The basic infrastructure that controls plumbing, electricity and more is vital to your individual agency, says engineering professor Deb Chachra. She offers a crash course on how these systems connect to shape our lives — and suggests some key improvements for providing long-term, sustainable energy to everyone. After the talk, Sherrell reflects on how these solutions, if widely implemented, could transform lives across the world.
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[00:00:00] TED Audio Collective
[00:00:02] Growing up in Seattle, environmental education started early for me.
[00:00:16] Kindergarten taught us to recycle, turn off lights, and avoid waste.
[00:00:20] As Planeteers, yes, Captain Planet, we believed we were saving the world.
[00:00:26] I assumed everyone had the same training, so imagine my shock when I got to college
[00:00:31] and realized my roommates had never learned to recycle or didn't have access to those services.
[00:00:38] Diving into the trash to separate paper from plastic, I realized how flawed the system was.
[00:00:45] No matter how green we tried to live, the scale of the problem felt insurmountable, and something had to change.
[00:00:52] This is TED Tech, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective.
[00:00:57] I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey.
[00:00:59] Our speaker today is Deb Chachra, a material scientist and a professor at Olin College in Massachusetts.
[00:01:07] In her talk, she explains that individual actions to reduce carbon emissions simply won't be enough to help our environment,
[00:01:15] especially when the systems that power our cities and lives are outdated and inequitable,
[00:01:21] built on principles that no longer serve us.
[00:01:25] Deb breaks down what's gone wrong, and how we can rebuild it for a better future.
[00:01:32] But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.
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[00:02:09] Joining me will be BCG's top experts, as well as my co-host Jean, BCG's conversational Gen AI agent.
[00:02:15] Blending human creativity with AI innovation, this podcast promises an unmatched listening journey.
[00:02:22] Join us on Imagine This from BCG.
[00:02:26] What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done?
[00:02:31] Who are the people creating this technology, and what do they think?
[00:02:36] I'm Rana El-Kaloubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI.
[00:02:44] Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center.
[00:02:51] Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI.
[00:02:54] And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in.
[00:03:01] And now, Deb Chakra takes the TED stage.
[00:03:05] I'm going to tell you about the most boring part of my day.
[00:03:09] So, on a typical evening, I come home to my apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I turn on the lights.
[00:03:16] I stream music to my stereo from my phone.
[00:03:19] I head into the kitchen to make dinner.
[00:03:21] For making something like pasta, right, I would get water from the sink, and I'd put it on the stove to heat up.
[00:03:26] I'd get vegetables out of the fridge.
[00:03:28] I would get olive oil, spices out of the pantry.
[00:03:32] I can have dinner on the table in about 20 minutes.
[00:03:34] I'm pretty good at this.
[00:03:36] And then it takes me maybe another 10 to clean up, right?
[00:03:39] So, that's like scraps in the garbage, wash the dishes, and I'm done.
[00:03:43] Boring, right?
[00:03:45] But here's the thing.
[00:03:46] When I come in the door and I flip that light switch,
[00:03:49] those electrodes might be getting their push from a nuclear reactor,
[00:03:53] from a hydroelectricity project a thousand miles away.
[00:03:57] The gas in my stove comes from national and local pipelines.
[00:04:01] It heats my house.
[00:04:02] It also heats the hot water that I do the dishes in.
[00:04:05] And then that water drains to one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in the country,
[00:04:09] and then out to Boston Harbor.
[00:04:11] So, alone in my kitchen, I am a continent-spanning colossus, right?
[00:04:17] Like, I am a cyborg.
[00:04:19] I have these technological systems at my literal fingertips.
[00:04:23] So, these are infrastructural utilities, right?
[00:04:25] So, there's energy, it's fuel, it's electricity, it's water, it's sewage,
[00:04:29] it's telecommunications, it's the supply chains behind that.
[00:04:33] And these are the systems that make my life as I know it possible.
[00:04:37] And on that typical night, they're basically invisible, at least invisible to me, right?
[00:04:42] There are thousands of people whose life and time and work and care
[00:04:47] goes into making sure these systems function.
[00:04:50] They are the real world of technology in which we all live.
[00:04:55] So, Amartya Sen, he's a developmental economist,
[00:04:57] and he is known for studying some of the poorest communities on the planet.
