The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Martin Rees: If Science is to Save Us, Part 1

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

This is the second podcast dialogue we are airing with renowned astrophysicist, Astronomer Royal, and former President of the Royal Society, Lord Martin Rees. The first time I sat down with Martin for the Podcast we discussed his life in science, and topics ranging from the state of modern cosmology to the potential conflicts between science and religion (which he views as minimal, and I don’t). Martin’s thinking, and his expertise, go far beyond these topics however. Based on his experience at the Royal Society, as an elected member of the House of Lords, and working with the Center for Existential Risk at Cambridge, Martin has thought carefully about the challenges we face as a society in the 21st century, and how science can be marshaled to help us address these challenges. He has written a new book on the subject called If Science is to Save Us. I thought it would be useful and interesting to sit down with Martin to discuss the ideas he raises there, and our conversation turned out to be so wide-ranging that we are presenting it in two separate episodes of the podcast. This is the first release, and I am sure you will find his thoughtful and incisive comments both provocative and inspiring. As always, I benefitted greatly from my conversation with him, and I hope you do as well.As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. I was lucky enough to have a conversation with my friend, the distinguished astrophysicist Lord Martin Rees, a few years ago on our podcast, but he more recently came out with a very interesting book about saving the world with science. And I thought it was a great opportunity to have him back to talk about the subjects in the book and to have a wide-ranging conversation far beyond astrophysics and its own background about the areas where science, uh, the areas where science, uh, can impact on our lives and our future. And it was, as always, a very informative and Loddy discussion. He's a remarkable scholar, human being, and a real pleasure to talk to. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. The conversation was so comprehensive that we actually are dividing it into two podcasts, and we're releasing the first half now. So I hope we'll enjoy this first half of the Origins podcast with Martin Rees,

talking about basically saving the world with science. And you can watch it ad free on our Substac site if you're a substack subscriber to Critical Mass, and I hope you'll consider doing that because those funds support the Origins Project Foundation. If you're not a subscriber, you can watch it on YouTube eventually, if you're a subscriber to our YouTube channel, or of course listen to it on any podcast listening site.

No matter how you watch it or listen to it, I really hope you'll be informed, and educated as much as I am every time I talk to Martin Rees. So enjoy this Origins podcast with Martin Well, thank you, Martin for once again agreeing to do the podcast. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for being with me today. Great to be in touch with you. It looks very cozy where you are in your study in England. Is the weather okay there? Is it you haven't had any blizzards or that sort of thing there, I assume? Nothing on the scale they've had in North America, but it's quite sunny today.

Oh, excellent. Well, it's snowy today here, but not a bad day, kind of nice, pleasant kind of snow. We have had the, I've had the privilege of already having been with you in England for one of the earliest podcasts when we began these podcasts. And so I don't have to go over that territory. As you know, normally, it's an origins podcast, and I talk to people about their origins, but we talked about that.

your origins as a scientist in the last time we had a podcast. But since the purpose of this particular podcast, I want to focus on your new exciting book if science is to save us. You and I have had some discussions about it. And it's a very important set of topics. So I thought it would be nice to come back. You and I talked a lot about cosmology and to some extent religion. I thought this is a chance to talk about some of the important ideas that you're raising

when it comes to science and public policy. And I was thinking about it, and I think there have been few scientists. You can correct me, no doubt, as you often do, if I'm wrong. There have been few scientists in the United Kingdom that have had your level of experience as well as acknowledged experience across a wide area of scientific and science and public policy.

I don't know if there's anyone who's held as many honorific and substantive titles as you had. And it really hit me when you talked in the middle of the book about the Longitude Prize. You talked about, I think, that there are eight people that are supposed to be involved in that prize. And three of them include the Astronomer Royale, the President of Royal Society, and the professor of astronomy at Cambridge. And all three of those people were you. And it really hit me that is. I don't think does there any precedent for that kind of experience that you hold?

You really have a unique. Oh, I think so. And there are huge numbers of people who are more sophisticated in the politics and the popularization, but may not have been so active academically. So I think I sort of try to straddle the academic world. and the popular world. But we are very lucky in Britain. Just think of this late lamented Colin Blakemore and people like that. Yeah, yeah. That's true. You've, no, England's had its share of exceptional scientists and scientists with communicators, but people who are in a position

to be able to not just voice their views, but perhaps have those views have an impact through their substantive roles like President of the Royal Society and now Lord in the, in the in the UK, I think it's all the whole thing, it's called House of Commons, but the House of Lords. So to have that combination of interest, which you have, which a lot of exceptional British sciences have had that, but also the ability in principle to kind of implement that interest. That seems to me almost, you may not be unique, but I bet there's less than a handful of people who've had that kind of opportunity. Well, my influence is sadly limited, I'm afraid, but I do my best.

Well, you do your best, and I appreciate that. and one of the many aspects, one of the many reasons I admire you, and there are many. But I thought in the context of origins, I would at least talk about that aspect of your career path as a choice or opportunity. You know, people take advantage of opportunities that they don't, but often it's because of their predilections at the same time. You took on these roles from President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College, and the other roles, you've taken on. Why?

Well, I took them on in later life. I had a very fortunate career, starting in the 1960s, when the rapid changes in astronomy in cosmology, first evidence of the Big Bang, black holes, etc. And I was very fortunate to be in a strong research group and to make many international contacts and to be able to spend much of my career at Cambridge University, which was an outstanding centre. So I was very lucky indeed, and I developed a wide international contacts. And I worked over a fairly widespread of topics with a lot of collaborators and a lot of students. And I think I made a number of modest contributions. Oh, come on. Don't be too modest. But as I,

say in my book, when I got to age of 60, I thought I should perhaps think about whether I should do something of more direct public relevance. And also, I was motivated by noting the ways in which scientists grow old. And there are three different ways. One common way is they just become paupied and don't do very much or nothing very exciting. That's one thing that can happen. There are many examples of that, and I had some in my university and in my department who were like that. I didn't want to follow their example. I want to do something else. There are some who, of course, just go on doing what they're good at and have a career extending into their 70s and 80s even.

But I think it's interesting that most scientists do their best work when they're young. a platitude people say this but there's a lot of truth in it and the reason for that is that as you get older you become less good at adopting new ideas and learning new techniques and therefore

if you are going to go on make a contribution in your later years then the best you can do is to be on a plateau doing what you're good at etc And incidentally, this is rather interesting contrast with the arts, because if you think of great composers, most of them did their best work in their last years. And there aren't very many scientists from you would say that.

And I think the difference is that if you are a composer, you're influenced by the modes and styles when you were young, but thereafter, it's just internal development. You don't need to absorb any external influences. sciences are more interactive and social activity. And therefore, to stay on the frontiers, I'm sure you'd agree, you've got to really be alert to what's going on and understand new things. And that's what we get less good at as we get older. Absolutely. Adopting new techniques.

Yes. You know, graduate students are notably adept they're required to. I used to have, I know a very distinguished colleague who said, well, you know, do you read everything? No, he says, but, you know, I have graduate students who read everything and then they can, They can educate me. Let me just, I know before you get the third thing, what about the other aspect? And maybe this isn't true because composers this way.

But the other thing that I wonder about older scientists is science does require generally intense energy and periods of concentration working intensely for a long time, years perhaps. And I'm wondering if that willingness perhaps also subsides as you get older to devote such intensity to a single problem as you get older? Well, I think most people's academic careers tend to gather a lot of extraneous duties, administration, etc. And so not very many managed to have careers where they can be as dedicated in their later years and that.

But, of course, it's not that one's part of concentration decline, because think of composers. I think of the concentration that Wagner needed to the full score of Götterdamerum. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In any case, I just wonder, because sometimes I think of projects and I think, boy, do I have the energy to do that project now? Earlier on, I would have had the energy. Well, most of us do have less energy, so we do have to conserve it, obviously.

And then the third one, which I, the third track. Well, the third one is one which is followed by some of the most outstanding scientists. Absolutely. These are people who still think they're doing science. They want to understand the world, but they get bored with doing the same stuff as they did in their early career. And they overreach themselves by entering fields in which they have no expertise. And often embarrassed they admirers by doing this. And one could quote examples, well, let me quote some.

Two of the previous holders of my chair actually are. Eddington and Fred Hoyle to really outstanding people with our greater even as their early career than me but they both became rather eccentric in their old age Eddington had his fundamental theory a sort of numerology where he thought he could predict

the exact number of particles in the universe etc and was really out of the mainstream in his last few years even though incidentally he was only 64 when he died wow he wasn't really old by most of our members. And Fred Hoyle, who again, over a 25-year period, was probably the most inventive and productive artifices in the world, in my opinion. Lots of ideas. He, in his later years, became rather isolated and took up rather crazy ideas like thinking that pandemics came in on

comets, et cetera, and that some of the key apostles in the Natural History Museum indicating the origin of birds and dinosaurs were forgeries, et cetera, and questioning Darwin. And thereby, although he was always inventive and worth listening to, he rather diminished his reputation, although he was always lively to talk to. So that's the third way. Certainly underpreciation. Perhaps one of the most underappreciated great British scientists of recent time, in my opinion. But anyway, oil.

