New Scientist 13 September 2006, Magazine issue 2568
James Martin believes that by using logic, and by understanding history, technology and the behaviour of complex organisms we can explore the future properly and find solutions.
Markets and capitalism are the solution to some very big problems requiring complex, expensive solutions and the only safe bet is to do this through corporations. You can set up corporations motivated by profit to deal with these big problems such as global warming. General Electric has set out to transform 12 product lines into the kind of ecologically inventive products they think customers will want five years from now.
I have this idea of a World Upper House, rather like the UK's House of Lords, which oversees the elected House of Commons. It would be populated by statesmen who have been through the political mill and know how to get action, as well as scientists who can talk to and trust the statesmen. This world upper house would make decisions about the new energy sources or forms of transport etc.
And they would choose anything other than carbon. Right now there seems to be a strong motivation not to have non-carbon solutions because of the subsidies. The total subsidy for the car and petroleum industries is around a trillion dollars. Huge profits are being made out of huge subsidies and these profits are going to destroy the planet.
I think James Lovelock's view of runaway global warming is going to be proved right. The ice in the Arctic - which is the size of the US - is melting, and if it disappears, the Earth will absorb massive amounts of extra heat. If we took action right now, we could slow it down, though it's not clear whether we could stop all the self-perpetuating processes that have already begun.
Mass Human Extinction
Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006, James Lovelock argues that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the Twenty First century.
James Lovelock claims that by the end of the century, the average temperature in temperate regions will increase by as much as 8°C and by up to 5°C in the tropics, leaving much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming. He suggests that "we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can."
We may not have time to solve the real problems of humanity because there is a lot of apathy. If everyone was excited about solving the problems, it would work fine, but that's not the case. It will take a catastrophe to get most people interested - this is how things happen. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration tightened up its regulations after the thalidomide scandal, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights & Preamble with 30 Articles was drafted after the Holocaust.
We're almost certainly going to get some kind of catastrophe in the next 20 years or so, such as a bird flu pandemic.
Right now it isn't poor people who are damaging the planet, it's the rich. What if you could turn them to eco-affluence, with a high standard of living which doesn't harm the planet? This will involve a huge transition away from a consumer society. And a lot of ideas to solve global warming will be politically controversial. If you put shades up in space to shield our planet from the sun, for example, this would affect countries around the world differently, so would cause controversy.
James Martin Quotes
”It isn't the poor people who are damaging the planet, it's the rich
"Now people are driven to develop specific skills to make money."
"There's a wisdom deficit in our world."
"I feel like I'm at the beginning of my life aged 73. When I was 18, I remember Bertrand Russell saying that the key to being 90 is to keep learning."
"A lot of apathetic people are as happy as pigs, watching reality TV shows and getting drunk on a Friday night."
"The biggest problem in solving the urgent problems that face humanity is apathy: the public is not putting pressure on the politicians."
Profile
After reading physics at the University of Oxford in the 1950s, James Martin worked as a rocket scientist before joining IBM. In 1981 he set up a management consultancy, Headstrong, which holds seminars for politicians and business leaders. His latest book is called The Meaning of the 21st Century.
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