[00:05:02] He made the case that the reason why we want money
[00:05:05] is usually not because we want it for its own sake,
[00:05:08] but because it gives us agency.
[00:05:11] In his words, it gives us the freedom to live the kind of life
[00:05:14] that we have reason to value.
[00:05:17] So, my parents moved from India to Canada before I was born.
[00:05:20] I grew up in Canada.
[00:05:23] And I think about the way that my foremothers would have spent
[00:05:27] so much of their day getting clean water, getting fuel for cooking.
[00:05:33] And I actually think about the fact that
[00:05:35] a very large fraction of the planet, that is still true today.
[00:05:40] And that is especially true for the people who look pretty much like me, right?
[00:05:44] This is the main thing that they do with their days.
[00:05:47] The difference between my life and theirs is not so much
[00:05:50] that I have a bank account, how much I get paid.
[00:05:53] It's a lot more to do with where I am.
[00:05:56] Because my individual agency, my ability to do things in the world,
[00:06:01] is really underpinned by these shared infrastructural networks.
[00:06:04] I'm going to give you an example,
[00:06:05] because the most significant example of this is artificial light, right?
[00:06:08] So, having light on demand means that you can kind of do what you want
[00:06:14] when you want to do it, right?
[00:06:15] It's a superpower.
[00:06:16] And this is what I mean by agency, right?
[00:06:18] It's that ability to act in the world.
[00:06:21] So, these infrastructural networks make our life possible
[00:06:23] by bringing these resources to where we are and to where we use them.
[00:06:27] So, as you heard, I'm an engineering professor.
[00:06:30] And that means I think a lot about the physical reality of the world.
[00:06:34] And, you know, one of the great truths
[00:06:36] is that energy is the thing that we need for anything to work, right?
[00:06:40] Like, we pay for it in dollars,
[00:06:41] but energy is the true currency of the material world.
[00:06:45] And in many cases, the most, you know,
[00:06:48] efficient or the most powerful way
[00:06:50] to harness and distribute resources
[00:06:52] is through networks.
[00:06:54] And networks are intrinsically collective, right?
[00:06:58] So, if you think about, like, roads and rails,
[00:07:00] they have to go somewhere.
[00:07:02] Telecommunication systems become more valuable
[00:07:04] when more and more people are connected to them.
[00:07:07] Electricity is cheaper.
[00:07:08] For thousands of years,
[00:07:10] people have had shared water supplies
[00:07:11] because if you have a bunch of people living close together,
[00:07:15] everybody needs water every day.
[00:07:17] Water flows downhill, right?
[00:07:19] So, it makes sense to cooperate,
[00:07:20] to build a reservoir,
[00:07:21] to build an aqueduct,
[00:07:22] to build pipelines,
[00:07:23] to bring water to where your shared community is.
[00:07:27] And, of course,
[00:07:27] you have a bunch of people living close together.
[00:07:29] Where the value of some kind of shared sewage treatment
[00:07:32] very quickly also becomes clear.
[00:07:35] So, our infrastructural systems connect us to each other,
[00:07:39] but they also connect us to the land around us.
[00:07:42] And this is now true really on a global scale, right?
[00:07:46] So, if we think about the internet,
[00:07:48] we think about mobile phones,
[00:07:50] we think about, particularly,
[00:07:51] so shipping, transportation, aviation,
[00:07:54] these are now planetary networks.
[00:07:58] And, our infrastructural systems also connect us
[00:08:00] to our past and to our future.
[00:08:02] Because, the networks that we live in today
[00:08:05] are the physical manifestation
[00:08:07] of the values and choices
[00:08:09] that were made by people who came before us, right?
[00:08:11] It's like, what are those networks going to be?
[00:08:13] How would we use them?
[00:08:15] Who would benefit from them?
[00:08:17] And, of course, who would be harmed by them?
[00:08:19] And, of course, you know,
[00:08:20] we look at these networks today
[00:08:21] and we're like,
[00:08:22] that seems like a really uneven distribution of benefits
[00:08:24] or even an unjust distribution of benefits
[00:08:28] that's worth keeping in mind
[00:08:29] because, of course,
[00:08:30] we are the people who are now making the decisions
[00:08:32] for those who are going to come after us, right?
[00:08:35] So, I think of this as infrastructural citizenship.
