Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Martin Blunt: Why Climate Politicization Is Killing Us

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Imperial College London’s professor, Martin Blunt, talks about the bitter consequences of politicizing the climate issue—that is neglecting the “easy wins” and thus failing to take tangible actions to tackle the crisis. Martin Blunt is a Professor at the Department of Earth Science & Engineering, Imperial College London. He has been teaching at the university since 1999. Prior to that, Martin was an Assistant then Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering, at Stanford University (1992-1999). #Endgame #GitaWirjawan #ClimateChange ---------------------- Martin's Educational YouTube Channel:  @BoffyBlunt  ---------------------- About the host: Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur, educator, and currently a visiting scholar at The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University. Gita has also just been appointed as an Honorary Professor of Politics and International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, UK. ---------------------- Supplementary Readings: "A Question of Power" (2020) | "Climate Optimism" (2023) ---------------------- Understand this Episode Better: https://sgpp.me/eps177notes ----------------------- SGPP Indonesia Master of Public Policy: [e-mail] | https://admissions.sgpp.ac.id | https://wa.me/628111522504 Other "Endgame" episode playlists: International Guests | Wandering Scientists | The Take Visit and subscribe:  @SGPPIndonesia  |  @VisinemaPictures 

I think we are going to have to live with climate change. What we're seeing at the moment is that CO2 emissions are actually not decreasing. The crisis is still getting worse, faster than we are deploying these solutions. We are already in trouble. Some inconvenient truths. These are things that are happening. We may and may not like that they're happening, but they're happening. And how do we deal?

There is an imperative then in the more developed world to, It's unrealistic. Professor Martin Blod from the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College London. It's published over 250 scientific articles. Officer Lent was a elected fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019.

The problem here is that what is fundamentally a scientific problem has become politicized. So there's some easy wins that we are not doing. My jaw drops open every time I see people having a political conversation arguing about a scientific truth. Instead, what the tendency is to have grandiose statements by political leaders that look very good, but are worded in such a way as there's no binding commitment.

But science is not political. We are in a race against time. What is the worst-case scenario? I think there's a real, real concern I have is that... Hi, friends and fellows. Welcome to this special series of conversations involving personalities coming from a number of campuses, including Stanford University. The purpose of the series is really to unleash thought-provoking ideas

that I think would be of tremendous value to you. I want to thank you for your support so far, and welcome to the special series. Hi, today we're honored to have the presence of Professor Martin Blunt, who is a professor at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College. Martin, thank you so much for gracing our event at the Endgame. Thank you. It's a pleasure. I would like to know a little bit more about you.

How did you grow up? What part of the UK did you grow up in? And how did you manage to get interested in physics and, you know, doing, you know, whatever you're doing right now at Imperial? Okay. So, as you can probably tell from the accent, I'm English. I was born in North London and Stanmore. But when I was only four months old, my parents moved down to Sussex. So I was brought up in a town called Haywood's Heath.

Not many people know that. But if you take the train from London to Brighton, and Brighton's on the south of England. Hayward Seeth is about two-thirds of the way down. So if anyone's flown out of Gatwick Airport, it's one-stop south of there. So my father moved there because he wanted to live a bit more out in the countryside. He commuted up to London every day.

So it's on basically Hayward Seat only exists because of the train line. So he commuted into London every day. I was brought up there and went to local schools. the schools, I have to say, were absolutely excellent. I really enjoyed my time at school there. And when I was at school, you know, I was one of these sort of studious kids. I sort of liked most things when I was a teenager. Actually, history was my favorite subject.

But when I got to 16, I realized that the subjects I thought were a bit boring and trivial, basically maths and physics, were the subjects that everyone else really struggled with. So I thought, hmm, I'm finding this really easy, but I'm sort of struggling with the English literature and history essays. Maybe I should stick to science. So that actually drove me to do it. Nothing particularly that I really felt I wanted to do it, but just because I noticed that I found doing maths a lot easier than most of my friends. So I studied maths and science for a level. So that's, you know, between 16 and 18. And then my dream was to go to Cambridge. My hero was Isaac Newton. And when you apply to Cambridge, you don't just apply to the

university, you apply to a specific college. Correct. So I remember my sitting with my father and he's saying, well, this, this looks a bit complicated. You've got you've got to decide on a college. you know, what college you're going to apply for? I said, well, I don't really know. I mean, I can't apply at the time. There were women's colleges and some men-only colleges. I said, well, I can't apply to the women's college. And I don't want to go to a men's-only college.

I mean, I went to a mixed, mixed schools throughout my time. I thought that was a bit weird, frankly. So I'll go to the same college as Isaac Newton. Of course, this is before we had the internet, but our version of Wikipedia was the encyclopedia Britannica. So he got that off the shelf, looked it up,

and I, Sir Newton, went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and that's where I applied. So that's, that's in brief, sort of my,

my, well done, how I ended up at Cambridge. And physics? Yes, physics. Did it turn out okay for you? It definitely turned out okay. So at school,

I like maths and physics. Right. At Cambridge, I applied, for natural sciences. So they have a slightly different scheme in that you apply for natural sciences and then you specialize in whichever science you want later. Right.

It actually apply specifically for physics. But once I started at Cambridge, it was quite clear to me that that was the subject I like most, largely because it had a much more quantitative description of the universe. It felt that you could do everything. And there wasn't much you had to memorize. In the end, I don't particularly appreciate subjects where you have to acquire a lot of knowledge that you have to sort of just keep in your head.

Got to memorize. Yeah, I love the idea that in physics you have a small number of principles which you can then describe mathematically. And from that, everything else follows. And indeed, I noticed that when I was revising for the final year, exams and the final year exams at Cambridge are quite brutal in the sense that your entire degree is based on them. So it doesn't matter how well you've done in the first and second years. It's all to do with those final exams.

And I found as I was revising more and more, there was less and less I needed to know in the sense that as long as I was practiced, I just need to know, you know, there's conservation of mass. There are a few basic equations that you need to apply. and then if you're quick, you can use that to solve any problem. You know, I want to talk a little bit about your idol, Isaac Newton. This is a guy who discovered calculus at the age of what, 22, 23. What do you think would have made him so different from mere mortals like me? Like all of us, you don't know.

I mean, genius, that type of genius is, very difficult to explain. Yeah. So you have someone the most extraordinary capabilities. He came from really quite a modest background. When he was first born, actually, the parents debated whether or not even to bother us sending out for the doctor because they thought it was inevitable that the poor child was going to die. Thankfully, for society and for his parents, of course he didn't. And then he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of 16,

not as a sort of full student, but on some sort of scholarship that maintained him. On a part-time basis. Yes, and he stayed associated with Cambridge for most of his life. He was just out of the ordinary, one in a billion person. And it's true with other people of extraordinary genius, right? Albert Einstein is the same, working in a patent office. and transforming our view of the universe. You can't really explain how that happens.

