SXSWORLD

Bill Nye: SXSW Eco 2016 Keynote. Photo by Steve Rogers When It Comes To Climate Change Action, THE TIME IS NYE! By RoB PReliasCo 1 6 SXS W O R L D | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 | SXSW.COM  We have the technology right now, Nye said, to power 130 of the world's countries renewably. This would be done mostly with wind and solar energy, and some tidal and geothermal energy, and without building any new nuclear power plants.  "Texas gets 10 percent of its energy right now from wind, without subsidies," Nye said. "In the state of Texas, we could run the whole thing renewably right now if we just decided to do it."  And why don't we decide? One reason is climate change deniers, both in Congress and at the head of powerful cor- porations. They've been very successful, Nye said. "They've introduced this idea that scientific uncertainty, plus or minus two percent, is the same as plus or minus 100 percent."  It's not all vested interest, either. There are intelligent deniers, Nye said, and ones that do not have self-serving motives. For many people, particularly those without much scientific knowledge, it can be hard to imagine that one's individual actions on such a big planet can have global consequences.  The good news? "Very, very few people who are 17 deny global warming," Nye said. To the millennials in the audience, he added, "We're at a tipping point. Your generation is going to be on this … you've got to play the hand you're dealt. Yes, you could have anger toward people like me [in older genera- tions], but we all got here together, and we've all got to solve this problem."  Nye concluded his talk with a call to optimism and a lesson from space exploration, the pinnacle of optimistic scientific endeavor. In science as in society, he said, it is necessary to do everything at once: address climate change, improve global living conditions and strive to answer the fundamental ques- tions of human existence. Why are we here? Are we alone? The scale of the cosmos can be overwhelming but the fact that our brains can grasp it at all is astonishing, and if we can con- quer that, we can conquer anything:  "And with our brains, my friends, we are going to solve these problems. We are going to address climate change and we are going to—dare I say it?—change the world!"   ry all you want to find a less prosaic way to say it, but science advocate and television personality Bill Nye's essential message is: You can save the world. Yes, climate change is here and the threat is severe, but the technology we need to survive and scale it back is just about here, too. Innovations like more efficient solar panels, longer-lasting batteries and new desalinization techniques are ready to be either invented or refined, perhaps by you, or by someone who is a college student or child today. Either way, it's going to take a global effort, and education will be crucial.  That is the message Nye delivered at his SXSW Eco Keynote on October 12 called "The Optimistic View for Merging Energy and Climate Policies." The pro-education, pro-science message is perhaps not a surprising one from Nye, the man who expanded the basic scientific knowledge of countless millennials with his Bill Nye the Science Guy television show in the 1990s. In his keynote, he focused little on what is at stake in our changing world—few dire-looking graphs, no pictures of threatened polar bears—in favor of what we can achieve in the face of this challenge.  "You could, when faced with this global warming and the cli- mate change associated with it, run in circles screaming! But that has proven completely ineffective," he said.  There are two things driving the climate to change, Nye said: the Earth's thin atmosphere and our advancing population. By 2050, nine billion people will be here, "and they're all going to want to eat something and drink something." The solution to the problem will have three parts, he said: clean renewable energy around the world, universal access to safe drinking water and uni- versal access to the Internet, with the opportunities for education and commerce that it represents. That's a tall order and will cer- tainly be a key challenge of our time, but Nye thinks it is possible.  "We can do this," he said. "We can get to work, have new sources of energy and new ways to store energy, and we can change the world."  And he emphasizes the need for a global effort. Discussing his WWII veteran parents, Nye said that "the greatest generation" solved a worldwide crisis in five years. We could do something similar— particularly today's young people, if they are educated and motivated. His message for them is that scientific break- throughs are within reach and so are, probably, rich rewards.  "The [solar panels] that are being produced now are nearly 30 percent efficient," he said, "and it sure looks like we'll be able to make solar panels that are as good as the ones on spacecraft and better than that at 40 or 50 percent efficient. What if they were 70 percent efficient? And what if you were the one that invented it, or your student invented it? He or she would—dare I say it?—change the world! And not only that, you tell these kids, 'You're going to get rich!' Like Bill Gates rich! Like board of directors of Ikea rich."

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