[00:08:38] The idea that we have a relationship to each other,
[00:08:42] actually, we have a responsibility to each other,
[00:08:45] that has nothing to do with what it says on our passport,
[00:08:48] but it has everything to do with the fact
[00:08:50] that we are like physical living beings
[00:08:52] that are located somewhere on the planet.
[00:08:55] So, you know, I said that infrastructure
[00:08:57] is how we get our agency,
[00:08:59] our freedom to act in the world to do things,
[00:09:01] and it's all powered by energy
[00:09:03] because everything is powered by energy.
[00:09:05] And that means that for most of us,
[00:09:07] most of our energy usage is then mediated.
[00:09:10] It goes through these infrastructural systems
[00:09:12] because they shape and they enable
[00:09:13] what we can do every day.
[00:09:15] So, it's things like,
[00:09:16] where does the electricity come from?
[00:09:19] How is it generated?
[00:09:20] What kind of transportation options do you have?
[00:09:22] Do you drive?
[00:09:23] Do you take public transit?
[00:09:25] Do you fly?
[00:09:26] Things like, where does your water come from?
[00:09:28] Or how do you heat or cool your home?
[00:09:31] So, many of these physical systems then,
[00:09:34] they both enable what we can do,
[00:09:36] but they also make it really hard to do other things,
[00:09:38] to do alternatives to those things.
[00:09:40] Our infrastructural systems,
[00:09:43] basically because of the way that we use energy
[00:09:45] and because they shape and enable what we can do,
[00:09:47] it means that they also constrain the things
[00:09:49] that we can't do, right?
[00:09:50] It makes it much harder to do things
[00:09:52] that are not the things that are made possible
[00:09:55] by these systems.
[00:09:56] And what that means is,
[00:09:57] actually, this is a thing we're all familiar with,
[00:09:59] right?
[00:10:00] Because we know how hard it is
[00:10:02] to move the needle on climate change
[00:10:04] as individuals,
[00:10:05] that our individual personal decisions,
[00:10:07] like, it's hard for them to do anything
[00:10:09] because there's really no such thing
[00:10:11] as a personal carbon footprint
[00:10:13] because things go through these systems.
[00:10:16] So, what that means is that we know
[00:10:18] that we need to decarbonize these systems, right?
[00:10:20] But these are physical systems
[00:10:22] that are embedded in the landscape.
[00:10:24] And that means that we need to think about
[00:10:26] these sort of landscapes as a whole.
[00:10:28] As we think about decarbonizing these systems,
[00:10:31] we can think about making them resilient
[00:10:32] and transformative.
[00:10:34] The reason why this matters
[00:10:35] is that these physical systems
[00:10:36] that are embedded in our landscapes,
[00:10:39] we think of them as boring and reliable,
[00:10:41] but our landscapes, of course,
[00:10:43] have been stable.
[00:10:44] And we know that that's not the case anymore, right?
[00:10:47] Climate change, that's what climate change is.
[00:10:49] It's making our landscapes less stable.
[00:10:52] And that means, you know,
[00:10:53] this is longer heat waves,
[00:10:55] this is stronger hurricanes,
[00:10:57] this is fires, this is flooding.
[00:10:59] Everything that we think about
[00:11:00] as extreme weather events,
[00:11:03] you know, this idea of a natural disaster, right?
[00:11:06] The thing that makes it a disaster
[00:11:07] is precisely that it's not natural, right?
[00:11:10] It's that it affects humans
[00:11:11] and human communities.
[00:11:13] We, you know,
[00:11:14] we talk about the severity of natural disasters
[00:11:16] and what we often feel that severity
[00:11:18] through the impact on infrastructural systems.
[00:11:21] So, you know,
[00:11:22] we think about like what systems go down,
[00:11:24] how long they go down for,
[00:11:25] how long it takes for them to come back up again,
[00:11:28] how big the outage is, right?
[00:11:30] And then who's affected.
[00:11:32] And because our landscapes are becoming less stable,
[00:11:35] sooner or later,
[00:11:36] the who's affected will be all of us.
[00:11:39] But we can flip this around.
[00:11:42] Because as we decarbonize these systems,
[00:11:45] as we transform them,
[00:11:47] we have the opportunity to make them resilient,
[00:11:50] to make them responsive,
[00:11:51] to make them more equitable.
[00:11:53] This, I mean, our infrastructural systems,
[00:11:55] they are the most powerful tool that we have
[00:11:58] for how we can respond to climate change.
