 This was the Global Energy Forum. We're coming to an end. Being a former cabinet member in the United States, you are, by default, a global citizen, whether you like it or not. You have a worldview that most people don't have. So let me start with you, Secretary Schultz, as based on what you heard over the last couple of days, reflect on that and tell us what struck you. What were the interesting things? Well, the first thing that struck me was, what a fantastic job you and Sally have done in putting this together. So any time I want to have a meeting, I'm coming to you to put it on. Well, let me also add that. Now, beyond that, let me say this. We have been treated to just a wonderful array of things to do that are basically doable that can go a long way toward this problem. But I worry because I don't think the drive is there. I read on this thing up here, Japan is building coal plants. Japan, come on, we're not with it. And somehow I think our basic problem, of course, is to do the R&D and develop all these things and so on, but we've got to get a sense of drive into the world community. That we have a major problem here. This gets totally out of hand. It has a big planetary meaning, I think as Bill and I both agree, nuclear weapons when climate change are the two things that can knock you out. And we don't have the drive behind it. And I think the base, and one of the reasons, there are many reasons. One is we don't have the drive in this country. Maybe we have it in California, but we don't have it in Washington. So somehow or other, we've got to ignite things here to take advantage of the opportunities to do the things that are here to do because the problems are urgent. I had a couple of experiences way back when, when I was Secretary of Labor back in 1969, President Eisenhower thought that if we imported more than 20% of the oil we used, we asked them for national security problems. So we had a quota system. We're banging up against it. So I made the chairman of a cabinet committee to figure out what to do. And we made some pretty obvious recommendations like be careful about your oil from the Middle East, create some storage capacity, change from a quota system to a tariff system so we get their rents. We said we've been at this for a few months and we know more about this subject than anybody else in the government. There'll be some place in the federal government paying attention to energy and strategic resource and see things like that. Report was published. President said thank you for a nice report. There were congressional hearings. Nothing was done. Then a few years later as Secretary of the Treasury, here comes the Arab boycott. Just about what we had predicted all hell broke loose. Christmas lights, discouraged gas stations closed on weekends. In Jim Sweeney's book on energy efficiency, all of the charts have their inflection point 1973, every one of them. So there was a huge jolt and then all the things we recommended got done. So we're getting jolted, jolted practically every day by something that happens. And somehow I think we need to accumulate these and point out how drastic the changes are. And maybe this is a good project for our global energy thing to take on. Perfect. Secretary Perry. Secretary Perry. A ruin this conference will become the standard by which all future Stanford conferences will be measured. Great job. Now my personal test of whether a conference was worthwhile or whether it caused my thinking to change on any issue. And this conference passed that test and actually changed my thinking on a few issues. Let me just give you a sample of a few of them. I liked, for example, your two degree 20 year metric. I think it's a very neat way of measuring climate and the goal by which we can consider useful and productive. I learned a new way to think about autonomous cars. I've always thought that safety was an issue which would hold back the introduction of autonomous cars. But the more I think about it and hearing the briefings on it, I realize that safety actually should be a net plus for autonomous cars. When you consider, as was pointed out, the 95% of the accidents today are attributed to human error. So that's a pretty easy goal to beat. And I think we might see autonomous cars being promoted and demonstrating a net improvement in safety. That's a new way of thinking for me. I have thought about the electrification of cars moving on one path and autonomous cars on another path. But I now see that they are merging together and subsumed and that autonomous cars are being developed faster than I'd realize they're going to subsune in the development of electrification of cars. And finally I have thought always of climate change benefits is coming from renewable energy, which is certainly a big part of it. But I've also come to think now the natural gas at least for the next decade or two is going to also play a very important role in this very significant role of replacing coal which is going to be acquired for at least another decade or two. So I have a renewed respect for natural gas in the role it will play in