VICE (2013) s06e21 Episode Script

1 SHANE SMITH: This week on Vice: the last-ditch effort to fight climate change.
STEVE OLDHAM: This is the world's first recyclable fuel.
It's compatible with any vehicle in the world today.
(NEUKERMANS SPEAKING) I hope that's not any weird chemical, 'cause I just put it in my mouth.
(CHUCKLING) Okay, great.
LESLIE FIELD: The idea is to try to rebuild a natural system with the least possible intervention you possibly could.
JASON BOX: We have started this era of geoengineering.
It's going to be a wild ride.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING) (CROWD SHOUTING) They're saying that right now, it's time for change.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) (HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING) NARRATOR: Man is actually causing the average temperature to rise two degrees per century.
I am, today, committing the United States of America, to develop an effective and science-based response to the issue of global warming.
SMITH: We've known about climate change for over 50 years.
Our response to the dire warnings has ranged from too little too late, to outright denial.
As a result, current atmospheric carbon dioxide now exceeds levels that haven't been seen in three million years, long before humans even existed.
This is a "Holy Shit" moment.
SMITH: It's worse than holy shit.
Vice has addressed this important issue in all six of our seasons.
However, what we have seen, is that instead of comprehensively addressing this crisis, humanity is going backwards.
TRUMP: The United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
SMITH: Many scientists believe that we have gone past the point of no return, and as such, need to focus on much more radical ideas.
So, in this episode, we are gonna look at potential solutions that could possibly steer us back from the brink.
(JASON BOX SPEAKING) So, we're here in southern Greenland, at what used to be called Eagle Glacier, so-called because it looked like an eagle, with two wings and a and a neck and a head.
The neck and the head were here, melted.
That whole wing is melted since we last came here.
This part of southern Greenland is losing ice faster than anywhere else in Greenland, in fact, as fast as anywhere on Earth.
It's losing ice so fast, that it's about three trillion tons in a decade.
The coastal environment, you know, it's already just beginning to be a problem.
Sandy was a good example of high-tide plus storm surge, plus sea-level rise, then flooding in the New York subway, costing $60 billion - (SNAPS FINGERS) - like that.
So, we'll see more of those type of extreme events.
We're fucked.
(CHUCKLES) Yeah, yeah.
So even halting emissions now, we still have this problem of 50 percent too much CO2 in the atmosphere.
Plan A, which was conservation, has largely failed.
So, Plan B, geoengineering, needs to be Plan A, it seems.
We have to try everything at this stage, because we're in such deep shit.
Can we dial the thermostat? SMITH: Right.
Can we, technologically, grab hold of this car that's spinning out of control, and and start driving in the right direction.
SMITH: To find out what's being done to actually fix the planet, we spoke to David Keith, the Harvard scientist who's leading global research efforts in geoengineering, or the use of technology to rein in the planet's rising temperatures.
The world is facing a huge crisis in climate change, global warming, sea-level rise.
What is the fastest these solutions could be implemented? So, one of the things that's scary about solar Geo is there's it could be done in dumb ways now.
- Right.
- So the basic idea isn't new at all.
The very first report that went to, sort of, the most powerful decision maker in the world, on climate change, went to President Johnson in 1965, when I was two years old.
- Wow.
- So that was the first really good climate report.
And that report included, as one of the few things that was suggested to deal with the problem, what we could now call solar geoengineering, - a variant of it.
- SMITH: Yeah.
KEITH: So these ideas aren't new at all, and the basic ability has been around for a long time.
So, it typically means two really different things that actually don't have much to do with each other.
So one of them is the idea that we might take CO2 out of the atmosphere, or otherwise, kind of accelerate natural syncs for CO.
So taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
That's correct.
So, the second part is, solar geoengineering, which is the idea that humanity might deliberately make the Earth a little more reflective to reduce some of the risks of the accumulated carbon dioxide.
