[MUSIC]

>> This is a problem unlike I would say any we've seen before, and

this is why it poses such interesting questions.

>> It effects the food that we're trying to grow and

the water resource that we're trying to get for people.

So, climate change is very much intertwined with so

many other things that we care about and are important to humanity.

>> There needs to be a way to get beyond that I'm right,

you're wrong, to look, this is affecting all of us.

>> We're very good at maintaining all this information among the academic elite, but

we cannot convey the same information to the rest of the world and

the rest of the population.

And I think that's where the main work needs to be done.

>> I guess I'd want to hear, how are we're going to do this?

>> The conversation I want to hear is about what we do next.

How do we limit climate change?

How do we adapt to the climate change that we're already in, entrained in.

>> I think it's also important to,

to divorce a question of is climate change happening and

is it caused by humans from the question of what should we do about it.

Because science can tell you that first question but values are important for

the second question you know?

What should we do about it?

Well that depends on how much do we care about the future or

people in other countries or nature. Right?

And I can't tell you that,

and you know, you, you can't decide that, but together, we have to,

kind of, look at our collective values and, and make a judgment on that.

>> There's a real opportunity for, for a conversation about climate risk management

and discussion of what we can do to build resilience to decrease vulnerability,

to adapt to climate changes.

>> I want to hear a conversation that's looking forward boldly to the solutions.

How can firms make responding to this challenge.

Creating the next generation of technology.

The business opportunity of the 21st century?

How can we act together to rein in emissions and

drive them down in this century.

How can we all make sure that our communities, and

our families, and our countries are safe in a changing climate?

>> From the research that we've done over the last 20 years monitoring American

public opinion, it's clear that Americans do place a priority on climate change.

There's strong public will to see government take action, on the other hand

government is not taking the magnitude of action the public would like to see.

>> Climate change is something that affects every part of

society that matters and that has an impact on people's life's.

And, as we move forward, I think the worst part of it, is that those who are,

who least have the power to change their circumstances and to protect themselves,

are the ones who are most vulnerable and who will suffer the most.

And it just seems like,

this just seems like the kind of injustice that ought to be addressed.

>> There's a wonderful English proverb that is,

may you live in interesting times.

Some people call it a curse.

But it's also just thinking about, challenge as an opportunity.

And I think that humanity is going to have to respond.

And so our society an our politics will definitely be changing.

>> This is a question on which our generation will be judged and

evaluated in the future.

Do we make tough decisions and solve it?

Or do we essentially punt and, and kind of kick the can down the road.

And, and push these buttons onto generations to come.

[SOUND].

>> Please welcome our Stanford round table panelists and our moderator, Leslie Stahl.

[APPLAUSE].

>> Thank you, thank you.

>> Thank you, thank you.

[APPLAUSE] Wow, my first time performing on a basketball court.

This is wonderful, and in the round.

Well, we have with us the rock stars of the environmental and

energy sector in the United States, and I am just so

thrilled to be able to introduce them to you.

Alvaro Umana, who is Senior Research Fellow at

the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center, and

was Costa Rica's first Minister of Energy and Environment. Alvaro.

[APPLAUSE] JB Straubel Co-founder and

Chief Technology Officer of Tesla Motors.

[APPLAUSE]

Chris Field professor of Environmental Earth System Sciences,

Senior Fellow at Stanford Precourt Institute and Woods Institute.

He is also founding director of the Carnegie Institute's Department of

global ecology.

Chris.

[APPLAUSE] Bina Vankacharmin,

Director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Brode Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Until earlier this month, just a few weeks ago, she was the White House advisor for

climate change innovation. Bina.

[APPLAUSE]

George Shultz, everybody knows

George Schultz, former Secretary of State and former Secretary of the Treasury and

distinguished fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute.

[APPLAUSE] And Tom Steyer,

president of NextGen Climate, cofounder of

Stanford's Tomkat Center for Sustainable Energy and the stier center for

energy police and finance, Tom Stark [APPLAUSE].

Well I'm assuming this is an subject of great interest to everybody here,

not just the panel.

And I want to start with Chris Field.

And Chris, I want to tell you about an interview I've just done with a senator,

a prominent senator of the United States.

I'm going to read you the transcript of the section on the, our topic and

have you comment.

And I want the audience to know, we're going to get to the questions of what we

should be doing about this, but I need to hear the answer to this, okay.

So I asked him, what, what his thoughts were on global warming.

We haven't seen any climate warming in 16 years.

Scientists call this a pause, a hiatus.

16 years?

Come on Leslie.

I say, what about the rising seas?

The droughts.

None of that can you scientifically say is caused by global warming.

Because there hasn't been any.

Since I've been in Congress, there hasn't been any.

Why are the glaciers melting in Greenland?

Why are they building up twice as fast in Antarctica?

Okay, take it away Chris Field.

>> Thanks Rosie.

>> [LAUGH]

>> There's no question that the planet's warm.

It's warmed by about one and half degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, and

there's also no question that the majority of this warming over the last 50 years or

so was the result of human actions.

The amount of heat in the Earth's system has been increasing really rapidly over

the last 15 years or so.

