How Humans Save Nature | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxMarthasVineyard

Can humans save the nature? In this fascinating look at our relationship with the natural world, author and environmental policy expert Michael Shellenberger argues that a bright future is possible-- if we take the right steps now.
Michael Shellenberger is an American author, environmental policy expert, and the president of Breakthrough Institute. He was named a Time magazine Heroes of the Environment (2008), winner of the 2008 Green Book Award, co-editor of Love Your Monsters (2011) and co-author of Break Through (Houghton Mifflin 2007) and The Death of Environmentalism (2004). He and his co-author Ted Nordhaus have been described as "ecological modernists" and "eco-pragmatists."
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx

[@virgilfenn2364]

Wonderful presentation. I will try to get everyone I know to watch it.

[@Fordi]

I'm glad to see that the public consciousness is starting to recognize the benefits of nuclear energy. With that, and the constant incremental improvements in safety offered by conventional energy, and the revolutionary improvement in safety and efficiency that will be offered by MSRs, I'd like to think that we might soon start the Good Anthropocene that the environmental movement has always hoped to achieve (but for whatever reason, now decries as some kind of anthropocentric fantasy).

[@UrsBolt]

Congratulations! Well delivered! The biggest challenges and adequate solutions in 20 minutes!

[@GwynRosaire]

Great job, Michael! I hope to see more of your work in the future.

[@m.j.golden4522]

“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson.

[@sureshbollam2995]

u r thought is really awesome sir we all are save the nature bcz next generation we give good gift in people only pure and clean and good atmosphere that is gift for not money and not status.... We all give good nature only so plz avoid plastics and pollutants items

[@briancam_2000]

Keep Speaking the TRUTH! Michael Shellenberger for CA GOV

[@shovelspade480]

Incredible content, incredible ability to present this information. Michael Shellenberger, nice one, you nailed it. you Legend.

[@theecoheroes413]

Love Planet Earth and be an Eco Hero! 🌍❤️

[@valpie7920]

Great advice! you should do a TED talk, not this nuclear-plant-sponsored deuche

[@maciej.ratajczak]

@@valpie7920 Isn't nuclear energy safer, greener and more productive than other energy sources?

[@DanielAnchondo]

Interesting video. I hear a lot about saving nature by leaving it alone. But I'm also wondering if that premise should be challenged. Are there positive interventions we can do to make forests grow back at a faster rate, bringing endangered wildlife back to healthy numbers?

[@rasmuskarlsson665]

Very limited I would say, rewilding is far superior to anything we can think of (except removing toxic substances etc). Good example is the DMZ between the two Koreas or the Chernobyl exclusion zone which show what it is possible if humans just stop interfering!

[@shovelspade480]

There are many, look into Permaculture, Agroforestry, Regenerative Agriculture, Ecosystem Restoration Camps, Elaine Inghams Soil Food Web School and Sadhaguru"s Projects. You will find many Reforestation Techniques and well established projects if you look in to these. Take care

[@radiobiologist]

Something can be smol but powerful

[@lukehp7431]

i love this man

[@gshann73]

“More of us are gonna move to cities…” I’m a huge fan of this guy, but he got that exactly backwards. At least as far as the US is concerned.

[@user-dc4ok8im3u]

best guy

[@michazajac5881]

To mention Molten Salt Reactors and not to mention Kirk Sorensen is just plain unfair.

[@radiobiologist]

By using small and powerful things.

[@conorgraafpietermaritzburg3720]

Very good

[@krishianubhav4471]

100% agee with u

[@irinaluz1218]

I think it's important to acknowledge that those farms were "not needed" due to extensive agriculture... nuclear cannot "save the planet" without economic degrowth

[@beatriznelson1000]

So few environmentalists have the integrity to admit that the green war on nuclear was wrong, much less to actually document the cynical behavior and the failures.

[@tomkelly8827]

I have alway voted green here in Canada and because of Michael I am preparing a 10 minute presentation in favour of nuclear research for my local nuclear research facility. I was originally going to speak out against it but I have been swayed. Chalk River laboratories license is up for renewal and everyone I know is speaking against the contract renewal.

[@monad_tcp]

Everything can fail, and sometimes something can be made to fail. Chernobyl wasn't a failure, it was a bad experiment conducted, it was made to fail. If you exclude it, most of the other failures were minor, and the engineering got better because of them, there's no other way around. Humans aren't perfect, there will be failures. As he said, what matters is the cost in relation to the benefit, the benefit is so great that we can spare the cost, also because the cost is less than with the coal, and doing nothing is the worst possible thing now.

[@b.p.9936]

@@tomkelly8827 show his videos. He has several, all excellent.