Go on. I mean, you know, it's interesting, by the way, when you were thinking about this, I was thinking of the contrary. I was thinking of someone, an example of someone who at least questioned himself enough to know was Richard Feynman. You know, Richard Feynman, you know, I wrote a book about it, but it's fascinating because he often talked about how, as you became more famous, people would ask for your opinions on things. and eventually he'd start to give them. And then he realized that he had no idea what he was talking about and giving an opinions. And there was a while when he got bored. I remember there was a period he went into a to try and learn some genetics.

And in a molecular biology laboratory, he spent a summer, and I'm sure he was an interesting graduate student in that sense, a Nobel Prize winning graduate student, but nevertheless. And then I think he just realized that he couldn't make good, you know, the kind of contributions there that he could in physics. he stepped back. So it's rare though that people are willing to self-analyze enough to know that they're pontificating. Well, of course, some do make a switch in mid-career, don't they? Yeah. It's somewhere I know from the UK. And of course, let's take another example. I think we both know it in Maher-Premant Dyson. Yeah. He did great mathematical physics in his 20s.

And he sort of consciously said that young people should write papers, old people should write books. And he wrote his first book when he was, I think, in his late 50s. In mid-50s, he remember he made that transition. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And he went on, of course. And I mentioned him in another memoir. I recently wrote my life story.

And he remained live in interesting until his mid-90s. Well, absolutely. And I used to communicate him, right? I told about two weeks before his death, as a matter of him. Yeah, he was certainly still the most interesting person to talk to at the Institute of for Verman study when I spent my time there. And he was when he was 80s. However, some people would say that he then began to pontificate on issues like climate

change in areas where he perhaps. Well, I mean, as I've already talked about this in other context, Freeman had the attitude that most people weren't as smart as him, and he didn't just, and which was a true statement. And he didn't trust work that other people had done. I think since he hadn't done the climate change work, he naturally distrusted it. But that, unfortunately, it's not true, as I think my late friend,

Sidney Coleman told Feynman once. It's not that everyone else is an idiot. Just that's a wrong assumption. They're actually, other people know what they're doing. And having studied it for years, should give you a bit of an edge. Yeah, exactly. And I think that was a disservice he did.

The only disservice I know was his attitude about climate change in that sense. He raised interesting questions. He always was a contrarian. In any case, you decided to choose none of those paths, I guess. Well, what I did was I thought I should do something else about what wider nature. And I rather overdid it because within four years, I was a master of Trinity College, which is the biggest college in Cambridge, and I was a member of the House of Lords, and I was present to the Royal Society. And so, for the decade of my 60s, I was quite heavily involved in quite serious administration and public outreach, etc.

But fortunately, that was all over when I was 70, and I'm lucky to have been able to go on for another decade. because I'm just 80 now. And during the recent decade, I've worked just as hard, but pacing myself, as it were, because although I've done a variety of things and helped to set up new organizations and written by the lot, I've not been responsible for any major organization

or committee or structure. And so I feel I don't have to be quite so concerned if things go wrong because I'm the only one who will suffer. Yes. You've learned from that, you've learned from that experience. I admit I understand it too. It's really nice not to have to run an organization. Let me ask you, had you been literally insulated from that, but I mean, had you not had a tendency, was it really only when you turned 60 that you looked, I mean, had, I'm sure you're such a responsible individual. I'm sure you must have been part of committees and and, and you were having to be. You were,

weren't you head of the British Association of Science or something earlier on? I was head of that and the Royal International Society as president. And indeed, I was chairman of the European Space Agency Science Committee for a few years. This was before you were 60 though, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's not as if this suddenly, you know, this response, this sense of responsibility to the scientific community or whatever emerged spontaneously when you were 60. You obviously felt the need to.

Yes. The change was up until 60. I was involved in lots of committees and, et cetera, but they were all in Astronautical space. Ah, okay. And then they were beyond that. I felt I would engage in broader topics. Okay.

And then after you stop that, as you say, you do things just for yourself, although you have been involved, and we'll talk about setting up, perhaps setting up a number of interesting organizations, or being involved in their, their neonatal stages anyway. But I will say that I think you've gone in that other route

with a little bit like Freeman's route. You've been more prolific in your writing, I think, in the last 10 years than before, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. I don't need to care what people think. Yeah, that's excellent. Good. Okay, good. Well, that's a perfect segue. Well, I thought that, you know, it's interesting to let me ask you

one of the question in that regard. I'm spending more time than here, but I think these are important lessons for young scientists anyway to learn from and for others. So was the example of others, when you looked up at people you admired, did your decision to some sense be, I don't want to call it a statesman of science, but something like that, was, were you influenced by looking at the people you had admired earlier who'd agreed to do that? I think I was, but also I was influenced by those who I think have made the wrong decision. I mean, there was one person, well, I said it was called Ray Littleton, who was a professor in my department. We worked with Hoyle.

But in his old age, he'd become rather sad and embittered because he had espoused various theories which had been discredited. But he really went on just defending them when they were, instead of becoming a defense. and I just didn't want to end up like that. Okay, so it was more to avoid the pitfalls than to rise to the peaks of the... Well, there was a bit of both, I suppose. No, no, I'm just wondering, because when I, you know, I'm sure both of us have been influenced in writing by the great writers, scientists who've been wonderful writers. I'm just wondering if there were any scientists you would, who'd taken the track of being involved in public...

Well, I know of one, and we'll talk about him, Joseph Roplatte, of course, but, but, uh, I'll Other British scientists have played a role in the influence in the government, people you knew, that you had to have no personal experience. I mean, I would say Bob May was one, quite well, and many of the pioneers of molecular biology. Any physicists? Any physicists? Well, of course, there was the earlier generation who were involved in the war. And of course, that generation, of course, got huge responsibility young.

And they continued, people like Cockcroft and Penny and people like that were involved in making the bomb. And those who went on in radar. And people like Lovell and Riot. the pioneers of radio astronomy. They did radar during the war, and Lovell, who built this huge telescope in Dodger Bank in Manchester in 1950s, he was fairly young, but he was very enterprising and ambitious because he'd done a lot when he was in his 20s during the war.

Try by fire. He was, in my opinion, a really great man, because he built this big dish. and it's been upgraded, and it's 65 years old now, and it's still doing work which he couldn't have conceived of. It's done some of the best work on looking for the evidence for gravitation of ways from binary pulsars and all that's been resurfaced. But at the same time as doing work on projects he couldn't have conceived of

65 years ago when he built it, It's also become part of British Heritage, a designated World Heritage site rather like Stonehenge. Oh, wow. I'm showing Stonehenge and Jodrell Bank. I wonder whether 5,000 years from now, whether people will unearth it and wonder what its purpose was like. I guess so. Well, I hope not in a way that it'll apply something about the end of our civilization, but maybe. And we'll get there.

Speaking of the end of our civilization, the title of the book is if science is to save us, That in some sense presumes that we need saving. Do we and why? Well, I think as I discussed in the first half of the book, we are under threats of various kinds, which are at least indirect consequences of the advance of science. We are subject to climate change and environmental despoilation, etc. because of a larger and more demanding population using more energy, etc. And that population would never have got so large,

had it not been for the benign effect of biomedicine, allowing people to live for longer, etc. So the stakes are getting higher because science provides great benefits, but also, along with those, there are very severe downsides. And so that's really the theme. Of course, the first example of this was the nuclear bombs in 1950s, depending on technology of the 20th century. But the 21st century sciences of bio and cyber, they are going to have a similar effect, which needs great prudence in order to apply safely and ethically. And so that's really what I meant.

And there are these contexts in which science could destroy us in ways which are the downside of its benefits. So the aim has to be to harness the benefits and minimize the risk of the downside, which are getting very serious. And so the first half, the book outlines the topics. And the second part of the book discusses more of the scientific community, its ethical responsibility. education and understanding science by the public. Yeah, in fact, that's a wonderful summary. I was gonna go into that. I think you sort of summarized it nicely at the beginning.

You say, my focus will be on instead on how the science has impinge on our lives and on the hopes and fears for the future. I shall offer thoughts on what distinguishes science from other intellectual activities, how the entire scientific enterprise is organized nationally and globally, and how to ensure that scientists and their innovation, mesh into society so that applications are channeled in accordance with citizens, preferences, and ethical judgments. And you write, say right after that, I think the important point that

you've just made, but you say it beautifully, I thought the stakes had never been higher. The earth has existed for 45 million centuries. I love that. I'm going to use that again. The earth has existed for 45 million centuries, but this is the first century in which one dominant species can determine for good or ill the future of the entire biosphere. And so, yeah, the book is and I want to go into that and I want to discuss each of those things. But I think I want to jump in in a way to one of the, you know I tend to be a little contrary, to one of the examples that, you know, you use the pandemic at the very beginning.

In fact, one of the first sentences is, in fact, the first sentence of your book is, in our response to COVID-19, we were told to quote, follow the science. And there was never such a time, as you say, when, when, when, when, when experts achieve such prominence. Yeah, in fact, the next sentence, there's never been a time when experts have had such public prominence. Well, that's true, but I guess the question I have is when, in retrospect, has that helped?

