I’ve recently found myself engrossed in a series of televised lectures from TED conferences (Technology, Entertainment and Design). They have some of the most inspiring and intelligent speakers from Bill Clinton to Steve Jobs and if this is all news to you then i couldn’t recommend it more! (they are all on youtube and only about 20mins long) (TED, 2011)
Although slightly off topic for this blog, I really thought that it might be of great interest to anyone with a passion towards solving climate change to listen to Bill Gates speak on climate change in 2010 (Innovating to zero). He mainly discusses a form of renewable energy known as ‘Terra Power’ (TerraPower, 2011) This is the process of using depleted uranium (what we would know as radioactive waste) as a substitute to the current fuel, enriched uranium. Basically, a complicated form of recycling.......how can that be bad!? It sounds good in principle but we all know what happened at Fukushima and Chernobyl and the further 33 serious cases since 1952 (The Guardian, 2011). Anyway, i’ll let you make your own minds up on that issue!
Gates briefly mentions geoengineering 24 minutes in and I thought it would be very useful to look at the view of a non-academic. He shares the same views that Schelling talks of relating to a preference for dealing with the cause rather than the symptoms. However, Gates uses an interesting analogy for geoengineeering (Schelling, 1996)
Burning fossil fuels____________Climate change_____________Geoengineering
Over-eating__________________Heart attack________________Surgery
Geoengineering, like heart surgery is a useful insurance policy. But, Gates worries that if we know it is possible, will we neglect to get to the source of the problem and try to fix our polluting ways?
However, he does state that it would be very unwise not to at least research geoengineering as it would be useful to have in the back pocket.
I have posted the video below and i would strongly suggest giving it a watch:
Also, on a very unrelated note, might I suggest watching the TED talk that I have linked.....this one of my favourites!
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