those kinds of issues because the

question is what is easier or harder or cheaper or more expensive finding a solution to a problem so that the problem is solved or adapting to the problem so that you never have to solve it but you can keep living with. It's an interesting challenge that we face throughout the history of our culture. If you go back 120 years, there was a challenge among urban dwellers where there was horse manure all in the streets. Flies would reproduce on it. Back then, before supermarkets, there were just carts with food, and flies would get on the food.

There was a health challenge. And so people did all this research. How do you put something in the feed of the horse that could change the nature of the manure so that flies will not reproduce in it? It would be considered unattractive to the flies. All this research went into this, and the fly problem was solved by the invention of a car.

The car solved that problem. And so, solutions are not always linear. By the way, that's a very different kind, it had its own problems, but cars don't breed flies, right? So, it's just interesting to me as I study human ingenuity and the advance of civilization, how and when people decide what a solution is to something and whether they just leapfrog it into a whole other realm. the power of genomic engineering to change our human physiology so that it could survive polluted water, that that world would have enough power to have

purified the water in the first place. That's what I'm just kind of thinking here. That's what I'm just kind of thinking here. And so this is why the STEM fields are science, technology, engineering and math. His Holiness spoke of the value of this. That's why it is so important in our future. Because a problem arises. What's your first thought? I think of it when the asteroid comes. The asteroid's coming. What's your first thought? I think of it when the asteroid comes. The asteroid's coming. What's your first thought?

Is it run? Buy water? Coilet paper? Whatever people buy when they're escaping. Is that your first thought? Or is your first thought, how do I deflect that asteroid? That's the world I want to live in. Where people see a problem and imagine a solution to it

that solves the problem rather than escaping from the problem, trying to prevent the problem from further affecting them. These are two different worlds. I want to live in this one. You get that by a STEM literate culture. Not everyone has to be a STEM professional. You could even be an attorney, but if you're STEM literate, you can fight for causes that promote STEM interests in our culture. His Holiness said multiple times, I'm not a scientist. I'm not. You are a spiritual leader who can change the world by example. And so you are an example to us all. Guys, thank you again for StarTalk Live. Thank you very much.