It's now become almost a taunt that politicians use when they say follow the science, because they keep pointing out of the people say, you know, when they criticize masks, they say, look, they follow the science. They claim to follow science, but they weren't. they were just part of a herd of sheep. And then when the public learns that something that was claimed to not work might work or something that was claimed to work, didn't work, the question I have is, in the end, by achieving such prominence, did it ultimately produce a distrust of science among politicians

and the public that some of them didn't have before for the precise reason that this was the first time the public saw how science really works, which is, you know, tentatively and at the forefront there are always things wrong but it's self-correcting and and all of that is kind of a little too subtle for the headlines and the net result is sometimes negative so I wanted to ask you about that well it does prompt negative tabloid headlines is no doubt about that but I think it was an example where as you say the public did get a feel and impression of how science is actually done and things were on They'd no idea what the virus was like and what the prospects were dealing with it and didn't know how it was spread. How to protect yourself, whether masks really weren't. And also whether we should wipe surfaces and all that. All those things were quite uncertain and they gradually firmed up. And certainly in England, the top scientists appeared regularly on television along with

the prime minister, et cetera. And I think they were respected because they did emphasize the uncertainties. But of course, most important of all, vaccines were developed within a year. Which is unprecedented, which unfortunately in some sense gives the public. For HIV after 40 years, it was remarkable that the program to actually design and manufacturing and mass scale appropriate vaccines was achieved within a year. So I think this indicated that science can do something for us. Yeah, no. In fact, in some sense, though, I also worry about that.

I think I've written about it, I've written about it in my way back in the physics of Star Trek books that said the biggest sort of scientific fallacy that Star Trek produced was the notion that you'd have this huge problem and within two hours you could solve it. And that's just not the way science normally works. It only takes decades. to solve difficult problems and gives people. And I think that kind of TV science fiction mentality has given people both a faith in science

and technology's ability to solve problems, but false expectations about how quickly or well those problems can be solved. And so expecting scientists to produce a vaccine right away and expecting them to know whether masks worked or not or whether some particular antiviral drug worked or not. And then being disappointed when they found out that the not only well first of all that we didn't know and secondly that the opinions varied

over time and and maybe in England there I just I don't know you see in the United States it's definitely produced a backlash the governor of Florida who was an educated person he went to I mean presumably educated he he went and did a degree at Yale and then a law degree at Harvard so therefore in principle has had some exposure to thinking said you know all the experts told us that vaccines would protect us against COVID. We wouldn't get COVID when we took the vaccines. But look, they're wrong. People get COVID who've taken the vaccines.

A complete misunderstanding of the fact that increasing your level of protection is not the same as being 100% immunity. And they use that as, of course, a political tool. And the public then, you know, and people like Mr. Fauci, you talk about is as much a source of derision in the U.S. as pride, I suppose.

Yes. Well, I mean, I think it is the case that although America has many the world's best science, it has the largest segment of anti-science and denial people among its population. So I think scientists have a harder time in the US than in Europe. I think it's only recently that more than 50% of the American public have accepted Darwinism. So it is way behind Europe and the stronger anti-science or science. Yeah, I guess it's true. I wonder.

But to go back to it, I mean, I don't believe everyone can, even in America, can believe that we can have an instant answer. Because everyone knows that Nixon tried to get a cure for cancer in the 1970s by throwing money at it. And he didn't realize it wasn't quite like the Apollo program. where the principles were known by throwing money at it, you could achieve a marvelous success. It wasn't like that because people didn't know where to start or how to spend the money. And I think everyone is interested in cancer

and they must realize that focus has been made, but it's a very long haul indeed. Yeah, well, I would like, yeah, that's a great example, use it in the book. And it's just I'm not sure how much that has sunk in. But you're actually right in terms of the challenge. And as a personal thing, I think I talked to you at the time when I was considering moving to England to take a position at Oxford in the public understanding of science.

And one of the reasons that I didn't end up doing that is that I felt that if you're interested in the public understanding of science like me and also an American, as well as a Canadian, that I should spend, my proposal at the time was to spend half the time in the U.S. because I felt if you talked about public understanding of science and you ignored the U.S., you were doing a disservice. In the end, I didn't know. Great to leave that. But let me just point out.

I was just reading in the news this morning that they're now not epidemics, but close to that in certain parts of the United States, regarding measles and chickenpox in Ohio and other places, because of this notion, the whole question of vaccination as personal freedom versus public responsibility has really now, in the U.S. at least, and I see it the same in Canada. I don't know if it's the same in England, has become an issue where people feel that they used to be, that children were forced to have certain vaccinations before they can enter public school as a public safety measure against childhood disease like measles and chickenpox and things like that. And now there are apparently huge numbers of people who are refusing to that.

They say, look, we have the freedom to not vaccinate our children. and in some sense, the whole public discussion over vaccination associated with COVID has led to that. I'm wondering, so I'm wondering if that's a step backwards as a result of the successful creation of vaccine. I'm raised these questions just because I don't know the answer, actually. Well, I suppose the public is more aware of the issues now, but I think they balance the risks incorrectly in those contexts. I think we'd agree with that. Oh, yeah, of course. And, of course, incidentally, one of the main problems

in conveying scientific issues to the public when they have practical implication is to ensure that probabilities are properly understood because it's very easy to misunderstand this and realize that often, if you do a test, false positives can outnumber the real cases, but nonetheless the test is a good thing to do. So it's not completely straightforward,

but this is just one of the issues where one does have to try and educate people. And this leads to a separate question, which is science education of young people. Yeah, which we'll get to, eventually. Yeah, no, I mean, an incredibly interesting thing. And importantly, an important issue, which you're aware of, I think I just recorded a podcast, it'll appear sometime with your Oxford colleague, Tim Palmer, about the importance of uncertainty and probabilities. And it was a fun and detailed discussion, I think.

By the way, do you agree? Let me just ask you as a question of public policy. And you've made the point, and I've tried to make it too. What comes to public policy, scientists are just citizens. They're not, we don't have any special. You know, we have expertise that's relevant for the determining of public policy, but all the factors, as you go into in great detail, that affect public policy, are affected by issues well beyond science.

And therefore, we can, you know, we don't, we shouldn't necessarily be taken. our views in that regard are not necessarily special. But having said that, do you think children should be a requirement to enter public schools should be that children are vaccinated against childhood diseases that will thereby protect their peers? Well, in principle, it may be or may not be, because as you say, there was a trade-off between freedom and the safety of others.

And I think that is just the kind of decision, politicians and the public have to make. But in making it, they've got to be aware of the genuine scientific evidence, or at least the best estimates we have of what the risks are. And they've got to accept that the scientists are genuine experts. I mean, if they get ill, they can discriminate between a kind of medic who can help them and someone who is just a quack. And in the same way, one would hope they can distinguish the views of someone who is a genuine expert from someone who has no credentials. Yes, and one of my editors once said that, you know, when the aliens come, everyone will turn to the scientists. There is an inherent faith in the scientists, but you did, it's clear you've had a public role for a long time because you managed to, you turned my question around and gave a very relevant answer, but didn't give your own opinion, which was,

Just wondering whether I think just I'm of the opinion for example that he I think it comes from having grown up in Canada that people should be required to wear helmets when they drive motorcycles not because I care whether they kill themselves but because there ultimately their impact it's a social responsibility in some sense because and so so we have we are born free but we do live forever in chains and and and and so. So I think we have a social responsibility to some extent to ensure that the children we send to school basically are not threats to other children in some ways. Yes, no, we do. But of course, contrast those. I mean, no one claims any downside wearing a helmet. Yeah. Oh, no. No.

No, no. There's a long zero downside of vaccination. Oh, no. You haven't lived in the United States. I lived in Arizona where you don't have to wear a helmet. And everyone claims there's a downside to wearing helmet. It reduces the pleasure of riding a helmet. motorcycle, the breeze in your face and all of these things. Anyway, all of these things, as you point out,

are there may be one of the great senses we'll get to is something like understanding, you know, risk is different than deciding how to address it or something like that. Because in some sense, that is personal, but it's also societal and it's up to politicians and the public ultimately to weigh those risks. And the role of science, which I think you stress over and over again as I do, is to provide the information to allow you at least make a more intelligent assessment of the risks. But I did leave a question to myself, and I want to move on.

But to this whole COVID experience, it's caused me to think about this issue of can there be informed public debate about scientific results when the very nature of science is not understood. Can we have an informed public debate before people know about probabilities and self-corrections and the fact that, you know, there's never, we don't necessarily know everything 100%.

So can we have that kind of public debate? Well, I think we can. I mean, maybe some people will be easily bamboozled. But I think even though there are some people we call experts and some people who are completely sort of lay, as it were, I think one could have expected among opinion leaders and politicians. there are some who are fully attuned to what the risks are, they understand the argument. And that's why in all these issues, it's important to have politicians who can explain the issues clearly.

And it's important also that scientists should have their voices amplified by charismatic individuals who have wide attraction with the public than the scientists do themselves. I mean, I discuss this in the context of climate change. Yeah, but I guess the danger is that the politicians are charismatic individuals as well by virtue of the fact that they've been elected. You did have a prime minister recently who was well-educated, but nevertheless seem to often promote nonsense. That's right. And did it very charitimately, I would argue.

