Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: forward Thinking. Welcome to forward Thinking. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Vocalbon, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a bit about really energy efficient buildings, Buildings
Speaker 1: that are so energy efficient that they actually don't either
Speaker 1: they do not draw any energy from the power grid
Speaker 1: at all, zero net zero, or they maybe they draw
Speaker 1: energy from the power grid, but they also put energy
Speaker 1: back in still being net zero, or they're just very
Speaker 1: very low energy so they draw a little bit from
Speaker 1: the grid but not a lot, or they're even energy positive,
Speaker 1: which means they just feed energy back into the power grid.
Speaker 1: And uh, we wanted to talk about what it takes
Speaker 1: to make a building do that, and what it would
Speaker 1: take to make a really big building do that, because
Speaker 1: it's one thing to design a residential home that can
Speaker 1: be uh net zero energy uh compliant, Right, That's that's
Speaker 1: one thing. But to design a skyscraper that can do it,
Speaker 1: that has a completely different set of challenges that get
Speaker 1: much more complex. And so we wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: talk about this whole idea and why we should even
Speaker 1: consider it in the first place. Uh. So, really, the
Speaker 1: net zero thing is is pretty self explanatory. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could at least imagine one in theory, you could
Speaker 1: imagine that. Let's say that you have a farmhouse that's
Speaker 1: on a essentially a plane, right, and you get lots
Speaker 1: of sunlight generally speaking, throughout the year, and you also
Speaker 1: have some you know, you have some good winds that
Speaker 1: go through the area. So maybe with wind turbines and
Speaker 1: solar panels and with a very good design of your house,
Speaker 1: you might collect this on light appropriately at different times
Speaker 1: the day. Right, And we'll get into all of that
Speaker 1: in a minute. Uh, that sort of stuff might allow
Speaker 1: you to be self sufficient. In fact, you could theoretically
Speaker 1: have a building that's so self sufficient it doesn't even
Speaker 1: connect to a power grid and off the grid. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're off the grid. Uh granted you're you're still being
Speaker 1: tracked because someone's always looking for you. Just kidding, just kidding. Well,
Speaker 1: so we we've heard of houses like this. At your house,
Speaker 1: it it has a nuclear reactor inside, or it has whatever,
Speaker 1: it hasnsters running in wheels, whatever it is that makes
Speaker 1: this house self sufficient. But you mentioned bigger buildings. Have
Speaker 1: we ever heard of a truly truly energy self sufficient,
Speaker 1: a net zero high rise, the large kind of building
Speaker 1: you'd see in a city. There's, Um, there's supposedly some
Speaker 1: I say supposedly because it's it's difficult to to actually confirm. Well,
Speaker 1: let supposed a right. So so there's there's a building
Speaker 1: called the Pearl River Tower in guang Sho, China, and uh,
Speaker 1: and this tower is seventy one stories tall, So I
Speaker 1: think that that counts a skyscraper. Seventy one stories tall?
Speaker 1: Does that count of skyscraper? I believe you would think
Speaker 1: that it would have to. I mean that it's it's
Speaker 1: at least a high rise. Yes, at the least it's
Speaker 1: at seventy stories I think, I think, I'm I'm willing
Speaker 1: to call it a skyscraper. Of course, I live in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: where a seventy story building would be enormous. In fact,
Speaker 1: we only have a couple that reached that high. UM anyway,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like the the fourth largest or fourth
Speaker 1: tallest building in Guangzho and the some somewhere in the
Speaker 1: twenties for all of China. UM it's two point three
Speaker 1: million square feet of space, and it's an office building.
Speaker 1: So there's no residential in here as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell. It's all offices. Uh, and it was, it's
Speaker 1: it's supposedly net zero. I say supposedly because I don't
Speaker 1: I haven't checked it out personally. Well, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: have any way of specifically going there and seeing it
Speaker 1: and making sure that in fact, and the numbers on it.
Speaker 1: You know, the engineers have have an interest in making
Speaker 1: it sound as good as possible. Of course, Well, we
Speaker 1: don't want to cast out, but they're fine, upstanding citizens.