[00:12:01] And we know that we can do this, right?
[00:12:03] Because after decades of policy commitments,
[00:12:05] we've done the research,
[00:12:07] we have the renewable energy technology
[00:12:09] to transform this.
[00:12:11] We know that there's at least a pathway.
[00:12:13] And once we know that a pathway exists,
[00:12:15] we know that many pathways exist.
[00:12:18] But we can only choose
[00:12:19] to walk those pathways together, right?
[00:12:21] This is no longer an engineering problem
[00:12:23] to be solved.
[00:12:24] And this is where
[00:12:25] being an infrastructural citizen comes in, right?
[00:12:28] It's this idea that we can sort of stand together
[00:12:30] to identify and articulate
[00:12:32] the benefits of these systems,
[00:12:34] starting with the fact
[00:12:35] that they're really not economic, right?
[00:12:36] The way that these make our lives work
[00:12:38] is not just a question of money.
[00:12:42] And that's even more true for the harms, right?
[00:12:45] That we can't think of these
[00:12:46] as sort of monetary harms,
[00:12:47] the harms that we do to each other,
[00:12:49] the harms that we do to our communities,
[00:12:52] the harms that we do to our shared ecosystem.
[00:12:55] So I said I think a lot about
[00:12:56] the physical reality, right?
[00:12:57] So the physical reality of our planet
[00:13:00] is that energy is decentralized,
[00:13:03] it's distributed,
[00:13:05] it's abundant,
[00:13:06] it's endlessly renewing.
[00:13:09] But that's not the case for matter.
[00:13:11] Our planet is mostly
[00:13:12] a closed system for matter.
[00:13:14] And we know that we're really hitting
[00:13:15] these kind of physical limits
[00:13:17] of the idea that we can take stuff
[00:13:19] out of the ground
[00:13:19] and we transform it
[00:13:21] and we consume it
[00:13:21] and then we dump those atoms
[00:13:22] somewhere else, right?
[00:13:24] Because this is what happens
[00:13:25] with CO2 in the atmosphere
[00:13:27] from fossil fuels,
[00:13:28] it's e-waste in landfills,
[00:13:30] it's microplastics in the ocean.
[00:13:33] The thing that's changed
[00:13:35] is that we can now make the decision
[00:13:38] to get off this one-way conveyor belt
[00:13:39] from extraction to pollution
[00:13:42] because we can use renewable energy
[00:13:44] to close these materials loops.
[00:13:46] And we know that we really want to do this,
[00:13:49] we actually really need to do this
[00:13:50] because what we're looking at doing
[00:13:52] is transforming the entire technological basis
[00:13:55] of human civilization, right?
[00:13:56] No biggie.
[00:13:58] So this is the work
[00:14:00] and we are just at the beginning
[00:14:02] of this work.
[00:14:04] And that means we know
[00:14:05] we don't have all the answers.
[00:14:06] But we do know
[00:14:08] that we want infrastructural networks
[00:14:10] that embody an ethics of care
[00:14:12] and not the utilitarian calculus
[00:14:14] of harms and benefits.
[00:14:17] Because we know
[00:14:18] we don't have all the answers,
[00:14:18] we actually expect
[00:14:19] to get better answers,
[00:14:21] it makes sense for us
[00:14:22] to build out systems
[00:14:23] that are small scale,
[00:14:24] that are reversible,
[00:14:25] that are responsive,
[00:14:26] that are exploratory,
[00:14:28] and then to connect these together
[00:14:29] to make these larger networks.
[00:14:31] And they need to make sense
[00:14:33] for who they're for
[00:14:34] because they give us
[00:14:35] the freedom to live
[00:14:35] the kind of lives
[00:14:36] that we have reason to value.
[00:14:39] We want to do this
[00:14:40] at a local scale
[00:14:40] and we also want to do it
[00:14:41] at a global scale
[00:14:43] because if you can't solve a problem
[00:14:44] with the same mindset
[00:14:45] that created it,
[00:14:46] you also can't solve a problem
[00:14:48] if you're not thinking
[00:14:49] on the same scale
[00:14:50] as the problem, right?
[00:14:51] So this is not
[00:14:52] a do-it-yourself thing.
[00:14:54] This is about
[00:14:55] do it together but everywhere.
