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Now it's time for meet the author. 35 years ago, James Lovelock came up | :00:00. | :00:14. | |
with the guy a theory, the idea that life once a bolt on earth and | :00:15. | :00:18. | |
consciously manipulate the planet in ways to make sure that life itself | :00:19. | :00:23. | |
continues to flourish. The earth, in other words, is a self`regulating | :00:24. | :00:26. | |
system. It's an idea he has revisited many times over the years. | :00:27. | :00:31. | |
Now, at the age of 94, he has published a memoir, part the series | :00:32. | :00:36. | |
of reflections on the impact man has had on that self`regulating system | :00:37. | :00:55. | |
and on what the future may hold. You've called this book a Ross Ride | :00:56. | :01:09. | |
To The Future. For mankind could be a difficult future. Quite a lot of | :01:10. | :01:15. | |
us may not make the journey. Yes, I think it's a great mistake to think | :01:16. | :01:22. | |
we are the end product of evolution. I think this is ridiculous. We are | :01:23. | :01:29. | |
just a step on the way station. Part of the problem you observe now if | :01:30. | :01:33. | |
there are simply too many of us. I think so. What can we do about that? | :01:34. | :01:40. | |
I don't think we can do too much about it, it will level off of its | :01:41. | :01:45. | |
own accord. A lot of thinkers, people like Fred Pearce, have | :01:46. | :01:49. | |
suggested that once women get their freedom around the world, the rate | :01:50. | :01:54. | |
of population increase will rapidly level of. They don't want to spend | :01:55. | :01:58. | |
their lives as baby factories. They would rather get on with things, as | :01:59. | :02:05. | |
well as reproducing. As you say, we are not, in your view, the end point | :02:06. | :02:11. | |
of evolution, we are mainly `` merely a stage in the evolution of | :02:12. | :02:14. | |
the Earth. One of the fascinations of this book is you look a very long | :02:15. | :02:19. | |
way into the future in parts of it. You suggest the ways in which we | :02:20. | :02:23. | |
might evolve. One of the things you suggest might happen is the | :02:24. | :02:26. | |
development of a life form that is a sort of Saint biosis between us and | :02:27. | :02:35. | |
our machines. Yes, a great friend and colleague of mine was Lynne | :02:36. | :02:40. | |
Margulis, an American biologist. She introduced the concept of endo Saint | :02:41. | :02:48. | |
biosis. This was the coming together of two individual living cells to | :02:49. | :02:51. | |
form a unit that, instead of chewing at each other and fighting to the | :02:52. | :02:56. | |
death, formed a union that was better than either of them alone. It | :02:57. | :03:01. | |
was through that union that things really started moving in evolution. | :03:02. | :03:07. | |
Before that, we'd spend 2 billion years just as free swimming cells, | :03:08. | :03:11. | |
not going any further. It gets more and more exciting as it goes on. I | :03:12. | :03:18. | |
fear now that animals like me, taking on electronic beats, it may | :03:19. | :03:25. | |
be another future kind of life. Incorporating them in ourselves, so | :03:26. | :03:31. | |
that we have a joint life. We supplied the power that keeps them | :03:32. | :03:35. | |
going that they can do their jobs and thinking with. That's something | :03:36. | :03:41. | |
for the very distant future. A lot of this book is about the nearer | :03:42. | :03:44. | |
future. Particularly, what we should do to counter global warming. You | :03:45. | :03:49. | |
are not by any means a sceptic about global warming, but you do admit | :03:50. | :03:54. | |
that you and other scientists may have been wrong in the projections | :03:55. | :03:57. | |
you made for what would happen over 20, 50, 100 years, because, you say, | :03:58. | :04:03. | |
we are too reliant on mathematical models. That is true. Not only that, | :04:04. | :04:10. | |
it's very difficult for the average scientist nowadays employed by a | :04:11. | :04:15. | |
government Department, University or big corporation to ever admit that | :04:16. | :04:19. | |
