Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the second in a series of conversations at the Martin School is organising this term,
exploring some of the ways that the pandemic has or may may change our thinking
about the major issues facing humanity before introducing today's guests.
Let me welcome our virtual audience and encourage you to ask questions.
If you look at the bottom of your screen on the right, there's a button that you can press to ask a question.
And there is also the facility to vote.
What questions that you want me to put to the speaker and please do that is very helpful for me in deciding which question to ask.
So it's an obvious pleasure to welcome today's guest.
Martin Rees Lord Rees, who's professor of astronomy and cosmology at the University of Cambridge, over a long career.
Martin has made extraordinary contributions to many areas of astronomy and cosmology,
and it's received a very large number of prises as prises and honours.
He's been president for the Royal Society and was made a life partner here in 2005 and is very active in science policy in the UK.
UK Parliament's Upper Chamber Martinez astronomer royal position held by Flamsteed
highly masculine and I believe you have had an asteroid named after you,
if that's correct.
Martin has been a long friend of the Martin School here in Oxford and has sat on our advisory council right since the foundation of the school.
In addition to his fundamental science, Martin writes wonderful books for non-technical audience and off the internet, so books.
Martin has written some are about cosmology, and I'm particularly fond of a book, which I think is about 10 years ago,
just six numbers, which gives a fabulous insight into the summer and into some of the magic of modern astrophysics.
But especially in recent years, for example, in this in his last book On The Future,
Martin has written a lot on the major challenges facing humanity in the current st century,
and he has established at Cambridge the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
And we thus hugely fortunate have Martin here today to explore some of these essential risks and whether the world having experienced a major,
if not existential crisis in the pandemic is better off or worse off in position in addressing them.
Martin, could we talk a bit about some of the technological risks?
And in your writing, you've talked about two categories.
One is sort of around AI and robotics and nano, and the other is around bioterrorism and biological risks.
Could you tell us a little bit about what concerns you most in those areas? Yes.
I think the point is that those are both areas where equipment which is widely available,
and it's logical that in the case of fire risks and the computer terminals can be used by
error or by design to cause and effect which could be serious and even cascade globally.
It's not like nuclear, which, of course, is the first major technological threat,
and it's still one that looms over us because you can't build a nuclear bomb without massive
special purpose equipment and it's easy to monitor worldwide when that's happening.
But I think we do need to worry as we are getting more and more dependent, for instance,
on the internet and everything like that on possibilities of either breakdowns or even worse of intentional cyber attacks on it.
And in the case of a fire, as we get to that later when we talk about COVID 19, of course,
one thing which is even more scary if it becomes possible for individuals or small groups to engineer viruses or give them intentionally,
and that will be even worse than the natural pandemics we are confronting now.
So with the issues around cyber threats, and I do you see them as existential risks or just as major systemic risks to infrastructure.
So the latter, I think, is an existential risk and something that is going to wipe us all out.
I think there are very few of those, so they are likely to happen because life is all about.
But the way I look at this, and I think the possibility of these risks is going to give us a bumpy ride through the century.
We're going to get more and more easy for individuals or small groups to have an effect that cascades very widely,
as I put it in my book, The Global Village Idiots, but they will now have a global role.
And that's the problem.
And that's why I think we're already we know that cyber attacks can cause disruption, and we know that it can be other just failures,
mechanical failures, electrical failures which make the grid go down in the country and cause other effects which can disrupt our lives.
So it depends on technology. So I think we're getting more vulnerable and therefore there's more that can go wrong.
And worse than that, cyber instance is where things can go wrong by evil intent as well as failure.
And is there an analogy with the global financial system?
And if we saw what happened in 2008 and the degree to which there was contagion
and spread of a problem with the sort of infrastructure that we have now?
Well, that's a good example to tell is that any problem in one part of the world is going globally,
whether it's a financial system, the internet or change of delivery for manufacturing or air travel and all the rest.
So we are so interconnected. And you know, Geidam of Classic will collapse where there could be a collapse of civilisation, one continent.
And now it would not be possible to have such collapse of one continent without it going global, which was so interconnected.
And so that's something which is new about this century and makes us more vulnerable.
And also, of course, let's take the electric grid and its relationship with Israel in London or some other area.
Then the lights, we are the least of our problems because a complete breakdown computer system.
In fact, I quote in my book a report from the American Department Defence,
which talks about the effect of a breakdown in the electricity grid in the eastern United States caused by some cyber attack.
And it says that if they knew where the attacker came from, then it would merit a nuclear response.
