National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World Page #5

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an energy-eating monster.

Many homes waste

more energy than they use.

[Teapot whistling]

A team of eco-detectives is

investigating the Cohen house

for crimes against the climate.

This innocent-looking thing

here, when it is on,

eats a whole lot of money.

When I feel this much cold

on the outside of the freezer,

I know that the insulation

is really not as thick

as we would like.

Oh, what have we here?

Climate change is a problem

we don't need to have,

and it's cheaper not to.

For Amory Lovins,

solutions start with efficiency,

reducing the use of energy

that produces CO2 emissions.

Do you see that little red light

in the corner?

If you have all kinds

of appliances,

your TV, your VCR, your DVD, et cetera,

that have that little light on...

Yes.

... they're using electricity.

It's called '"vampire loads."

Almost 60 bucks a year,

just sitting there, turned off.

Lovins doesn't just talk the talk.

He lives in a house he designed

without a furnace,

in Aspen, Colorado,

where temperatures in winter

routinely drop below -17 Celsius.

We're at 7,100 feet here.

It can go to -47 F.

You can get frost any day of the year,

and we can get 39 days

of continuous mid-winter cloud.

Lovins' house is a mix

of high-technology

and homespun common sense.

Solar units on the roof

produce more electricity

than the house uses.

The entire house runs

on just 120 watts,

slightly more than a single light bulb.

Energy efficiency

is the biggest, fastest, cheapest way

to solve the climate problem,

to save money

and to make a safer, richer,

fairer, cooler world.

Next to our homes,

the second largest source

of emissions we're responsible for

is parked right outside.

Cars produce nearly 20 percent

of global greenhouse gases.

To keep warming below

the critical two-degree threshold,

we need to cut seven billion tons

of greenhouse gas emissions every year.

Doubling the average

fuel efficiency of all cars

from 25 kilometers per gallon to 50

would save one billion tons.

But we would still need

to cut billions more

from our carbon footprint

to stay on the safe side

of plus-two degrees.

We have an arsenal

of solutions already.

It's going to be solar, wind,

going to be solar, wind,

and it's going to be tidal power

and thermal power.

All of these different things

working together

actually give us a pretty good ability

t0 get away from

the fossil fuel economy.

The ultimate answer may be

just over the horizon.

But the problem continues to grow.

With each passing year,

we consume more energy.

The future will test

the best minds in science.

An international team

of Physicists in England

is already started, attempting the

mother of all technological solutions:

Nuclear fusion.

They're building a fusion reactor

modeled on the single best power plant

in the solar system,

the sun.

Harnessing that same power could mean

a virtually limitless

and self-sustaining source of energy

without producing

any greenhouse gases.

This energy

lights up the universe,

powers most of the stars

in the universe.

So, what we're trying to do here

is to replicate

the same process on Earth

and use this amount of energy

to produce electricity.

It won't be easy.

The core of the reactor will be

nearly 10 times hotter than the sun.

A powerful magnetic field

contains the super-hot plasma

and prevents it from melting

through the reactor's walls.

Even if it works,

and there's no guarantee,

the reactor won't produce

commercial electricity

for at least another 30 years.

As ambitious as it may be,

fusion may appear

relatively down-to-Earth.

Imagine outer space filled

with a cosmic fleet of mirrors.

One current research project

estimates that one million mirrors,

each about three feet across,

could block out enough of the sun's heat

to lower the Earth's temperature.

It's no good sitting around

hoping that someone's going to invent

some fantastical new source

of free energy

The reality is that we have

to deal with what we've got,

and have to do it within ten years.

The world's appetite for energy

remains voracious.

Our carbon footprint is staggering.

As global warming escalates,

it also accelerates.

At some point, climate change

could take on a life of its own,

and global warming would

become a runaway train.

The only question is,

now that we know about it,

what are we going to do?

Even the worst-case scenarios

of six degrees

won't mean the end

of all life on Earth.

But the planet after

extreme global warming

would be radically different

from the life we know today.

How bad could it get?

At that point, the best minds

on Earth agree on two things:

They just don't know,

and they hope we'll never find out.

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