My other idol was Leonardo da Vinci. Oh, not a great person. Yeah. Yeah. So he was the illegitimate son of a local attorney and farmer brought up by his father. And again, just completely supreme genius of the Italian Renaissance. So you can't really explain. you can describe what they've done and their background,

but it gives you no insight, frankly. You know, you hear stories about how people, when they were very young, there's no sign that they're going to be so brilliant. And then all of a sudden, when they turn 16, 17, 18, well, I mean, Einstein, you know, really primed at a later age. You know, a lot of people thought he wasn't. special at all for most of his, you know, childhood. It's just kind of amazing. I mean, what,

I guess, I guess the question that I have is, what would it take for the world to produce the Einstein's, the Leonardo da Vinci's and the Newtons of the world in the next, you know, a few decades? I think it's something unpredictable. These are extraordinary people. So it's difficult to say, well, you do ABC. I think from a historical perspective, there are difference. There are, there isn't, to put it this way, from a historical perspective, there is an environment that will promote genius and there are environments that do not. The Italian Renaissance is a good example where suddenly there's an outpouring of cultural and intellectual activity. And similarly with the time of Isaac Newton, this is just after the restoration of the British monarchy.

We had a few decades previously, we had executed the king. We had decided as a country that Parliament was sovereign. And though we weren't democratic, it was at least sort of oligarchic and meritocratic. So in the restoration era, it was very intellectually vibrant and free. People were thinking for themselves. People were receptive of new ideas. So someone like Newton who comes along and says quite revolutionary things was embraced as something positive.

You know, we were being enlightened, we were understanding the universe, rather than being restricted by religious dogma or political dogma that everything has to be along those lines. So I think it's important to have to live in free societies. And by free societies, I mean not just free in the normal ways in which we think about it, but one that's genuinely intellectually free, that embraces a diversity of opinions and views, and is very receptive for people coming up with things that are genuinely novel, even if they're quite revolutionary.

Well, you know, I want to, I might sound digressing a little bit here, but since you're a, you know, know, you're a student of history by heart. We're seeing quite a number of democracies around the world that have not been able to democratize ideas, right? Which is kind of ironic. And we've also seen China at the same time in the last few decades as an autocracy being able to democratize quite a lot of ideas, right? Does it really have to do with the structural framework in terms of whether or not you're a democracy?

I think is quite a difficult question. I think in the modern world, it is a challenge to maintain an open society that is not democratic. And I think we're beginning to see this in China, with President Xi clamping down. more on protests, specifically you've seen in Hong Kong, that when it became part of mainland China, the idea was, well, it was treated a little bit differently. It had its own government. There was a much of freedom of expression,

and you can see that that's been clamped down on. So I think there is a risk of societies that are not genuinely multi-party democracies. I think in the end, there is a tendency for someone, in power to take that power and consolidate it. And unfortunately, I suspect that this is where we're heading. In China, of course, we've seen that very clearly in Russia as well. So, Russia is normally a democracy. It is de facto now dictatorship.

So I think the structures, the political structures are important, but there is also a cultural structure that goes along with that. Interesting. And it's the British, I'm not going to say our society and our politics is ideal, but there was a very long tradition of people standing up to authority and expressing their ideas reasonably freely. And that's just been true for about a thousand years. Yeah. We've done to dictatorships.

We've had rough periods. And as I said, I'm by no way suggesting this is an ideal society today. but there is at least a cultural notion that we are allowed to express their views and you're not really supposed to clamp down on what people are thinking and doing apart from a brief period actually around as I said when we had a Commonwealth which was essentially a religious dictatorship so it did attempt to do this and it was it was considered by if we want a bit of disaster so I think in common with a political structure There needs to be an intellectual structure and an intellectual structure that allows authority to be challenged, that allows the expression of new ideas, which is much more open in the discussion of these ideas and don't view them as a threat.

Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you on that. Yeah. Now, let's talk about what you do. I mean, you've talked a lot about, you know, where the earth is and where the earth is going to be. What's your take on climate change? Broadly speaking first, before we deep dive on this.

Okay, so I think it's a very serious challenge. I think we are presently committed to there being a significant and noticeable change in the world's climate and with an overwhelming trend. So we probably, the earth has now probably warmed one degree C since pre-industrial times. and we're almost certainly on track to get to at least one and a half degrees of warming. And we can already see this with extreme weather events, droughts and floods and storms, that this has a significant impact. And that impact's only going to get worse. So in order to avoid, you know, I would say continuing a much worse catastrophe,

we do need to decarbonise our economy. We need to make steps where we are reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that's going into the atmosphere and we need to move away from fossil fuels, which at the moment are by far in a way the dominant source of energy. What's the way out, though? I mean, you know, I was talking to you earlier about my earlier conversation with Mr. Stephen Chu, who even opined that it's looking like two and a half to three degrees, at least,

in addition. I mean, you've mentioned 1.5. I mean, 1.5 is already bad as it is, much less 2.5 to 3 degrees, right? And the way I see it, people are just going to keep on using carbon or fossil, right? I mean, if we take a look at some of the publications by some of the consultants on fossil, The demand for fossil from automotive is certainly going to decline, but the demand for fossil from aviation and petrochemical will continue to rise, given the fact that everything that you see in an electric vehicle is petrochemical.

How do you get out of this hole that you're just going to be perennially consumptive of carbon or fossil? Okay, I think this is a huge challenge. Right. I won't say I'm completely pessimistic, but I'm completely optimistic either. I think there will be, over the next decades, a move from being utterly dependent on fossil fuels towards moving towards a more renewable-based economy and towards a more electrified economy as well. Unfortunately, this comes with a growing world's population and an aspiration in most of the world to enjoy more prosperity. And prosperity is really very fundamentally linked to energy use. So what we're seeing at the moment is that CO2 emissions are actually not decreasing.

because although in much of the Western world, they are decreasing. In Europe they're decreasing. Even in the US, they're decreasing. That is more than made up for the fact that the rest of the world is trying to grow their economies than actually growing their population. And so they're growing their economy by using fossil fuels. So I think we will get there. I think we will say in a hundred years' time have an economy.

have an economy that is much more electrified, that is essentially carbon neutral. The concern is, yeah, at that point, what's our climate going to be like, and is it still going to be tolerable to live in many of the parts of the world where we're currently living? And I think that's very much an open question. I think we are going to have to live with climate change. I think there is going to be serious consequences, but I'm not of the view it's going to be utterly catastrophic. So, you know, I'm not going to disagree with Steve Chu on his predictions of how many degrees of climate change.

I'm not to be expert in climate science to apply on that. I think we will, we may not get to full net zero by 2050. I think that plan. Oh, with you. It's overly. It's unrealistic. It's unrealistic. I mean, let me give you the voice of a developing nation.

Indonesia, which is where I'm from, okay? And I think how we think in a country like Indonesia kind of represents most of the developing economies, such as India, Nigeria, you name it, right? And I would even argue that 80 to 85% of the population of the planet are sort of like thinking the way Indonesians do. We're still more worried about putting food on the table. and we can put food on the table on the basis that we can afford energy. And unfortunately, or fortunately, energy comes from coal. That's the affordable choice at the moment at about three to five cents per kilowatt. I think on the demand side, I'm comfortable in being able to socially re-architect or re-engineer somebody's behavior,

as long as the alternatives are affordable. It's on the supply site that's more perplexing. On the supply side, I think from a technological standpoint, there are alternatives. But from an economic standpoint, it's just not viable at all with respect to each one of these alternatives, be it hydro, geothermal, nuclear, nuclear, solar, and what have you, right? Because on a per kilowatt basis, we're still looking at about 15 to 20 cents at least. whereas countries like India and Indonesia can only afford three to five cents. So we're just going to have to wait until the technology can avail itself at a rate of about three to five cents. And that's going to take quite some time, unfortunately, beyond the 2050 or 2016 deadline.

