Hi, it's Meg Ryan here, guest hosting today. If you want to learn how to take real

lasting climate action like I do, I want to invite you to join Countdown, Ted's new global

initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Now, here's a conversation from the

countdown global launch event between engineer and investor John Doer and climate policy expert Hal Harvey.

To hear more of these ideas and get involved, check out countdown. ted.com and subscribe to the Countdown podcast wherever you're listening to this.

Hello, Hal. John. It's nice to see you. Nice to see you. Do. Hello, Hal. John, nice to see you.

Nice to see you.

So, John, we've got a big challenge.

We need to get carbon out of the atmosphere.

We need to stop emitting carbon, drive it to zero by 2050.

We need to be halfway there by 2030.

Where are we now?

As you know, we're dumping 55 billion tons of carbon

pollution in our precious atmosphere every year as if it's some kind of free and open sewer.

To get halfway to zero by 2030, we're going to have to reduce annual emissions by about 10% a year.

And we've never reduced annual emissions in any year in the history of the planet.

So let's break this down.

75% of the emissions come from the 20 largest emitting countries

and from four sectors of their economy.

The first is grid, second transportation, the third from the

buildings, and the fourth from industrial activities. We've got to fix all those at speed and at scale.

We do, and matters are in some ways worse than we think in some ways better. Let me start with

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