SMITH: To battle these rising carbon dioxide levels, groundbreaking technologies are being developed to cool down the Earth and slow sea-level rise by removing carbon from the atmosphere, brightening clouds, and even replicating volcanic eruptions to reflect sunlight away from the planet.
And in one experimental site in the Arctic, a scientific team is focusing their work on the ice itself.
So we sent Ben Anderson to Alaska's northern-most town.
LESLIE FIELD: This is hollow glass microspheres.
You can think of it as a form of floating sand.
It's reflective, it's bright.
It's basically a thin, silica shell around a gas core.
I mean, a lot of these things, seem to be about damage limitation.
- But this is actually about boosting - Yeah, we're We're working on Arctic restoration.
People are attributing a quarter to a half of global temperature rise every year, right now, is coming from the loss of that reflective heat shield in the Arctic.
We we want to build that back to be the Earth's heat shield, the Earth's refrigerator.
SMITH: The idea is surprisingly simple: cover the ice with reflective sand to reduce the amount of sunlight absorbed.
The team is testing the concept on a small scale on a nearby frozen lake.
(WIND BLOWING) MAN: Oh, shit.
ANDERSON: Based on what you've done so far, this area will be covered with your reflective sand.
Roughly, how much longer will the ice last? The prediction is days.
Uh, and and that matters on this scale.
SMITH: The long-term goal is to scale up the process and pinpoint the areas in the Arctic where it will have the greatest effect.
We're looking at areas on the order of half a percent of the Arctic.
By building that back, you stop this inevitable heating feedback loop of getting things hotter and hotter and sea levels rising, um, destabilizing the jet stream, and having more severe storms and such.
Rebuilding ice would be easier on the wildlife, would be easier on the planet.
It's just it's one of the safest things we can think of to be able to turn back to where we were.
The idea is to try to rebuild a natural system with the least possible intervention you can possibly make.
We really have to preserve the Arctic.
There's no option there, and we have to proceed with all due speed on all these other mitigation techniques that people are using, I mean, this is just it's key.
It's absolutely essential.
They have to work together.
SMITH: One of the mitigation techniques that Dr.
Field mentions is currently being researched in Silicon Valley by a team of retired engineers and entrepreneurs.
Their goal is to develop a technology that can be quickly applied to kick sunlight away from the Earth, and thereby, cool the planet.
These are all my partners in crime, so to speak.
Okay! This is the Dream Team, here.
This is the Dream Team, a sort of a geriatric team.
JACK FOSTER: We've been doing this for almost ten years, and the pay is really good.
Zero! (LAUGHING) SMITH: Almost like something out of a Hollywood film, Armand Neukermans and his unconventional team of engineers and entrepreneurs resemble the cast of a real-life Space Cowboys and have actually banded together using the seed money from Bill Gates and their own personal savings to study and develop a technology that could actually brighten clouds.
So why, if you guys are all successful ex-inventors and entrepreneurs, why work for free on this? - We're trying to get an insurance policy.
- SMITH: Right.
So if things get really bad, we're gonna need to have go-tos, and this is maybe, potentially, one of the go-tos.
- That's right.
- If we don't have to do it, it means, we've gone so far, that we're gonna try anything.
SMITH: It's a geoengineering technology called "marine cloud brightening," a process that uses saltwater spray to whiten clouds.
Why are we trying to brighten them in the first place? - This is how clouds form.
- Yeah.
What we're doing is trying to enhance that process.
About a quarter of the ocean has clouds on it.
Take about 30 or 40 percent of that and you get that five percent enhanced, you would reflect enough sunlight to almost compensate for doubling of CO2.
SMITH: The key to their technology is the spray.
For the effect to work optimally, they need to spray trillions of microscopic salt particles every second.
There we go.
(NEUKERMANS SPEAKING) I hope that's not any weird chemical 'cause I just put it in my mouth.
- (CHUCKLING) Okay, great.
- All right.
SMITH: Now what's ingenious about this plan, is that the salt sprayers can be deployed on cargo ships already crossing our oceans.
So why do you believe that this technology's gonna work? So, there's good evidence that it might work from ship tracks.