this problem. Those are the new ways I have of thinking about the problem as a result of this conference and I thank you for giving that new insight into my, to me. Thank you. Secretary Chu. First, I again want to add my thanks to you, to Sally, to all the people behind the scenes who have made this possible. They are rock star staffs. Right, exactly. So thank you. Let's start. Now, I would also have to say that after having to follow Bill Gates, George Shultz and Bill Perry, thanks a lot. Okay. But in any case, to those in the audience I also want to tell you that I'm so delighted to share the stage with these two gentlemen. To the young people in the audience in their 20s and 30s I have to point out something. In 2019, the United States will be 230 years old where you start the clock when George Washington was in order, 1789. George Shultz would have been alive 43% of the time of the life of the United States. Think about this. Bill Perry's not far behind. 40%. Both of these guys. And I'm a spring chicken. That's what I was gonna say. So, but so I'm so delighted because you should listen to these people. They have incredible wisdom and they have incredible intelligence. Now, the only other thing I want to say is I'm gonna read for us. I don't know where Chris Field is in the audience I was looking for him. He has a very gentle, low key way of describing this. Everything he said, I agree with 100%. There's no debate, but I'm gonna describe it just if you give me a little time. Sure, sure, please. A slightly different take on it. He talked about in 12 years we will go past the 1.5 degree and in 15 years we'll go past the UN 2,900 gigatons of carbon. But what he didn't say is that after we go past 2,900, two degrees, from there on in for the rest of the next 10,000 years humans can't emit any more carbon dioxide in power, in cement, in steel, in agriculture, in everything, zero. After we exceed 2,900 degrees, two degrees, what happens at two degrees? As a matter of history, not a climate model, a matter of history we know what the sea level was like. It was six to nine meters higher. That's the UN goal, six to nine meters higher sea level. We used to think that would take several thousand years. Now we're beginning to think it might take a few hundred years. So that's a difference between evolution and evacuation. Okay, so think in two degrees we have to go to zero, period, for the entire world. I'm not talking about the United States. And so this is the challenge. So when you say, well, it's okay, natural gas will be, it's true fossil fuel, we'll be using fossil fuel in the next 50 years. But if we're using fossil fuel for the next 75 years, there's a technical word that physicists use and the expression is, we'll be in deep doo doo. Very, very deep doo doo. The only other thing is something, there's again a very gentle way of describing it. We have globally engineered the world due to many, many things. If you think about agriculture, if you take all the land in the world that's inhabitable, that's the takeaway Antarctica, Greenland, most of Greenland, mountains, okay? What you're left with is half the land has already been put under agricultural production in the world, half of it, okay? And then you look at that half of the land put in agricultural production, which we will go from seven and a half billion to nine and a half billion by mid-century to 10, 11 billion. And we're already actually maximizing land. What is going to be happening in this? So you look at all the carbon in the world, there's a very recent 2018 Proceedings to National Climate Science article. You look at all the mammals in the world. Livestock in humans are 95% of the mammal weight in the world. I'll say it again. We are 95% of the animal mass of the world, humans and the animals we eat. This is a problem. This is a huge problem. Stop eating animals we could reduce the time. I think Bill Gates is absolutely right. You start eating meat substitutes and you go to one, 10, 20th. And the other final thing, I'll just end with this because here I see many, many things is we don't have all the technology or we need as political will because new technology, new science, new discoveries give us much, much better choices and we will need much, much better choices in order to do this. And this is what I see. So completely bimodal, I see great technology. Renewables have to be twice as cheap as fossil because you need all the back of systems and oh by the way for many countries around the world, many regions, you need energy on demand at least 50% to 80% of the time, no question. That's the other thing. So if you think we can go to renewables, think again. We need energy beyond demand in many, many parts of the world. And so I see this and so completely, I'm excited about the technology and the science. I'm very depressed about what's happening. Completely bimodal, all I can say is each way and I figured out I'd get much more 10,000 years of lithium to see me through this depressive bimodal state. Just, sorry, I'll stop there. Keep going. Okay, if you really want me to keep going, can