So that's why it's scary. And so I do feel that we will all suffer from the kind of breakdowns in our country's infrastructure.
They're pretty routine in, say, India and Pakistan now.
But of course, the for that reason, not quite so dependent on we are much more dependent on them.
I'm just to leave the Earth briefly again, our solar system,
solar storms and solar flares with a capacity to disrupt electrical grids and electrical supplies.
Are they something that concern you? Yes, they're quite serious. In fact, they are natural.
But of course, they're natural.
They had no effect until we had electricity, whereas they do have effects on the producing surges in the electric grid.
And of course, they could affect the workings of satellites, and they're very dependent on the tubes, the satnav and timing and all that.
And so we are newly vulnerable to the closest race.
So exploring a different category of threat sort of very severe, possibly existential,
the sort of nexus of threats around our demands on the environment, which depend on our population size and our per capita consumption.
What we're doing to climate, what we're doing to to water supplies and things on that that must be a major category of threat.
Well, indeed, I think that said, the second class of threats are those which are caused by us collectively because the world population,
it's doubled in the last 50 years. It's now seven point eight billion euros to nine billion by mid-century.
And moreover, we are all more demanding of energy resources.
And of course, we hope within the developing world they will indeed develop.
But that's going to mean that they use more energy per capita,
etc. So we do have a greater impact on the planet and this is doing two things, as you know, for me.
One is affecting biodiversity and the other, of course, is leading to climate change.
And this is, of course, as we all know, the very serious threat.
But I think if you compare that with, say, COVID 19, it's like a slow motion.
COVID 19 is an immediate threat, and the trouble is that things like climate change or slow motion.
So we're in the position of the frog in the.
Kind of water being heated, it doesn't realise what's happening until it's too late to escape.
And that's the danger really of a lack of adequate response to something which
is going to happen in decades and is already showing serious precursors.
And also, I think we've got to bear in mind that the other kind of difference, as I addressed, they may be unfamiliar,
but there's a good maxim due to make silver if the unfamiliar is not the same as the improbable.
And I think although these things happen fairly rarely, even one occurrence, maybe too many.
And we ought to prepare for the more. And in a bigger scale, that's true of climate and diversity preservation.
Yes. An example of an unfamiliar threat.
What would you what would you suggest in this in this line at the moment?
Well, I think COVID 19 was unkind.
Yes, but it should not have been unexpected really, because as we know, we've had influenza pandemics,
we've had the virus pandemics, sales and mergers which didn't get the global traction, which COVID 19 was done.
But this is a case where we should have been far more prepared than we were because in estimating estimates
that the cost to the world of COVID 19 is going to be something of twenty five trillion dollars.
Plus, of course, the loss of millions of lives.
How likely was it taking note of sense of the pandemic like that was more unlikely than most for 50 years or something.
This isn't some the insurance premium by both probability by impact.
That means it would have been worth spending several hundred billion dollars in preparation for something like COVID 19.
And of course, we were doing that,
and it's understandable book is very hard to persuade governments to spend money on things which has never been addressed, immediate need.
But I think one lesson we have learnt from COVID 19 is that we do need to think about how we should
be more prepared for these events by the obvious preparations which we should have had COVID 19.
And also, we've got to realise that's an important trade-off between two things.
One is efficiency and the other's resilience and not be resilient.
We've got to leave some slack in the system. You give two examples. It's not resiliency,
although it's efficient supply chains around the world and not keeping any inventories or
stocks because they're breaking one link in one chain can screw up the loss of manufacturing.
So that's an example where it may be a false economy as it were to maximise efficiency.
And another different example more relevant to COVID 19 is that it would be better if we had more intensive care beds,
as I think they did routinely in Germany, this country said, was more prepared.
So I think one thing we're going to learn from the pandemic is that we should be some slack
in the system and be prepared to spend money in doing the kind of things that we needed,
the protective clothing and all that sort of thing. So governments will happily spend very, very large amounts of money on defence.
If one looks at, for example, the defence budget of the of the United States, it dwarfs that that's going into medical research.
And much of that is predicated on potential ill defined threats in the in the future.
Whereas other categories of threats which are still unfamiliar but exactly as you've just said,
are more certain in many ways, it's far harder for governments to take action on.
Well, that's a very good example, actually, because I believe it was the case that in 2009,
the government stock up on vaccines for the first time ever actually came back, and some people berated the government for a waste of money.
But of course, you have wasted you our insurance if your house doesn't burn down.
