Actor and producer Robert Downey Jr. launched a group Tuesday night at Amazon.com Inc.’s re:MARS conference in Las Vegas that plans to use advanced technologies to clean up the environment “significantly if not totally” in about 10 years.

Somewhat more specifically, Downey Jr. said, robotics and nanotechnology, as well as artificial intelligence, could help clean up the environment more quickly than people realize. Indeed, the coalition’s goal is to accomplish the goal in 10 years after it starts next April — when, he joked, he would hold a massive retirement party since he will be 65 years old.

At this point, it’s not at all clear how the Footprint Coalition would do this, since the bare-bones website that just launched is little more than a place to sign up for the group’s newsletter.

Why launch the project at re:MARS? Well, perhaps because he was going to be in Vegas already, but Downey Jr. made the case that the several thousand software developers at the conference will be some of the people who will leverage those technologies. And of course, they may well use Amazon’s cloud and other technologies on display this week at re:MARS, which is exploring the intersection of machine learning, automation, robotics and space, thus the acronym.

“I feel like I’m looking at the steering committee of the path we’ll choose,” he told the audience.

His keynote talk was so wide-ranging — from his troubled period in the 1980s to his hugely successful run as Tony Stark in the “Iron Man” series and the entire “Marvel Cinematic Universe” — that even Amazon’s Alexa kept telling him jokingly onstage that he was wandering. But the actor revealed an existential worry about the future of humankind. “I have to admit I have a quiet sense of crisis,” he said.

He also admitted that he was part of it, given his jet-setting life. “I’m a one-man carbon footprint nightmare colossus,” he said.

Not least, he conceded that the whole idea is kind of crazy. He said that when he met with experts about six weeks ago, one said most environmental problems could be solved with advanced technologies in about 10 years. But when Downey Jr. suggested forming a coalition to make it happen, there was dead silence among those experts.

“I get it — bureaucracy, turf wars, trade secrecy, ego, cooperation across state and federal lines, let alone internationally,” he said. “It’s a kumbaya pipe dream, it’s a logistical fustercluck, it’s an impossibility.”

Then he added, “Kind of like movies. To me, that’s kind of a turn-on.” And even an “abject failure,” he said, “would still be the best idea” he ever had. “That’s why I’m here.”

Downey Jr. also displayed a keen interest in AI in particular, and it doesn’t appear to be all that superficial. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon AI, told SiliconANGLE that he and his team had helped brief Downey Jr. on the evolution of AI and of course the AI services offered by its Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud computing unit. And according to Variety, he and his wife Susan Downey have been producing a documentary series about AI for YouTube to explore AI and the impact it will have on people’s lives.

Over the next three days, Amazon and conference attendees are exploring what sounds like a list of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos key passions, with two keynotes featuring Amazon executives and partners and a raft of deep dives into everything from drones to the rockets built by Bezos’ Blue Origin space company.

Photo: Robert Hof