There is an imperative then in the more developed world to demonstrate a feasible pathway to net zero. Right. So, for instance, in a UK perspective, actually the cheapest electricity now is wind energy. A lot of wind in the UK. And so wind energy is cheaper. It's certainly cheaper than nuclear. It's cheaper than natural gas that's very expensive. We essentially have virtually no coal-fired electricity generation now.

So if the Western world can produce a pathway, towards a net zero economy and by doing so obviously the technology improves so for instance solar power you know the cost of solar power has gone down enormously so in many parts of the world actually solar generation and particularly sort of more local solar generation rather than centralised facilities are something that works very well in the developing world so I agree that it is impractical at the moment to say to people who are simply

aspiring for a reasonable standard living that most people enjoy in the West to say, oh, you have to be zero carbon as well. Right. But if the people who are enjoying a high standard living and are living in societies that are not genuinely short of energy, it's those societies need to demonstrate how you can get to net zero while the technology is developing and getting better and better. and then that is something that can be then offered to the rest of the world. I mean, much like most other technologies. The Western world develops a technology. Everyone's using it and cars, for instance.

In the United States, most people have two cars in many parts of the world. No one has any car. And the idea is that everyone will have a car. Now, what, it will be an electric car and we will have to resolve how we can deliver not only enough electricity, but enough batteries to do that. Let me give you an illustration of countries like India and Indonesia, right? India and Indonesia are electrified to the extent of about 1,300 kilowatt hour per capita. And I think it's reasonable for a developing nation like India or Indonesia to want to be a modern nation.

And I look at modernity as being defined at least, at least, 6,000 kilowatt hour per capita, right? I mean, Singapore is at 10,000. We're not even asking for 10,000. We're asking for 6,000. At the rate that India can only build about 19,000 megawatts per year, Indonesia, 3,000 megawatts per year. In order for India and Indonesia to go up from 1,300 kilowatt hour per capita to 6,000,

that in itself is going to require India and Indonesia about 100 years. to become modern well beyond a 2050-2016 mark. I mean, I'm glad that you alluded to a hundred years from today because the hundred years I think is just much more reasonable for a developing country to become modern.

If you can demonstrate, for instance, electric vehicles, electrification, the use of renewables, say, solar power, and you can demonstrate that that's cheaper of the fossil fuel equivalence, you don't have to go through the fossil fuel stage. Yeah. I mean, a classic analogy is that there are many people around the world that have a smartphone, you know, in communities that never had fixed telephones.

Yeah. So you didn't have to go through, we will have a fixed telephone infrastructure, and you'll have a phone sitting in your house that you answer. And then maybe 50 years later, someone invents a mobile. phone and then 10 years later it becomes a smartphone. You've leaked to block that technology. Now, of course, that's a lot easier. Yeah. Because all you need is essentially the remote communications and the device, as opposed to the enormous infrastructure investments that are required with energy.

So sometimes that's a little bit of a naive analogy because things can't be implemented. In fact, that's what people think, oh, we can decarbonize in a decade like we've transformed out of energy. transformed out communications. And unfortunately, that's not possible because of the infrastructure required. But there may be possibilities to do that. But Martin, I want to just come back to the point of economics. The developing economies at the moment, they could only afford three to five cents per kilowatt, right? All the available alternatives can only be made available at a cost of at least 15 cents per kilowatt.

I'm with you in the sense that, yes, there is a way to technologically leapfrog, but there's still not a way to economically leapfrog. This is where the problem is. I want to put this in a broader context of if we take a look at the world right now, it's electrified to the extent of, you know, around 7 to 8 terawatt, right? And if you take a look at the reports by so many people, pundits and what have you, you know, the world is supposed to be going out to about 15 to 16 terawatt, right? Yeah, I mean, world energy, world energy use.

Of course, it won't all be electricity, but world energy is about 20 terawatts. Okay, it's even greater than 15 to 16 kilowatt, right? As I said, that's every type of energy. It doesn't necessarily. Yeah. We won't electrify everything, obviously. Yeah, it's huge. It's huge.

It's huge. It's huge. Yeah, I just want to point out that if even if we were to just have to build the additional six, seven, or eight, terawatt worth of power generation capabilities, we're talking about $20 to $30 trillion worth of funding required. Right. And I mean, at the point of India as being able to build only 19,000 megawatts per year, Indonesia, 3,000 megawatts per year, irrespective of whether it's coal, nuclear, solar, wind, or what have you.

We can technologically leapfrock, but we can only afford to build 3,000 in the year, because the economy can only shoulder that kind of. So I'm just trying to point out the fact that at the end of the day, somebody's got to, you know, do the heavy lifting of putting money on the table. And that's only going to have to come from the G7 countries. I don't think it's going to have to be able to come from the developing economies, which are not flush with liquidity, whereas the G7 countries are flush with liquidity. I think the communication has to be in such a way that, look, I think for the next, I don't know, near foreseeable future, somebody's going to have to do more heavy lifting until such time the purchasing power of the underlying economy can get to the

the necessary level so that they can self-sustain from there on. The problem there is the amount of money because you're looking at trillion dollars compared to the tens of trillions, tens of trillions. In the top conference, you know, it's a few hundred million that, sorry, a few hundred billion dollars of billions or even that, you know, is controversial. One thing we could do, it doesn't completely solve the problem, but we could put more constraints on the fossil fuel industry that actually would then tend to obviously make the products more expensive. So there's some easy wins that we are not doing. So a good example that has been

shown in the context of COP28 is the amount of flaring in the Middle East and in fact in other parts around the world. So this is, when you produce oil, the oil drops pressure, gas comes out as well. That's natural gas. Now, natural gas is a very valuable product. So if you separate out that natural gas and then pipe it to a power station or directly for heating, well, okay, it still contributes to climate change, but it's been used. At least you've got to benefit from it. Right. In many parts of the world instead, that infrastructure does not exist. If the infrastructure does not exist, you can just reinject it back underground, but that takes money, that takes investment. So many parts of the world, what it's done is it's not vented to the atmosphere, but it's burnt. So it's

burnt, it contributes to climate change without being of any benefit to the local population or indeed to the country. Furthermore, if this is onshore, contributes significantly to air pollution, and health problems. So that's an example where you talk to any oil company in the world, they're looking to reduce flaring. But they've been looking to reduce flaring for decades. There's no real force behind that. I see.

So if you were to say to the oil industry, you must do certain things that reduce your CO2 footprint. And if you don't, you're not allowed to trade your products. Then I think we begin to see, obviously, that comes at a cost, but it reduces CO2 emissions very dramatically. It also makes them less competitive against renewables. So the two examples I can think of immediately and then maybe a third would be flaring. The other is carbon dioxide naturally comes out of the subsurface associated with hydrocarbon production.

