[MUSIC PLAYING]
VEST: Because our lecturer
today prides himself
in his trove of interesting
jokes and stories,
I decided I'd better start
off with a joke, Jack.
And it's one that does
have relevance to deduction
and the scientific method.
And it has to do with
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
being out on a camping trip.
They were lying there
in their sleeping bags
in the middle of the
night on their backs,
looking up at the heavens
and crystal clear night
and millions and millions
of stars across the sky.
And Holmes turned
and said, I say,
Watson, what do you
make of all this?
What do you think about when
you see all these stars?
What do you deduce from it?
Watson thought a bit and
said, well, my friend,
I think it's a message to us.
It's there to remind us of
the vastness of the universe
and the miracle of its
creation and to clearly
send the signal to us that all
those billions of stars out
there, as far as we know,
we're the only planet
with intelligent people and
what a special place we hold.
He said, what do you
make of it Holmes?
Holmes said, well, Watson,
I deduced that someone
has stolen our tent.
So with that, as the
15th President of MIT,
it's my pleasure to welcome
you to the first of three Karl
Taylor Compton Lectures that
will be given during 1998-99.
This lecture series
was established in 1957
to honor the Institute's
ninth president.
Dr. Compton held that
post from 1930 to 1948.
Went on to serve as chairman
of the MIT Corporation
from 1948 until
his death in 1954.
In his quarter century
of service to MIT,
K.T. Compton led a crucial
expansion and modernization
of our Institution.
In the words of one
of his contemporaries,
he was instrumental
in transforming MIT
"from a good, but more or
less provincial Institute
to an international
Institution."
At the same time, he provided
extraordinary leadership
in bringing science
and technology
to the service of our nation
during the Great Depression,
during World War II, and
in the critical early years
of the Cold War.
He served in a variety of
senior governmental positions,
including Chairmanship of the
Depression Era Science Advisory
Board, Chief of
the Wartime Radar
Programs of the Office
of Scientific Research
and Development, and the
first head of the Research
and Development Board that was
created by President Truman
to oversee scientific
preparedness in the years
after World War II.
These lectures were created
as a fitting memorial
to Karl Taylor Compton's
ability to bring
the innovations, the values,
and the wisdom of science,
technology, and academic
inquiry into the arenas
of public policy and
popular discourse.
The purpose of the series
is to give the MIT community
an opportunity to
hear from, meet
with key leaders who
are helping to shape
and inform global events.
Sponsored each time by a
different academic department,
the Compton lecturers have
brought a distinguished array
of global leaders to our campus.
Past Compton Lectures
have included statesmen
like Hubert Humphrey, former
Japanese Prime Minister
Nakasone, and they have included
Nobel Laureates such as Niels
Bour and Linus Pauling.
Indeed, last year's lecture was
both a statesman and a Nobel
Laureate, Doctor Oscar
Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica.
This year's Compton
Lectures are sponsored
by the Political Science
Department in conjunction
with the Office of the Provost.
They have brought us a
speaker who is well qualified
to carry on in the tradition of
his distinguished predecessors.
Indeed it would be
difficult to find someone
who better epitomizes K.T.
Compton's own devotion
to the development of
science and technology,
as instruments of national
service in the public interest.
Jack Gibbons is an
internationally recognized
scientific leader
whose early career
specialty was nuclear physics.
After earning his
doctorate at Duke,
he spent 15 years
as a researcher
at the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory.
Beginning in 1970,
his professional focus
began to shift.
He undertook pioneering work
of the use of technology
in conserving energy,
as well as in minimizing
adverse environmental impacts
from energy production
and consumption.
At the start of the
nation's first major energy
crisis in 1973,
Jack was therefore
well-positioned to become the
first director of the Federal
Office of Energy Conservation.
After two years in that post,
he returned to Tennessee
as head of the University of
Tennessee's Energy Environment
and Resources Center.
In '79, he was called
back to Washington
to direct the Office of
Technology Assessment, the OTA,
an independent professional
agency that provided Congress
with nonpartisan expert analysis
on a wide variety of issues
involving science,
technology, and public policy.
After two 6-year
terms as head of OTA,
Jack was selected
by President Clinton
to be the assistant to
the President for Science
and Technology and director
of the Office of Science
and Technology Policy,
job he performed
with great distinction until
he decided to step down
early this calendar year.
In his role as the president's
Science Advisor, as in so much
of his career, Jack Gibbons has
been a forceful and effective
advocate for the importance
of understanding and using
science and technology,
programs and policies
designed to address
larger public issues.
Several of us from here
at MIT, myself included,
greatly enjoyed the pleasure
of working directly with Jack
through our joint service
on the President's
Committee of Advisors in
Science and Technology.