So ships make a track, like a cloud track? So, along the wind, you know, the wind blows in a certain direction, and those are the the hydroscopic particles and they make clouds just like these other ones do if the conditions are there.
MAN: If you look carefully, even where there are already clouds, they're actually whiter, again, because of a ship track going underneath them.
Like over here and over here.
SMITH: So it's the same as when you see a line from a plane, there's a line from each ship.
That's Wow, I didn't know that.
So you guys say, "Let's replace the bad - with the good," and brighten them up.
- Yeah, that's right.
NEUKERMANS: We'll just take seawater and spray seawater.
SMITH: Essentially, ships would be outfitted with a specially designed nozzle that can spray highly condensed ocean saltwater, to brighten the clouds and better reflect solar radiation away from the Earth.
I'm doing it, because I really can't think of anything better I could be spending my time on.
- I have a kid in private college.
- SMITH: Yeah.
You know, because I want to ensure - the best possible future for him.
- Right.
But if we're, you know, gonna warm up this planet, he has, virtually, no future.
That's a good answer SMITH: Now, marine cloud brightening is a very promising technology, but it may not be enough on its own.
(RUMBLING) Simultaneously, another team is studying volcanoes and their abilities to actually darken our skies and thereby cool the planet.
At one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, Guatemala's Volcán De Fuego, scientists are studying how ash cloud particles can effect global temperatures.
So we visited with volcanologist Matt Watson, during the months before its devastating eruption this summer which killed more than 160 people.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted.
It was the largest eruption of the 20th century, and it had a profound impact on climate.
We saw a drop in temperature around about half a degree.
We see a drop in global temperature after large eruptions, and that that's because sulfur dioxide is ejected by volcanoes into the atmosphere, that converts into sulfate aerosol, which act like tiny, little mirrors, and scatter incoming solar radiation back out into space.
That has the effect of cooling the planet.
I'm really interested in volcanoes as analogs for deliberate intervention into the climate system.
It's climate control, right? It's changing the way the global climate system works, to try and reduce the worst impacts of climate change.
SMITH: Scientists are now studying how the deliberate introduction of sulfur into the atmosphere would mimic the cooling effect of volcanic ash.
(WATSON SPEAKING) (MAN SPEAKS) WATSON: We're about to fly a drone into an ash cloud.
And the reason we want to do that is because we want to collect particles that segue into climate engineering, particularly solar geoengineering, is two-fold.
Firstly, we need to know, and understand and control the size very well.
If the particles get too large, we might actually induce the opposite effect and end up warming the planet.
And secondly, I'm pretty confident to say that if we were ever to do this for real, we'd need to monitor it very, very carefully.
All right.
Clearance is one kilometer above Fuego.
Um, we're going up to the height of Fuego.
WATSON: Ready? (MAN ON RADIO) (BUZZING) SMITH: Particles collected by the drone will be studied to better understand volcanic aerosols and how to replicate their cooling effect.
MAN: The drone is about gonna be about the same elevation as the top.
- It's coming round.
- It is! Yeah.
MAN: Okay, we're coming towards the top of the clouds now.
Over.
Should be almost coming over to you at this point.
Over.
SMITH: Geoengineering, using volcanic-like particles, could successfully lower the planet's temperatures, but it also carries the serious potential for harming crop production across the world.
This stuff is so terrifying.
It's such a big, scary idea.
We have to be really honest about the pros and cons of this stuff, because there are nine billion lives at stake, right? SMITH: In order to get a better idea of the potentially dangerous side effects of mimicking volcanoes, scientists are now finalizing plans to spray sulfur particles from a high-altitude balloon.
What do you think that the public's reaction? Because I just before you're even doing this, there's conspiracy theories about chemtrails and all of these things.
We've examined all the Twitter tweet-tweets ever, Uh, there's a way to do that.
Most of the tweets that have anything to do with geoengineering are about chemtrails.
- Wow! - Yes! I mean, as a scientist, I don't know what to react, it's nuts.