Again, that has to be separated out just to sell the products. Most of the time, that's vented to the atmosphere. No, we put back underground. So those are the two easy wins. The third time. To what extent? Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, the third one is to then say to the oil industry,

or the fossil fuel industry in general, that some fraction of the CO2 that's emitted when your products are burned has to be collected and stored underground. So it doesn't go to the atmosphere. to what extent would these three contribute to the carbon footprint are we talking a lot are we talking about a lot of carbon emission here from flaring and what's coming out or what's around the surface through which it comes out and yeah how much how much carbon emission are we talking about here so obviously it depends on where you're operating so if you're in the north to the north sea there is no flaring there's also a very extensive um now gas pipeline infrastructure, so you wouldn't want to flare even if you could. Right. You're going to sell all of that.

There are other parts of the world where there's a huge amount of flaring. So Saudi O'Ramco, for instance, flares more gas than any other company, but then they are the world's largest oil company. So that can be, is highly variable, but it's anything up to about 15% of the total CO2 footprint of your fossil fuel is actually goes into the atmosphere before it's then given as a product. I see. You're putting petrol in your car. Obviously that produces

CO2, but that may be only 85% of the CO2. There's another 15% which actually be much more easily dealt with. So by eliminating flaring, by separating out CO2 and putting it underground. Furthermore, you can begin to tackle the 85% if you were to mandate, and I agree, it's difficult to know how that exactly could be done, but you could, there are central facilities, heavy industry, power stations, etc. where there is a central source of CO2 that again, you collect that CO2, essentially you separate it out of the exhaust gases and then you inject that deep underground, so it doesn't go to the atmosphere. I think if you do that, you begin to create

hydrocarbon industry, which is also reducing its CO2 footprint. And I think that's one thing, certainly something I work on. My research is looking at fluid flow underground. So how to design that process. That could be not the only contributor. I'm not suggesting for a moment that, this is the only thing you do, but it could be put out of the package of measures. And it can be effective. Give me some numbers, Martin. I mean, the last time I checked, the carbon emission from fossil is what about 35 to 40 gigatons per year. So we're talking about 15% of that that could actually be eliminated.

That sounds like a huge amount. Remember, that's a lot of, yeah. Yeah. I have anything, I mean, that 35 gigatons includes coal and that isn't, so you have to exclude coal. I think actually, honestly, with coal, we have to progress as rapidly as we can towards phasing out coal and replacing it with lower carbon alternatives. Not easily, though. Not easily. Not a great. I agree. We don't have the money. Context is difficult. But that, I mean, coal is the most, is the most CO2. intensive fuel because it's basically just carbon.

Hydrocarbons, you're also getting the energy benefit of converting hydrogen into water. So hydrocarbons produce less CO2 per unit of energy. So we're not talking about a whole 35 gigatons, but yes, I mean, there's a potentially of savings of the order of gigatars. Sorry, I cut you off, but out of the 35 gigatons, how much is coming from coal? Then I don't have the numbers at the top of my head. Okay. But it's quite a big chunk. It's going to be a big chunk, right? It's going to be somewhere the order of 12 to 15 gigatons, I would estimate.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So we can do way with the 15% out of the non-coal aspect of... So they say that's three gigatons a year. That's a lot. Yeah. Three gigatons a year, I think, could be contributed through eliminating flaring through re-injecting any associated carbon dioxide and also with storing a percentage of the CO2

that is emitted when these products are burnt. And all of that, it seems like a huge amount, but it's not infeasible. And I think most scenarios do suggest that if we're going to avoid dangerous climate change, we are going to have to address these issues. And it's going to be at the can't scale. Okay, this is a partial solution, right, to the whole framing of the solution, right? We go back again to the biggest part of the problem, which is economic, right? So I think there needs to be realism with which we address the climate change issue in the sense that there's just not enough money amongst most parts of the world to come up with, you know, technological alternatives that are renewable, until such time, we're just going to have to be

exposed to coal. So if we were to collectively think that this is a good thing to decarbonize as quickly as possible so that we can check the box as of 2050 or 2016, actually, it just requires view-taking from an economic standpoint. Okay, I'll shoulder it. the burden for the next 10 years. And I'm pretty confident that 10 years or 15 years from today, the technology is going to be cheap enough for everybody on a planet that you start sustaining it yourself.

I'm going to back off and we'll take it from there. Isn't that a way to just pragmatically remedy this whole thing? That sounds great. I'm not an economist, so I find it difficult to comment. But that, if the world could agree on a mechanism that would tackle removing or making the energy economy less carbon intensive, particularly in those parts of the world where, say, burning coal is cheapest, I think that could be very effective. And my view here would be to view it more from a sort of engineering perspective is you would And I've seen this you know the cost of decarbonization

You do the easy things first so you do the cheapest things first Yeah, right? So the classic is energy efficiency You know insulating people's houses that actually is a saving it saves money. It's not even the cost But if there if there was a way say for instance in Indonesia no, if you want to build a new power station, we will subsidize, say, solar power as opposed to coal, and we will do this for the next 10 or 15 years, and the understanding that at the end of that period, it actually will be the cheaper option anyway. I think that's, that is potentially a very good way, way to go. There's actually a way to pay you back after 10 years or 15 years.

at such point, you know, we could afford it. We could afford to, you know, hopefully by then we'll no longer be developing economy, will be a developed economy. Then we can afford it the same way you guys can as of today. You give us anything, wind, solar, nuclear, you know, geothermal, whatever, you know, we can afford it. Because by that time, our purchasing power will be at 15 to 20 or even 25 cents per kilowatt. But at the moment, we can only afford three to five cents per kilowatt. So this is where I can't wrap my heads around.

You know, it requires collaborative efforts between those that have money and those that don't have the money. And those that have the money are telling people that, you know, people that don't have the money to get their act together, to clean yourselves up. but we can't. So it's just dilemmatic. And this is where, you know, I've been to some of the cop meetings, you know, in the past.

And the discussions are highly intellectual. But they're not realistic. You know, with respect to what's on the ground in a developing economy. And I sense that from what you're alluding to. Technologically, it's already available. and things are going to get cheaper by the minute, by the day,

but it's not going to get cheaper fast enough for everybody else on the planet to be able to embrace. I mean, while the COP conferences, as a concept, seemed very laudable. You go to all the countries in the world together. There's a recognition of the threat of dangerous climate change and everyone is in their own way agreeing to do something about it. I would be much more in favour of seeing a sort of, again, a much more engineered view,

which is there is specific agreements to do specific things that actually have been that are seeing to reduce the problem. And it may start very small. I agree. It may start with something that people say is a drop in the ocean. Yeah, it's going to be negligible. but at least it's a tangible step forward. Instead, what the tendency is to have grandiose statements by political leaders that look very good,

but are worded in such a way as there's no binding commitment. And then you, you know, you fly out to Dubai, you stay in a ritzie hotel, you have a fancy press conference. Everyone says how wonderful and green you are, you fly back, and it's business as usual. that is that is not a very satisfactory way of doing business and I think it's the same in political revolutions as well um backlav harville who was um you know the first president of chakislavacia um the fall of the the soviet union right he said okay there's the big thing you want to do but you do it in steps and see you start negotiating and you're negotiating over some relatively

small thing. But once you've accepted that you're going to make that step, then all the other steps seem easier. Now, I agree economically and technically, and in terms of infrastructure, it's not something that could be done over life. So it's not like a, it's not completely like a political revolution. But I would much more like to see that this conference, we will agree to do A, B, C, D, and that will reduce our carbon emissions by X, and we're actually going to do it. Not a grandiose statement that we're going to not allow the world to warm by more than one and a half degrees. That's a nice thing to say, but you're not actually doing anything that is consistent with that. What would it take for all countries around the world to agree to do the three things that you've talked about?