Through that close
professional association,
we have come to appreciate
that Jack is exactly
the kind of scientist that
President Compton found
so valuable and virtuous.
He's a leader not
only in his own field,
but in the complex
and demanding business
of bringing science
and technology
into the mainstream of public
discourse and policy making.
Jack's most recent
book is entitled
This Gifted Age: Science and
Technology at the Millennium.
His lecture for today's
entitled The 21st Century:
Will Science and Technology
Contribute to Society
or Scuttle it?
His second lecture which
will be delivered here
at the same time on
Monday, November 30,
bears an equally
provocative title
Governance of Science
and Technology:
Theory, Myths and Reality.
I think I know how he
will answer the question
in the title of
this day's lecture,
I have no idea what he
will say in November.
But please join me in welcoming
an outstanding colleague
and good friend, Jack Gibbons.
[APPLAUSE]
JACK GIBBONS: I think
I have my mic on.
Is that right?
Good.
President Vest, how indeed
nice it is to be with you
and to come to MIT
in this capacity.
I'm greatly honored
by the invitation.
And I look forward to the
weeks and months ahead,
and working with individuals,
and departments, and programs,
as well as these several
Compton lectures.
I want to especially thank
Chuck Vest for taking the time
to introduce me, he doesn't
have very much to do, of course,
as you understand.
Chuck, when he came to MIT,
was also very, very generous
in his time with
a lot of issues we
had to deal with in Washington.
And I don't know whether his
wife has forgiven me yet,
but I remember on one occasion
in which he was helping
try to figure out what in the
world to do with the space
station back in 1993.
And I think his last
night on that project,
he worked not only
through the night
but saw the dawn and sun
come up the next morning
while he was still trying
to finish that work up
for the president.
I think that's first
time that had happened
to him since graduate school.
But I want to, in
case you don't know,
I want to congratulate
Chuck in public for the fact
that he's now a grandfather.
You don't look it Chuck, but
we're very proud and happy
for you, and for Becky.
It's no accident
my coming to MIT,
I yearned to come
to the place that I
saw as a symbol of the front
edge of higher education
and research in public
service in terms
of science and technology
in our nation's future.
There's no question in my mind
what MIT carries the leading
flag in that regard.
And I'm, therefore,
feel a little bit
like carrying coals
to Newcastle to talk
with you about these issues.
But nonetheless, bear with
me and you can attack me
when I finish my lecture.
I do, in this
first lecture, want
to say that I'm drawing on
not only my past work at OTA
and the Office of Science
and Technology Policy,
but also to a degree in my
prior experiences in research
and in technology development.
The course now, I'm
out of government
and I have changed my pace.
My office is now on the
farm in northern Virginia,
a comfortable hour away
from downtown Washington.
And in setting up
shop at home, I
had to get a computer set and
a lot of other things going on.
So I got some advice call a
Farmer's Guide to Computers.
And there's several
definitions I
thought I would share with you.
To log on means making
the wood stove hotter.
Monitor means keeping an
eye on the wood stove.
Download means getting the
firewood off the pickup truck.
Floppy disk means what you
get from piling too much
firewood up.
And windows means what to shut
when it's 30 degrees outside.
And finally, mainframe is
what holds up the barn roof.
So if you have to remember
to get your term straight,
even though the words
may be identical,
the meanings are different in
one setting versus another.
But thank you so
much for inviting
me to be with you during
this 1998-99 winter season.
The title I conjured up for the
talk is a teaser, you know it.
It's not either/or,
it's always both.
Robert Lewis Stevenson
said that nature never
gives anything to anyone,
everything is sold at a price.
It is only in the
ideals of abstraction
that choice comes
without consequence.
Alvin Weinberg talked
about nuclear energy
in terms of the
faustian bargain.
If you want to take the
powerful opportunities
of nuclear energy,
you also have to make
the bargain of stewardship.
And because technology is
the human use or application
of knowledge, and
because humanity always
displays the passion
for both good and evil,
there's no question but what
powerful technology will
add either to the benefit of
humankind or to its detriment,
depending on how humans use it.
And in thinking about this
question of the 21st century
and the role of technology,
I had a few images flash
across my mind.
First of all, national
defense these days
is certainly
governed by the fact
that we have the science and
technology edge that we have
obtained since World War II.
It is an enormous
asset for us in terms
of providing an assured
national security
at a much lower investment
of people and money
than otherwise would be
required by virtue of having
front of the edge technology.