[@russaac]

Have smaller families, or adopt a child instead. Switch to a vegan diet and leave animals off your plate (Watch Cowspiracy on Netflix!) Support nuclear and renewable energies. There.

[@radiobiologist]

Up and atom!

[@jerryjones7293]

Agent Smith was right about humans.

[@dragonflower829]

2020 hello

[@grantw7946]

Thing about meat production ...Can be done on land that can't otherwise be used.

[@sonofgodsdad3227]

Only 7.000 views...

[@fataonz]

This is a very good 'point in time video'. At a number of different stages, our presenter came to different conclusions based on information available. I believe that his conclusions about alternative energy are premature based on his (our) current understanding. He never deals with the issue of spent nuclear energy.

[@uws75th]

It is not often that I can listen to people explaining the real future of the world.... rationally clearly...not based on fantasies or science fiction, but on things human kind already knows.... It is sad that for now politics destroy value and environment by implanting useless wind mills and photovoltaic stuff.

[@nathenmorris1174]

Architecture based off nature such as a nuke plant structure based off mushrooms please. Also those damns you speak of block off thr flow of natures energy

[@mmctest]

Very interesting, I wonder what his position is now. I think he is on the right track except he is concluding on nuclear and not hydrogen fuel cells which are the only truly zero emission alternative. In addition to other problems such as very high production carbon footprints and recycling issues Batteries Lithium and Nuclear are toxic to the environment life and humans. Solar and Wind can't supply reliability without batteries. Hydrogen the most prevalent eliminate (it could come from sea water) is the answer and could be the most important public private partnership in human history. But our Politicians Elites and Environmental community are financially embedded in these "solutions" and not moving forward. My opinion

[@volta2aire]

at 13:46 why we need nuclear

[@chrisrusso6152]

I love looking at Michael, but TED, spend more times on the slides. You're showing the presenter, but not his presentation.

[@grahamflowers]

Betz limit has been smashed and debunked regards Graham S Flowers

[@valpie7920]

I have issues with this presentation. Going back to the chart labeled "air pollution and accident related deaths" - the Chernobyl accident by itself should have caused a visible peak, no? From the Chernobyl accident roughly 300,000 people and still counting, died do to the accident, radiation exposure, their parents' radiation exposure leading to deadly birth defects and so on.

[@yt.damian]

not according to any available published research. it was something like 40 directly attributable deaths.

[@hajostork9351]

Chernobyl deaths: about 40 due to radiation sickness extra cancers: only thyroid cancers observed, about 16000 extra sick, 99% of them cured, leaving 160 to die. That's bad, and you should never again build reactors Chernobyl-style, but if you break it down to the TWhs of electricity produced, even windfarms are more deadly. You know, workers falling off from 200 meters and that.

[@yt.damian]

​@@hajostork9351 chernobyl was bad. it was a f@#$up. and a big one. from the poor design to the badly run test. nd as you point out - as bad as it was - it was far less bad than almost anyone would have predicted.

[@andreasvelten4060]

The WHO report found 43 deaths related to Chernobyl. 28 from the workers that were in the plant during the accident and about 15 in the general population from cancer afterwards. There is also an estimate that the measured radiation levels should have lead to up to 160 cancer cases in the general population over time. But there was no actual increase in cancer deaths that large seen. Those models likely overestimate the actual number. Coal and natural gas kill tens of thousands every year.

[@mortalwombatproductions2560]

The claims and conclusions about whales is abject nonsense. "We" did indeed stop using whale oil for lighting around the middle of the ninteenth century. But numbers of whales captured by humans continued to increase until the mid 1960s, more than a century later. Developments in technology - the end of the open-boat hunt, high powered harpoons and massive factory ships - increased the efficiency and volume of resource extraction by a degree of magnitude. (cetus.ucsd.edu/sio133/PDF/16%20-%20Whaling.pdf). These people have evidently discovered a lucrative market in snake oil.

[@satishpatel8461]

Obviously Hongkong is importing so many good from outside and saying that they are more sustainable. Similarly we all we move to city and food will grow by itself without the need of farmers.😂😂

[@aznstlth]

watch Cowspiracy too :)

[@dknippify]

Breakthrough Institute is funded primarily by the nuclear industry. They also advocate for GMOs and against any kind of carbon tax.

[@rasmuskarlsson665]

First of all, your claim is factually wrong. Second, the "nuclear industry" is not interested in supporting nuclear, they want to close it down and get a lot of public money for doing so. There may be a lot of indiviudals working on nuclear who want to fight for a clean energy future but they are rarely supported by management, who, big surprise, only care about earning money :-)

[@monad_tcp]

They want to shut it down because solar/wind is the new hot and they can earn money, eventually everything will collapse for wind and solar because it's not energy efficient.