His education was in the classics. Oh, there we go. Okay. Well, that'll produce a lot of letters now, Martin, that you'll have to answer. Not me, I hope. But let's go now to the substance, more in detail, the substance of the book. As you point out, the first part of the book is really to talk about threats. Then you talk about the organization of science and the scientists themselves and ultimately education. So I want to divide things in those areas and spend a fair amount of time on the threats. But I don't want it to be a boom and gloom discussion because, you know, the latter part of your book is, really, really important about how science is organized. But let's talk about them. As far as I can see, there's, well, you mentioned three, really, the three greatest, the three big sort of technical threats that, that in some sense, science can save us from, and in some sense, science is relevant for our climate change, sort of pandemics and biomedicine and terror as one item. So climate change, so biomedicine, and then artificial intelligence as the three sort of chief things that you

discuss in the book in any case. You know, climate change, let me, in those regards, you make a statement that I also want to parse because it raises questions in my own mind, which is really great. That's one of the wonderful things about your book and our discussions as you often cause me to think, rethink things.

But you say, make the statement, it sounds good on the, on the surface, but I wonder whether, anyway, scientists have an obligation to promote beneficial applications of their work in meeting these global challenges. Well, who could argue with that? Except for the questions, we'd often, how is it clear that we know what's beneficial? What are beneficial applications of our work, especially if those applications maybe 50 years down the road and we have no ideas at the beginning? But also, what if we think applications are beneficial, but we, until the tested, we really don't know where they are. For example, you raise this question, let me give an example later on. You know, malaria, you know, genetic engineering that basically engineers mosquitoes,

malaria producing mosquitoes out of existence and makes them extinct. Something that seems to me, since I hate mosquitoes, seems like a lovely thing to do. But you do raise it under a different context. You say, well, should we be doing that? But on the face of it, ending, malaria for poor children and people in what you would call the global south. I'm trying to not use the word developing countries anymore because I read that you use global south and maybe we'll talk about that. But I mean, on the surface, it seems incredibly beneficial. Or, you know, I mean, you know, and just like people who thought putting cane toads into Australia might be incredibly beneficial. And so there's this question of how can we, do we really have an obligation

about beneficial applications, but in advance of knowing what's been. beneficial? And sometimes when we think what's beneficial is in fact not beneficial? Yes. Well, that's always good. It's a trade-off, isn't it? And one does have to decide, is the risk small enough to go ahead nonetheless because there's an obvious benefit? I think this is true in all the cases. It's true of vaccines, but it's certainly true in these cases, I think in the case of the mosquito, I would agree we should go ahead with gene drive. But on the other hand, one is aware that a runaway change to the ecology could have a downside which outweighs the benefit.

So one needs to be open-minded, and one needs to consider as many scenarios as possible and present the options to the politicians. Okay, to present the option. What about solo geoengineering, which again seems potentially beneficial, but as you point out, we don't really know the effects of blocking visible sunlight as a way of reducing the infrared. That's more serious because the effects would then be global. Yeah, absolutely. Although it's more surface in that sense, although I must admit, less serious in another sense,

if you make a genetic change to population, as you point out, I mean, even human population, it can exist for not eternity, but for a heck of a long time, whereas solar geoengineering aerosols you put in the atmosphere will be gone within a year. So it's, you know, they're global impacts, but they're shorter term. Yes, yes. Well, I mean, on geoengineering in the sense of putting stuff in the upper atmosphere, I think, as you say, it would be very dangerous to start doing this on a big scale.

Yeah. Until we had much more detailed and more reliable climate models about what it would actually do. How would it change, cloud cover, et cetera? And we're far from having that. So I don't think we're anywhere near being a position where it should be done. And of course, incidentally, the worry then is that it could be done by one nation. It's the worry and the benefit in a sense, because to really solve climate change,

we have to have a global consensus. And I think you come through in the book, as I am, as somewhat pessimistic about whether we'll ever get that global consensus. So the positive of geoengineering is you don't need a global consensus, but it's also the negative. Well, indeed, that's true.

That's the worry. And that's why I think we should try and avoid any implementation. But nonetheless, I do think it's worthwhile to explore the technology of how you can change the albedo of clouds and how efficient you can launch these particles and how long they do stay in the upper atmosphere etc and I think it's a pity that there are some people who object even to that I know that in Cambridge not in my Cambridge there was a very modest experiment being proposed and there was some Canadian campaign group that

persuaded the funders to take the money away from that, even though it was trying to do us to see what happened if you had a balloon one mile high. Yeah. I think one ought to do the research. But of course, the word geoengineering is used in two different contexts, isn't it? I mean, what we're talking about just now is modifying the upper atmosphere, like an artificial volcano, as it were. and that's something which is denies.

The kind which is, in principle, benign is sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere. Yeah, yeah, that's... It's maybe never very economic. It's not practical, but it's... It's very hard to incentivize, but if that could be done in a cheap and effective way, then I think that could achieve a global consensus that was worth doing. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it'd be hard to imagine a global consensus.

this argument wasn't worth doing. And economics, at this point, the economics and the logistics seem incredibly impractical. I visited, we visited an remarkable facility in Iceland that's doing this run by astronomers, actually, who I met when I was going to give a public lecture and astronomy there, but they were actually had moved to become involved in this, in this incredible facility near the thermal facility of capturing carbon and putting in rocks. But of course, it's very, it's great, but ineffective in the global. sense.

But, but. It has been on a huge scale. The other problem is that unlike adaptation, where a country benefits from the money it spends, in the case of this kind of mitigation, your country doesn't benefit to having these things on your land. Yeah, yeah. Well, the whole world does, but yeah, but that's not the same thing.

That's why it's going to be very hard to incentive. Yeah. Unless, well, I suppose there'd be money to be made by selling these things and companies, private companies might therefore get benefit. Why are they going to use them? They'll sell them to other countries. I don't know. Yeah, but anyway, yeah. No, it's true.

It's a, it's a, it's very hard to incentivize the landish. But let's, you know, I guess I want, yeah, let's go into this a little more detail also because I can't resist. is that so solar geoengineering, the normal kind of geoengineering, we'll talk about it, putting aerosols and artificial volcanoes, it makes perfect sense to say, we really need more research before we should do it.

I think that's unbelievably, you can't argue with that, in my opinion. However, it's risks and rewards, and at some point, some people have argued that, that even, you know, because even if the world comes together, to reduce its carbon footprint on a time scale, even remotely approaching what the government's claim to try and do by 2050, that there'll be an overshoot, and that overshoot will be dangerous.

So would one, I guess the point to demonstrate that this is, the science, the social issues are sometimes as important as the scientific ones. Yes, research is needed now more. But if in 10 or 20 years, there's much more, the impacts of climate, change are much more severe, but the research has not yet been done, we would probably have to reassess whether we should just go ahead without knowing exactly what's going to happen because the rewards might be more beneficial than the risks. Do you agree? Yes, I do, because I think the bigger the temperature rise is, the more worrying it is, because even if

we consider the benign kind of geoengineering, sucking the CO2 out, then if the change has got beyond a certain threshold, by no means obvious that it will reverse and come down. If you cross the tipping point, then it could be that once the temperature rise has got above, say, two degrees, then even if you suck out the carbon dioxide down to the present level, the atmosphere may find a different equilibrium at four degrees, something like that. Well, that's a reason for trying to minimize.

the change to avoid that sort of irreversibility coming in. Also, I forget where in the book, because I made a note, because it resonated with me, that you can't know everything before you do anything. And at some point, well, and that's something I try and instill in my graduate students. I used to because I remember when I was a graduate student, I wanted to know everything before I started a problem, you know, and then I realized you eventually have to do something. But it's true globally, at some point, political decisions. are always going to be based on incomplete knowledge.

Yes. And we have to accept that fact that we don't know, that we can recommend that this may be useful, but we don't know for sure. And at some point, someone has to make a decision, and politicians almost will never be able to make it. Politics would be too easy if you could always make decisions where you knew what the results would be.

Yes. But I think in the context of climate, there are courses of action which are unambiguously positive. That is to move towards carbon-free energy generation and storage and all that goes with it. But then another point I emphasise in my book is that it's not enough for the global north to achieve a net zero by 2050, which I think is feasible. The point is that the global south, by 2050 will have 4 billion people

and they are now using less energy per capita than we are by a big factor and they're going to need more energy per capita if they are to develop in the way we hope they will and we've got to make sure that they can leapfrog directly from smoky stoves

to clean energy just as they've leapfrogged directly to smartphones never had landlines and so the reason why we want to accelerate R&D into all kinds of clean energy. It's not only for

nations like yours and mine to aim for net zero by 2050, but to ensure that it is going to be possible for the global south to do the same thing because if we in the global north do this, then those in the

global south may well be producing at least half as much CO2 as the world is now today. And that will not be enough to stop the continuing rise. So the crucial thing is to ensure that the global south has the resources and the technology to do the same as the northern countries can and develop but using carbon-free energy. Okay. I agree. Let me parse that again to ask a little more carefully. First of all, just to make it clear, because I think Global South is not a word that,

it's a word that's, that is the word that's being used now to what we would have called developing or third rural countries and now called Global South. Is that, that's a, more or less, right? It's, um, uh, uh, Southeast Asia and Africa, which only is the way the population is rising fastest. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But now, having said that, yes, absolutely, we have that obligation, but that obligation is probably not going to be met. And then some people would argue. It's nice to me, the reason we have smartphones

and we don't have simple ways to leapfrog in climate is that it's easier to make a smartphone. And so the question is, can we expect the global South to really do that? And if we can't, do we have any right to say, no, you can't produce hydroelectric dams or burn coal or whatever, that you can't work as to because it's too late because we already screwed things up, you don't have a right anymore to take the old-fashioned technologies and try and improve your quality of life or your standard of living in your country?