Speaker 1: But well, they do have an interest, right, right, The
Speaker 1: point being that we cannot confirm, right, We can only
Speaker 1: take in the data that is available from the people
Speaker 1: who built the thing. And and there's no way that
Speaker 1: you can say that that's unbiased. I mean, by by
Speaker 1: its very nature it's biased. It may still be correct,
Speaker 1: but it is biased. Right. But wait a second here,
Speaker 1: So a seventy plus story building that doesn't use any
Speaker 1: more energy than it makes? How is that possible? All right? Now,
Speaker 1: assuming that in fact that claim is true, here's how
Speaker 1: they did it. First of all, it was it was
Speaker 1: designed by by two American architects, Gordon Gill and Adrian D. Smith. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming they are American. I know that they designed
Speaker 1: it in Chicago. Uh. The the building itself was completed
Speaker 1: in late early and Uh. The way that they generate
Speaker 1: energy is through several different methods. They use something called
Speaker 1: uh passive solar power. Actually they call it sunlight harvesting.
Speaker 1: That's how they refer to it and there on their website.
Speaker 1: But they also use wind turbines. They have two large
Speaker 1: sections of the building where it's designed to channel wind
Speaker 1: through these sections and wind turbines are in them. So
Speaker 1: it's like like a jet engine for your building kind of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were to look at the building face on,
Speaker 1: you would see that there were two levels within this building.
Speaker 1: So it's like the buildings in three big sections, right.
Speaker 1: So you see floors where obviously office space exists, and
Speaker 1: there's a chunk floors, and then there's this weird level,
Speaker 1: and then there's another chunk of floors and the weird level,
Speaker 1: and then the third chunk of floors. Those two weird
Speaker 1: levels are actually the wind turbine levels, and they're channeling
Speaker 1: the wind through. So if you the other thing is,
Speaker 1: if you were to look at the building in profile,
Speaker 1: the the the the the outward facing walls would look
Speaker 1: kind of curved from floor to floor because it's actually
Speaker 1: channeling the wind through those turbines. Um they also had
Speaker 1: photo voltaic cells also known as solar panels, and they
Speaker 1: use stuff like a raised floor ventilation and radiant heating
Speaker 1: and cooling ceilings to help control the temperature inside the
Speaker 1: building to reduce the need for using energy to to
Speaker 1: run the HVAC system. So that's how this building supposedly operates.
Speaker 1: It also makes it really uh easy to get all
Speaker 1: that sunlight because from the pictures I saw, it's the
Speaker 1: only really tall building in its area, there aren't any
Speaker 1: other neighboring skyscrapers butting up against this thing, right, which
Speaker 1: has to make it immenseally easier to to a catch
Speaker 1: that wind and betch the sunlight. Right. Harvesting the sunlight
Speaker 1: is a lot easier when you don't have another normous
Speaker 1: building casting a shadow on you. So that's that's generally
Speaker 1: how it's done, and of course that's uh kind of
Speaker 1: how all net zero buildings work in some to some extent.
Speaker 1: There there's an effort of actual energy production as well
Speaker 1: as energy conservation that's going on, so well, let's look
Speaker 1: at some of those features individually and see what they take.
Speaker 1: And now, I imagine everybody's heard of solar panels and
Speaker 1: wind turbines. Probably a lot of people aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: passive solar, right, yes, So, so like a solar panel
Speaker 1: would be an active solar system because you're actually actively
Speaker 1: grabbing that solar energy and converting it into electricity. What
Speaker 1: is passive solar? Passive solar is uh it's a design issue.
Speaker 1: It's hard to just added onto a building the way
Speaker 1: you might be able to. So take your average skyscraper
Speaker 1: that already exists, all right, you could stick solar panels
Speaker 1: all over it if that's a feasible upgrade. The passive
Speaker 1: solar is a design issue from the ground floor, and
Speaker 1: it means that essentially the building is constructed in a
Speaker 1: way to make perfect use of natural sunlight. Um And
Speaker 1: a lot of this just comes down to heating and cooling. Uh.
Speaker 1: I looked up the U. S Department of Energy says
Speaker 1: that the average home's utility bill in America, fifty four
Speaker 1: per cent of that is just heating and cooling. Heating
Speaker 1: and cooling is a huge amount of the power we
Speaker 1: use in our buildings and infrastructure because we like to
Speaker 1: be comfortable, right, Um, But like I like my I
Speaker 1: like my building cave cold, right well, you know, so
Speaker 1: we can you know, wave our hands at that. But
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if I could sit
Speaker 1: in an office sweaty and like get my work I have,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't recommend it. It's yeah, it's it's definitely,
Speaker 1: you know. So we we like to be comfortable. We
Speaker 1: keep our buildings at a nice temperature. Um. But this
Speaker 1: is really really costly if you're constantly pumping in cold air,
Speaker 1: pumping in hot air in order to do it. Passive
Speaker 1: solar design allows you to do this with natural angles
Speaker 1: of light from the sun. So what it has to
Speaker 1: do with is um how you orient the building. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the building is built in such a way
Speaker 1: with the passage of the sun in different seasons in mind.
