OppGreen Insights

Saul Griffith is awesome

Posted on 22. Feb, 2009 by Mike Flynn in Clean Tech

Saul Griffith gave one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen this past Saturday at AIGA San Francisco’s Compostmodern event.

A fellow engineer (MIT), he outlined where we are in terms of how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, and where we will be depending on our actions over the next few decades.

To boil it all down, we’re at 387 carbon dioxide molecules per million other molecules (parts per million, or PPM) in the atmosphere (source – NOAA). Once we get to 440 parts per million and beyond, things will have gotten much worse in terms of water shortages (Sierra Nevada snowcap that is already 40% lower than normal), weird weather and a host of other issues.

If we were to stop EVERYTHING, and deploy a reasonable mix of solar, wind, geo-thermal, nuclear and bio-mass energy production infrustructure, Saul estimates we would add 20 parts per million CO2 and be up to 407. The annual increase from our activities lately has been 1.5PPM. So in 32 years we’re at 440PPM. Yikes!

Bottom line, we need a compelling vision for what the future could look like, that the world can rally behind. And we need organizations (businesses especially) to get moving!

Tags: Tech/Innovation