These low-hanging fruits, cutting down the flaring and closing. the lid off, capturing whatever that can be captured around some of these oil and gas wells. How difficult is it to get everybody to agree to do those three things? I think it's politically difficult. Yeah. Two reasons. One is obviously the large oil producing countries, particularly in the Middle East, are going to try their best not to be forced to do it.

Why? because it's easier because it gives them more freedom to do what they like, right? And people are lazy. The second reason is in the West, climate change has become highly politicised. So the idea of negotiating with oil producing nations to make their oil production a bit greener is to them an anathema. The all industry should be closed down tomorrow. end of discussion. So there's little political will to tackle the problem from a pragmatic

perspective. So on the West would say no, I mean, we just, I mean, in fact, in Britain there's a protest movement, just stop oil, very clear. That is the view from any environmentalists. So they say what I'm saying, what I'm suggesting is a little bit ridiculous. because in fact you should just stop using hydrocarbons. So that is the problem. So this is why I'm a little bit concerned that our highly politicized efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are in many ways

getting in the way of sensible engineering solutions and dealing with a low-hanging fruit because we know what we need to do. do and lots of studies have been done, you know, energy efficiency, insulation, dealing with with CO2 emissions that are really not essential, and then dealing with the more difficult things as you go along. What other things do you think we can do to help resolve this climate change issue? If you've talked about the low-hanging fruits, we've talked about the much more

difficult stuff, right? That's going to just require money and time. What other things that can be done in a near foreseeable future in addition to the low-hanging fruits? Okay. I mean, the, the, the perspective in the UK is a climate change act. Yeah. So this was past some time ago, which said that Britain would effectively get to net zero by 2050 and that there will be an independent committee that would advise on how you are getting to try you can't sort of do nothing until 2049 and then repeal the act right i mean you have to make progress of course that creates a lot of political tension and it does require a political consensus that you're not going to have a government that just repeals the bill but that is a good framework because what it then does is you then have an

independent committee that he's not trying to make a political statement, it's trying to make a practical statement taking into account the best science and engineering. So what does the country need to do to reduce its CO2 emissions further? You know, what plans need to be in place? So that creates a framework and it has the advantage of creating a framework that is focused on CO2 emissions as opposed to what happens in other countries often, which is where you have a sort of portfolio of various complex subsidies or pet projects. The problem there is some pet projects may be good

and some others aren't, and then some other things that could easily decarbonize quickly are not considered. I won't say it's perfect, because I think in Britain we're now going to face a real challenge and further decarbonisation, particularly around heating and particularly around moving towards, you know, a larger renewables economy where we have to do energy storage. I mean, I'm a, you know, I'm a scientist and engineer, so my perspective is more to deal with some of the fundamental technological challenges, which are dealing with intermittent renewables.

so how do you deal with energy storage? That's going to become increasingly important. So at the moment, say in the UK, and this is true in some parts of the world, where there are lots of renewables in the UK when it's particularly windy day, and particularly if it's a windy day in the summer. There's a lot of wind out there. I was just there. Yeah, where energy use isn't that high, it's 100% renewables, which sounds great.

But what we need to do is we need to more. than treble our renewable capacity. So they're going to be some days where we're creating 300%. Well, we want to store that energy. Store it. For the days, you know, when we're going to need it. When we need it. So energy storage is, I think, very significant.

And then the other significant thing that I work on is back to what I was saying before, is increasing the proportion of carbon dioxide you collect. from the burning of fossil fuels. And eventually, if you want to get to net zero, you've got to be collecting all the CO2 you produce if you burn fossil fuels. You either do that, or you're faced with a much more expensive task

of trying to extract CO2 out of the atmosphere directly, which is possible that we may end up having to do that in the next few decades when the world is faced with the consequences is a dangerous climate change and we seem to have no other solution but to get the CO2 back out of the atmosphere. But that sounds like the ideal solution, right? I mean, if you can do whatever you're going to be doing in scale, problem solved.

No more emission. There are a number of disadvantages with that. The first one, clearly people say that's. seems to say, well, we just carry on as normal and that some magic time in the future, we're going to take the CO2 out. So it's not a, it's not good to rely on it. It has the advantage of being politically neutral. People have a lot more, they're not more worried about an oil company producing hydrocarbons and then collecting that hydrocarbons. It seems to be sort of allowing them to carry on, whereas this is just taking out of the atmosphere.

The problem is thermodynamics. So the exhaust stream of fossil fuel burning power station, I mean, basically burnt all the oxygen. So you converted the oxygen into carbon dioxide, so you can get up to 20% CO2. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 0.04%. So it's a much lower concentration. So it's going to cost a lot more money to separate out. about carbon dioxide. That's the problem. It doesn't make thermodynamic sense to be extracting

CO2 from the atmosphere artificially when you have sources of CO2 that are a lot higher concentration. So this is what I said about the low-hanging fruit. You should be dealing with the high concentration sources of CO2 first. Okay. Now, how do we deal with the climate deniers? You know, there's a lot of these guys. I mean, you know, every time I do an episode with somebody who's expert in climate, there's always these commentary about, you know, you know, the world's been like this for the last four and a half billion years. You know, we're just going through the same kind of cycle we went through some millions of years ago.

How do you deal with that? What's the best way to answer or respond to some of these climate-denying people or even institutions? I'm not a behavioral scientist. Would like us to live in a society that had a greater respect for science and logical thought. Right. It is strange when we started this interview talking about living in an open society that welcomes different view. So you can't then say, well, we want to live in a society where you're only allowed one viewpoint. I think the problem here is that what is fundamentally a scientific problem has become politicised.

And there's a real, real concern I have is that climate change has been identified and badged as a political issue. And the problem when you do that is that people tend to have a sort of almost truble. identity politically. So I, you know, my tribe is here and then they can latch on different views to it. Okay. And you take the package. And that's not really consistent with scientific views, which frankly, within the scientific community, there's a consensus. Okay, there are differences of opinions among scientists, by the way, you know, we're human beings and we also interpret facts differently and new facts come along and when new facts come along you change your views that's what science does but it's not how people react naturally to political problems

so we are living in a society unfortunately there's becoming increasingly divided i'm in america i fear is becoming politically dysfunctional simply because of this enormous divide between the Republicans and the Democrats, and there's no common ground. You've seen the same in Britain with the Brexit debate, which again just pushed people's opinion in different directions. And then what you've done is you've landed in one company or the other, and actually your view on climate change is actually associated with which camp you're in. So that is, I think, the problem. I think it's the divisions in society and the inability for people, people to ever seriously engage or debate.

And that is, you know, when I was at university, we would have ferocious arguments, you know, communism versus capitalism, for instance. We'd also have, you know, ferocious debates on moral issues as well. These were debates with your friends. Yeah. These were debates with your friends, you know, some of them were communists. Some of them were much, much more right-wing.

Some of them, you know, were, you know, thought Margaret Thatcher was absolute, and Ronald Reagan were marvelous. But they were still your friends and you sit there and you debate it. And okay, it might be quite vigorous debates. But now we become much more tribal. Yeah. It's those of my friends. I don't have anything to do with them. My friends who have same views.