[00:14:58] So in the 20th century,
[00:15:00] we built out these kind of
[00:15:01] massive monolithic systems.
[00:15:03] And I have to say,
[00:15:03] look, I am a fan
[00:15:04] of our charismatic megastructures.
[00:15:07] So in the U.S.,
[00:15:07] that's the Golden Gate Bridge,
[00:15:09] it's the Hoover Dam, right?
[00:15:11] These were built as monuments
[00:15:12] and they were built to endure.
[00:15:14] But in the 21st century,
[00:15:16] our infrastructural systems
[00:15:17] will need to endure
[00:15:18] not like monuments
[00:15:19] but like forests.
[00:15:21] So if you think about
[00:15:22] a forest ecosystem,
[00:15:23] it's powered by the sun,
[00:15:25] it's rooted in the earth,
[00:15:27] there's no waste,
[00:15:29] everything is basically
[00:15:30] used to grow new things.
[00:15:32] It endures,
[00:15:34] but it actually evolves
[00:15:35] and changes with time.
[00:15:36] And of course,
[00:15:37] it provides a place
[00:15:38] where all who live there
[00:15:39] can thrive.
[00:15:41] Our infrastructural systems
[00:15:43] are how we take care
[00:15:44] of each other at scale.
[00:15:45] So that we can take care
[00:15:46] of each other as individuals.
[00:15:48] They underpin our agency
[00:15:51] and they really foster
[00:15:53] and allow us to develop
[00:15:54] our social relationships
[00:15:55] with each other.
[00:15:57] And that's especially true
[00:15:58] with things like
[00:15:58] global communications, right?
[00:15:59] That means that this is now
[00:16:00] culture on a global scale.
[00:16:04] All of these are about
[00:16:05] what it means to be human, right?
[00:16:08] And that means that
[00:16:09] a commitment to a shared
[00:16:10] infrastructural future
[00:16:11] is a commitment
[00:16:13] to our shared humanity.
[00:16:14] So this is the world
[00:16:15] that we can create together.
[00:16:18] Thank you.
[00:16:23] That was Deb Chakra
[00:16:24] at the Bloomberg Green Festival.
[00:16:30] Over 250 towns and cities
[00:16:33] in the United States
[00:16:34] have pledged to be 100% powered
[00:16:36] by renewable energy by 2050.
[00:16:39] So far, about 49 cities
[00:16:42] have reported achieving this.
[00:16:43] These cities adopt energies
[00:16:45] like wind, solar, geothermal,
[00:16:47] and hydroelectric power
[00:16:48] to turn on their dishwashers,
[00:16:50] ACs, and vacuum cleaners.
[00:16:52] This move is meant to help
[00:16:53] curb the climate crisis
[00:16:55] and help stabilize the environment.
[00:16:57] Even a larger city
[00:16:59] like Los Angeles, for example,
[00:17:01] is positioning itself
[00:17:02] to be fully powered
[00:17:03] by renewable energy by 2045.
[00:17:05] It's a lofty goal,
[00:17:08] but if they can accomplish it,
[00:17:09] this will change the dynamics
[00:17:11] of entire populations
[00:17:12] by implementing
[00:17:14] large-scale energy solutions
[00:17:15] that almost everyone
[00:17:17] can benefit from.
[00:17:18] Chakra urges us to rethink
[00:17:20] how we tackle climate change
[00:17:22] by transforming these systems,
[00:17:24] making them accessible,
[00:17:25] and designing them
[00:17:26] with a clear understanding
[00:17:28] of who and what
[00:17:29] might be left behind.
[00:17:31] Only through
[00:17:31] responsible systems change
[00:17:33] can we create
[00:17:34] better solutions
[00:17:35] in our fight
[00:17:36] against climate change.
[00:17:39] And that's it for today.
[00:17:41] TED Tech is part
[00:17:42] of the TED Audio Collective.
[00:17:44] This episode was produced
[00:17:45] by Nita Bird-Morrence,
[00:17:47] edited by Alejandra Salazar,
[00:17:49] and fact-checked
[00:17:50] by Julia Dickerson.
[00:17:51] Special thanks to
[00:17:52] Maria Latias,
[00:17:53] Farrah DeGrange,
[00:17:55] Daniela Belarezo,
[00:17:56] and Roxanne Heilish.
[00:17:58] I'm Sherelle Dorsey.
[00:18:00] Thanks for listening in.