Speaker 1: So it's built with side facing windows that are designed
Speaker 1: to allow sunlight in in the winter to naturally heat
Speaker 1: all the rooms, and designed so as to block the
Speaker 1: sun in the summer. And this is because the sun
Speaker 1: itself passes in a different arc depending upon the season,
Speaker 1: because the tilt of the earth. Keeping in mind, of course,
Speaker 1: we're talking about rotation of the earth and untilt of
Speaker 1: the earth, not the actual passage of the sun. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't important point. It does mean, however, or that
Speaker 1: you know, there are times, like you've probably noticed this,
Speaker 1: where there's certain times the year where at a particular
Speaker 1: time of day, sunlight just streams in through a window
Speaker 1: and blinds you, and you just you can't get anything done,
Speaker 1: so they have to move to some other part of
Speaker 1: the play house or or close a blind or something
Speaker 1: like that. But other parts of the year, during that
Speaker 1: same time of day, everything's fine. You don't have sunlight
Speaker 1: coming in through that window. Same sort of thing, except
Speaker 1: you're designing an entire building around that so that in
Speaker 1: the winter, the sunlight comes in, it hits surfaces. They're
Speaker 1: designed to absorb as much heat as possible and radiate
Speaker 1: that heat out throughout the day, so that way on
Speaker 1: during the winter months when it's cooler, the sunlight's actually
Speaker 1: warming the interior of your house, and it's staying warm
Speaker 1: longer than it would if it were made out of
Speaker 1: some other material. So the material itself has to be
Speaker 1: good at at absorbing that energy and then radiating it
Speaker 1: out over time. Another issue is just simple insulation. Sure,
Speaker 1: anybody who who if you've own to home or anything
Speaker 1: like that, you know that installation makes a huge difference
Speaker 1: in your energy costs, right, yeah, yeah, you know it's
Speaker 1: all the glass panels, the floor to ceiling kind of
Speaker 1: glass panels that we have on our current building actually
Speaker 1: that we're sitting in right now are gorgeous. But how
Speaker 1: energy efficient are they? Right? I don't know. They probably
Speaker 1: lose a lot of heat. You definitely want your building
Speaker 1: to be weather tight. That's kind of the way that
Speaker 1: that it's industry talks about it, and that will allow
Speaker 1: you to save a lot on your energy bills. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot of these things we're talking about are
Speaker 1: things that that, at least to some extent, existing buildings
Speaker 1: can do. But you, like you were saying, Joe, you
Speaker 1: can't take full advantage of it unless you're planning it
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. And it's harder to rotate a
Speaker 1: building after we've already set it up. Yeah, we put
Speaker 1: it up on stilts. Sadly, it's not not quite like
Speaker 1: some city where you just you know, pick this up
Speaker 1: and move it over here. Um. Yeah. And also the
Speaker 1: it's easier to do on a smaller scale than on
Speaker 1: a large scale like a like a skyscraper, especially if
Speaker 1: you're talking about the dense urban population where you've got
Speaker 1: lots of skyscrapers together, that might mean that you don't
Speaker 1: get even if you were to build it from the
Speaker 1: ground up, you might not get full sunlight all day
Speaker 1: long because of the way the other buildings are. You
Speaker 1: might only be able to have you know, one of
Speaker 1: these and every you know, three or four city blocks
Speaker 1: or something for them all to be as efficient as possible. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Pearl River Tower. You said it was
Speaker 1: the only building around that according to the pictures I've seen, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are no other skyscrapers that are immediately adjacent to it,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't it looks like it gets the full
Speaker 1: benefit of sunlight from where it is right now. So
Speaker 1: that would automatically kind of cut back on some of
Speaker 1: the advantages if you couldn't build it close to other buildings.