And they were doing the right thing and we would be doing the right thing if we had better preparations for making vaccines.
This and of course, as you say, in a sense,
the whole of the Minister Defence Procurement Budget is in this category because
we're having all these fighters and things which we hope you never have to use,
and that's on the far larger financial scale that we're talking about here.
A couple more details, one of the issues around how COVID has changed the world, just thinking about threats on.
How concerned are you at the way that global politics is going, so it was only 15,
20 years ago that we had there was a tacit assumption that the world was going inexorably towards a uniform liberal democracies.
And now we've had waves of populism and we've had the reverse of democracy and in many countries.
And of course, that's a paradox that some of the less democratic countries have found it easier to deal with the pandemic than more.
How worried are you about sort of global political trends at the moment and our capacity to address the risks that you talk about?
Well, I'm less worried somewhat after the American election results recently, obviously, but there is a more general concern.
And I think in the country of populism,
I think there is something which won't reverse so easily and that's the effect of social media and fake news and all that.
If we go back. More than 20 years, and most people have most of their news via radio stations or the press.
So it was filtered through professional journalists of some kind who in general filtered out or muffle the extremism.
But what happens now is the opposite because on social media engines, extreme gets more clicks.
That's something still more extreme. And so this is the tendency which is hollowing out moderate opinion and making it harder to get consensus.
And I do worry about this as a downside of social media, which could be rather hard to reverse, in my opinion.
It was aggravated, obviously by Trump, which is something anyway. And of course, as you say,
it has been one of the things which has made it especially hard for our country and the U.S.
to cope adequately with the recent pandemic as compared to what has happened in Taiwan,
for instance. The the what's happened recently,
both with some of the misinformation about COVID on social media and also the fury about
the storming of the Capitol on January the 6th has brought some of these issues to a head.
Are you optimistic that this may lead to movement in this area or do you think we'll just sort of go back
to the status quo ante once the pandemic is over and we're back to more normal politics in the states?
Well, I'm not. I do worry about the United States because of course, even though Trump lost the election, more than 70 million people voted for him.
Still, more people than that carry guns routinely. So it's a very different social system from what they used to in northern Europe.
And so I do worry about what's going to happen there.
But I think this pandemic is going to make people aware of the need for collaboration.
And I think going back to environment issues, we are, as you know,
having important international conferences this year on climate in Glasgow and biodiversity in China.
And I hope these will raise consciousness, that these are areas where the world does have to move together and.
We need to get all the data, etc. and just quote something on the environment.
I was on a conference call just this morning about space and small.
Arrays of satellites now can monitor every day, every tree in the world.
And get all this data, and this can be shared around the world and can check whether countries are conforming to pledges they've made for.
Not cutting down forests or cutting CO2 to emissions and things like that,
so I think technology is going to be very helpful in that sense in that it allows everyone to know what the data are.
So one of the most extraordinary things about the pandemic is how science has come so much to the fore over the last year.
As someone who's sort of taught what the R number is for 30 years,
it's extraordinary that now everyone knows what that number is and largely gets it right.
Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance are household name, so privatise additions before Christmas was entitled Happy with.
It's fun. Overall, do you think that this will be what will cover things?
Do you think this is going to be temporary and do you think it will have lasting effects?
Will the lasting effects be positive that people see the value of science?
Or could there be a a reaction against science?
We see Chris and Patrick been called Professor Bloom Professor Doom and think.
Well, I mean, I think we've got to say that those particular scientists and all the others under huge pressure have done a wonderful job,
but not the way they preserve their integrity and made things as clear as they can.
Emphasising, of course, that there are uncertainties and that you change your mind as the facts change,
which has happened several times as we know this pandemic. I think some scientists shouldn't be too worried about their prestige.
I mean, scientists often bemoan the fact that the public doesn't know any science and doesn't suspect science, etc. And I think that's unfair.
And to respect first, when the opinion polls done of the extent to which particular professional groups are respected by the public scientists,
at least academic scientists come out pretty high.
Government scientists somewhat lower, but all way above politicians, journalists and estate agents and the rest of them so respected.
They may be below DP's, maybe below clergymen, but they're still pretty high.
That's one thing. And also, I think it's a bit unfair to bemoan the public's ignorance of science.
I mean, obviously, as you say, they've learnt about the unknown number and things like that in the last few months.
But there is a lot of interest in science and biodiversity,
etc. It's something which does concern huge numbers of people in this world and indeed in astronomy.
I mean, I'm. They surprised at the large number of people who are fascinated by dinosaurs and space.