[@spiralkim64]

When he mentioned it was a Bill Gates FUNDED..... he had me until Bill Gates. That man invents viruses to kill humans , Nope

[@helenesstables]

On thing is ''using nature'' but another one is ''abusing nature''.

[@oystla]

20:30 his area scale for 100% renewables are completely wrong. You would only need a fraction of the Arizona dessert to cover all of the US need of electricity, even with 100% trucks and cars on electricity.

[@yoananda9]

Not very convincing. France have exported it's industries. So it's easy not to pollute when you ask poor countries to do it for you. How about USA that have nuclear powerplant but that destroys entire regions to extract shale oil ? How do you do heavy industry and fuel with nuclear ?

[@oystla]

14:46 "far away" ? Not not at all. We are on the contrary, VERY close to dirt Cheap energy storage. And Schellenberger do not understand the time scale needed to build the amount of nuclear needed. ITS far far easier, cheaper and FASTER to build the same amount of power with Solar and Wind and Added energy storage as price fall for storage. We can also use natural gas without destroying the globe. ITS coal we need to end. And diesel and gasoline of course.

[@yt.damian]

the time scale to build nuclear is a result of decisions made to make nuclear too difficult and too expensive. the actual time and cost to build nuclear in china and russia is a fraction of the cost to do it in the west.

[@oystla]

@@yt.damian yes everything is cheaper in China, since labor cost is lower. Does not help nuclear in the West. Or may be if we import chinese workers, and materials. But that would not look good for western employment.

[@yt.damian]

@@oystla the time and cost of building nuclear in the west is primarily a result of fear. environmentalists have successfully made us fear nuclear so much that we have regulated it out of contention. your other comments about deaths from chernobyl are one indicator of their success.

[@oystla]

@@yt.damian nuclear building codes are the same in the East as in the West, so you are wrong, it's not too strict codes, but just the fact that Nuclear is inherently complicated and costly.

[@yt.damian]

@@oystla nuclear is complicated and costly. but environmental lobbyists have made it almost impossible to build one in north america and increasingly so in western europe. german and french electricity prices go up everytime they add more renewables into the mix and go up everytime they close a nuclear power plant. by making it so hard regulatory and financing wise they have made it more costly, far more costly, than it needs to be.

[@az.tek.00]

Lol... ZERO pollution.

[@oystla]

19:00 "10 000" years. Wrong. Waste need to be stored for 100 000 years. And alternative Waste burning nuclear reactors are still a dream.

[@hajostork9351]

Waste burning reactors have been available since the 1980ies. Every so-called "fast breeder" reactor is essentially a "waste-burner", since 95% of the waste is U-238 and Plutonium - both fissionable with fast neutrons. The only reason they haven't been built large scale is that there's so little waste and so cheap uranium, you need to run a reactor for 80 year for the fuel cost to make any difference. The Light-Water-Reactors are already there, so just use them for some more decades, and build the waste burners when the LWRs are becoming really outdated. After that, the waste of each 80 year old LWR will power 800 years of waste-burning (double power output) giving us more than enough time to decide if our decendants prefer to switch to thorium (can also be used in fast-neutron-reactors) or if they prefer nuclear fusion (i have no idea what scientific progress wil look like 800 years from now. All i know is, it will not stop.)

[@michazajac5881]

use logic mate if it would be just something that some random guy came up with - you would probably be able to say it's his wild fantasy but if at least a dozen of different companies, in several different countries, are putting very serious money to develop this tech - the least this should tell you is the science behind this concept has to be sound.

[@oystla]

Hajo Störk I know fast breader reactors, but both US and Europe has abandond the FBR programmes. They are too expensive to build and maintain. Even existing Nuclear reactors are way too expensive to build for profitability without subsidies. Also Europe alone has now 50 000 tonnes of spent Nuclear fuel, enough for many FBR’s. Therefore it is still a distant dream. And existing reactors have a design life of maximum 40 years. After that you have to refurbish the plant completely, which cost more than new plant.

[@oystla]

Michał Zając I am not questioning the Science. I am questioning the cost efficiency vs alternative cheaper Solutions.

[@michazajac5881]

@@oystla and I'm questioning if those "cheaper solutions" are indeed cheaper if so many people, all around the world, are willing to invest in day nuclear, or even fusion. Logic says there has to be a catch somewhere. No one would need convincing, and no one would bother with other options, if renewables would really be the cheapest.

[@sonofgodsdad3227]

And then Trump got elected...

[@chapter4travels]

Nuclear in the US has a MUCH better chance under a President Trump than it would have had with a President Clinton.

[@paulmcgreevy3011]

WHY SO SERIOUS That crucial word - elected - chosen by the population to carry out the will of the people rather than the will of the career politicians.

[@joejoe-vx4xs]

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