Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140416

Council on global affairs. This is about one hour. [applause] thank you so much. It has been amazing. Mike and pat have been the most charming host. And i have a great friendship that has betrayed and turned been created. And so thank you so much. So its an honor to be a sellout. So i would like to share with you my story for the next 20 minutes and im hoping you will think him worthy of being a fellow. And so im just going to start. The story of this is not about an educated or social activists want change the world. Quite the contrary. Everything changed when i became a mother. And so let me introduce you to my son. Within a single stroke his cry was to write his essay and he went to school thinking i can grow up thinking i cant. So we like choices everyday. Choosing tea over coffee or putting a man onto the moon. Her choices define who we become and it is this where do word that we need to move from her childrens vocabulary and for 50 years we tell them they have no choice but to listen and do what we have to tell them. And pathetic, responsible creative citizens. So that day i removed my son was going to was i supposed to do now . The easiest solution would be to change schools but i didnt have a problem with the schools. I had a problem with the storm and this is where my background kicked in. And it starts with asking what it rather than saying whats wrong. Otherwise we will end up solving the wrong problems and change doesnt happen and its a the fact that you are not helpless and that change is possible and you can drive it, otherwise we end up blaming someone for things we can do and become by standards. So hopefully my child will turn out okay and we can leave everything to chance leaving that we can become empowered young citizens of the world. So my response is designing an education model instead of icann or icann. So for the last 13 years the curriculum spaces have been designed using a simple four step process. You imagine doing and sharing. What i would like to ask you to look at is how empathy ethics engagement are embedded in each of these steps. Until we designed all of the equipment and tools in the curriculum to start doing good. So we got them excited about problem solving and scientific situations as well as recognizing that we have to change by including accidents and engagement. And i would like to show you and i hope i can take all of you to show you how amazing the kids are. But i will show you my children. So the very first story, but this includes the boundaries between school and my red 10th graders, 15yearolds were designing a new ice cream flavor for the leading bluechip company. Not only a product of value but added value and so lessons in social entrepreneuons in social entrepreneurship we have proposed this challenge which is part of this and we are preparing a presentation is part of the ice cream. And we are excited and we didnt know that this could happen in this amount of time. [inaudible] so we developed this and it looks at the christmas tree. That speaks a lot. An excellent presentation because we are including the cost and everything. Single mocha. [inaudible conversations] [cheers] we will eventually select him and we would like to continue with news for any social cause of our choice. The second story is a snapshot of doing good and how that turns the dose of the school. Its a story of 25 thirdgrade students, eight and nine year old kids. And they realize that they can raise the money to get their hearing aid that they need and this is their story. With your hands and legs are inspiring people single mocha. [inaudible conversations] im feeling ready. This program is to help the children [inaudible] we need to take action single micro you look at. This is for a good cause. [inaudible] are you ready . Yes [cheers] [applause] it does demonstrate that when children do good, they do well and for all of those who tell us what about math and science and english, this is the most recent result that we have gotten. Riverside children outperforming the top 10 studios in math and science and english. So finally the final video is the graduating project. It is an acronym for the time that they will graduate into the world and they need to be able to cleanse her inner self into the office and the second thing is because of the timing. This particular experience happens a month before they exit examinations and thats when everything goes crazy. Its just like when a child is in grade 12 they dont do the light of the day. And so you have to have perspective and life is much larger than the. So we take our children into this community and so this is their story and personal transformation and personal growth. [inaudible] the experience to engage ahead hands and hard. With completely bungee jump into this experience. Every other experience has culminated into this. Momo. [inaudible] we went to the house and terrel, the one thing that i have gauged for now is respect. Silence and just reflection. Even the meals a taken in silence to understand the slowing down is important. [inaudible] [inaudible] memories back with them to remind them of always having perspective, never again telling themselves, my god, im so tired. I do so much work. In the sense that theres something that you have of this world around you. Suddenly youre it by reality. [inaudible] very important milestone in life. Our children will become citizens of this country and of this world. Every child will graduate with a certificate. To give every student to graduate is fashion and compassion. And thats what we have seen. What has taken beyond the school. Michael has 370 children. 370 children, just meaningless, has to go beyond. So in an ideal world every society has to take care of his children. But no society would have more marls. To a hundred 50 tv channels. We cannot try to figure the sense of what it the city could design for and nurture tournament. Once you nurture. Some 2,007 approached, every child can make the city child friendly. This was something we did with municipalities, police, citizens we have the best design and the best business mines. My god, the city has not benefited from these. How can we all come together and collaborate on making this city child friendly . What im going to share with you is three little snapshots. All the other than walking we have Services Closed down the door. Some have it and some dont. Have you open up the doors to our children. The busiest street for traffic and make it a playground for children. The first time i went and said, sir, i need this. No, madam. And said, no, want this. Take back streets. I said, no. And the reason why i kept insisting, the fact that it had to be. One day in the month cannot the citys slow down and recognize that our children are important, that they have to be seen and heard and recognize as being creative and protagonist and wonderful. So you know, around our independent state in the 15th of august, its a Public Holiday it will be no traffic on the road. Its such a big hit. And they recognize it. Its so wonderful. Now six years down the city now takes this story when they are presented to the world. They have the support. There were telling everybody. A. [inaudible] and it has now gone beyond. The best multiplex and given popcorn. [inaudible conversations] the first time. This city is giving so much for the children. An initiative which is so unusual. And they are just so caring. Now we had to take the same to the world. So in 2009 we created the Worlds Largest Design Thinking challenge to take Design Thinking to everybody and that if the wind says i can and i will. Im going to just show you a little snapshot when we started in 2009 and where it yesterday. How to read and write. This whole thing. And i think designs of changed. Helped teach all of us. Strong, powerful. All these children come from the heart. All of them. So on august 15th and again , and depended a 2009 we empowered 100,000 of the end of the to say i can. Simply exploded, the reach of design for change, going from being an idea to traveling around the world. I can and you can. Together we can. And the winner in the war category is a design based on School Competition programs designed to enable children to express their own ideas for a better world. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. We can. I said it before obama. The best minds. Its a simple idea, but it is a constructive idea at the same time. And we cant deal with ideas that are complicated and on travel. So many ideas ourself congratulatory rather than constructive. Theres a wonderful constructive gift to the school, the community, the nation and many other countries around the world. So here is to design for change. Very interesting participation. And also particularly interesting for me is to see that design is not something that is being talked about in the schools. It actually started sprinkling into the schools without them realizing it. It starts with the priority. It starts with that invitation. Today, your voice, your imagination, right now matters. Design for a change would like to give a big hug to the Rockefeller Foundation for honoring the heroes and telling every adelle. There are a poor child. Thank you. [applause] so the children changing, to say in over 35 countries reaching 200,000 schools from reducing the rate of schoolbags to stopping child to of preserving tribal culture. Our children are changing in making it did with the power of their idea. So that store heir will share, the numbers in fact, but it is significant in terms of what it did to the community into the child. Theres a story of other children change one chancellor forever. A story from a village in india. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] there will bring the child to school every day. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] amazing. And thats what happened. We have become storytellers. Given us the unique responsibility to tell these stories beyond the particular school or community. Comic books have actually had a role model, there would be their own model. These wonderful stories being published. Basically telling adjuvant, who are you waiting for . You have to find the ghandi in new. The very first time recruiting designed to it every student to be able to take this particular mine said. Optimistic. And to be able to exercise that right, the right that they are not helpless, change is possible and they can drive it. Palin this particular book. Genetic, cross geography, crossed and a graphics. A mind set that empowers a real human. Design is at the core of that thinking. And to celebrate all of these had we make sure that they need each other . Every year we have what is called the be the change conference. In india and china and everybody used to take all of the. When the sun than we had to be imagine. And just like we celebrate valentines day and everyone knows what has to be done to mention will be making the world a better place. This is of netflix. Its about what they care about. Yeah. Im still struggling to believe that i can make a difference in this world. That power has been experienced by them and there were 11 years old. Al has the jury chased you as a person . The joy that i get. How are you going to take this up and spread . The program in our community. Then each others as well as the challenges. Right now were facing the challenge of development. Were trying raise money for that. One thing you learn. You can do everything that you want. Everything a can. I did think that the project could bring me so much happiness the project is actually made me more custom. Celebration. No matter what language is speak and then on that stage the idea is basically we have workshops. We have conferences. Todays of great energy. So of the children are educated but this. Some what started with my son has been able to affect children in over 200,000 schools. Would just like to leave you with this one caught developing a bathetic response. That does not happen by chance. Happens by design. Maybe thats why this is about sharing. Hopefully that is where the. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much. Congratulations again. It like to go to the audience for questions. Please raise your arm and wait for the mike and make sure your question is a question. Maybe ill kick it off. You have lots of visit this weekend, a charter school, school, meeting with people from the golden apple, could you tell us a little bit about anything you have learned that you think you may be able to implement . I mean, i feel its ready. Theres so much attention. I want to be will the forge more partnerships. The on and check it out of fear. This is possible. I think chicago is really ready for it. Im excited. Already have some wonderful conversations. [inaudible question] of the is the not all people welcome change. Some people are afraid of change. Pepo maybe dont want to see change. De want to do this . Thats the concept. So this comes from, the fact that we have to finish the curriculum. We have no time. So is the mindset. The of the mind set is the government. So might be thinking, if only we could start with the what it brought in and whats wrong mentality. Thats why i believe that it has to become mandatory. The new incentive framework. Nothing changed. So if you just go back to the human centered approach to believe it is natural that we would respond with positivity and possibilities rather than frustration and being overwhelmed by the magnitude of problem. So human center approach. Thanks. This is just incredible. I really and there are lots of words. Of me as your question. Exactly. Its clear why the children are open to this. But how do you convince the teachers that this is that this can work in that this is so important for the kids . Can i convince you . There. I dont know. I just i am hopeful because of seeing that happen. Begin 700 stories of change. This year will reach 10,000 because to go deeper because we get 15 and the stories of change. There is this need. There is this gap. People are feeling it, recognizing that they dont have to be ruthless leaders. And theres an opening to the concept of doing it is important. The spotlight on education was always aware the smartest, strong this. Nobody was empathetic or concerned or kind of a jenners. Are not saying you have to be the strongest. If we can spotlight as much of your spelling bee champion, the havoc in story going. And, again, the approach is clearly showing that academically you really do better. This year rick trying to be able to collect more significant data because the researchers doing is with dr. Gardners could well project. We will be tracking the academic scores. Once i get that i will probably show a degree