Well, I think that's too pessimistic because we know that there are technologies that can provide net zero for us. Yeah, well, look, I've had this argument with the guy with Michael. But certainly, sun and wind plus lots and lots of storage plus long-distance smart grid, et cetera. And it's a technology that is feasible. And there's only economic limits on that being deployed globally. Yeah, maybe.

Although, again, I had this debate with a guy named Michael Schoenberger who has said, and I think it's probably reasonable to say it's not just energy production, it's energy intensiveness. and the land area and the energy intensiveness you get from a hydroelectric dam or a nuclear plant, for example, can produce much more power in a much smaller area than having a distributed wind farm or solar farms. So if we want to bring those people up quickly, you need energy intensiveness as well as overall energy production. And therefore we have to. That's not clear.

It's not clear. It's more expensive to get energy. in Africa from solar energy than from nuclear? The question is one of land use and land area. That's all I was thinking about. I mean, you can, you know, I'm quite sympathetic to what you just said, and I agree we need to try and look away select leaf frog. I just don't know, not clear to me, it's not clear to me we have that technology yet

to allow them to leapfrog at a level that would bring their populations up to be able to even adapt to climate change, to have the fresh water and, and energy access. That means they need economic development, and we've got to collaborate with them. Yeah. But it's hugely in our interests. Of course, it's usually on our interest.

So even if it has to be heavily subsidized by the North, as a mega-martial plan, as it were, then you should still do it. Otherwise, there's going to be disaster for all of us, and also, incidentally, massive migration on a scare we can't cope with. Exactly. I was going to bring up migration. All of these things make ultimate sense, but doesn't mean that people, it's in our own interest to be benevolent. It's not altruism.

But I see no evidence that that level of understanding that it's in our interest is causing the global north, as you'd call it, to take the necessary action. I mean, migration is a clear example. It's obvious, given that the, what's just happened, you know, with the Sudan or you pick your favorite recent country, Syria, the impact of small, relatively small number of migrants, namely only a few million instead of a few hundred million. It's caused a social discord and instabilities. If you have it on the level of 100 million, then it's a national security issue. yet countries don't seem to care. Well, I mean, you can accommodate that in Canada, certainly,

and that's probably the prime destination, because it's affected by the overwarming. So that's the case. But I think you're right. But there are examples. I mean, the Marshall Plan after World War II was an example of, well, enlightened altruism, let's say. Yeah, like not.

Do you have any, this again comes down, I was going to talk about Sputnik moments, but let's leave that to later. But do you have any, after the, you know, after the destruction and devastation of a world war, the need to bring the world back is clear. Do you have any suggestions for how, what might, or any ideas about what might motivate or prompt or get the kind of political will to produce a global Marshall Plan? I know that it's a very difficult question. Well, I think to make politicians care about what may happen 30 or more years ahead,

I mean, the main problem is termism by politicians think about the next election. And the only way in which they will care more about what happens 30 years ahead is if voters clamor for this. That's why, say, in my book, we should welcome the demonstrations by young people who will be alive at the end of a century. And we should welcome the influence of charismatic figures who have an appeal to Lars and others. And I mentioned in my book four very different people, Pope Francis, who has a billion followers in Latin America, Africa and East Asia. And his insectical, got a standing evasion of the UN. was a very important development.

So he's one, David Attenborough, our secular Pope, influenced people to take this seriously. Bill Gates, I think, is a wider respected figure who's talked a great deal of sense about what the technology will allow us to do. And Greater Thornburg, as a symbol of the younger generation. And we want more people like that who will influence the public.

And if the public cares about what happens in the life, lifetime of their children and grandchildren, then they were vote for politicians who respond to that. Or it isn't even... But it's not true to expect that change. Yeah, no, but it's also, I want to reinforce that another way. I don't think the vote is necessarily the case. I think it's more, even more, even dictatorships.

There's well-established social sciences just when 3% of the population and become actively engaged in an issue, then it causes a societal change. change. And that's, but it's true whether you have a democracy or dictatorship. Dictatorships have more control. And the virtue of a dictatorship, especially in the lighten one, is the ability to think longer term. You know, think Singapore, where they've already planning what roads they have need 20 years and. But at the same time, dictatorships can't function if the public ultimately, and you know, Iran is in the process of maybe observing that. If once a significant, enough fraction of the public say, no, this is the line we won't cross. It doesn't matter whether

there's democracy or dictatorship. No, so what I'm saying is that the public opinion has to long term and people have to care about their children and grandchildren. If that happens, then I think there could be the political will, whatever the government is, to do these things and ensure that net zero can be achieved by the world and not just the prosperous world. I guess what I was, the question I was asking, I've often, I've had this discussion for 40 years with colleagues. The first paper I think I even got involved in this one was in 1970s was that you think it's likely to come from a few charismatic individuals or a global impact. I mean, you know, is there, is it likely that something will happen in a, something in the physical world will happen that will cause people to be enough afraid? enough. You know, one would have thought it maybe when New York, you know, flooded with the

subways or, or is it likely there'll be a natural phenomenon that you think that would cause people to be able to finally say enough is enough or not? I think that might happen. I think we've seen this in a slightly more modest way with pollution of the oceans. This wasn't at all on the agenda, but I think this is where David Attenborough's program Yeah. They're even seen in the US, but they're certainly seen very widely in the world, and they have made people aware of the effect on marine life and all the rest of it of plastic pollutions.

And that's certainly in England led to some legislation, which wouldn't have happened, had the politicians not realized that the public was mindful of this issue. And so that's an example. But I think if the public is known to care, then these issues were prioritized and this may need more elaborate R&D in order to bring down the costs of clean energy or something fundamentally new or perhaps a system of smart grids on the transcontinental scale. That's another possible.

Yeah, you talk about the need to. That will be a need, certainly when it comes to global south will be need. Energy production may happen in one place, but be able to transport it to places that need that is a non-existent ability right now, but something that would be a game changer in terms of global cooperation and the global need to address carbon. And the global cycle make money,

sending the energy to places like Canada and Britain. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But even when it doesn't involve making money, it involves self-interest, as you say, if you can send that energy. And yeah, but I think desire of course and we'll get to it. It's the last part of your book is to is to scientists interact with the government with the public I mean and it's one of the

reasons both you and I do some of the things that you and I do including what we're doing right at this instant. Let me let me let me let me pick up another statement early on and we will get through this at some point I have we're on page two of 12 pages so you know but we get but there's so much I want to talk you about. But I do want to ask this question. You say when it comes to things like AI, you say, we will need the insights of social scientists to help us envisage how human society can flourish in a networked and AI-dominated world. We've been talking about climate change, but this statement was made early on in your book. And do you really trust social scientists to have those insights?

Do you really think that they can provide those kind of insights at the current time? Well, maybe somewhat better than the lay person. But I think if I'm going to talk a bit about AI, I'm not one of those people who believes that superintendents would take over the world. Yeah. But I worry about two things. First, the fact that's clearly already, not AI, but automation. and similar things is changing very much work patterns. And this can be benign if the resources are redeployed.

To take an example, if those who work in Amazon warehouses and in telephone call centers can be replaced by machines, which is quite feasible. then that's a plus plus provided that jobs could be found for those displaced. And the kind of jobs that are needed where you need to be a human being, not a machine, and where currently there are far too few people who are underappreciated and underpaid, is in being carers for young and old and teachers' assistance, custodians, public parks and things like that. So if the mega companies that make money from AI and all that are properly taxed,

and that's, of course, hard because they're multinational. But if that can be done, and if those resources can be hypothesated for workers in socially valuable enterprises like caring profession, etc., that's a plus-plus. So that's an example where one can actually develop these things. So my view is that we can benefit from AI by using it to supplement human expertise in things like radiology, etc. And to replace humans in the mind-numbing jobs like working in a warehouse. But I think we've got to be careful because we're, we've got to be careful because, I think as Rodney Brooks, the inventor of the Baxter Robot said, he's not worried about AI taking over,

but he thinks for a long time we'll have to worry more about human stupidity. Then artificial intelligence. But we also have to worry about just malfunctions and bugs because the worry is that people are using, AI to replace human judgment in medical diagnosis, deciding whether you deserve parole if you're in prison and things of that kind. And this may be appropriate in some senses. You can perhaps show that on average, the AI makes better decisions than a human does.

