Tracking the whole world’s carbon emissions -- with satellites and AI | Gavin McCormick

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

What we know today about global greenhouse gas emissions is mostly self-reported by countries, and those numbers (sometimes tallied manually on paper!) are often inaccurate and prone to manipulation. If we really want to get serious about fighting climate change, we need a way to track carbon pollution in real-time and identify the worst culprits, says high-tech environmental activist Gavin McCormick. Enter Climate TRACE: a coalition of scientists, activists and tech companies using satellite imagery, big data and AI to monitor and transparently report on all of the world’s emissions as they happen -- and speed up meaningful climate action. A powerful, free, global tool to match the scale of a civilization-threatening crisis.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. So who's doing the polluting, from where,
0:09.5	and how much? Is it the cars or the factories and how much of each? It sounds like data we should
0:14.9	reliably know, right? Especially these days as climate change's consequences get far more dire.
0:20.6	But as environmental activist
0:22.0	Gavin McCormick explains, scientists actually don't have clear answers on those very questions.
0:28.2	His talk from the Countdown Summit in 2021 shares lots of progress on that front and reasons to be
0:34.9	hopeful.
0:40.5	What is causing climate change?
0:43.7	I mean, it's greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, of course.
0:46.0	But which human activities?
0:49.0	Who specifically is burning all these fossil fuels?
0:50.2	And for what?
0:51.2	And where?
0:53.8	It sounded strange when I first heard it,
0:55.9	but I have come to learn that even today in the 21st century, scientists have surprisingly little information about this question.
1:00.6	So I'm part of a new coalition of scientists, activists, and actually tech companies working
1:05.2	to address this issue. It's been a stranger journey than I expected. Let me break it down for you.
1:10.3	We've known for decades that emissions are rising in the atmosphere.
1:13.6	So the famous keeling curve is based on what we can actually see from space.
1:17.4	But what you can't easily see from space is how did they get there?
1:21.3	It still boggles my mind, but even in the year 2021,
1:24.7	in most countries and most sectors of the economy,
	...

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