But as a citizen, I worry about our ability to make any sensible decisions if a significant fraction of people believe stuff, which are just, kinda, obviously false.
To go back to the realm of the sane.
We've talked about the solar reflection.
Bring us Like, there's so much carbon in the atmosphere, how do we even make a dent? How do we scale that up? How do we how do we take enough out to make it count? Removing all the carbon from the atmosphere is inherently hard 'cause you actually have to deal with all that material.
I helped to form a start-up that has an industrial technology for removing CO2 from the air, and we have fought like crazy to find industrially scalable ways that are cheap to do that.
Our market is capturing CO2 to combine it with hydrogen that comes from cheap solar power to make transportation fuels say to energize aircraft in a carbon-neutral way.
SMITH: Now, in a case of tragic timing, just as we arrived to go see this prototype plan for carbon recapture, a state of emergency had been declared in British Columbia, with nearly 600 forest fires raging out of control, thereby releasing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
So this is our plant.
Great to have you here.
- This land where we're at here in Squamish - Yeah.
it's a great example of climate change at work.
This is a development site.
We're building lots of houses here and industry.
But they're having to raise the land by about two meters, - because of the concern about rising sea levels.
- Right.
Meanwhile, we look around, and we got 600 forest fires in BC right now.
So we can't see the mountains because of the smoke.
So all of this is smoke from forest fires? Yeah.
600 in BC.
OLDHAM: Everything here is a working mode, - full process working.
- Right.
Think of it as, like, a big cooling tower.
Large fan, the fan draws the CO2 in.
Chemical reaction, and we capture the CO.
Wouldn't there be more carbon to capture by dirty, naughty factories? No, it's uniformly distributed.
Yeah, so we could put one of these plants in the middle of Beijing, or we could put it in the middle of the Sahara Desert, you would capture the same amount of atmospheric CO2.
So, we as a species, have put it in, so we, as a species, should be taking it out.
Well, that's our choice, but I think we have to, - or find somewhere else to live.
- (CHUCKLES): Right.
And so, it's basically, we recycle plastic, we recycle paper, we recycle wood, why don't we recycle energy? You're hitting the nail on the head.
We would like people to be recycling their fuel in the same way as they recycle other things.
SMITH: Your technology is, we're gonna refine that energy, that carbon out of the atmosphere, combine it with hydrogen and water, and then that's the same as gas or jet fuel? OLDHAM: Yeah.
Yeah, it's chemically the same.
No pollutants.
So, for example, our diesel burns completely clean.
None of that black smoke you see from trucks when they go up hills.
- Right.
- Completely clean, but yet, it's chemically identical.
OLDHAM: Got a sample here.
This is the world's first recyclable fuel.
And here's the interesting thing.
A carbon-neutral fuel that's compatible with any vehicle in the world today.
Right.
So that car you just drove up in? - We can make that carbon neutral tomorrow.
- Wow.
Any vehicle, any performance vehicle, any battered old truck, airplanes, we're compatible with all of those.
Which is significant, because nobody's making electric tractors, - or electric planes.
- Right.
Do you have to do any modifications? - No.
- Wow! If we recycle all the plastic out of the oceans, we'd never actually have to produce anymore plastic because there's already enough plastic out there to continue anew.
So there's enough carbon in the atmosphere, that we could just continually make uh, uh, synthetic fuel like this - to power our cars? - Yes, you could.
This is the real the killer app for what we're doing.
So transportation is about 20 percent of the CO2 emissions.
How are we gonna decarbonize that? There's a billion cars in the world.
So if we all go electric, $50,000 for an electric car, that's $50 trillion.
Then you've got to deliver energy and electricity to each car.
- It's a massive change.
- Yeah.
Alternatively, why don't we just change the fuel? The price to you at the pump will be the same.
SMITH: Cars powered by this fuel would still release some carbon into the atmosphere, but at least they'd be releasing recycled carbon that could be captured again.
Having something like a carbon-neutral gas isn't even enough.