But there's always a worry that there's some bugs in the system, which we don't know about. and so one should keep a human in the system. And so what is worrying is if a machine has bugs which aren't read it out soon enough and therefore cause social damage, or if there's a breakdown, which is very hard to repair. I mean, suppose there was some breakdown which affected the internet globally, something like that. Think what, how much worse would have been if the internet had failed during the COVID lockdown? So I think to be over-dependent on interlinked technology on the global scale is very risky. And so those are the sorts of downsides I worry about, not the machine,

becoming a super not not yeah not not uh terminator yeah and of course i we did jump ahead i do want to go back but i but i but you know but i couldn't resist that question of whether social scientists really can help us i think i'm not i'm more dubious but but when it comes to this question of um i don't want to leave it this you're absolutely right the the point is that and i think those this goes back to maybe even one of your old john mannard keens who i know um who who who who who argued that in principle capitalism or at least industrialization would be wonderful because it would take all these boring jobs factory you know these and and people would have more free time to you know and to have leisure and do and listen to music and so and and and it would and so in principle it'd be a

wonderful thing and of course it hasn't necessarily been directed that way but i i think i would amplify what you're saying and i think i maybe it was um jeffrey sacks who i first to say this in a way, not necessarily just taking mind-numbing jobs and moving them into other jobs that are maybe more beneficial useful, but no jobs at all. That if we can produce more resources with fewer people, and if everyone benefits from that, we'll all be able to spend time at coffee shops and listen to music, and we may just have lives where we can also just enjoy cultural things without necessarily That namely take the goal that Keynes talked about, which is to more or less have technology make the average human's life more pleasant.

Yes, but of course, a crucial limitation on freedom comes from lack of money. And that's the big problem now. Well, that's, I mean, I think what Sat's saying. Those of working are not getting enough money to enjoy the kind of life you mentioned. Well, I think we agree maybe on the danger and the necessity, and I'm probably pretty pessimistic, but AI and, you know, we've already seen high technology has produced vast wealth. And the question is, will that vast wealth and AI will be another example of that, those companies that control AI will have vaster wealth. Will that be progressively funneled into fewer and fewer individuals become their by more rich and more powerful, or will that vast wealth just make the world better for everyone? And I think the example thus far is that the former is more likely than the latter. Well, I mean, I think this leads to general politics.

And being in Britain, we've got a deplorable government at the moment. And one of the most deplorable features of it is it wants to learn more from the United States. than from Scandinavia. My view is that we ought to learn more from Scandinavia, which accepts high taxation in return for greater equality and a better welfare system. And so, as you say, it's possible to have this, but it requires political attitudes rather different from those which prevail in your country and indeed in your country at the moment, although I hope not for much longer. Well, I could say the same thing. Actually, by the way, I'm in Canada now.

So it may be a little less extreme. But I have, yeah, I know what you're saying. Okay. I wanted to hit those. I want to go back. We will talk about AI because, again, at some point as well. But I wanted to go back. I don't want to leave.

There's several important issues you talk about. Once again, climate change, sort of and then biomedicine and then AI. So going back, we talked about some general aspects of climate change. But something you point out, which is an issue that really is a so much is population growth and biodiversity loss. One rarely sees maybe because it's politically incorrect to see population growth tied into the problems associated with climate change and energy as you don't hear them discussed.

You certainly didn't hear them discussed by one of your heroes, Pope Francis, for whom is not who's not one of your, one of my heroes, but who, as we talked about in the last thing, in one hand gave a wonderful and cyclical about climate change, but at the same time refused to discuss the possibility or encourage family planning in Africa, which is an essential part of that. And so it seemed to me be hollow. But population growth is an issue, and it's an issue not just for the drain on the world on what a world with 10 billion people will be but as you also point out a drain on biodiversity so so i wanted to talk about that a little bit since you talk about those in your book and ask you to

comment on on this issue of should of of is there's this divergent attitude and very divergent impact in the global north population growth is decreasing the rate of population growth is decreasing and it's also becoming negative in certain places in the in global north and the global south it's increasing so what do we do well it's not just we in the north i think it's very important that it's a matter for the countries themselves yeah i mean what we don't what clearly is unacceptable is um people in in the north um imposing their working stapers about what should be done in these other nations but i think um It's clear that many nations which are impoverished, as they are in parts of India and rural parts of Africa,

they would be able to develop more quickly if the population is stabilized. And of course, the question is, will it stabilize? We know that urbanization, women's education and things like that make the population stabilize. And that may happen in Africa. It may not because, of course, it could be that even when people have the choice, they don't want to have big families. But then, of course, that that will lead to a huge conurbation in West Africa, a hundred million people, several hundred million people, etc.

And Nigeria having a population equal to that of Europe and North America combined. The question is that a good thing for Africa And if the view in Africa is they don't want that Then let's hope that they can stabilize the population And I think that as you know there's some UN projections say That's although there'll be a continuing rise Partly because of the lifespan extended By medical techniques

still in the middle of a century. By 2080, the world population may peak. And that may be a good thing. And of course, let's bear in mind that the doomongers like Paul Ehrlich 50 years ago. Club of Rome and Levitical Growth, which I read as a kid and really impacted me. Well, of course, the population was less than half than what it is now. and they predicted doom and massive starvation in the 70s and 80s, which didn't come about. So, of course, using sustainably intensive agriculture, it's quite possible for the population to be fed.

So it's not necessarily a disaster if the population rises. And also, as regards biodiversity, I think we all do depend on the natural capital. We don't want to deplete that. And there's an ethical issue here. I quote, I quote a good at a culture of E. Wilson, who says that if this generation's actions lead to mass extinctions, it's a sin that future generations will least forgive us for, because it's an irreversible destruction of the beauty of nature, as it were.

And here I think we can all agree with the Pope. And that therefore means that we want to ensure that the food, is provided in the same intensive way, which may mean that we should encourage artificial meat and things of that kind. Well, okay. It shouldn't be sensational about the problems of rising population at all. I'm not saying.

And, of course, it's not for the global north to pronounce on these things anyway. Well, maybe for the research in the global north to talk about the implications will be. Yes, that's right. To study do research on what the implications will be, which will provide the necessary perspective that in principle people could then use to make decisions on their own. So along the lines.

Yes. So that's what we- In Africa which can join in that research. Yeah, exactly. And your point, we'll get to it, is that we want to encourage Centers for Excellence in Africa and other places. That'll be four or five hours down the road here when we get to that point in our conversation. But you do say, let me say that, you know, maybe you're saying this is going to be out of day, too. You say there's a well-known estimate from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature that the world is already despoiling the planet by consuming natural resources at about 1.7 times the, quote, sustainable level.

So that's a statement that we already are past sustainability. Do you think that technology will just, I mean, like has happened at the Club of Rome or limits to growth or whatever, that may be true now, but technology will allow us to have a sustainable level at 10 billion people. I just thought, I just thought so, yes, because that World Wildlife Fund estimate is based on knowledge of the rate of which they're cutting down the Amazon forest and all that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But are there, as you quote, Swedish environmentalist Johann Rockstrom, is there are undoubtedly, maybe there are no planetary boundaries. Maybe it's always a moving, a moving target. Maybe what seems like a planetary boundary now won't be 20 or 30 years because of technology. And there won't, and it will, do you have optimism in that sense that there are no, at some level, there are no irreversible, that technology will keep pushing those boundaries out as long as we need them to? I think it could, but still, we'll ask the question, ideally what should the world population be? I mean, if everyone is to have a beachfront property, then the world population has to be cut to 1% of its present size.

Yeah, yeah. That's obviously extreme. But the question is, what is the population we'd like the world to have? And I would have thought most people would say probably not much more than 10 billion. Well, I'd say it now because that's what's going to happen. Yeah, yeah. If you'd ask people maybe 50 years ago, they might say not much more than $4 billion or $3 billion. Well, that's right. That's right.

When there's $10 billion, the question is people, people say, not really much more than $15 billion. Well, they might, but I'm saying that they might realize that the quality of life would be greater with a lower population density. Well, but the question I guess have is, isn't it obvious that the population of life in the world would already be better if we had less than 8 billion people? I'm not sure. Okay, interesting. Well, I hope in your pontific, when you go down to the Vatican that maybe you can talk, since you do indirectly at least talk to the Pope, you might talk a little bit of a population in the global South and maybe help at least that conversation move forward in one of the, as you say, in one of the people who probably has a greater following in the global South than anyone else might have. But anyway, one of the things you talk about is natural capital, which comes to my question of that when I talk about social sciences are sometimes despairingly. The science I'm most disparaging of is economics.

And you make the point that we don't, you know, we don't calculate necessarily, or at least traditionally, economics hasn't calculated the, calculate capital but not natural capital. It doesn't feature national budgets. For example, as you say, a forest is cut down. Whenever it's cut down, instead of seeing as economic benefits that come from the sale of the products and stuff, which it should be recorded as a negative contribution to a national stock of natural capital.

It's been urged by your colleague, your colleague Partha Dasgupta at Cambridge. But currently in most countries did not happen. Isn't, is this an example? of really the failure of economics of us to I mean economics has led us astray in this regard that that we if we continually think of capital in terms of monetary resources alone then then we miss when it comes to reaching the it didn't matter when we weren't at the global limits when we could move on when we just spoiled an environment you could move on to the next one or we didn't care if you despoiled the environment of some poor country because you were england and you had a big comp big empire and you could move on. But doesn't it mean really that economics has failed us in that regard? Well, I think it's only in recent decades that people have taken this seriously.