Nothing could be more relevant, whether they like dinosaurs, but young kids especially approximated by that.
And I think this is a good thing and I think scientists shouldn't bemoan.
The fact that the public is not an expert in science anymore,
that they should bemoan the fact that many people in the public don't know the history
of their country and probably couldn't find a South Korea or Libya on the map.
I think if you want to have an informed citizenry, then citizens have to have a feel for science,
obviously because of a fraction of the issues that come up on energy, health and the etc. have a scientific component.
But also one can't address these issues properly unless one knows a bit about history and politics.
And that's why one should bemoan the ignorance in those areas and not particularly in scientists societies.
I think mode too much because there's as much interest in what they do as there is in any other academic area.
And I see that point. In addition to the sort of facts and I completely agree that we're silly if we sort of
bemoaned that the public don't know the facts about science and the things that we love.
But but what about the issues about some of the the methodologies of science and things in the interpretation of quantitative data?
And I guess one of the things that's encouraged me in the last year is that people are very different type of people.
The journalist Tim Harford, for example, your colleague at Cambridge,
they did speak a whole to have been given a platform to explain some really quite complex ideas to a general audience.
And those are really transferable skills that help you interpret the data about the pandemic but help you do many other things.
It's not something you find encouraging is that the gang scientists and I think that should be a bigger part of the school education
because one can't be an informed citizen unless one can look at the numbers and not be bamboozled by false claims about them.
And that's why those people you mentioned are doing such a good job because they're important.
But just going back to science, I think you've got to realise and of course,
of balance and Richie and Mark Wolfe as a people who emphasises rightly that scientists are people who make the final decisions and offering advice,
and the politicians who in these cases have to make decisions on behalf of all of us.
They obviously do have to take into account the ethics and economics as well.
And in those areas, scientists as citizens with no special expertise.
I think it's very important that decisions which are made by politicians should be
made on the basis of the best possible understanding of the best available data.
But that's not the only thing they have to consider. They have to consider the political context and the economic context.
Will the rest of it? And as you say, people like Patrick Vallance and Matt Wolpert completely understand it.
My worry that some people in our community take a rather simplistic linear view about how science fits into policy,
and I do not appreciate quite how hard the job politicians do have in integrating all these different things.
I agree, and also some scientists to generate a mystique about the scientific method.
And then it seems to me that what we do when we do science,
it's not very different from what a detective does or of other people sort of trying to assess evidence,
etc. So mode of thinking, which been exemplified by what the experts have been doing in studying the coronavirus.
There's nothing very special about them. It's just a way of assessing rational evidence, which would be entirely familiar to any such person.
So scientists shouldn't be shouldn't say that there is something very special called the scientific method.
Nor, of course, should they or academics regard themselves especially clever and intelligent, but no more so than any other professions.
Do you think that the pandemic, which is really a challenge that almost by definition,
requires a societal communitarian in a way response may have changed both the discourse and civil
society and also the discussions amongst politicians about collective approaches to other challenges.
I don't want to go over the sort of nuts and bolts of what happened over the last year,
but we do see a sort of tension between people with a more libertarian view and people who are more comfortable with collective action.
And do you think that is changing the mood music in a good way?
Well, I mean, I think we are realising that many of the so-called libertarians have really had a damaging impact because in cases,
they are wearing masks. For instance, if you wear a mask or or if you but you increase a danger for other people as
well as they wear masks not to protect yourself and that they do that a bit,
but for altruistic reasons to protect other people just as much.
And so I think extreme libertarians who bridle at wearing a mask have been damaging about hopes
that the attitudes of extreme libertarianism is discredited a bit in some other contexts as well.
So that's good. But I think one thing which is this report is that we realised that more and more of the important questions.
Can't be tackled by a single nation alone.
And obviously, the pandemic can't, nor can climate work and energy supply and biodiversity and all these things.
And so I think it's going to be the case that we are going to have to give up more
of our sovereignty to international bodies of various kinds and maybe a new body,
rather like Joe to monitor compliance with the Paris and Glasgow pledges to cut CO2 emissions, for instance.
Major energy. We probably need some new international body to regulate the internet,
etc. because no single nation can compete with these massive multinational conglomerates that control the internet.
So in all of these contexts, national sovereignty doesn't amount to very much.
You've got to think globally. And I think that's going to be something that will be more and more widely unionised.
And another point, of course, is that no, that communication and travel and that's local.
When this whole topic becomes more common again, a communications is then I think we do have to worry about the fact that,
for instance, in Africa could just pretty desperate.