I make one more? He's a good friend of mine. One more thing, I've often quoted a former Saudi oil minister, Sheikh Yamani, and he said the oil age, the stone age came to an end not for lack of stones and the oil age will come to an end but not for lack of oil. Our ability to find and recover at less than $80 a barrel of oil and natural gas is racing ahead almost as fast as wind and solar. We will have at least 100 years, but maybe 200 years. And so what is it that you need to do? You actually have to find a better solution so you don't look at the stones and the ground and say, if it weren't for the regulators, we wouldn't have these stranded assets. We went to a better solution. And so the thing we need to do is the new technology says, we don't need the oil and gas but it's actually more expensive and it's crappier for society. It's another technical word, physicists use. And so that's again the technology we need. So flipping back to Secretary Schultz, we heard some fantastic discussions out here. Very substantive on a variety of topics, diversity of topics. If you do this next time, I think I hope everyone agrees that we should do it again. What other things would you like to hear given the discussion that's just gone? Well, I think what we see here is lots of things that can be done that will help the problem. There's no lack of that. And I think it's also been shown that energy R&D is productive. So we need to keep going with that. So those are important things that you can establish. But what alarms me as I said earlier is that we're sort of not really driving at all. When Japan of all countries is building coal power plants now, you say they don't have the message but Japan must have their kind of country that can get the message and they're not. So I think of course we need to keep going and producing these ideas that have a reality to them. But we also have to figure out how to get the world community working on this. I always thought the significance of the Paris Agreement was an acknowledgement of the problem very broadly. Not so much the things that people pledged with the acknowledgement of the problem. That was good. And I think that's why it's so tragic that we have dropped out symbolically. But one of the odd things that's happened is the result of us dropping out nationally. There are lots of states and individuals that say we're not dropping out and we had that big conference here in San Francisco about a month ago, it was a gigantic thing and it was fun and very well attended by people from all over the world and kind of back on the map. But somehow we have to think of how to get energy into the system. And I don't know exactly how to do it, but it may be the accumulation of undeniable events and you add them up and you see they're getting more and more frequent. And I think that's an assignment I'll give you for our global energy thing. But somebody to work on, let's put these things together, put them on a time scale and don't publish a book, do this kind of stuff that you have up here then people get it. Can you allow me one minute intervention? The last two years Germany installed more of the brown coal lignite power than wind and solar because they closed their nuclear power plants being maturely. Japan wasn't gonna go to 60% nuclear than Fukushima happened, then they went to zero. Trying to get them to go back to at least 30 or 40, 50%. That's why they're building more coal plants. If you turn your back on nuclear, then the alternative is fossil. And then coal is cheap and there's lots of brown coal in Germany and that's why they're doing, and there's lots of coal in Australia. Coal is not cheap if you put a good carbon tax in there. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm hugely impressed by the progress being made in the R&D which has demonstrated so well at this conference. And this conference gets out the message but we're speaking to the converted here. And so I see a huge need for an educational program and how serious this problem is. How soon is going to be serious and in fact, things can be done about it but they're not being done. I don't suppose it's the role of the education, of the university in the mass education but that's what's needed here and we need to somehow figure out how to get the message across that offsets the message that the climate deniers. This is a big, big problem and it's a bigger problem than I ever realized it was that people were still moving ahead with the theory that this is just a fiction. It's just the climate change is something that is inevitable and cannot be reversed. And we need to get the word out it's not inevitable, it's being caused by us and the technique can be reversed. The actions to reverse it technically are in hand but politically they're not in hand. So that's the kind of education I think is needed. Secretary Chu. Well, I'm going to go back to the carbon tax because I think we're at least, you know, George and I for sure have to say that the last, my last private conversation with President Obama, you know, I said, what are you, my parting wish was, you