I mean, in their 1951 paper, Ehrlich and Holdren did address this sort of issue. And you mentioned my colleague and old friend, Pathas Gupta, wrote a 500-page report, which was input to the Montreal Conference, which took place in early December this year. And this is, I think, leading people to realize that natural capital is something which is under threat with the greater pressure from larger numbers of people, but more demanding populations. And so I think it's being taken on board, and I think we shouldn't be too despairing of economists. okay good yes you're always more generous in this regard than me it's a very hard subject yeah it's a yeah yeah yeah it's a hard subject i agree it's it's very hard subject and therefore hard to know

hard subjects it's hard to know when to trust the results from hard subjects i guess that's the point i would say and i'll leave it at that when it's hard that's why you and i do the simple stuff We do this dronomy and the cosmology gets so much easier. I agree. I guess to leave this area, you talk about the IPCC as a very important group. And I think you say there are three major findings ultimately that are sort of uncontestable. One, humans are unequivocally responsible for global warming. some climate-induced changes such as continued sea-level rise are irreversible, at least for centuries.

And it's very late, but here's where you're more optimistic in some. You're very late, but thankfully not too late to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown. And when it comes to this, the key questions you raise, which are interesting, I don't know whether metaphysical questions, certainly philosophical ones in some sense, is risk, this wonderful statement of risk assessment is different than risk management. And they're very different. And we can make, and we can do the kind of calculations that insurance companies do, which is to multiply probably risk by the nature of its impact and decide then whether to act or not.

Yes. But, and we don't even do that yet globally. And probably we should, especially given the uncertainty of certain tipping points, such as the global impact of potentially the ice sheet in Greenland melting and raising sea levels by 21 feet, which would change the world, make the world completely different than it is now. That may have a small probability, but a large impact, and we maybe should consider that as an uncertainty, which instead of causing us to in, lead us to inaction because it's uncertain,

should leave us to action because we want to, and there's another good phrase somewhere to get in your book somewhere about, we want to think not just in time, but just in case. That's the phrase used. But you talk about weighing long term, because climate change is a long-term issue, and it's weighing future generations versus the present. And that's an interesting conundrum, and you discuss it, and I thought maybe I'd ask you to elaborate on that a little bit. Yes, yes. Well, of course, climate change is something which is getting more serious,

but the very serious issues like the melting of all green as ice, that wouldn't happen on less than a few centuries. And so the question is, to what extent in our calculus of risks, we should discount the far future? And, of course, most politicians are happy to discount the future. completely. Four years. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, as we said earlier, we need to persuade the public and politicians that they should think about what will happen in the lives of their children and grandchildren who will be alive at the end of a century. And so we ought to worry about that.

And of course, that is the reason why it's very sensible to have the target of keeping the mean global temperature rise below two degrees, well 1.5 ideally, but certainly two, because that will give us less chance of encountering some tipping point that would make the change irreversible. And as we were, by time for clever ideas to make it easier for us to depend on carbon-free energy generation. So I think that's very sensible,

we should value the long term to that extent. But it does cause me to think about this. The point is that when the other aspect is the longer term you go, the more uncertain you are about what's going to happen. And so therefore, it's harder to weigh them the same amount because you don't know all of the variable. For example, you could have looked long term for four years ago about food production. made a decision that people would be starving today at a level they're not, because you didn't know

about the technology, the green revolution. Yes. No, but that's precisely the case. And so you've got to ensure that we make realistic predictions. And I think, whereas some of the other prediction in my book about the chance of some by a weapon lead to a pandemic of things like that, those are very hard to estimate. And the chance of getting large. year by year nonetheless. But I think in the case of climate change, we do know enough to know that we're heading for a temperature rise of, say, three degrees this century. At least, maybe four. And that could be dangerous many parts of the world. And that's not an improbable scenario. That's the likely scenario. Most likely. Well, yeah, the most... If we don't change course. And so if we

But I think when we talk about several centuries into the future, I fully agree with you that we don't know enough to make predictions. And therefore, it's not reasonable to make great sacrifices now for people several centuries in the future, which we have no idea what their preferences and tastes are. And especially because as I discuss later in the book, human beings themselves. they have changed in the next year's centuries in the ways they haven't over the last 50,000 years. And so for all these reasons, we don't know what the preference and taste will be that far ahead. And so I would say that to plan for eventualities which are plausible within the lifetime of some people already living, which means by the end of the century is prudent and would have public support.

beyond that, I completely agree that we have to be cautious in how much we wait at the arguments in favor of the far distant future. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Although, of course, there's always a wrench in the works and there are people who say that even at 1.5 degrees here have irreversible tipping points. But as you say, as you say, well, okay, so we have a few centuries to deal with. We have a few centuries and there's mediation there's adaptation there's you know and and so it is true that you know even if greenland ice melting is inevitable we have three or four centuries at least to deal with the worst parts of that and that's a lot that can be a lot to be done in a way you know humanity can respond in principle and there is we both you and i have very optimism in science and technology it's not

so much optimism in in politics but to leave that i think i'll leave that for but i will read a quote from you which i want it which we've already said and i it's where you use this wonderful sentence but it's still crucial however to keep clear water between the science on the one hand and the policy response on the other risk assessment should be separate than risk from risk management and i think you what you don't say but it's implicit is risk assessment is in some sense the province of scientists and researchers risk management is the province of the public and politicians yes and i think that's very very important we'll come back to that over and over again but it's but you and i would argue it's the

role of scientists to at least provide that that um that input of risk assessment because without that you can't make risk management is use is silly and it comes back to a debate you and i had earlier where really i think we're on the same side here but you know this question of whether you can get off from is which we both agree you can't i think but but my point was that without is you really can't get a hot it seems to me and i think that's that's really the science gives us the is and and the rest is is is the odd and and but without it gives the maybe anyway yeah the maybe but without it then then the odd is just unrealistic and and that was part i guess that's part of my problem with religion but anyway we won't get there right now um but i do want to go to

bio one or two things you read you make a point that that that um that people are, actually one of the areas where England and certainly Europe is, unfortunately, gone in the wrong direction compared to the United States, is genetic modification of foods and things like that, where really decisions are made, political decisions were made that really don't make sense from a scientific perspective. You agree? when it comes of genetic GMOs, the fact that Well, I mean, I would agree that probably Europe has been too cautious.

Okay. What's happening now is that the limited kind of genetic modification involving CRISPR where it doesn't involve trans-species changes is less risky and certainly one of the only things which is a benefit of Brexit for the UK is that we are now

legalizing that kind of um the generalification where it's um it's not anything trans species and um and i think that's that's probably reasonable i think we're right to be cautious about uh trans species yeah it's um well as you point out the gulf between what medical science may enable us to do and what is prudent or ethically actually able to do will shift and widen in many cases in ways that'll be difficult to cope with. Because biotechnology really is the area of greatest and most rapid growth in terms of science right now. Yes.

And you point out something interesting to me that I hadn't really hit is that people are much more hesitant to deal with genetic sort of modifications. that address problems, then they are, they're much more hesitant to deal with genetic modifications that suggest enhancements than they are to deal with genetic modifications that address problems. And could you discuss that a little bit? Because that's an important point, I think.

Well, I think it's true, isn't it, that the obvious case, when there's just one gene that gives you a hundred diseases, something like that. Then if by CRISPR, you can eliminate that gene, I think everyone would say that was a good thing. But human enhancement, making people better looking or more intelligent, everyone knows that that would involve understanding the interaction of many thousand genes. And so you couldn't even start until you'd had an AI to analyze millions of genomes to find out which was the optimum combination. And then you've got to have the ability to synthesize the genome with that optimum combination.

And even then, you won't know if you haven't introduced a lot of small negative effects that will outweigh the benefit. And so the idea of human enhancement in a serious way does look very, very far in the future. And then, of course, if it were realistic, then you have to ask, would it be something which we should encourage? and one I would say if it's something everyone could have that's great but if it's going to lead to some sort of elite then I think one would be slightly worried about it and of course this has come up in a sort of semi-serious way now with these three labs two in California and one here in Cambridge called Altos Labs bankroll by billionaires which are going to focus on aging yes aging and extending the healthy lifespan and most people are rather pessimistic about the prospects of any drastic

success but of course if there were to be drastic success and there could be some small elite that could live twice as long as the rest of us then we'd have to ask is that something if we want to happen i don't know but certainly there are these labs and the way i put it in my book is that as when they were young, they want to be rich. No, they're rich. They want to be young. It's not quite too easy. It should be encouraged them. I don't think we should. Well, I have no, well, it's their money, but, and at some level, you know, yeah, I mean,

I don't mind them wasting their money, primarily because of something you say somewhere in the book, I think you say it. You do. When we, even we, we're both disparaging about human space exploration, but the one thing it often happens is when you throw money at technology that you often find useful things on the side. And so maybe there'll be something useful that will come of this aging anti-A. That may be useful for everyone. The unexpected results. So whenever they spend a lot of money, I have less worries about billionaires spending money on new technologies because often it'll result in something that might actually be useful for others.

