Al Gore argues that by 2023 we can be on the way to solving the climate crisis if we act now. Solar costs have fallen to 1 cent per kWh, batteries are getting cheaper, and India plans to go 100% electric vehicles in 12 years. The 2020 Paris Agreement review creates an urgent window for countries to increase greenhouse-gas reductions.
Questions this video answers
January 30, 2018 (Salesforce event).
1 cent per kilowatt hour.
By 2023.
2020 (the first five-year review period when nations will be called to assess/increase commitments).
100% of all their cars and trucks will have to be electric in 12 years.
Chapters
So in looking five years ahead, might be useful to look five years back, five years ago, just to pick one example. If somebody had told me that in the year 2018, marriage equality would be the law of the land in all 50 US states and gay marriage would be not only accepted but honored and celebrated by two thirds of the American people, I would have said, well, I hope so, but what are you smoking? But it happened because that long struggle reached a point where it was resolved into a choice between what's right and what's wrong. And when that threshold was crossed, things changed. Social change sometimes follows a pattern described by the late economist Rudy Doornbush. Things take longer to happen than you think they will, but then they happen much faster than you thought they could. We are at a moment now in the climate struggle that will determine what the world in 2023 looks like. Will we be celebrating? Will we breathe sighs of relief? Or will we struggle with a burden of guilt that we are condemning the next generation to an impossible future future. This year is the beginning of the first five year review period, where every nation in the world that signed up to the Paris Agreement and the US is still in, by the way, can't legally leave until the day after the next presidential election. And if there's a new president. Excuse me for a moment. There will. A new president can simply give 30 days notice and we're back in. So in 2020, every nation will be called upon to make an assessment of whether or not they can increase their commitments to do more in reducing greenhouse gas pollution and land destruction and deforestation, because the cost of renewable energy is falling so quickly. This year, we'll see 1 cent per kilowatt hour electricity from solar because batteries are coming down so quickly, because electric cars are coming down in cost. India said in only 12 years, 100% of all their cars and trucks will have to be electric. I wish the US could move that fast. China's leading. We're at the early stages of a sustainability revolution that is giving CEOs and executive teams the ability to manage electrons and atoms and molecules with the same precision IT companies have used to manage bits. And Diane can tell us something about that. It's empowered by the IoT and artificial intelligence and it's changing everything. It has the magnitude of the industrial revolution, but the speed of the digital revolution. So I will predict for you, but I have an addendum that by 2023, we will be able to say we are now on the way to solving the climate crisis. But here's the addendum. We have to make that prediction come true. And the people in this room, I call upon you to be a part of this commitment. The entire future of humanity is at stake.
