That we have the science to develop a renewable
energy although we don't have it at the scale or
at the, with the economic framework that's necessary for massive use.
But, still, the reaction seems muted compared to the scale of the problem,
and one of the reasons that people have speculated that that's the case is
that we humans have a real hard time thinking long-term.
You know, we, we like gratification.
We like to get something done and then it's done and we
feel good about it.
You know, they, and many of you will know this
experiment about a delayed gratification where the the toddler is looking
at a marshmallow and is told if he doesn't eat
that marshmallow for five minutes he's going to get more stuff right.
And a lot of kids just as soon
as the experimenter's not there eat that marshmallow.
And in, the ones, some of them can wait, some of
them do things, the way they go like this, they don't
look at the marshmallow.
They, they do all these things so that they, they
can think of the long term, project into the future.
And scientists have studied these kids many years, over many years.
And they find the ones who could really wait are the ones who
do better on their tests, who seem to have more success in their lives.
And so the speculation is that it's, we have, if you can think in the
long term, if you can delay gratification lots of good things
will come in the wake of that willingness to delay gratification.
But the temptation to grab the gratification
right away is strong, you want to
employ more people tomorrow, so you want
a quick industrilization, we want cheaper gas.
We want we want to be able to cool our, houses in the summer more efficiently.
All these things, [SOUND] we can do right now.
We can do right now.
The long term consequence of doing
those things right now, scientists understand but
the rest of us seem to be, just focused on the near term.