that last bit of resistance. Here in the front room please. Yours is very interesting. However, in chicago we have someone a problem with their children in public schools. Very often a child is not even able to make it to schools because he or she is shot by some gain. See you have problems with gangs and any of these other places . Is there anything you can do . These are in people also. We have a specific problem in our city. I wonder how you would deal with that are make your ideas circumvent that problem. Actually, they die because of poverty and hunger. Equal trouble. We have 300 million children that of the school, roughly the population of the united states. Only 18 million graduate college. Abcaeighteen million the graduate college, 70 percent and an implacable skills. We are doing something significant in on. We are producing a Staggering Number of graduates to believe they cant get a job, they cant make a life. You know, whether its the perspective of actually being shot or being killed because of the fact of we dont empower them. I magnitude is much bigger. The number is staggering. So i think if anything works in in the it can work anywhere in the world. All the possible solutions to all the possible problems the views of different chunks in different pieces, its an exciting time. For the last five years, i think, there have been interesting initiatives that have come up specifically for certain pieces of the puzzle. Each of these shows significant gain. These initiatives that can be replicated. So this model can be replicated. For certain schools, certainly. It can be something that everybody can do. But whether this particular problem can be solved by to we have a solution for this particular problem . Maybe not at the moment. What we do when children get shot. So i think it is a similar problem. Right here in the front row. Thank you very much. It was very inspiring to hear what you done. Im curious about how you started your first class. I mean, you obviously saw what was happening to your own son, but to convince of the parents of your vision, that sometimes can be hard. Its easier to sign on five for six years later when theyve seen the results. Im wondering about that. Are your schools will be called private schools or are they subsidized by the government . How are they paid for . To answer your first question, i did not have to convince because i dont think people actually bought into the vision. I got 25 students when i started , except for five. One was my daughter. Physically at once did. At think they all came per multiple reasons. The children didnt get into indian school. The other was the top close by for one of two years. So it didnt matter to me. And i was going to start my school. I had 27 believers, nonbelievers. It didnt matter. Just because of what weve done we get people who believe in the philosophy, but it didnt matter to me. It didnt matter whether they believed. And needed to be able to share this particular concept and this possibility that this can happen, and it happened with this motley group of people. They are chanting and could not speak a single word. He had come to me from a school that is 75 in english. He sat for six months quiet. Today you write poetry and makes presentations. That stance of the first question. Credibility. The second, a private school. We dont get subsidies from the government. The student population is the verse. We have 25 percent of our children will come from below the poverty line. Another 40 of to percent who are on financially, and then we have the rest of the people who cannot on the pay but support and sponsor my children who come with zero money. Yen. Front row. Thank you. You told us this week that we have seen the creativity in your school, the spark, the delight in the children, the imagination which is really quite something. You told us that an wycherley thousand schools in india the teacher teaches the chip listen and a spot back what they heard, but there is no creativity. We were told that you were one of 20 that were selected to meet with president obama when he was in india. So somebody likes you. I love it, its fabulous, and its just that much value in what youre doing. Rapid prototyping, if you dont know, its repeatedly going back not to understand the product, but to understand the user. Thats critical. Were not saying, oh, i did this, so wonderful, i love it. Thats what weve done in education. We dont learn by textbook, we have pictures now, and they are colored, you have to love it, and now, kids want to put their body in the text experience, no, now we have smart phones. We are not going back to the user at all, but throwing products at them, you have to retain it, love it, put so much time into it. Gentleman in the plaid shirt. I Teach Service learning in an alternative school, only Service Learning, butts heads about standardized testing we have to do. They study with the testing to do at certain times, and that you need time to do it. What are some clues you can give me that im always up for something new. I think the problem with Service Learning often what schools tend to think is bisque risks, so intangible. I can give you a grade youre now 50 more confident or 70 more sthettic. If i cant see make it visible, it becomes, you know, sort of something that i can leave away, so i do believe, and i think this is important, make substantial in the work they do and the time they do it in. I would like to, of course, share with you the Design Thinking book thats come up, and i think that could be useful because it actually puts specific skills to do what you ask them to do rather than leave it as a thinking feeling process. The first step is to be a cartographer and map your words. Immediately in that exercise, theres so much skill, all the 21st century skill you teach, eventually, the core curriculum is supposed to align too is happening, clearly, in this particular step. What you do is take that i think tangible spirit of Service Learning and make it specific, and its showing fantastic results so i believe this might be it. Great. Next question. Yeah, jerry, please, here in the back row. You mentioned, of course, you started the school, mentioned 30,000 school in i india. Can you talk more about the scaling mechanisms that you use because i always believe the toughest problem is scaling small protocols up to the scale it has to go to to be really effective. Right from 2004, i remember people said, my, god, i want to do what youre doing, and i recognized in doing the processes, and so we just got madly into this. I got everything that we did, put it down, the processes they have to become independentble person, that i can take a cross over rep kate it anywhere else i would do, yet you dont have to do what i do. The whole point of our prototype, processes was this is why its important. How you do it pretty much, your context, it is important for that particular process, and so weve done that, weve documented just about everything weve done, and this year, were excited to say with my Technology Partner over here, we are kind of putting what we call the i can box, which will have everything, using Technology Just as leverage to be able to get any school that even wants to transform or start new to be able to use the processes. Until then, until the technology is used, what we been doing is teacher training. We do teacher training, reaching out