They now know their fate. The one thing they do have is the internet, and so they know that they know the injustice of it.
And I think any sort of inequality between regions.
I'm going to be very dangerous and will lead to better land mass migration and wars and all the rest in a
way that wouldn't have happened 200 years ago when the middle of Africa didn't know what my listings were.
And I think this is perhaps digressing slightly, and I know that a Paul Collier in Oxford is a business question.
We've got to really have something like a mega Marshall Plan, where the northern nations ensure that Africa doesn't fall behind because, as you know,
it's sort of a rapidly growing population and we can't develop like the Asian
tigers did by undercutting manufacturing costs because robots do some of that now,
just go me some other way of ensuring that it doesn't go behind, because if not, then those are your problems.
And so I think the northern nations need to ensure that Africa's economy develops and not just for altruistic reasons.
Martin, thank you for mentioning Paul Collier, which gives me an opportunity to say that this time next week,
we'll be having a conversation with Paul and John Kaye on the recent book about it.
Is very good book, and it is very good to be several books on that sort of thing actually on the.
The toxic nature of extreme inequality and all that.
And I completely agree with you, but I'm perhaps a little less optimistic than you.
Aren't we seeing at the moment it becoming harder for countries to pool sovereignty?
I certainly don't want to get into discussion on Brexit, but we have traded of sovereignty for trade advantage and see in the number of countries.
And even Biden is, if you compare Biden with Obama or Clinton is talking about a disconnected America.
Nowhere near as disconnected the US as Trump.
Are you more optimistic because the pandemic may make us think about the importance of sharing sovereignty?
That's the extent that we could do it directly, but of course, it's the major Brexit.
But once I mean, one of the reasons why I was the leader was that given that we can't rely on
America in the way that one did 20 years ago and we have China and Russia,
this is the last.
The least opportune time to weaken the coherence of Europe as a liberal democracy, and indeed I would go further and say that my politics,
I think we in this country should try and learn more from Finland and Denmark and less than the United States to be united political.
I think the main problem the government is allowing too much the United States,
and we do far better with a higher tax regime, greater equality as is exemplified by the Scandinavian countries.
I'm going to get to questions in about five minutes,
so just please do vote for questions you would like me to ask Martin and add some yourself before doing that.
If I could ask a couple of sort of more specific biological hazard questions.
So in your book, you write extensively and persuasively about the dangers from bioterrorism and especially garage biotechnology,
as well as the risks of modifying influenza virus and things like that such that we, we know and again haven't gone through the pandemic.
Do you think that that will will raise the profile of what perhaps a little bit
of a Cinderella issue compared with some of the other things we've talked about? Well, I mean, of course, I'm not an expert at all,
but I do know that the influenza virus could be tweaked even 10 years ago to make it more virulent, more transmissible.
And the same thing may happen with other viruses. This can be done perhaps by small groups and by an increasing number.
And I do worry very much about this.
That's even more than I do about cyber, because as you know,
there are international discussions into academy discussions about regulating all
these new biological techniques and on grounds of prudence and on grounds of ethics.
But my worry is that even if we all agree internationally what the regulations should be, that enforcing them.
Is as hopeless as enforcing the drug laws or the tax laws globally.
And that's, I think, very scary given that one.
But actually, it could be could be too many.
So that's one of the things I've learnt most about how we can avoid these two bad actors were all of us needed to produce some,
some bio disaster, how we can cope with them.
And it's going to be a trade-off between three things we want to preserve our freedom, security and privacy.
And in China, they may give up the privacy of security, but I don't know what would happen here,
but I think we do have to accept far greater surveillance if we are going to avoid the
possibility of things like that happening and similar arguments applied to cyber attacks.
Mm-Hmm. Let me ask, this is a slightly more parochial question in the sense of us working in universities.
But if you look at the successes and failures of not only this country, but at other high income countries response to the pandemic,
then an area that's been really has worked well is the science response.
Whether it's the big studies or potential therapies, whether it's the vaccines here and in in Germany,
for example, and whether it's some of the the epidemiological modelling.
And I guess this goes back to a point you make right at the beginning about resilience that we had some we didn't
really think about some of the research groups we had as being sort of a national capability in terms of resilience.
But they were and they were able to really get going once the once the pandemic started.
Do you think the going thinking back to when you were presence across society in arguing so strongly for more money going into research?
Do you think that's going to make the argument of of Adrian Smith, the current president, easier to make?