Speaker 1: And another challenge that we can think about UM with
Speaker 1: with net zero or at least low energy skyscrapers or
Speaker 1: high rises is um you've got to offset those costs
Speaker 1: you you do incur, right, so you can use passive
Speaker 1: solar to control your climate. But you still gotta turn
Speaker 1: on the toaster and you know, run you plug in
Speaker 1: your laptop and stuff like that. Where does that energy come? Right? So,
Speaker 1: so you need to have some sort of energy Uh,
Speaker 1: creation like generator is what you need. You need some
Speaker 1: form of generation to create the electricity you need for
Speaker 1: the to run the stuff in your building. So if
Speaker 1: even if you don't have a fusion reactor in your building, right,
Speaker 1: you're going to have Yeah, if you if you do
Speaker 1: have a fusion reactor in your building, please let us
Speaker 1: know because I would love to see that, but chances
Speaker 1: are you don't. So how do you generate that electricity?
Speaker 1: And uh, and really you're talking one of the other goals.
Speaker 1: We didn't really mention it, but one of the other
Speaker 1: goals for a net zero energy building is also to
Speaker 1: reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, which means that you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just fill up generators full of gasoline and
Speaker 1: crank them up and use that as the way to
Speaker 1: generate electricity. You need to find a way to generate it.
Speaker 1: That's that's clean and so uh, the that's where the
Speaker 1: photo voltaic cells and the wind turbines come into play, uh,
Speaker 1: to to harness the natural energies as much as possible.
Speaker 1: But again, when you're talking about a building that's challenging,
Speaker 1: right right, there's only so much you can do with
Speaker 1: wind turbines. And and study in two thousand nine found
Speaker 1: that by far, wind turbines are more efficient, uh costwise
Speaker 1: than than photovoltaics for doing this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they compared for for a mixed use community of about people.
Speaker 1: This was a study done by the Pacific Northwest National
Speaker 1: lab UM. They compared five different scenarios for this, and
Speaker 1: they found that that even in even in a city
Speaker 1: like Phoenix that has a relatively low amount of wind
Speaker 1: in a relatively high amount of sunlight, that um that yeah,
Speaker 1: wind farm would win. And and also you know, Joe
Speaker 1: you were pointing out earlier when we were talking before
Speaker 1: the podcast that uh that it really depends upon the
Speaker 1: ratio between the sides of the building that faced the
Speaker 1: sun and the top of the building. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I mean both of these things, whether it's wind or solar,
Speaker 1: they need some sort of freedom of access, right Like
Speaker 1: especially solar needs a direct access to the sunline. Wind
Speaker 1: I'd imagine. I actually don't know, and this would be
Speaker 1: interesting to find out, But do you get more uh
Speaker 1: wind if there's less other skyscraper around you, or if
Speaker 1: you're within a city skyline? Is that cut down on
Speaker 1: your access to it? Actually just depends upon the geography,
Speaker 1: because you can you can have what becomes a wind
Speaker 1: tunnel depending But there are certain parts of Atlanta, by
Speaker 1: the way, this is incredibly obvious. You might you might
Speaker 1: walk down one street and you think that's a nice breeze.
Speaker 1: You walk between the buildings on Peachtree Street near the
Speaker 1: Fox Theater, and then suddenly you are folding on for
Speaker 1: dear life. Oh yeah, sometimes I'm driving home and I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna sucked up in a cyclone and my
Speaker 1: car shakes, right, and then there's the ruby slippers that
Speaker 1: you wear all the time. It explains a lot, Joe.
Speaker 1: But but the point being that, yes, I mean the
Speaker 1: idea that that even if you were to coat the
Speaker 1: entire side of a building with some form of solar panel,
Speaker 1: and you know, they've talked about films that could be
Speaker 1: used to coat different services that could act as a
Speaker 1: photovoltaic cl Let's say that we get to that point
Speaker 1: where we can do that, you still are limited by
Speaker 1: the fact that that side of the building is only
Speaker 1: going to be exposed to the sun during part of
Speaker 1: the day, right, so part of the day it's going
Speaker 1: to have a lot of sunlight hitting it. The top
Speaker 1: of the building is going to have sunlight hitting it
Speaker 1: for most of the day. But if if you've built
Speaker 1: a very tall but relatively skinny building in the in
Speaker 1: the sense that when you get to the roof you
Speaker 1: only have a small percentage of the square footage of
Speaker 1: the roof is only a tiny fraction of what the
Speaker 1: sides are. That's not an efficient way to generate energy.