to over i think 6,000 teachers by now. They are now in 11 other schools, and so it started small, but today, wii in the right place. After 13 years of writing it, checking it, refining it, were ready no to start to at a larger using technology. Maybe next year if im here again, ill share with you what weve gone. Next question, karen jones right here in the second row. Piggy backing on that thought, how are you working with the universities that are teaching our teachers and how do you get that passion, and you say theres a gap in that teaching, like training the trainers, but eng that would be a critical piece if they are taught along, this is how children learn, whats your thought on that . Weve had some measure of success at teacher training institutes, so redundant and stuffy at the moment so it happens with very difficult, bureaucracy to get through the states, teacher training is tough. We try to help the teaching training inagain institutions that do that. Theres stir education, they do a lot of work, and we have specifically introduced the Design Thinking model. I just believe every teacher can go through that, that would be really remarkable change. We did it with some measure with the government in my state. Last year, we trained 2500 teachers and two sat lies, trained like 50,000 teachers, but this year, we want to do it as a more continuous process more than the one off. They dont have much effect. We really want to do it consistent. Karen, did you have a question . Karen here in the third row. Thank you, and congratulations. You start with the children, or is there an unlearning process that takes place with children who are past a certain age . Starting in prekippedder garten, coming in at two and a half, so pretty much we can mess them up our own way. Already and your graduates, they would be incredible am ambassadors for you, what are they doing . Fabulous. 17 graduated last year, my first batch, and just all the other states studied in india, went to the best institutes, and they are topping in each of their colleges, but the one wonderful thing they told me, they got back because we had a little bit of a deeply unfortunate incident, one of my boys passed away when he went to college. The whole batch cam back, rallied around the parents, and the compassion was so viz l. In fact, the parents recognize they were tbhot alone, and i think the big batch was understanding that they were not leaving my boy. They were going to go along with that journey and keep the memory alive with them. The parents were so moved by the way that they had responded, and im telling you, god forbid my son had died and the school, the school would have just had an announcement and assembly. Thats it. Nobody would have cared, and my sons whole life would have gone, but his life was wonderful, lived fully, and the school responded, the kids just came back, and subsequently, parents had birthdays, childrens ramlieded around, got cakes to the parents. They had a festival. They all came down specifically because the first day would be tough. The parents were stunned, my god, the human faith, we didnt know it was possible. Asked me what success is, i think my boys would be fantastic fathers and great husbands, you know . I think that is is going to be really, really great, and i think thats wonderful. Woman in the third row, please. Hi, i come from india, one of the 60 people in the classrooms, so i understand what youre talking about and sending many i son to a school like this in america, so its nice to hear your story. Theres two things that i want to ask you because in india, we have a tendency of hanging on to those like you to just change the world and everything so my first question, how are you going to do something done in riverside to the rest of the incredibly impoverished people all over, like you know, and, actually, i the social difference despite just looking at the video, and your school seems to harbor higher socioeconomic kids even though you have middle and lower class, somebody different because of economic reasons just entered the school. Thats one thing. How can we change that across india, and second thing is, we believe we have strength in india, eastern philosophy, the culture, how are you going to integrate and be loud about expanding the values in which the culture goes to the western world . Oh, then to come clean. There are too many questions in that, and this is not a platform for me to answer half of them. Id love to sit with you over a cup of chai, and well take it up. Its a long story, its a long question. We could take this on afterwards . Yes . Its a very india specific question. Unfortunately, thats all we have the time for, but karen speaks tomorrow on a panel with jeff, and supreme and combating violation and ways to do it around the world. That will be interesting tomorrow evening at the contemporary arts, but thank you for thanking karen for the wonderful presentation. [applause] thank you for supporting this for the seventh year, thank you, pat and mike. We are adjourned. Good evening. Thanks so much. [inaudible conversations]re und extinction and this one is the result of human intervention. This is from the seattle townhall and it is about an hour. [ applause ] thank you very much. I, too, am very impressed such a large number of people are hear on a friday night. I really aappreciate it. I want to introduce you to what is known as an alanal. To believe able to survive in different sorts of habitat. In the case of the hawaiian crows most of the species died out after the human acombrie acombriefb arrived. In hawaii, the first people arrived 1500 years ago and they brought species like the pacific rat that ate up the young of the crows and the eggs. This was the last species that survived into modern time. It is native to the big island. The island of hawaii. It, too, has been under terrible pressure. And by the 1980s the population was so low the state of hawaii began to take the birds into the captivety to stay to save them and this turned out to be lucky because the last wild ones were seen in 2002 and the bird is classified as extinct in the wild. This particular bird was born at a breeding facility on the island of maui. He is quite an odd duck. He was raised by people and doesnt selfidentify as a bird. Or not as a crow, at least. One of the women who cares for him told me he once fell in love with a spoon bill. Because of his, you know, lack of identification with the other crows, he refused to mate with any of the birds at the facility. Now there are a hundred at the facily and there were 50 birds to chose from and he refused them old. He is in his 20s which is very old tr for a bird and his genes are very important. He came to san diego and he is being studied now and they are hoping to use his gamutes to artificially insiminate one of the other crows. She takes this bird and strokes him in a way she is supposed to find exciting. And that, a year ago, i was out in san diego and he had not delivered on this. He introduced me to the bird. And he turned out to be a sexually confused bird. He has this cage that is almost like a suite. And we could stand in it. And he hopped over to us and he definitely recognized durrant. He seemed embarrassed to see her. That maybe a projection, of course, but he seemed to ded t be embarrassed. He brought him hairless mice known as pinkies. He hopped over to peck at them. Crows are very smart and they can imitate human speech. He is a line that says i know and it sounds demeant ment demented but that is what he says. And here we have this crow, one of the very last survivors of his species and people are going to incredible lengths to save this species. They are giving what amounts to hand jobs to crows. And people really do care about animals. And about what Rachel Carson called the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures. But we are in a process of what has been called the sixth extinction. We are drawing more and more species to the brink and over the brink. His knowingness or pseudo knowingness saying i know seemed a reflection on his own tragic situation. I ended up ending the book with his story and he is an emblem for what i am going to talk about. What is the sixth extinction . The implication is there has been five others and that is the case. And what you are looking at in this graph is an analysis of the marine fossil record. It is a bit of a complicated graph but on the bottom, on your left it is time before the present measured in years. 