The period during which the atmosphere hasn't warmed as rapidly.

What we've seen is a small switch so that this big

increase in heat in the Earth's system has been partitioned more into the ocean's and

less into the atmosphere than in previous decades.

We don't know if this'll be sustained or not, but the striking thing is that

the amount of heat uptake has actually increased dramatically.

We haven't seen a pause in the heat uptake,

we've a dramatic increase, such that there may be

40% more rapid warming than we had understood until just recently.

the, the impacts of this are really widespread.

The, one of the clearest indications came from a brilliant Stanford study that was

just published a couple of weeks ago, and it showed that

there's basically this mountain of high pressure in the in the Central Pacific,

and it's making the storms that come toward California bounce off.

That we don't know.

>> Is that, is that because of, global warming?

>> So, that's the question.

And, Noah Diffenbaugh who you saw on the great video's group recently asked

that and said is it the case that we can say that California's drought with this

big mountain of high pressure air, is causing, caused by climate change?

And what they found is that even though you can't say with 100% certainty.

That the mountain of high air is a product of climate change,

we know that in the climate of today.

It's four times more likely we'll see that kind of condition.

Than in the climate before humans altered.

Four times more likely we'll get the kind of conditions that have

produced this devastating drought we're seeing now in California.

>> But when you say you can't say for sure, I mean, that's what's gets.

That's what I think gets confusing.

You can't say for sure it is climate change.

You, you think it's climate change.

George, jump in.

>> We have a guy around here now named Gary Rupping.

He recently retired as Chief of Naval Operations.

And we have a task force on the Arctic.

And what's going on there?

And the consequences and the opportunities and the problems and

so forth that are associated with it, why?

Because the ice is melting, the sea ice is melting fast.

And he has a little video that shows over time, gradually, and

then, all of a sudden, there's a discontinuity.

So how is it that a new ocean is being created?

That hasn't happened since the last Ice Age.

>> No. I've been to Greenland.

I saw it too, but I think the question is about the extreme storms and the drought.

You know, it's just a little confusing, because it's out there, and

it should be nailed and answered and let's get rid of the question.

Why is it even on the table, why does a Senator say this?

You know, just, let's get rid of it.

But we can't. >> So I think this issue of uncertainty

a little bit of a, it's a little bit of a copout for us, as a society.

We make decisions amid uncertainty all of the time.

We make decisions about bets on financial markets that we're going to invest in.

We make decisions about what university we're going to attend.

We make decisions about what course of treatment to take.

Think of when you're a patient in front of a doctor.

A doctor might present you a sort of

body of research about people who have symptoms like yours.

The doctor can't tell you I'm 100% certain in every case that

this intervention's going to turn out perfectly.

I'm not 100% certain that if you don't do the intervention that you are going to

die or that you're going to suffer.

But here are the,

here are the probabilities, here is the information that I can tell you.

And then let me know about you.

What's your tolerance for risk?

What's your personal history?

What's your vulnerability?

And with those decisions,

with that interaction with the science we make decisions.

And frankly we make decisions to avoid risks.

We made a decision, make decisions as a society to avoid harm, and

that's what we need to do in this case.

>> Tom. [APPLAUSE].

>> Well, obviously I agree with Bena but

I think there's something else here too because she's talking about the ability,

and the need to make decisions in uncertainty.

But the other question is what is, what is the size and

character of the risk we're willing to undergo?

And I was an investor for 30 years and I had a good friend who ran a big company.

And he told me the one thing you never do when you run a big company is

risk the whole enterprise.

So if you have 95% probability coming from scientists,

you are saying we really need to nail this we need 100%.

We have 95% probability of this with a risk to the whole enterprise.

Now what sensible person looking at those percentages and that, you know,

gigantic risk that no CEO should ever really take, wouldn't want to take action.

[APPLAUSE].

>> You nailed it.

All right, back to Chris for a minute.

So here's another thing I hear, in that it is only 95%.

Let's not invest that much right now [LAUGH], because you know there's that

little, we can't afford it really, and this isn't the time, we're not there yet.

Hit that out of the ballpark the way he just did.

[LAUGH].

>> Well, there are two elements that are really important to understand.

The first is that,

there's a tremendous amount of inertia in the way climate change works.

Some of this inertial is as result of emissions that have already occurred.

And, and the physics.

And some of it is inertia as a result of the infrastructure that we have,

the coal fired power plants, the all electricity generation.

We know that we're going to continue to use fossil fuels for

some time in the future.

And the only way that we can transition effectively off is to start now.

The longer you wait, the more it costs, the more complicated solutions get to be,

and the more residual impacts you deal with.

There's no reason to wait because there are smart,

effective, low cost things we could be doing today.

>> Give me one low cost example that you think we should be doing today.

>> Just as an example, we could be dramatically increasing

the efficiency of water utilization in California.

Huge amount of water in California goes, energy goes into pumping water around.

We don't need to be doing that.

>> Okay someone keep track of all the ideas we get, okay?

[LAUGH] And let's get someone to, seriously, seriously.

One more question before we open it up Chris.

I, in your opinion,

in order to really get a handle on this issue, in terms of solutions.

Is