We've got to start going negative.
We've got to actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
Now, can can this do that, and what's the plan there? Yeah, absolutely.
We can take the CO2 generated here, and bury that underground and you get to negative emissions.
- Right.
- It's a hugely important thing.
And how many do you need to scale it to get to carbon negative? OLDHAM: You need less of these than there are power stations in the world today to net emissions out to zero.
And how so how many is that? It's in the region of tens of thousands.
If we are taking measures as we should be, to move emissions elsewhere, now you start getting to an overall negative emissions for the world.
Why isn't the world rushing to Squamish, BC, and saying, "Can we please make 100,000 of these?" So, first of all, we're open and ready - to receive the world.
- Yeah.
Um, secondly, we've really just got to proof of concept here, and it's working.
So the next step of our business is to expand across the globe - SMITH: Scale.
- make carbon-neutral fuel, and when the scientists and the governments decide that they need to do negative emissions, the technology's ready.
SMITH: Now, obviously creating a carbon-neutral fuel made by refining it out of pre-existing greenhouse gasses would be a positive first step, however there is so much carbon in the atmosphere, that we need to get to negative emissions, effectively going backwards, and reversing the greenhouse effects and actually cooling down the planet by removing more CO2 than we're adding and sequestering the excess carbon underground.
Now, while these technologies are promising, and give us hope for a brighter future, all human innovation, it seems, come with unintended consequences.
There could also be a negative if countries weaponize, or not even weaponize, but say, "You know what? "I need a little bit more, or a little bit less rain.
I'm gonna do this.
I'm gonna add that.
" Could this be the new arms race? No technologies come without the potential for misuse.
So, I think there are really two kinds of misuse we're worried about.
One is, sort of, actual misuse in action.
That is, some country tries to make more rain in one place, and that makes it worse for somebody else.
That's a realistic fear, I think.
SMITH: And weather manipulation technology is already being tested.
(FIRING) NEWSWOMAN: China spends millions of dollars every year on the world's largest cloud-seeding program, using it frequently to mitigate drought.
Another form of misuse is the the misuse of these being over-promoted and being used as a way to weaken efforts to cut emissions of carbon pollution, which we must cut if we want to deal with the climate crisis.
This is our solution, then, and we can keep driving all our cars and everything.
Absolutely.
Say, the big petrol states, or Exxon, or people who want to push against the need to reduce CO2 emissions, they will over-claim how well this works and kind of want to use it - as a "Get out of Jail Free" card.
- Right.
So they'll want to say, "Ah, we don't need to worry now.
Just go back and drive your SUVs and fly as much as you like, and we don't need to cut emissions.
" SMITH: Our failure to stop greenhouse emissions after years of scientific evidence and warnings has gotten us to this dangerous place, and it is quickly becoming the greatest threat to our species The irony here is, that the scientists most invested in studying geoengineering, are the same ones who are most afraid of its consequences.
BOX: We have started this era of of geoengineering.
It's just beginning.
It's going to be a wild ride.
I don't see us backing away from it.
It's the engineering project of the century.
FIELD: There's this whole moral hazard to geoengineering.
If you have a solution, people say, "Great! I don't have to change a thing.
" And that's not the message that people should get.
SMITH: I hope this never has to be used, but if we get to a point where we do have to use it, it's probably going to be (NEUKERMANS SPEAKING) We should be thinking of this, you know, as a war.
Yeah.
OLDHAM: I think we need to be reducing our emissions in multiple different areas.
You can't rely on one solution for everything.
This is not a panacea.
We would be foolish as a species to rely on just one technology or just one solution.
We need multiple solutions.
It's a huge problem.
WATSON: Worst case scenario, it might be the dumbest thing we ever do.
It's a very odd situation to work on something that you really hope never happens.
Were we ever to actually deploy solar geoengineering full-scale, it's the clearest indication that we failed.
It's a desperate act, make no bones about it.
If there's a way not to do this, every academic that's working on it will rejoice.