Protecting Our Planet: The Role of Technology

The last decade produced the highest average yearly greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The culprit: human activity. Join Washington Post Live for conversations with Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change, and Susan Stone, CEO of Ubiquitous Energy, about the role of technology in curbing the human impact on climate change.

Highlights

“Climate change continues to be the most important and alarming existential threat for humanity…Technology has been, in the history of humanity, one of the drivers for change. For changing our way of life, for changing the way that we use resources. Sometimes for the good and sometimes not so much for the best of humanity and nature. Currently we are seeing very exciting and positive developments in the area of technology…Technologies for renewable sources of energy have really seen incredible progress…So that’s very promising.”- Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of U.N. Climate Change (Video: Washington Post Live)

“Technology is a really a very crucial element for us to be able to overcome this challenge. But technology alone cannot be the solution. We need plans, we need policies, we need structures…it’s really a very complex group of requirements that need to come together so that technology can effectively be deployed and become the solution…We have more knowledge than ever on what the challenges are…and I think that is something that is making us all very aware…Humanity has, in the past, overcome challenges that seemed really unsurmountable. So, I would say why would this be the time where are not able to overcome that?”- Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of U.N. Climate Change (Video: Washington Post Live)

“Technology is a tool for us to save ourselves. Public sector support and government support through those incentive [clean energy tax credits] programs is immense…I think programs like the Department of Energy’s loan program…those can also help get comfort around private capital so that they know the government is with them hand-in-hand in supporting these companies.”- Susan Stone (Video: Washington Post Live)

“I hope we reach a moment where we don’t talk about climate tech – climate tech is technology and that’s just our baseline orientation is that everything we do is with an eye towards protecting our planet.” - Susan Stone (Video: Washington Post Live)

Patricia Espinosa

Executive Secretary, U.N. Climate Change

Susan Stone

CEO, Ubiquitous Energy

Content from Amazon Web Services

The following content is produced and paid for by a Washington Post Live event sponsor. The Washington Post newsroom is not involved in the production of this content.

(Video: Washington Post Live)

Christopher Wellise

Director, Sustainability, AWS