Okay. And I'm comfortable in that bubble of my social media. feed tells me all the things I want to think about and they're others and that then I think is very dangerous so I think we could easily reach a consensus on climate change and it was viewed as it is which is a scientific issue of which there is an overwhelming consensus and an enormous technological and engineering challenge to deal with obviously then it's up to the politicians and the economists to do it to work out how to do it but it is not a political issue you know I would even argue that

The problem you've laid out is not uniquely within the UK and the U.S. It's quite pervasive. Yeah. I mean, we're witnessing a high degree of political neuroses in many countries, right? And how conversations have gotten so polarized and how town squares have become Coliseum, where, you know, both sides are just becoming glad. fighting off against each other as opposed to just having a nice intellectual debate about any particular issue. That scares the hell out of me, which makes this issue of climate change and

some other issues just seemingly unsolvable in a near foreseeable future until such time we can actually centralize conversations as opposed to polarized conversations. right yes i i think we're on a broader political issue i'm very concerned about yeah where the world is heading is as though we've we've become complacent about democracy on the other hand if we're going back to the climate change problem the main advantage we do have in the world is a very sophisticated technological structure. And so, you know, someone to tomorrow, and in fact, this has already happened, right? We're developing, for instance, solar cells that are becoming increasingly efficient and cheap. There is an enormous incentive

to do that, right, just from a pure economic ground, but also from a scientific ground. You make a new solar cell that's better. That solar cell will be made and produced and people will use it. So we are in a society that will, if there's the economics, as he pointed out, will respect new solutions that make the world a better place. And we've seen this in lots of other examples. So a revolution in communications is the obvious one. Right. So there are a number of things here that some of them are depressing and some of them are less depressing. Yeah. But I would, yeah, I am dismayed how what is a scientific. issue has become politicised. And we see it then, and it's now become a sort of intellectual

disease where other scientific issues are again, get themselves politicised. So we saw this during COVID, right? COVID conspiracy, anti-vaccination. It's as though anything scientific now, some people actually want to be against it. But science is not political. It's looking at evidence, driving conclusions from that evidence. And I don't know how we can address that, except for education. You know, I get the sense that in many places around the world, the interest with respect to science has declined in a big way. And I can give you a post-check on my country where the reading of books from libraries, public libraries, for junior high school students, all across the country, you know, 32 to 33% of the books are basically with respect to social science topics.

32 to 33% are with respect to law. 32 to 33% with respect to economics. Only 0.5% with respect to science or empirical science. it that that that worries me worries me in the sense that how are we going to be able to produce products of education that are going to be able to be as good as good as you in the issue of climate so that we can find the right solution you know scientifically and then this is not uniquely in Indonesia

I mean I can I can say for you know many other developing economies where the interest for science is just not as high as it should be probably because people are more worried about putting food on a table, right? But that, okay, if it's more worried about putting food on the table, there's not much to say because I think that it's obviously a principal concern. But there is an issue about education and fundamentally about intellectual training. Right. So in many parts of the world, if you look at the curricula, actually it's not too bad.

students learn science and maths but there is a tendency and I noticed this in the students we have in here also so we're we're looking at the very good students oh you're you're a really good school yes so you're bound to have good students I mean even the students who apply that I'm not going to be critical about right that they're good students by any standards so what we seem to do still and I I I mentioned it at the beginning is we have students who've learned a lot of topics and facts to do certain, you know, answer certain questions in their exams or whatever. But actually, we live in a world where, you know, you've got Google, you've got chat GPT. Yeah, it's all there.

Fractual things are actually there at your fingertips. And what is needed are interoperated. You are intellectual skills and those intellectual skills are being able to construct a logical argument being able to construct a logical argument using mathematics okay which is similar but a little bit different using that also to look at scientific evidence okay and develop and critique a hypothesis and many of our students are not really intellectually trained to look at things that way and so they can do things really within a silo of a specific subject. Right. They learned this topic and they did this test on it.

But if you think about it more broadly. So an example that's come up in the UK at the moment we're having an inquiry over COVID, basically to learn how we can deal with. I'm following that. Yeah. But one of the things that come up is simply that we have political leaders. who don't understand any science. They've had no scientific training.

So, for instance, they cannot understand exponential growth. Simply, it's a block. It doesn't matter how many times it's presented to them and what it means, it doesn't make any sense. And this isn't unique to the UK. Sure. With the exception of Angela Merkel, who went on television and explained.

Well, she's a scientist to begin with. She's a scientist. The rest of the... Born in East Germany was a scientist, was a chemist actually. Yeah, so she had a rigorous intellectual training. And if you've had that, it's obvious, and if you haven't, you're a bit sunk. So I would... My recommendation is that even students who are studying science, actually,

often don't have a good view of placing things out of context. So I ask students who apply to Imperial College to explain exponential growth and to explain it mathematically if they can. And you'd be surprised by how poor the answers are. Oh, I'm probably going to be one of those. Yes. So you'd have thought, you know, it's fairly basic mathematics and population growth or the spread of a virus, you know, come out of COVID, you know, haven't you heard this word?

And even if you're more interested in economics, you know, growth of an economy. But very poorly described and very poorly conceptual. So I, my recommendation would be from education because that's fundamentally what I do and I teach is for us to think carefully about school curricula that are much more careful about looking at evidence and driving an argument on evidence. And you can do this. It's not exclusive to science. You do it in history as well. You know, here's your source material. What can you then say as a result of that source material?

So there are lots of subjects where that type of rigorous logical evidence-based thinking is important and that really is the only hope for the future generations. I mean, we have wonderful tools, we have the internet, you have the whole of human knowledge at your fingertips, something that you could only dream, you know, I could only dream as a teenager of that being there.

And it's there in front of you. So most young people have this wonderful resource, what they need to be educated in is how to use that results critically. But Martin, you can have the best curricula, but if you have the most lousy teacher, it's not going to be worth anything. At the end of the day, I would prefer a damn good teacher and a mediocre curriculum,

as opposed to a damn good curriculum, but really mediocre, a really poor teacher. You know, I think a teacher makes a difference. Oh, there's no doubt about that. And the earlier

in your education, the better. Yeah. So we, we had Imperial, particularly in this department, pride ourselves on, we're not necessarily

just innovative teaching, but actually really good teaching and attention to the education of our students. But if you talk okay to more social scientists, they say, your life chances are already pretty much determined, right? You've got into Imperial College, you know, you're in the direction. You make the difference to a class.

Well, you get into Imperial, you're set for life. Yeah, well, that's a good selling point, isn't it? But, you know, if you've got a class of five-year-olds, that's where you're making the difference. Yeah. So good quality education and good quality teachers as soon as possible. So I have to say, okay, primary education is very good. Yeah. Primary school teachers, and many of them are absolutely first rate.

You know, they should be paid like bankers. They contribute, I agree. A good teacher. More, more than the bankers. Sorry? More did bankers, hired at bankers. Yeah, hired. Well, then I'm sounding a bit.

No, I've been very vocal about this. I'm not a fan of banker, so I wouldn't have a problem with that. But yeah, we have a... That makes me very guilty because I was once a banker. I've read your CV, yes. But we... And this is, obviously, I know this is not unique. We should value education more.

