Kind: captions
Language: en
we are in the early stages of a global
climate crisis but it's still early
enough that most scientists agree we can
prevent a lot of damage if we stop
creating the problem in academic circles
this is called mitigation but how do we
do it
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humans emit about 37 metric Giga tons of
co2 per year I know what the heck does
that mean
think of it this way if you extracted
all the carbon from that carbon dioxide
gas and put it into the form of solid
coal it would form a pile of carbon for
miles across and over a mile high and
that's just one kind of greenhouse gas
in one year so how can we make this pile
of pollution disappear if we want to
solve climate change we have to get our
net greenhouse gas emissions to zero the
majority of greenhouse gases about 70
percent of them come from combusting
fossil fuels for energy everything from
lighting your bedroom to fueling cars
trains and planes to powering massive
industrial plants this is a good place
to start bringing down emissions first
we could abuse less energy stuff like
LED lighting and efficient heating and
cooling of buildings can help us reduce
the amount of energy we need in the
first place
these measures will help but they can
only go so far because well let's face
it our civilization runs on energy and
some efficiency measures are expensive
and not that accessible to those with
fewer resources since no one wants to
stop using energy the next trick is to
find alternative affordable clean energy
sources surprisingly there is some good
news here renewables now are the
cheapest form of electricity on
two-thirds of the Earth's surface and
it's going to be everywhere sign is the
biggest energy source we've got access
to and if you look at how large that
resources in comparison to what we use
it Dwarfs it there's enough wind energy
if you could capture it to light in the
world
wind and solar are much further ahead
than anybody ever thought they would be
ten years ago they're growing impossibly
rapidly and wind and solar aren't the
only games in town
nuclear power also produces carbon free
energy though many believe that nuclear
is a less safe alternative there's also
geothermal power all of these
alternatives can contribute to replacing
fossil fuels it's already much cheaper
to make electricity without burning
fossil fuels but creating an electric
grid that runs on clean energy still
presents a challenge it's very easy to
dial up or down the output of a power
plant that runs on let's say natural gas
but not so easy to control how much the
Sun shines or when the wind blows we'll
have to innovate ways to distribute and
store energy regardless of the weather
and then we've got to get everything we
possibly can to run on that grid that
might be a tall order for some sectors
of our economy the hydrocarbons from
fossil fuels cram a lot of energy into a
small package and that's crucial for
things like airplanes
well electric flights for small
commercial planes may be on the horizon
longer haul flights will likely need
something else all sorts of innovations
are being developed to make jet fuel
from renewable sources and while energy
production is responsible for most of
our greenhouse gas emissions there are a
lot of other sources which can be hard
to eliminate industrial processes like
the production of cement also release
carbon dioxide as a chemical byproduct
Cement alone accounts for about eight
percent of annual co2 emissions and then
there are other greenhouse gases that
are not carbon dioxide methane nitrous
oxide and other molecules like
industrial refrigerants account for
about 25 percent of our emissions so
while preventing further climate change
would likely be the cheapest and most
straightforward solution simply
switching to all renewable energy
be enough and because the shift won't
happen overnight it's already too late
to actually prevent more climate change
especially for some populations that are
already feeling the effects so in
addition to crucial mitigation or
prevention efforts we may need other
sets of solutions for tackling climate
change ones that might help us undo or
adapt to some of the damage follow us on
social to watch our other episodes that
explore these solutions
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you