know, you hired me the first scientist, cabinet member in history of the United States do it again, he did and start a carbon tax says it's not going to happen. Okay, I think it can happen now because times are changing. The oil and gas industry is facing liabilities. They're looking and they would like to deregulate. So I'd say, you know, that's fine. You end all subsidies, you start the carbon tax over 20 year period, give people time to adapt. But where's the thing? You can't mail the check back. So we have a means of giving back the money every week. You know, food stamps are now electronically done. And so when you're in the gasoline station and you're going like this and you're going ding, ding, ding, ding and you see those numbers out of your wallet. Okay, you've got to give it back to the people every week electronically who can do this. And so it is revenue neutral and it's not an additional tax. It's you pay no more tax and you make it progressive. And if we start to think of how to do this maybe we can get some traction. The oil and gas companies I think are now motivated because they're facing potential liabilities, things like that. Everybody seems to be changing direction. Secretary Schultz do you agree with that? Every week, electronic payment back to the people? Well, I'll leave it to him to figure out how you do it. But having been Secretary of the Treasury once I supervised the IRS. And let me tell you, it's complicated. US, well it's new technology, the US Department of Agriculture. USDA has electronic food stamps. They, okay. And we have Apple Pay and other things. So we can do this to just, because the people need to have it every week. Secretary Schultz. I have an addition to our revenue neutral carbon tax idea. I hear more and more people are figuring out how to take carbon out of the atmosphere. We're trying to restrict people from putting it in, taking it out. So let's add to our carbon tax idea a little payment for people who take it out. New little wrinkle. And the best way to take it out is plants. I absolutely agree with you. Plants are wonderful. The amount of carbon dioxide plants in agriculture and grazing land only. I'm not talking Brazilian rainforest. I'm just talking about agriculture. We now grow for food and grasslands is twice the amount of carbon dioxide we emit each year. Okay, but it all gets recycled. And so if you can take that, you can take useful products, make it into chemicals, plastics, start with high value, sequester the rest, then you have many gigatons per year of negative carbon emissions. And so we need stuff like this, but this is technology and science development. Along that high, let's see. One more thing. I think at Stanford, we really have some good thing going here that's good. And there's a lot of good work being done as such, but there's interest. And you invited me over to a meeting. New graduate students, I think it was, came voluntarily. And there were a lot of them. They were really interested. They were from all over the world. And so this is the kind of group you want to ignite. So we have a lot going for us here at Stanford and we ought to keep going for what you're doing. Mr. Secretary, I'm so glad you ended. You're ending on a note regarding the students. Because I think that's the future. And they are an amazingly inspired bunch that we have seen out here and not just in Stanford and across the world, frankly. And we have students, not just from Stanford out here, but Berkeley, MIT, Georgia Tech and others. And as I mentioned earlier, we're gonna expand it to other countries. We have from University of Toronto and we're gonna expand it to Mexico, to India, to China in the future years. So this is very important because they need to understand the 20 and beyond that it's zero after that. And it's their future at the end of the day. Here's another thing you ought to do. I keep making this suggestion. You tell me it's too expensive. But I think it would be a good idea. We have a little relationship with MIT that's been productive. Right. And why don't we establish our self as the place you go to to find out what's going on anywhere in this R&D world because there are places all over the country and in other countries that are doing things. And we can establish Stanford as the place that has the information. If you wanna know what's going on at X, you go to the Stanford website and there is the answer. So you get the money to do that. Right. Okay. Okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, as you can see the intensity, the inspiration out here is just absolutely remarkable. And it's great to end. I can see the red dot blinking on me for a while. But once again, thanks to you and Sally. We're Sally. So here's the one. There's Sally. You stay right there. You too have done a fantastic job. You stay right there and you all stay right there. Sally, why don't you come on because we have some thank yous now. And let's thank all, and this is for Secretary Rice and she could not be here. Let's first thank them. And then, most importantly, we're gonna thank a few other people.