600 million years up to 0 up to the present. The big dips are points with when the number of marine families, we are looking at the marinerecord only here. A family is a group that is just above a genius. It goes species, genius, family. And at the species level the losses were much greater than what is reflected in this graph. These five major mass extinctions and there are many minor extinctions in the record. But these five ones are sometimes referred to as the big five. They are moments when the diversity of life, for some reason, plummeted. Two people have written a lot of on this subject and define it as quotes that eliminate a significant amount of the worlds biodea in a short amount orf time. And it is written swaths of the tree are cut short as if attacked by mass madman. The first of the extinctions, number one, took place at tbout0 million years ago and most of life was confined to the ocean. So it was devastating for marine but not other life. The fifth is the most famous and that is the event that killed off the dinosaurs and most mammals, reptiles, snakes and a lot of groups like terror saurs and i cannot so you a picture but i have a wonderful illustration. There is a broad agreement this is called by an asteroid impact. So those guys are reacting to the asteroid impact. Saying we are in the sixth extinction is serious and the reason we are in the sixth and some say we are only on the verge and maybe we can prevent it and others say it is already here. We are changing the world fast and not unlike an asteroid. I have heard scientist say this time human beings are the asteroid. How are we doing this . How are we changing the world on an asteroidlike scale . There is a lot of ways. But i will focus on three and that is how we are changing the atmosphere, the oceans and what darwin called the principles of geographical distribution. Every year we add 10 metric tons of fuel to the atmosphere. You know this. It is ordinary stuff and i will not belabor it. We drive our cars, we turn on our lights. 7. 2 billion people on the planet and it adds up. When we burn fossil fuel, we are taking carbon that was buried over the earth over the correspondence course of hundreds of years and putting it into atmosphere. So we are running backwards at a highspeed. A process that took hundreds of years to one in one direction and we are running it in the other in a matter of centuries. If you came to earth, you canou conclude the fundamental purpose is to affect this transfer as quickly as possible. Seeing how much carbon week we can get from the ground and put it up into air. If they were measuring this process, they would say we are doing a good job. We are measuring this process. We are doing this from hawaii, from a place called the mona observe tory and it is on a huge volcanic mountain. I am sure most of you have seen this. This is what is known as the healing curve. This is Carbon Monoxide levels measured for over 50 years. On the y axis, up and down, is it in parts per million and time is on the bottom. That saw tooth pattern is a seasonal component. In the winter, when trees of the Northern Hemisphere drop leaves the levels go up and in the Northern Hemisphere summer we get lower levels because they take it out of the air and the levels fall. And you may have read that co2 levels reached 400 parts per million and that is true they did at the end of last winter. But they have sense dropped over to summer and they are in the rising part of the curve. 396 parts per million. And this saw tooth is going to continue and it will couple years it will never be before 400 parts per million and it will keep rising as long as we continue to put co2 in the atmosphere and we show no signs of slowing down. If we want to see how well we are doing on this process in a longer scale we have to go back to ice core records. Here is a record of co2 from an ice core that was drilled on t antartica. And it is years of snow laid down year after year there that never melted. Time is Going Forward from left to right. That is 800,000 years ago in the lefthand corner. In this ice cores are bubbles of past atmospheres that scientist have figured out how to expract and analyze and those up and down patterns you are seeing the co2 level on the up and down axis there. The up and down saw tooth things are ice ages. Co2 levels are low and the ice creeps down in places Like Washington state and creeps back up. And when the arrival of people around 200,000 years ago. This is eight glace cycles. And you can see they were never above 300 parts per million until recently and now they are rising into a vertical line straight up. If we want to go further back the ice runs back, but there are other ways of teasing out ancient atmospheres from the evidence we have. For example, from the shells of marine creatures that dropped to the bottom of the see and have been preserved for millions of years. These methods are not as exact but they give us a pretty good picture. And if we want co2 levels as high as today we have to go back to 20 million years ago. And if we keep pouring this into atmosphere, we could reach their levels by mid century and if we keep going we can see levels as high as 15th century by the end of the certainry. I am not give you the Global Warming spiel because you know it. But this is basic geophysics. This heat trapping under the earths has been understood since the 1950s. This is called a spectro monitor. Kendal designed this do look at the properties of different gases. When testing carbon dioxide, we realized he found out something very important. Carbon dioxide is transparent and doesnt let light through but it is party opeek in the infra red area. So heat that would go back to space gets block. And he realized that is what kept the earth warmer than what it would be if we had an atmosphere with no greenhouse houses. That is called the natural greenhouse affect. If we had no Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere, our climate would be frozen and the average would be about 0 degrees. This has been understood for a century and a half. Now news here. If you know co2 is heat trapping and we are raising them rapidly you would expect average Global Temperatures to be going up and that is what is happening. This next slide isnt a slide. It is