Absolutely. And we, you know, it's easy to say we should pay teachers more value, value teachers more. But it is important that we have good quality education, good quality teachers. And one of the difficulties is also in science. You know, it's well known, unfortunately, and it's same with me at school and my children at school, the inspirational, the really good teachers have been more in the humanities. Yeah. And one of the reasons is if you're a good scientist, you can get much better paid doing another type of job.

So that's another thing that is a problem. You know, one country in Southeast Asia that's investing a hell of a lot in education and good teachers is Singapore. They are just on a different planet, you know, when they're looking at recruiting teachers from all over the world, when they're trying to beef up their educational domains, when they're trying to, make sure that they come up with really cool products of education. And it's manifested in how Singapore has turned out, you know, in the last, you know, a few decades. It's something to be to be spoken about, you know, for at least, you know, by many of the other,

you know, countries in Southeast Asia, if not Asia Pacific. Now, you talked about exponentiality. I smell in the horizon that there could be something popping up, you know, sooner than we think. That's going to be a remedy to the climate change problem, right? Just by way of exponential growth of the innovation and whatever you do and whatever your peers are doing as to, you know, help remedy climate change. Is that a possibility? I think it is. Let's give an analogy.

When I was young, AIDS was the big threat. Right. There was this appalling, incurable disease. Yeah, that was in the 80s. Yeah, I remember. We understood. No one, you know, and it seemed insurmountable. Yeah.

At the time, people... It was so apocalyptic, you know, back then. Yeah. But at the time people thought the solution would be, you know, someone's going to do something revolutionary medicine, get a Nobel Prize, and maybe that cures AIDS. Actually, what's happened is a number of incremental improvements and simply developing the treatment. And so that now people are living with HIV have a life expectancy that's indistinguishable from someone who isn't,

if they have access to the right appropriate treatment. Right. And that's a number of important but collaborative advances. It could be, you're right, that climate change is the same. There could be something truly transformative on the horizon, which would be a super efficient solar cell or nuclear fusion is another example. So that's why I'm a little bit more optimistic. I don't believe that we're going to avoid dangerous climate change. I don't think we should abandon the 1.5 degree aspiration, but we are almost there, and I think we're committed to it.

But it may not be as bad as three degrees, simply because the technology improves. And there is an incentive, regardless of everything to say, there is an enormous incentive both scientifically, but also financially to crack this problem. So I think it will be a combination of things. And that is one where they begin over politicising and oversimplifying things is a problem. Because many people you talk to have their silver bullet, their solution.

Why don't we go all nuclear? Or why don't we go all wind or solar power across the Sahara, right? They always have their pet solution. It's going to be a combination. It's going to be a combination of things. Well, I see climate change as a problem, but it's also a source of so many things to come. I think it's going to be the source of the largest number of Nobel Prize winners in the next few decades. I think it's going to be the source for the creation of probably or potentially,

potentially the first trillionaire, right? Anybody that comes out with a solution to climate change, I think could potentially be the first trillionaire. But I can just visualize so many Nobel Prize winners, you know, coming out of the space. Because it's such a huge problem for humanity that is a source for, you know, so many things to come. Isn't that the way to think about this?

I mean, in an inspirational sense, yes. As a scientist, you know, you want to work on the solutions and you want to work on the things that are important. In fact, I'm paraphrasing what Nome Chomsky said, which was that he viewed it as the duty of intellectuals to identify important problems and to work on them. Now, he was viewing this obviously on identity of what he thought were political problems, principally. But as a scientist, it's scientific and engineering problems.

And clearly, the big challenge is how to provide sufficient energy to a growing and hopefully more prosperous world population while dealing with the threat of dangerous climate change. That's clearly, that's a huge issue for this century. it is inspirational to be working on it and the fact that it's a serious challenge makes it you know worthwhile getting out to bed in the morning it doesn't necessarily have to be depressing I think if we viewed it a bit more as an engineering and scientific challenge right we would be able to attract more bright people to work on this problem at the moment unfortunately I I do get the impression that many people think that the way of dealing with climate change is to protest.

So, you know, to be the next Greta Thunberg. Now, actually, I've got nothing against Greta Thunberg. I think she's absolutely magnificent in the way that she's highlighted, you know, some of the hypocrisy and cynicism and has helped galvanize a youth movement. Right. but if you want to solve the problem, it's not just political. There's a huge science and engineering component. And that's one of the things a little bit frustrates me.

You talk to students who are very worried about climate change and you ask, are you studying science at school? Why would I do that? Yeah. That's that I think we need to communicate a little bit more strongly. Right. And you know, if you take a little bit of the environment. You understand the Earth and we understand how to deal with solutions to make the Earth a better place.

Well, since you brought up Greta, her followers on Instagram are about 14 to 15 million, which sounds like a lot. But the followers of Kylie Jenner are 350 million. You know, so that tells you the pulse of humanity, right? Right? That people still prefer to burn carbon and emit carbon, you know, as much as they gravitate to some of the narratives that are being articulated by Greta. And that worries me. And this, I think, you know, goes back to the earlier part of the conversation where just, you know, we're seeing conversations getting so polarized unnecessarily and unhealthily. I want to ask you, what is the worst case scenario? What could go wrong? More wrong than whatever we've been talking about.

How apocalyptic can this be? The major concern was people call positive feedbacks. So it's not that something fundamentally goes wrong in our, what I would say deliberate CO2 emissions. Even in the most pessimistic recognings, I have to say, only a finite amount of oil and gas in the subsurface that you can extract economically. We're not going to find another Saudi Arabia.

So even without climate change, there is in fact going to be a natural peaking and decline of hydrocarbons. Not enough to avoid significant effects on the planet, but I think sufficient to stop anything pure, you know, truly apocalyptic, apocalyptic, sorry. Coal, we have plenty of coal, but I think the technology is improving to make alternatives cheaper in the long run.

The real problem is if this induces a positive feedback. So, for instance, the release of methane hydrates into the atmosphere, as an example. So as the permafrost warms up, we have more, more carbon and global warming potential locked up in methane hydrates than we do in conventional hydrocarbon resources. So if permafrost warms, these methane hydrates are essentially sort of ice-like structures that have captured methane will then be released into the atmosphere. And methane is a more potent greenhouse gas in carbon dioxide. And so that is a serious problem.

And then there are other problems associated, which I'm less expert on, but are associated with the world's weather patterns and ocean circulations. So we actually make a big change that is much, much worse. So we reach essentially a tipping point. And that is potentially catastrophic. And in fact, that's one of the reasons why most people are very adamant that we do need to reduce. warming to below as lower numbers we can make it. We can't say, oh, we could survive with three degrees, it won't be so bad because there is a genuine risk that something unexpected happens. This is an uncontrolled experiment with the climate and you don't know how the planet will react.