No, I agree because they can't target their work. It's rather like cancer research in the where I didn't know what to do directly, but they indirectly understood salvage much better. And this will lead to understand the way in which the chromosomes changes the age and all that. So it's a good thing. Yeah. To get back to that intelligence thing, I would argue it's even, you presented all of the concerns and issues that make it both logistically difficult to imagine. ethically questionable. You talked about basically the disparity of access to whatever enhancement resources are available. I would argue that in the common world, in the current world,

it's even another thing. You'd have people arguing about what intelligence is and whether it's really fair to argue that more intelligent really has any absolute meaning. Because so people... Yeah. It will be that sort of thing, yes. Yeah, so it'd be a lot of that because you'd see that right now and say, well, people have a right to be emotionally intelligent and not, you know, whatever. So you'd have that huge social issue. But but I, but the other aspect of my medicine that is a worry you point out is sort of, is sort of is, is the bioterrorist aspect. Now I, both you and I have been involved in the, at various levels at times in the boldly atomic scientists. And as you know, I was chair of the

board of sponsors for a long time interacting with you as one of the sponsor members. And I used to be more worried about bioterrorism, and we had several meetings with biological experts who argued to us to be not as concerned globally as much as locally. I mean, that you could create local disasters, but that the robustness of life would be very difficult to create a new virus. You know, the bodies had four billion years of opportunities to fight viruses. and so it would be difficult from scratch to create a totally new virus that would be able to totally defeat the body's defense mechanisms globally and and that it isn't as it isn't as while it is true that you can get that hacking is now a tool for almost anyone who wants to in their garage or mit undergraduates that actually to really do sophisticated

genetic manipulations is still a rather difficult art and requires a great deal of scientific infrastructure and therefore it isn't as much of a worry as some people would suggest. What do you think about that?

Well, I agree that it needs sophisticated expertise and it may be done in some lab which specializes. There were 60 labs around the world which are sort of for security and it's not clear how good the security is in all of those but of

course it has been possible for the last 10 years to make the influenza virus more virulent or transmissible by so you can the same can be done for the coronavirus now and so I think it's by no means implausible that viruses like to Zika virus or others could be made more virulent water transmissible or have a long latency period or any of the things that make the more dangerous of the world by the application of techniques. And this is such a possible catastrophic threat potentially that one has to be very, very concerned about the security and the labs that do this sort of thing. And you made a bet to that. In fact, in 2003, way in advance of a pandemic, you made this bet.

And you quote, bioterror or bio-error will lead to one million casualties in a single event within a sixth month period starting no later than December 31st, 2020. And the interesting point is, I actually think you probably won the bet based on what I know. But we don't know that it's quite possible that coronavirus was a bio-erer due to these gain of function. activities and other in Wilhelm, yes. Well, of course, Stephen Pinker took me up on this bet

and he wrote an article which I summarized in my book saying that we weren't going to settle the bet, for the reason you mentioned that I said that I would win if the pandemic was caused by bio-era or bioterror.

And if it was a lab leakage, I would win, but of course as you know the Mansell opinion is it wasn't a leakage but it could have been it's not a crazy hypothesis and so in fact Stephen and I rose an art in new statesman

nearly 18 months ago saying we weren't going to settle a bit because of that uncertainty and we went on to say that if it turned out that it had been a leakage from the lab then it's better if we never know definitely

because then the tragedy would have a villain. And if it could be blamed on the Chinese, that would aggravate the already disastrously bad relations between China and some Western countries. And so, if we're better if we never knew. Wow, that's interesting to hear a scientist say it's better that we never know. I understand politically. It's true.

As a political issue, it's important. But one would also argue, and I think Matt Ridley did in the book he wrote on this subject, and I talked about it, that the benefit of knowing is so we don't repeat it. And the question is, which is better to know what went wrong and therefore not repeat it, or to not know so we don't exacerbate fools who like to foment hatreds? I don't see that argument at all because there's no reason. We shouldn't tighten up security. And as I say, I worry very much about there being 60 labs where they could do the sort of thing,

which are supposed to be great for security. And I think it's very, very important to ramp up the security. And I also think that we are going to have to have fairly intrusive surveillance of people with this expertise, because one person doing this sort of thing is too many. And so I think whether or not, Bohan was caused by some Be natural. It's a wake-up call. It's a wake-up call.

Yeah, it'd be neat to know which kind of techniques are most dangerous. I mean, I'd like to know that. That's why I guess I'd like to know which, because there could be some techniques which may appear to be dangerous, but not, and are easily controlled that may be beneficial. Once again, there's question of what's beneficial, what isn't? And so that's why I guess I fall in the favor of knowing and hoping we can deal with the hatred and and and and and and I don't get it I don't think it'll make any difference to what we ought to be doing yeah never happened in

rohan okay whether we can target but anyway that's a that's a that's a question that's a detailed question given limited resources I you know whether what we should target is an interesting question but you're absolutely right it's it we we need to be more prudent and this has been a wake-up call in that regard speaking of wake-up Carl, the last thing is this question of a demented loner that you point out. I don't know if you're as into movies as I am. I don't think I've ever talked to you about movies, but, but, you know, I kind of really am into popular culture and movies, and I, they influence me a lot.

So do you know, did you ever see the movie 12 Monkeys by actually Terry Gilliam, who's, you know, who's a, who's, you know, anyway. But there are a number, but this, it's not new at all. It's a common theme in science fiction. And it was also in The Kingsman, I think, and then even in the most recent James Bond movie, which you may or may not have seen. Have you seen any James Bond movies?

Yes. Oh, good. I think the recent one was an example. But where this is a theme of some people saying, look, we need to get rid of a fair fraction of the world's population. And the 12 monkeys was exactly that was a bioterror that actually got out of control. But it was around someone's idea that, hey, we should just introduce a new virus that will solve the problem for us.

I think that's true because I think this wouldn't be done by a terrorist group with limited aims, nor by governments in warfare, which you don't know the consequence. But it would be some crazy person who thinks there are too many people in the world and doesn't care who they kill. Yeah. And so you are worried about that? You think that's... Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's something improbable, but it could be so catastrophic,

especially if the techniques of gain a function become more wider disseminated or more efficient. It's certainly my number one worry of all these things. Okay, interesting. Again, one comes back to this question, and I'm not a biologist, but I come back to this question of even if a gain of function thing, it would cause a disaster. There's no doubt it would cause and global economic issues. It's hard to imagine anything that really is going to efficiently wipe out a fair fraction of the world's population that could be done just because of the way, even the pandemic,

because things evolved to become less, generally less virulent, even if they are more initially. And also, anyway, you can imagine disasters that are global or that are national or even international. But I guess I'm less worried about, I'm more worried about creating a global catastrophe. in terms of its national, international, geopolitical repercussions and economic repercussions, then I am maybe of getting rid of a third of the world's population or something like that.

Well, I think you ought to worry with more because... Okay, good. Anytime I learned that I'm supposed to worry more, that's better. COVID-19 had a fatality rate of less than 1%. Yeah. There are other viruses that have a fatality rate of 70%. Yeah. If one could modify one of those to be as transmissible as COVID-19, it would be a mega-global

disaster. Oh, yeah, I would. I agree. I guess the question is that it's a big if, and the question is, can you do that? Well, I mean, even releasing a natural one, we know. The Cigavirus or Ebola virus. But Abolid isn't transmissible except by touch. But if you could, even without tinkering with these things,

a release could be. Oh, then you produce a disaster, but it's always local. The big problem is also disseminating it globally. No, no, no. You have to have a much longer latency period, as you point out. You'd have to design it to. Well, no, but we, why shouldn't what happened with COVID, COVID, happened to this other one.

And so if it's, it's already, I mean, there's been, I guess because it's so, well, it could. Look, let's, I'm not one to say it can't. I guess the point I'm saying is that Diga and Ebola, there have been leaks of that. And generally, because they're not so transmissible, they've been controlled. And so. Yeah, yeah. And so I guess I view it as a danger, but not a global danger yet. But you, but if one could.

Yeah. Anyway, it is something once again, it's best to think of the, I just watched a movie where it said, someone said that, it's best to think of the worst in advance because someone should be thinking of the worst in advance in any case, because if you don't, then then then you might be surprised. I would say it's not implausible and the problem is going up year by year because the techniques are becoming more understood and more widely. disseminated. Now here's Martin I actually I do want to I wanted to go a little bit more into um um well I want to we're almost at the end of the first part of your book okay and what I'm going to suggest you if it's okay I'm enjoying the discussion I think people will enjoy it a lot I think what I'd like you for maybe I'd like to go over AI just one more question and then if we could, could we can then take a break and then at another day continue

this for the second half of your book? Would you be willing to do that? Yes, or, I mean, easier for me to take a break for just half an hour and then continue can you do that? I can do it. I just didn't want to tire you out.

If you're willing to do it. No, this week is particularly sort of free of other because it's the holiday week, I agree. Because I think we, I will, there's enough substantive issues, I think, to go for at least another hour and in my opinion. No, that's fine by me. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation.

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