Speaker 1: The taller you go, you're increasing the ratio of your
Speaker 1: energy needs to your ability to harvest solar energy exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, and tall buildings like you know, the
Speaker 1: the HVAC system that we're talking about. Let's let's assuming that,
Speaker 1: of course, the passive solar approach is not completely eliminate
Speaker 1: the HVAC requirements. And really, and if we're talking about
Speaker 1: a realistic skyscraper, I can't imagine a scenario where passive
Speaker 1: soldier takes care of all of that. Then you could
Speaker 1: force it to people. People are just gonna have to
Speaker 1: to shiver and sweat depending upon the time of year,
Speaker 1: or in Atlanta, depending upon the day, since we seem
Speaker 1: to be going through winter, summer, and spring simultaneously this
Speaker 1: year this week. So in that case, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the more floors you have, the greater the
Speaker 1: amount of energy you need to maintain the climate as well.
Speaker 1: So again, the bigger you get, the higher your footprints
Speaker 1: going or the deeper your footprints going to go. I
Speaker 1: guess we could say if we're gonna use that metaphor
Speaker 1: so that that makes it a challenge. Also does it
Speaker 1: depend on I mean, you know, you you mentioned that
Speaker 1: this this Chinese building was an office space. Is it
Speaker 1: going to take a lot more energy cost for a community,
Speaker 1: for for a living community. I would imagine that it
Speaker 1: probably would, because if you're talking on office space, one
Speaker 1: of the things you could do to help limit the
Speaker 1: energy is you essentially say, you know, at X time,
Speaker 1: this office building is essentially closed and you can still
Speaker 1: be here, but with the lights right right, you may
Speaker 1: not have electricity or heat or or or air conditioning,
Speaker 1: but you could still be here. Whereas, of course, if
Speaker 1: it's residential oxygen now I don't think it's gotten quite
Speaker 1: that bad. But yeah, if you for residential, clearly you
Speaker 1: would need to have access to all of those things.
Speaker 1: More people shower, I would say, at home than they
Speaker 1: do in their offices. So well maybe you probably you
Speaker 1: have obviously not seen the shower on this floor, um,
Speaker 1: or the shower at my home for that man, it's
Speaker 1: a talent only shower. We have, you know, their benefits
Speaker 1: to go with the job. But yeah, so there are
Speaker 1: some challenges here. In fact, we cannot really say for
Speaker 1: certain if if a high rise like a skyscraper could
Speaker 1: really be a net zero energy building, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about in the middle of an urban space, it would
Speaker 1: be an incredible challenge. Um. Maybe we could find more
Speaker 1: efficient ways to generate electricity through things like wind power
Speaker 1: or solar power, and that would help, but you're still
Speaker 1: talking about a huge energy need. Another thing we could
Speaker 1: do is looking at energy conservation, so cutting down on
Speaker 1: things like vampire power UH standby power. So essentially that's
Speaker 1: when you know you have your computer turned off, but
Speaker 1: it's plugged in and it's still pulling some power from
Speaker 1: the UH from the building. If you were able to
Speaker 1: eliminate that and have you know the switches where when
Speaker 1: you turn the switch off, that's it. No more powers
Speaker 1: going through there. That would help. Or or you know,
Speaker 1: the per capita water use in America something like six
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand gallons per per family per year,
Speaker 1: and that's that's an enormous amount. That's almost twice the
Speaker 1: global average. So yeah, so so cutting down that would
Speaker 1: help a great deal as well. So I think it
Speaker 1: definitely would be a huge challenge and possibly even an
Speaker 1: impossible one right now with today's technology. That that's not
Speaker 1: to say that we would not someday find a way
Speaker 1: to achieve this, but uh and and if any at
Speaker 1: any rate, going through this would mean reducing our energy consumption,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing. I mean, whether or not
Speaker 1: we believe the claims about this building in China, we
Speaker 1: do know that now we can create what are called
Speaker 1: low energy building that you know, that's it's definitely feasible
Speaker 1: to create a building that, though it might not completely
Speaker 1: break even it uses very little. Even even less is
Speaker 1: a pretty terrific amount when you go for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. So and there are some buildings out there,
Speaker 1: and they're usually smaller ones that you know, they take
Speaker 1: some energy from the grid, but then they may generate
Speaker 1: energy throughout parts of the year and actually sell energy
Speaker 1: back to the grid. So ultimately, if you look at
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at the receipt at the
Speaker 1: end of the year, you might say, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: building ultimately breaks even even though during parts of the
Speaker 1: year it has to consume energy from the grid. Um,
Speaker 1: So there are those options as well. And of course,
Speaker 1: maybe one day we'll reach a point where this won't
Speaker 1: be as big a a priority. For instance, maybe if
Speaker 1: we somehow crack that fusion problem, then in k yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got an energy surplus at that point. And if
Speaker 1: you have an energy surplus, then these considerations are no
Speaker 1: longer really important. Now, I would stress that a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that go into this this design process
Speaker 1: are beneficial in other ways. Besides the fact that they
Speaker 1: help cut down our energy consumption, they also cut down
Speaker 1: on greenhouse gas emissions, which also then means that we
Speaker 1: have less of an impact on on climate change. So
Speaker 1: there are other reasons to pursue these technologies besides just
Speaker 1: right right right. But I'm saying that even if we
Speaker 1: get to the day where where fusion is completely possible,
Speaker 1: which you know, I hope that day comes. I just
Speaker 1: I just don't you know, I don't see it happening tomorrow,
Speaker 1: but if it, if it happens, maybe ten years from
Speaker 1: now or twenty years from now, I still think that
Speaker 1: the design principles of the net zero energy buildings are
Speaker 1: important for us to consider for the other benefits besides
Speaker 1: energy consumption. So uh, that's the answer I give to
Speaker 1: people who who think that. You know, they say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: don't worry because technology is going to solve our energy problems,
Speaker 1: so we shouldn't have to worry about this at all.