a video made by nasa and all you need to know to understand it is that as the colors get warmer, you know what we consider warmer, yellow and orange, temperatures are warmer and when they are blue, temperatures are colder. This is a reconstruction of Global Temperatures going back to the 1980s done by nasa. That is pretty drawmatic. What does all this mean dramatic for living things . The icon of what it means to be an animal in the warming world the polar bear. Polar bears hunt off the ice which is very rapidly disappearing. One of the points i make in the book and it isnt really my point it is a point made by the scientist i went out with. The changes of Climate Change are likely to be more devastating in the tropics and there are a couple reasons. One of which is the tropics are where the most animals live. If you think of trees. Canadas boil forest is the largest intact forest left on the planet. It covers a billion acres and there is only about 20 species of trees you can find. Here we are in a cloud forest in the andes in peru from about 12,000 feet. And some scientist here named miles silman who works at Wake Forest University laid out tree plots along the ridge and each plot is exactly two and a half acres. And in each plot you can get a hundred different species of trees in just two and a half acres. So five times as many species as you get in a billion acres in the canadians forest. That shows you there is a whole lot more species living in the tropics. And what they have done in the pots is tagged and measured every tree with a diameter over four inches. And this leads to another reason why tropical species have a lot more to use with Climate Change and as much to use as arctic species and that is that tropical species tend to inhabit these very specific climatic conditions. As we were hiking down that ridge i showed you before miles said to me find a leaf with an interesting shape as we go down this trail and watch it as we go down. And you are only going to see this leaf for a couple hundred meters because that is the range of this tree and the only place you will find this tree. They are very adapted to very specific conditions. And the whole point of this is to see what happens to the trees as the andes warm and they are warming quickly. To track the climatic conditions they were used to, they would have to be moving up the mountains by several meters per year. Trees dont move, but they do you know, put out seeds and then those seeds can survive at higher and higher elevations. What they found, the experiment has been running a decade, the earlier results suggest a few species are moving fast enough to track the climate but only a few. Most are not. And a lot are not moving at all. They are just sitting there. These tree communities which have tended to be very stable because the climate is stable are going to break apart. We will have different trees moving at different rates and what is going to happen to the creatures that are also adapted to living in these communities . That is a difficult question to answer. Insects, birds and mammals. It is hard to tag insect. Trees have the advantage because they stay in the same place all of the time. But as miles pointed out, unfortunately we will find out what happens to these species because we are running this gigantic experiment. And another question that arises when you think about what happens to the tropics as the speci species move up is what is going to happen to the low lands . What is going to move into the tropical lowlands or will they empty out . We dont have an answer right now but unfortunately we will find out. Global warming isnt the only effect of pouring co2 into the air. It has a more significant affect on what it douse to the oceans. The oceans have taken in about a third of the mount and that is about 130 billion metric tons and the acidity of the ocean has increased around 30 . And the details of this phenomenon which is known as Ocean Acidification is a bit complicated and i am not going to get into the nittygritty but if you dissolve co2 in water you get a weak acid. If you had as a coke this afternoon you were drinking it. If you add enough of this too ocean you will change the chemistry and this affects a lot of Different Properties of the water. But one of the key things it does is makes it harder for organisms that build shells from the mineral calcium carbonate. It doesnt exist in the water. Animals have to assemble it and we are making it harder. Many animals do this and they are so plentiful that they turn the water this milky white color at certain times of the year. Shellfish, sea urgent, star fish. And that is a great star fish on the groweat barrier reef. And once again there is a lot of work being done to answer this question because some of the animals are the very bottom of the food change. And one of the big concerns is what is going to happen to coral reefs because they support these incredib incredible eco systems as anyone who has been on a thriving reef knows. This is the island on off the Great Barrier reef. Researcher here at the island were trying to look at what is going to happen to corals as we continue to pour co2 in the catter. And they turn out to be docile research subjects. You can break off a piece of the reef, glue it to a tile, and put it in a tub and it has what it needs, it will sit there quitely and go on doing whatever corals do. They are bubling in Different Levels of Different Levels of the carbon dioxide. And there are many studios going on around the world. Their studies suggest around the middle of the century the reef building corals will not be able to keep up and keep going. And they will just stop growing and there are a lot of forces to break this down. A lot eats at the reefs and there is storms and just erosion. So reefs need to always be growing in the sense to stay even. This is a quote from a British Marine biologist saying it is likely reefs will be the first in the modern era to be extinct extinct. And another way we are changing the planet is by moving the species all over the world. You are all familiar with animals making a land everywhere else. This is the asian carp. They are filter feeder and go through everything in the water. It isnt good for native fish and there is a lot of fear they are making their ways to the great lakes. And in fact, just last Month Congress asked for a study, some of the Congress People from around the great lakes asked the army core of engineers of what it would take to try to keep these carp from getting into the great lake and the army core of engineers released their plan for how they could maybe keep the carp out of lake and the price tag of that was 18 billion. So this is another species from asia. This is the emerald ash bore and he does what his name suggest. He bores into ash tree and the results a usually fatal. If you live in the northeast you see these signs saying please dont move firewood and that is to precent the spread of this bug. He is a very worrisome relatively recent arrival. And not all Invasive Species are from asia. This guy is from eastern europe. He is a zebra muscle. All of these species were transported from a place far away. And in the new place they had no enemies so they proliferated and difficult very well. Moving species around the world is something we do everything day. Often on purpose. Many people have plants that are nonnative species and many have pets that are. But more often we do it on accident. Every day in the balanced water of super tankers we are moving thousands of species. This is ordinary to us. But when you think about it is something that is very new and unusual. Without a lot of help, a landbased species cant cross an ocean and a marine species similarly cant cross a con continent and this is another way we are running history ba backwards and at a highspeed. 