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When we physicists look in outer space for alien life
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we don't look for little green men.
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We look for type 1, type 2 and type 3 civilizations.
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A type one civilization has harnessed planetary power.
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They control earthquakes, the weather, volcanoes.
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They have cities on the ocean.
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Anything planetary they control, that's type one.
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A type two civilization is stellar.
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They've exhausted the power of a planet
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and they get their energy directly from their mother star.
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They don't just go and get a sun tan on a weekend,
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they use solar flares.
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They use the power of the sun itself to energize
their huge machines.
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Eventually they exhaust the power of a star
and they go galactic.
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They harness the power of billions of stars
within a galaxy.
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Now, what are we on this scale?
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We are type zero.
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We don't even rate on this scale.
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We get our energy from -- not from stars or galaxies --
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we get our energy from dead plants: oil and coal.
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Historians will look back and say:
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"Holy shit! They were making materials, selling them
for corporation profit
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over and over and over and over again with absolutely
no reference to what the planet had
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and recycling protocols and everything else.
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They were burning fossil fuels at a million times
the rate of their actual renewability.
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They're gonna laugh at us, wondering what the hell kind of
a primitive dumb-ass species we actually were.
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If we even survive to reach that point.
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From an extra-terrestial perspective
our global civilization is clearly
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on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces:
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preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens
and the future habitability of the planet.
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This transition is also the most important because
it's not clear if we're gonna make it.
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When we look at outer space we see no evidence of
type 1, 2 or 3 anywhere.
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No evidence whatsoever.
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The mathematics say that there should be thousands
of type 1, 2 and 3 civilizations in the galaxy.
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We see no evidence of any whatsoever. And why is that?
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Because the transition from type zero to type one
is the most dangerous of all transitions.
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We may not make it.
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I hope everyone out there will understand that either
we change or we die.
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War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering
will not change in the monetary system.
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That is, there'll be very little significant change.
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It's going to take the re-design of our culture and our values
and it has to be related to the carrying capacity of the Earth.
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Not some human opinion or some politicians' notions
of the way the world ought to be
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or some religious notions of the conduct of human affairs.
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So again, the generation now alive and our grandchildren are the most
important generations ever to walk the surface of the Earth.
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We are the generations that will determine whether we make
the transition from type zero to type one
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or we destroy ourselves because of our arrogance
and our weapons.
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Now, every time I read the newspaper I see evidence of this
historic transition from type zero to type one
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and I am privileged to be alive in the most important era
in the history of the human race:
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the transition from type zero to type one.
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The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism
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and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.
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A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth
as a single organism
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and recognizes that an organism at war with itsself
is doomed.
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We are one planet.