they were wrong. You are not allowed to make mistakes. I think it's | :04:20. | :04:23. | |
absolutely vital to make mistakes, because only then can you really see | :04:24. | :04:27. | |
the way ahead and see what you've done wrong. You have been a lone | :04:28. | :04:32. | |
scientist almost your entire career. You've worked on occasion | :04:33. | :04:36. | |
for NASA, in medical research, organisations like Shell, but mainly | :04:37. | :04:41. | |
you work for yourself. That gives you a freedom but it also means you | :04:42. | :04:54. | |
have to fight to be taken seriously. Not really. Can I take you up on the | :04:55. | :04:58. | |
word you used there? I don't think I've ever had a career. To me, | :04:59. | :05:00. | |
science was a vocation. I see a scientist as somebody like an | :05:01. | :05:03. | |
artist, who does it as a vocation. If you told most good artists that | :05:04. | :05:08. | |
they were in a career, they would want to spit! But most scientists | :05:09. | :05:13. | |
would want to spit if you like and what they did to the lives of an | :05:14. | :05:18. | |
artist, they think of themselves as rational. They are too rational. | :05:19. | :05:21. | |
They don't use their intuition enough. Artists use their intuition. | :05:22. | :05:26. | |
Then other people explain what they've done afterwards. New, as an | :05:27. | :05:32. | |
inventor, also used your intuition to try and come up with some | :05:33. | :05:36. | |
suggestions for dealing with this issue of global warming. One is we | :05:37. | :05:40. | |
are all moving into cities anyway. We should do more of that, we should | :05:41. | :05:47. | |
make more of cities. You liken them to ants nests or bee hives, that we | :05:48. | :05:52. | |
could be developing almost into a super species that evolves through | :05:53. | :05:56. | |
communities rather than as individuals. It was the great | :05:57. | :06:02. | |
American biologist, Wilson, that first suggested it. I'm riding on | :06:03. | :06:07. | |
his card, so to speak. When you think about it, the insect | :06:08. | :06:13. | |
communities went into nest living about 100 million years ago. They've | :06:14. | :06:16. | |
been doing it ever since and seem to like it. They think it's a very fine | :06:17. | :06:22. | |
and stable way of doing things. I think we can follow their example | :06:23. | :06:27. | |
very well. In fact, we are doing it. And you point to one particular | :06:28. | :06:32. | |
city, Singapore, as an example of how we might adapt to global | :06:33. | :06:36. | |
warming. As you point out, the climate of Singapore is not by any | :06:37. | :06:42. | |
means ideal, and yet the place flourishes. Not only is it not | :06:43. | :06:51. | |
ideal, it's more than twice as hot, their annual average temperature, as | :06:52. | :06:53. | |
the worst case of the IPCC predictions for future climates of | :06:54. | :06:56. | |
the world. If twice as hot is not that bad, perhaps we've been | :06:57. | :07:00. | |
worrying too much about the world heating up and not enough about | :07:01. | :07:04. | |
ourselves heating up. The Singaporeans have excellent air | :07:05. | :07:08. | |
conditioning. One of the things about Singapore is it is not | :07:09. | :07:15. | |
democracy. It looks like one but is really a non`democratic state. You | :07:16. | :07:20. | |
suggest that might be the model we have to adopt in future. A lot of | :07:21. | :07:25. | |
people will find that chilling. I'm sure they would. But this is the | :07:26. | :07:31. | |
wrong way to look at it. If you consider Britain and the United | :07:32. | :07:33. | |
States, for example, during World War II, we had to give up democracy | :07:34. | :07:37. | |
during that period. It was done with the consent for the duration. I | :07:38. | :07:42. | |
think that global warming is just as serious as a major war. We should be | :07:43. | :07:50. | |
prepared to give up democracy if necessary for the duration. James | :07:51. | :07:53. | |
Lovelock, thank you very much indeed. | :07:54. | :08:06. | |
Now it's time for the weather forecast. This should | :08:07. | :08:07. |