259 million years ago all of the land masses were clumped together in a giant climate that has been called pangia. They broke up and started to drift apart and form the world as we know it today. And by bringing together and transporting the issues and bringing together the lineages that have been living separately for tens of thousands of years we are bringing this together again and are creating a newer version of the older one. And the vast majority of them dont survieve in a new place ad many survive but coexist peacefully with what is there. But if you are moving thousands of species around the planet every day. If even a tiny portion of them have a disastrous affect they are going to start adding up. This is the panamanian golden frog. It used to be considered a lucky symbol in panama. It is technically a toad. It is very poisonous. It is a lucky symbol. It used to be printed on lottery tickets in panama. Then around, i guess it was around ten years now, maybe more, maybe 15, the prfrogs in n panama disappeared and people started realizing it was a disease known by the short name bd. It is fungus. It appeared in a lot of parts of the world. In central america, in south america, in australia, and in europe more or less at the same time. And that is a pretty clear indication that it was moved around by people. You know, know one knows exactly how. But one of the theories is it was moved around by the african claud frog and that was used as a pregnancy test in the 1950s. If you inject the frog with the women of a pregnant lady that frog would lay eggs in a couple hours. So doctors used to keep these frogs in their office. And did people get tired of them and let them go . And now there are naturalized populations in different parts of the world. And they carry this fungus, but they are not affected by it. That is one theory how we might have transported this disease around the world. People realized this was one of the things killing the frogs and they could watch this fungus that was moving east and killing the frogs in an easterly direction. Some scientist tried to get out in front of the disease and try to save a panamanian golden frog population. A biologist scooped them out of the rain forest so they could survive and they had nowhere to put them and they quite literally ended up living in a hotel. They rushed to build a center. This is called the elvia conversation tr now and it is one of the few places you should see panamanian golden frogs. They are now classified as extinct in the wild. This is where i begin this book. With the story, i worked my way from the end of the book to the beginning. I begin with the story of the panamanian golden frog and the wonderful story of the frog hotel as it has been called. You could say this is a heartening story. It shows people are concerned about other species once again to use carsons phrase about the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures. And in the course of this writing this book, i spent a lot of time with people who devoted their entire life to this cause. Barbara durant and others were ordinary people. When i went to the Conversation Center there were a lot of volunteers from the state to help and when they took the frag frogs from the rain forest and put them in the hotel they needed people to be out in the field and collect bugs and people from all over the world volunteered their time and their resources basically. Even people who, you know, who are not part directly of efforts like this, you know give lots of money to groups like the World Wildlife fund, defenders of wildlife, National Wildlife federation and groups that to wonderful work. I would like to say what is going to make the difference is we need more people involved in effortss like that. But that unfortunately, wouldnt be true to the book. So one of the central points of the book and my talk tonight is that caring is not really the issue. It doesnt really matter how we feel about this. It doesnt matter how much we are concerned about it. What matters is we are changing the world. That is what makes us like an asteroid. And unless and until we confront that we are this world changing force, i am afraid we are not confronting the problem. Thanks very much. [ applause ] all right. Folks we have 15 minutes for questions and would like to get through many as we can. So keep it brief and in the form of a question. Please come to one of the two microphones on either side. In your talk of extinction you left out one species that is sitting here tonight. And i would like you to Say Something about that. People do seem to be concerned about the state of people. And i understand that. Some of my best friends are people. And i want to say that i very consciously avoid talk about that. But i guess there is two ways to look at it. If you had to pick an organism that seems to do well living with people it would be people. We seem to be quite good at basically taking over the resources, the niches, and the habitats of other organisms. We live on every continent and habitat and we are adaptable and clever. If i were betting on a species to survive, i think i would bet on humans. But the other answer to that is that one of the lessons of the record and it is one of the reasons by i do look and spend a lot of time in the book looking at what we can learn from the past mass extinctions and that is past success is no indication of future. The dinosaurs were very successful and dominated the world for a very long period. When the rules change, and we are changing the rules, you dont know where things are going to end. So those are two somewhat contradictory answers. But that is sort of the best i can do. How serious a problem do you think the spred of foreign genes from the gmo crops to other plants such as the bt gene and the roundup resistant genes . I dont know. I mean the short answer to that is i dont know. And the longer issues all are a couple issues sort of involved there. And you know one of the big stories that came out in recent weeks, for example, and that a lot of the gmo crops in the midwest that have been modified so they can withstand you know very heavy duty herbicides, the herbicide as killing off the milk weed in the midwest and that is leading to the dramatic plunge of the monarch butterfly. So there are things that dont have to do with the crops, but more what are we pouring on them and Chemicals Using that then have the affects on different species that depend on the plants that we call weeds that are needed to survive. There are a lot of issues in there. And i am not enough of an expert to unpack all of them. You brought up the issue of people caring and said that is not enough. But i guess the question is what do you think is causing this whole situation . Climate change, destruction of species, etc. Because the whole question of humans caring. There is tremendous sentiment to stop this and interact with nature in an entirely different way