Well, I can tell you the weather anomalies are increasing in number. in my place where I grew up Indonesia, all my life I've never seen anything that looks like a tornado. But recently, I've been seeing stuff that looks like a tornado. And the number of typhoons and the Philippines is just increasing, unlike whatever we might have seen in the last few decades. So going back to exponential growth, I mean, if this thing were to grow as, an exponential rate then i think we're quite exposed in a near foreseeable future right it could get pretty apocalyptic not to mention the number of islands that are going to be you know submerged by

way of the the rise of sea level uh yeah and then and then there are other concerns that they don't go along with that i mean if we live in a society that is highly integrated and very sophisticated So a disruption of, for instance, global trade or global manufacturing would, within a few weeks, precipitate people into what we would consider an intolerable standard living. And of course, that then comes with political upheaval as well. So one of the concerns people have is with major climate change and major disruption that then leads to a collapse of societies as well. so that you have a sort of dystopian view of the future where a burning of fossil fuels has precipitated really very significant changes in climate that has made living very difficult and we've made that worse by creating political instability, wars, huge amounts of migration. And in a hundred years time, we look back on this period as some sort of golden age. We're living in essentially a sort of more modern equivalent. And the dark ages has always been a bit of a misnomer, but we're looking at a situation where we've seen a collapse of our modern integrated technological civilization.

I mean, I used to, funny enough, I used to have that view. Now that I have children, I don't want that to happen. So I'm less sort of, less sort of, you know, fantasize about it. And I don't believe it will happen. I'm optimistic that we will be able to solve these problems, but we won't avoid them altogether. I think we will solve them in the long term, but there will be changes in our climate, and I do believe we are going through a period of political stress as well. Martin, we've spent an hour and 20 minutes.

I want to ask the last few questions. On a more basic level, you know, what would it take? for the world to get more interested in science? I mean, what would it take for as many people as possible to idolize the likes of Isaac Newton, Oppenheimer, Leonardo da Finci, Einstein, and all that? What would it take? I'm quite concerned with how fewer and fewer people, are wanting to study science

in many places around the world, not necessarily the UK. I think it's the education. Because you mention those heroes. Oppenheimer, it was a Hollywood film. Yeah. You're lots of people.

But there's so many other competing things. We live in a very busy, very diverse world. so for every one person who sees the Oppenheimer movie there are a hundred people who was doing something else whereas I mean I remember you may remember you used to live in a world where there were far fewer options on what you did and those options were were very much controlled by a sort of intellectual elite now that comes with a lot of problems I'd have to say I'm I'm very much in favour of an open society so I don't say that's an ideal to go back to. But certainly young people nowadays have so many other competing things

that they can be interested in and do. And so science, which requires a rigorous intellectual training, can be sort of drowned out. So the way I feel it should be captured is not fun enough that there's a problem with all aspects of popular culture. You know, there's a lot of interest in science. There's a lot of things in the news. There's a lot of things in films and television

that try seriously to explain science in a way that used not to be, and have to say, for instance, science reporting and newspapers has improved enormously because they realize how important it is. But it's the education. The education comes at school, so most children in the world do have to go to school.

And I think it's there at a young age, children should be encouraged to go through what is a rigorous intellectual training to think logically, to apply mathematics, to look at evidence, to build up scientific hypotheses, to critique what people are doing. And I think if that was considered to be intellectually the most laudable activity, as it is in many parts of the world, then I think we would have people with a better scientific training.

Do you prefer the world to be filled with people with lateral thinking abilities? Of course, yes. I think that's very important. Right. So I will, I mean, this is one of the, I have to say, we see it with intellectual training as a tension. Right. So I was talking about parts of the world where, you know, knowing science and maths is considered the best. right? So I give an example. China and that's definitely the case. We have lots and lots of

applicants from China, lots of absolutely splendid students who've received a really first-rate education in the way I've described. But, funny enough, there's less encouragement for lateral thinking for things that are really imaginative to doing stuff out of the box. In fact, actually, a Western education is often considered very good at that, right? Just take these ideas and try try apply something completely new, try and think across rather than within. Sure. On the other hand, often the tools, like can I really think logically, can I write code, can I do mathematics, are limited. So what we, you know, like with everything, the ideal world would be a combination of some of the skills. The acceptance and the recognition culturally, the importance

of a scientific education combined with a sort of liberal free thinking that these is not exclusively but often associated with a more western style education i get the sense that you know lateral thinking makes you more innovative yeah and that that requires risk-taking you know that's another yeah that's another which we see with young people often less willing to take risks, largely because they have a riskier life. Sorry, don't know. Sorry, sounds like contradiction. They have a more difficult life. Right. When I graduated, there wasn't really a sense that you wouldn't have a job. You know, we couldn't have a reasonable life. So you were perfectly prepared to make

compromises, make, to take risks. Whereas nowadays, I'm telling you. you know people who graduate here can I even get a job can I even afford the rent being able to buy a house seems almost inconceivable and that unfortunately narrows your view because then then you're just it's just a narrow focus on sort of surviving it's obviously a more western view of putting enough food on the table but it's part of that if people are insecure about having a reasonable life day to day they're less likely to be innovative they're less likely to take risks. And I think this is a problem.

We should live in a society where particularly young people feel much more secure, secure about their future in the sense that they feel they can make their own future. And then they're more likely to do different things. And that would be wonderful. Okay. This is going to be my last question. At the COP 28, there are a number of countries that announced that they're going to triple their nuclear energy. Yeah, I'm a nuclear fan, right?

I like nuclear because it's scalable and it's clean. And technologically, it's gone to a place where it's a lot safer, you know, than it would have been some decades ago. What would it take for you as a scientist, or I'm asking you as a scientist, what would it take to repopularize nuclear at the rate that it's been, you know, sort of like put a scientist? for quite a while? Yeah, I agree. The nuclear should absolutely be part of the package. Yeah. And as a physicist, again, I can see the enormous advantages of nuclear power.

The problem has been, I don't believe, is fundamentally concerns about safety, but cost to construct nuclear power station that you can guarantee is more or less safe. and also to deal with high-level radioactive waste is just expensive. So certainly in the UK context, there are plans to build new nuclear power stations, but the costs associated with them are just huge. So in fact, they're much more expensive as an option than, say, offshore wind. So I agree with you, I'm not a sufficient expert on nuclear power to dig into, you know, why it isn't taking off.

But again, from the scientific and engineering perspective, the problem appears to be that building a nuclear power station is hugely expensive. If it could be done cheaply, done cheaply in a way, you know, that is safe and at least has a plan for monitoring. Well, Germany can afford it. Germany can afford it. Yeah, but Germany rather, if you asked me rather stupidly, went against nuclear. I know.

Yeah, absolutely crazy. So I think those countries that have nuclear power should at least try and maintain it. That's sort of what Britain is doing. And actually we're taking... And France. France has done a good job, yeah. Well, someday. I think nuclear is part of the package.

I think this idea of, oh, well, we're going to move to a zero-carbon economy, but it's somehow going to be pure. That becomes ideological. It becomes sort of a bit religious. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to be zero carbon, but that's going to be without nuclear. Oh, we're not going to do any CO2 capture because that's hydrocarbons. No, we're going to do it pure.

And that's a religious argument, not a scientific. I've said it quite a number of times. The narrative just becomes a little too elitist, you know, without enough degree of realism. Yeah. And they're just sort of like circling. Yeah. Anyway, Martin, it's such a pleasure to be able to talk to you. It's a pleasure being able to talk to you, so thank you for a much.

Thank you so much. And I hope to see you in person when I'm in your part of the world. I mean, I'm sure you have to fly via London, possibly. So, yeah, be great if ever you're here or I have the opportunity to go up to Nottingham. It's not that far. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do. All right. Thank you so much. Take care.

That was Professor Martin Blunt at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College. Thank you. This is Endgame.