Speaker 1: My response is, no, we should definitely look into this
Speaker 1: because it means that we come up with new ideas
Speaker 1: that help the world, even if it even if the
Speaker 1: energy consumption angle goes out the window. Well, I love
Speaker 1: to speculate about technology as much as anybody, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's really easy when you're not the one making it. Yeah. Sure, no,
Speaker 1: I'm working I'm working on to keep our feet on
Speaker 1: the ground. Yes, yes, yes. The only reason I say
Speaker 1: all that is because I know people. I actually know
Speaker 1: people in my life who have the attitude of that's
Speaker 1: not worth worrying about because someone smarter than I am
Speaker 1: is working on it. Just just throw that McDonald's rapper
Speaker 1: right at that baby dear's head and technology a robot
Speaker 1: will come along and pick up both the baby deer
Speaker 1: and the rapper, use plasmification to turn them into useful energy,
Speaker 1: and Bambi and your fast food will power your home
Speaker 1: for the next three hours. I know people who think
Speaker 1: you want there are people who think like that, and my, my,
Speaker 1: my perspective is that that is not necessarily a responsible philosophy.
Speaker 1: The idea that oh, we don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: it today because tomorrow will solve the problem. Well, the
Speaker 1: only way that works is if we actually work on
Speaker 1: solving the problem. That's my point. I know that we
Speaker 1: talk a lot, and especially in this episode, about the
Speaker 1: challenges that we face, but honestly, if there's one thing
Speaker 1: I think human beings have proven themselves capable of doing,
Speaker 1: it's meeting challenges that previous generations thought as being impassable.
Speaker 1: There was just no way we're going to get around it,
Speaker 1: get over it, get through it. And yet time and
Speaker 1: time again we have found ways to fix problems that
Speaker 1: people thought were unsolvable. Oh, of course, I mean, like
Speaker 1: every cool thing we've ever done was deemed impossible, right
Speaker 1: and so and so I really do think that you know,
Speaker 1: knowing that what what the challenges are, that's definitely important.
Speaker 1: But don't give up thinking that those challenges are are
Speaker 1: are hard barriers that will never get through. That just
Speaker 1: means that we need to rise to the occasion is
Speaker 1: ultimately what I think. Um So, guys, if you are
Speaker 1: interested in these sort of topics, these futuristic topics, then
Speaker 1: we highly recommend you get in touch with us and
Speaker 1: you can follow us on Facebook. You can follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter, you can follow us on good goal plus. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can go to the blogs fw thinking dot com
Speaker 1: that actually has links to all the things I mentioned.
Speaker 1: You can find me the various links to the videos
Speaker 1: the podcast that you're listening to. Now, if you want
Speaker 1: to listen to some older podcasts and you don't have
Speaker 1: time to download them, you can listen to them directly
Speaker 1: on the website. We have lots of information there and
Speaker 1: we want you to be part of this conversation. Let
Speaker 1: us know what what's exciting to you, and we will
Speaker 1: make sure that we incorporate that into our future discussions.
Speaker 1: We really look forward to hearing from you. And we
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this topic and the future of technology, visit forward Thinking
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