Well, I would hope so. I think this is a case where we have benefited hugely from the very strong research in these particular areas.
And I think it's very important to bear in mind that in this country,
one of the big assets we have is in our research into practically everyone says this.
And the reason is that this.
Whose expertise that can be drawn on when it's needed, particularly to do.
And also, of course, for the economy. And you know that people get for if we don't get smarter as it were and we've got two advances.
In fact, there's one heresy, which I think people say the key thing is to take the ideas of developing labs and then develop them.
But of course, even the best of times was discovered in the UK is going to be five or 10 percent of these discoveries.
And so the important reason why we want strong universities, which are to specialise is still we have people who can be in the invisible college,
in all subjects all over the world and can know what's going on.
Anywhere in the world, and it's a clever idea they can run with it, so I would hope that British start-ups won't be just using ideas invented here,
but will be taking advantage of the ideas that emerge all over the world and have a discerning eye to pick out the good ones.
So and also, of course, in universities, we and the Americans have the still university concept.
The Germans eventually, but they don't have it so much of having teaching and research together.
And that's because an equally important part of the output of a university is,
of course, that the highly educated students and the better educated they are.
Then again, the better for the prosperity of this country.
That's a platitude on a global scale. Thank you.
Martin, I'm going to go to some questions and I'm just going to read out the first one, which has 10 votes.
It's from Daniel Scharf. If, as the PM has said, climate change represents a greater threat than the pandemic should he set up regular No.
10 briefings, so have ministers flanked by ecologists, meteorologists, behavioural economists,
sociologists, psychologists, etc. and I go and address questions from the public NGOs and the press.
Well, I mean, I think it's it's a slow motion process, isn't it?
I think that's that's the problem that the pandemic happened fast enough and is so scary that everyone wanted the news every day.
The trouble with climate policy is, of course, that it is long term.
You've got to be thinking about the mitigation of the effects of climate change and adaptation on the time scale of up to 50 years.
And I think we want to make sure that this is hardcoded within government.
But I don't think the public is going to be confused by briefings.
Just like to watch trees growing all the time, it's too slow. And so these things are important.
But so I think we've got to prioritise when this is a problem and to say something more about climate change.
I think it's true that the public perception of the public rating of the importance of climate change has risen tremendously.
And this is partly the effect of signs, but it's more the effect of charismatic figures.
I think we both know people who have been scientific advisers in government, and we know they're frustrated.
There's something like COVID 19.
They feel that they don't get much traction because they're always more urgent issues and the politicians care about the short term and the parochial.
But let me give you two examples.
The papal encyclical in 2015, which was the input which had very little effect because the pope is a standing ovation of the UN.
He's got a billion followers in Latin America, Africa and East Asia,
and that had a big effect in using the consensus at the Paris conference because he has his billion followers and our secular pope.
Rutenberg has done his bit too, especially in the context of biodiversity and tactics in the ocean.
I mean, the recent BBC programmes events are going on now are, of course, very important.
But I think Mr Goh, not the most enlightened about politicians,
would not have used any of his political capital on legislation to reduce the use of plastics.
Had it not been for the scene in Blue Planet to showing the albatross of the nest and coughing up plastics which Young must have done for nourishment,
that's an iconic picture. Rather like the polar bear in the melting ice was for the climate campaign.
And so I think if politicians know the public cares, then they will take these long term decisions.
And that's why it's very important that those members of the Santa community who are good at
this and those who they can enlist because they better should be banging on about these issues,
because only then will voters care and politicians care.
It is also a fascinating thing that government actually had legislation and plans for reducing marine plastic,
which they've been considering for some years,
and it was a stimulus so that single television programme that gave them the sort of window and the opportunity.
And I think it's a lesson for all of us interested in science and policy to have many plans ready to go and when the window of opportunity exists,
time to encourage the charismatic figures and encourage young people to demonstrate and all these things.
Because if these things are imperfect politicians in boxes and in the press, then they will rise on your agenda.
And Marcus Rashford, raising the profile of urban food poverty is another local example.
Let me read out another one, and this is from Max Nugent.
In 2019, the Global Health Survey ranked the UK second in the world in pandemic preparedness, and the US was first.
And this was above China, Germany and New Zealand, and we now have the highest death toll in Europe.
Is it more important to have decisive and ineffective leaders in the crisis than have a level high level of preparedness?
Well, of course, the decisive leaders are crucial and of course, the willingness of the public to accept strict lockdowns,
etc. But I think I would contest the statement that we were well prepared.