but it is limited and squashed by a system that operates in a total opposite way that is driven by competitiveness. There is potential for people to live in a different way with natures and be caretakers of the planet but it is restrained and controlled. I want to know what you think the solution it. Another point, that i didnt get into in the book, but i do in the book, is the question of when did we begin this project . When people look back at, for example, north america, we used to have a lot of fantastic creatures that are not here and havent been for thousands of years. It isnt just a recent phenomen phenomenon. The early people to Research American did end a lot of these fabious creatures like the mammoths and the giant sloths. If you had a no reproductive rate you didnt survive early contact even with a small number of people using simple weapons. People are this unique creature that can innovate in ways that am much faster than other creatures can adapt to. I am sorry to say and sad to say that seems to be something we have been doing for a very long. It has now ramped up with the discovery of using fossil fuels and 7 billion people on the planet. I dont want to say there is not a way to do it better because there is. But the question of whether with 7 billion people on the planet we are using a lot of resources organisms use and how we sustain ourselves is something i have yet to see i have seen someone provide a good answer for and i cannot provide a good answer tonight. Thanks for a wonderful talk and your wonderful work. I hope you dont mind a personal question. You took a look at the Climate Change, you are a parent and like all of us who are, you have a deep stake in the future, how do you keep from disspare . I could answer that in a lot of different ways. The most honest way is that everyone sort of compartme compartmentalizes. People work in Emergency Rooms and they work with dying and suffering people and go home and play with kids. So we have all the ability to see certain dark truths about life in general and put them aside to lead our daily lives and maybe that is part of the problem with all of us. But that is true of me, too. And i think that this is material is sobering but it isnt any more sobering than what we know about humanity for a long, long time. There have been american dark episodes in the life of our species and we kept going. My grandparents were refugees from nazi germany and they kept go so how is that . [ applause ] thank you for a wonderful talk. I heard it, i think you were given an interview on npr and you said by the end of the century, a lot of our Large Mammals will have been extinct and that is a very thought. When you think about it, it does really scare me to bits. But i came up here to say if we look around the room, i am sure everyone in here has been to high school or finished high school and been to college and had a good education. And how can we fix the planet if we cannot fix our own species and we have so much of the population in want, and famine and war. How will we help the plant if we have children walking miles to get their face in water and scrape food off the ground to eat. How are we going to move forward and do that . What do you think . Well, i think, that these are the questions of our century and beyond because all are tremendous issues obviously of global equity. This is one of the issues at the heart of trying to mitigate Climate Change is those of us in this country and in the developed world who created the problem to a large extent it is going to be borne by people who did little to contribute to it. And what is the fair and equitable way to deal with that something i dont know. But the question of how we can improve the lives of People Living in poverty and try to peserve the many other species that depend on us not using their resources. Lifting people from poverty tends the take resources. This is a question i cannot answer it but it is the question that will occupy us or should occupy us for the rest of this century and it will impenge on us more and more. Both the inequity and what we are doing to other species. I dont think the situation is going to continue on as it is right now. Two more questions. Thank you for your field notes book and your no impact man article a couple years ago. Can we anticipate sudden extinction events that may help the tell the story in a why the weather events have helped . That is an interesting question and i dont know the answer to that. It is sort of like be careful what you wish for that is for sure. But i dont know the answer. It is a good question. And i just dont know the answer. Thank you for your presentation. So i had a couple questions. One of them, during the presentation you were saying that different scientist thought about how deep we were in the situation. What do you think about that . Do you think we have take an step too far and it is irreversib irreversible . If you look at how many species we have driven extinct and how many on the verge you would say this is a serious situation. But it isnt the end cretaceous. It isnt the death of the dinosaur or 75 percent of the species on the planet. But when you look at real scenario and how much global population increases and resources people will use and how much more co2 will be dumped in the ocean. Then you say that is taking us to dangerous territory and if you project out and out the longer out we go the more and more uncertain our projections become. People who have looked at, for example, things like measuring the rate at which creatures are going from vulnerable and threatened and then extinct would say the rate they are happening is we are in a major extinction event. People have tried to look at different ways to calculate that and come up with different answers. And i cannot tell you where we are in that process. It is one of those things millions of years whoever is looking at the fossil record knows but it is difficult to know while doing it. So, at the end, you said caring isnt enough. We have to manually make a change. But earlier on you said that some leading factors toward the six extinction were seven billion people using light and driving and such. Do you think that us manually making a change would make a big enough change so as to not be impacted by all of the lights and cars and such . What i was trying to say is your good intentions are not enough. We need to confront at the point where you know, something is on the verge of extinction and we preserve a remnant population that is a noble thing to do but we need to confront the root cause as it were of what was going on. And those are very big and they are many. It isnt just one. It isnt just Climate Change. There is a host of ways in which we are changing the planet on a geological scale so much you have probably heard we should rename the time we live in. We official live in the time before the ice age after people because people have replaced the great forces of geology of the past. These are big things. It isnt about spending more time helping the money or donating even though those things with great and i recommend them but it is matter of getting our minds around ways in which what we are doing that seems ordinary is just changing the planet on a permanent bases. Thank you. Thanks a lot. [ applause ] if you would like to get a book signed, we will line up in front of the stage right here