If you look at the national risk register, we were prepared for a influenza pandemic that was put behind us.
But if you look at the end of 2017 published version of this, that.
Epidemic X, no pandemic was not ready to tie at all kill thousand people,
and so we were not prepared for the distinctive features of the corona virus,
namely the need for huge amounts of protective clothing and the fact that it might be very difficult to develop a vaccine,
unlike the flu, etc. So I think we were not prepared in the way we should have been.
But of course, it's the political decisions and the willingness of the public to accept regulations, which is also crucial,
and we weren't prepared despite having wakeup calls with nurses and staff and the lot in the last 20 years.
That's, of course, one reason why the East Asian countries will forget. And thank you, we have a couple more questions that are sort of on this topic,
so I hope we can talk about the need for legislation on climate change, how important issues will be choosing the right leaders.
And so I guess that's a how important is the legislation on climate change more generally
on some of the issues that we've been talked about that we've talked about then?
One can approach it in different ways. One can regulate. One can legislate. One can try and have incentives within the market.
Or one can try and ask consumers to drive change by, for example, picking low carbon food and things.
I know it's a terribly broad question,
but just in that sort of spectrum of from government action through incentives through allowing consumers to make the change.
Do you have sort of a broad feeling about what works best and whether we have the balance right at the moment and forgive the terribly broad question?
Well, of course, it's very hard to persuade people in their interest of long term benefits to.
Give up things they like doing now, but let me say what I think the win win situation win win policy is the climate change,
and that's to bear in mind that we in this country produce between one or two percent of the world's CO2 emissions.
So even if we reach our 2050 targets, that's making only one or two percent difference the world,
if we can aspire to having much more than one or two percent of the world's clever ideas and innovations.
So I think what we ought to do is to focus on R&D effort.
The government supported part of it on clean energy batteries,
smart grids and all these things so that we can make it more efficient and bring the cost down so that,
for instance, India, where they need a per capita energy supply more than now, we don't.
They need more of their population growing additional for Africa if we can help them.
To defraud, directed to clean energy, just to save leapfrog directly to orphans and never have landlines, then we will help them.
We do this by collaboration.
And of course, we can then do far more in reducing the world's CO2 emissions than the one or two percent reduction achieved by just cruising around.
So if we can help India to develop without needing to increase its contribution to CO2 emissions, we'd be making a good deal.
And it's hard to think of a more inspiring go for young engineers than to provide an affordable energy,
not just for ourselves which are developing world. So that's that's my Win-Win situation, I think to prioritise that.
Just as to your subject, we have expertise in food science and plant science and all that and feeding the world in 2050.
Preserving biodiversity is another area where expertise is needed and what we
can do in those areas as they scrum can make a great difference in the world.
So I think those are these two really important areas where the UK, through its academic strength,
which we talked about earlier, could really make a disproportionate difference.
I absolutely agree with you. Let me ask this question are passed with with your legislator hat on rather than a science hat.
What concrete steps could we take to convince governments to invest more in resilience?
There. Well, I think I think there are ways I'm sure of the funding, the health service,
Spencer Overton obviously would allow them to a more slack in the hospital system.
That's one thing. And perhaps there could be some system to ensure that the manufacturing companies keep inventories, et cetera.
And I think. Mainly to make these industries under less pressure and also to recognise the value of the public sector because the
one thing we've seen in the pandemic is that the public sector has done better than certain private contractors have.
That may not be your question, but I think those are lessons you can learn and can then think not just about the next pandemic,
but about dealing with these other crises which are less imminent but are more important the long run.
Thank you, that question was from rock paper. And Cooper asked the question about how automation, mechanisation and AI and how it may affect jobs,
and so they worry that this will hollow out the middle classes.
And if I extend the question a little bit, then you will get a small fraction of the population, be able to make a lot of money.
So the returns on capital will get so much greater than the returns on labour.
How much expansion? Some of the economic things we are talking around inequality.
How much does that worry you and how much do we in the science community?
Take some responsibility for addressing this issue.
Well, it's certainly true that it's going to be a redeployment of labour this needed in that it's not just blue collar jobs.
Is it going to be replaced into gardening and it's coming through rather hard to mechanised?
But of course, many professional jobs are going to be, if not supplemented by machines of accountancy, legal work and medicine as well.
And that's great. But I think the simple answer question is that clearly we need the redistribution and this
is going to be achieved by proper taxation of the big companies that own the robots.
And of course, if you said earlier, that's impeded by the fact that multinational companies to get around the rules.
But I think having done that, this should be used.
This money should be used to create a far larger number of.
Dignified, properly paid jobs in areas where the human element is crucial,
particularly carers, the old people now in immensely short supply and teaching assistants,
and all the other key people to be recognised in the pandemic as being crucial to us and appreciated more than they were in the past.
So I think there's a huge demand for more people in those professions.
And of course, if those people now in mind numbing jobs in the Amazon warehouses or in.
The cool centres, for instance, if they're replaced by machines and those people have dignified jobs,
looking after young and old, they're not Win-Win. And so this again,
is where we've got to learn that the mantra of a low tax economy is not the way to happiness because of the
Scandinavian way of having a proper welfare state where there are plenty of people to do these jobs as carers,
custodians, etc. and quoting David Goodhart, who I know we've both read them more parity of esteem for head, heart and hand jobs.
That's ridiculous. So I'm going to finish with a question.
I can't resist doing so. And this is from Olli Steadman and I asked, how can we address risk by by picking careers that are future proof?
And he gives some examples i policymakers, gene tailoring ethics, pandemic crisis management.
What jobs do we need more of? And then, he says, apart from astronomers smiley face, I'm already one of those.
Well, I mean, I think the answer I would give is that a many jobs are changing so fast.
That's the case for lifelong education is strengthening.
And one good development now is just more public support for the idea that instead of everyone spending three
years at the university between the age of 18 and twenty one might be better to give people three years of study,
which they could be spread anywhere through their lives because they don't have to do a lot and change their careers.
So I think that might be beneficial as to where we are going to need the extra jobs.
Then, of course, we can't predict far ahead to be some no bigger need for astronomers than it is now, of course.
But there'll be more there'll be more chance actually, for amateur scientists, I think as more people do acquire wealth,
then I think we may go back to a situation when there are more people who were like Lord Reilly and Darwin in the 19th century,
where the best science is done by people like that. And of course, there are some people in centuries like Lovelock,
etc. who both independently and I think the rise of the independent scientist may be something which is more attractive.
And of course, some people may prefer to take that route rather than spend the whole time teaching in university.
I think this is going to be a change in higher education is going to be changed,
and the pandemic and the balance between distance learning and real lectures is going to change much faster than it would have done otherwise.
And a question which I know you get asked a lot as a stone.
What role the future of humanity? Is it on Mars? No, it isn't.
Of course, as an astronomer, I get asked, but if I want to be left alone in a plane or somewhere,
I say a mathematician, but if I say I'm an astronomer, then I get asked these questions like, Oh, do aliens exist?
ET cetera? No, no. Of course, there are some people who think that we will go to Mars.
I personally don't think there's much of a case for.
Human spaceflight at all is getting weaker with every advance in miniaturisation and robotics.
So my take would be that human spaceflight would be done only as a sort of expensive spectator sport.
Paid for by Messrs Musk and Bezos. And we should cheer them on.
Good luck to them, and some of them may go to Mars and that would be fine.
But it's a dangerous delusion to imagine, as Elon Musk does, and as my colleague Stephen Hawking did, that would be mass emigration tamales because.
Terraforming Mars is far, far harder than dealing with climate change here on Earth, and there's really no Planet B for all of you risk averse people.
So let's cheer on people like Elon Musk, who says he wants to die on Mars,
but also impacts if you want to follow him and let's keep the Earth as a unique place for which we are adopted.
But of course, one reason to cheer on these people is that.
Although we're going to regulate all these new technologies,
cyborg technology and genetic modification on Earth for conventional and ethical reasons, those guys on Mars will be away with the regulators.
They'd be in a very hostile climate. So good luck to them. If you want to adopt their progeny to live in a alien and hostile world,
and so if there's going to be any sort of host humans, well, not by natural selection,
but by a sort of second intelligent design, they will, I think, start on Mars, where there's the incentive and defeat of regulation.
Well, the here on Earth. I would love to go on talking for another couple of hours, but I'm afraid we have to stop there just before thanking you.
Could I just say that, as I mentioned beforehand, the next in the series is Paul Collier and John Kay talking about economic issues going ahead?
Martin, I want to thank you for two things.
First of all, it's a pleasure to observe this in public for everything you've done to help the Oxford Martin School over the last 50 years.
And I know Lillian Martin, who I think is on the call,
would join me in thanking you so much for what you've done and thank you very much for the such a wonderful conversation this afternoon.
I've really enjoyed it. And just looking at the the messages in the chat, and I think a lot of other people have done this as well.
So thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Charles and Virginia.