The food we eat,
the drink we drink,
the shelter over our
heads, the interior lights,
and the illumination, and
the heating and cooling,
all of these things
are direct results
of technology that would have
been the envy of [INAUDIBLE]..
Disease these days is not
exactly on the retreat,
but we're certainly gaining in
terms of the ultimate goal of,
as one physician
described to me once,
having people turn into
alkaline batteries.
You know, an alkaline
battery runs, and runs,
and runs until it just suddenly
dies instead of petering out
like a carbon based battery.
And he said that's our
objective for humanity,
we should turn people
into alkaline batteries.
And I think we're doing
a pretty good job of it,
given the extension of
useful, active, healthy lives
that come about by virtue
of technology and medicine.
Job increase has been enormous,
because of the opportunities
provided by advancing
technology for people
to use them themselves
in very productive ways.
Transportation is beyond
belief of my father even,
much less my grandfather.
Communication and
access to knowledge
is beyond the
belief of people who
thought about this
only 20 years ago,
before internet had its
exposion and the opportunities
now in this latter day
succession to the invention
of the printing press to
have access to knowledge
from whence commerce
power and influence.
Environmental wastes
is another area
where we have made
extraordinary gains.
Let me give you an example.
This first slide I took from
a magazine some years back.
I think it was advertising
sewer treatment.
But can you imagine our cities
today without the capability
that technology provides for
gathering, and assimilating,
and treating wastes that
otherwise would make
urban living simply impossible.
The convenience and amenities
provided by technology
are essentially too
numerous to mention.
And I think Oliver
Wendell Holmes
captured the positive spirit
of science and technology
when he wrote the following.
Holmes wrote, "true
science knows no bounds.
It penetrates into every
domain without fear
and it serves all men
without prejudice or favor.
Its work is to substitute
facts for appearances,
demonstrations for impressions,
and beneficial realities
for those many things that
ignorance and greed proclaim
to be impossible.
For suffering
humanity," says Holmes,
"it is hope and promise."
Now, I could spend all day
talking about the goods,
but as Ken Boulding
always said, you
should also talk about
the bad, because that's
the other side of the coin.
And in my thinking about today's
talk and where we are now,
I thought about
just several things
that I think we should admit to.
First of all, that
technology has
led to the
proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction
in a form and scale
never before witnessed on the
face of the Earth, both nuclear
and biochemical weapons.
Their use not only
by nation states
but also by small
terrorist groups
now makes the world a
very different place
and security a very
different thing
from what it was a scant
several decades ago.
Population growth has
been extraordinary,
driven by the fact
that health has
brought death control downward
and birthrates remain high.
And the consequence of the
difference between those two
functions led to a very rapid
increase in world population.
For example, when DDT,
after post-World War II,
was introduced into
Sri Lanka, death rates
fell by a factor of
two very suddenly.
And the population of Sri
Lanka doubled in 17 years.
This is a benefit
of death control
but the disbeneift of having
a sudden imbalance between two
things that only slowly change.
And it's not just numbers.
It's an issue of quality of
life that goes with population.
And this is another ad from
a, in this case, newspaper.
Who wants to go to
Jamaica in the summer
when you have the
beach right here?
Well, these are people.
And I think the ocean
starts about here.
But you can see the problem
illustrated by this, namely
that we have, in terms
of quiet, empty spaces
for those uniquely human
functions of population
in many ways is already
outstripping our resources.
See how this works.
I'm going to run back
over to the podium.
Along with a
population explosion
and the press on people
comes also a loss of privacy.
That is a child of some
our modern technology,
derived through information
technology's expansion
and such things as DNA
typing, which now give us
different and additional reasons
to have to apply governance
to the use of these
technologies in order
to assure traditional freedoms
of choice and of privacy.
This is going to be a matter
of continuing and increasing
concern.
If we want the
benefits of advances
in information technology
and molecular biology,
we also must, along with that,
join with public policies
that help assure our
traditional freedoms that
can be infringed by the misuse
of that kind of a technology.
Our environmental
losses have been large.
We have lost some species
at an increasing rate.
The Chesapeake Bay
oyster yield is now 1%
of what it was 100 years ago.
Zebra mussels now cost us
nearly $7 billion a year
in management costs
in the US alone.
We are doing things with our
atmosphere on a global scale
that I will return
to in a few minutes.
In other words,
we have some bads
that come along with the goods.
And we have rising
conflicts between technology
and its use on the one hand
and traditional ethical
and religious and
cultural values.
This is perhaps personified
by the great writer
and anthropologist
Loren Eiseley, who
made this exclamation
in his book,
a book called The
Firmament of Time.
Eiseley, I think,
personified the frustration
that a lot of people
have about technology,
and it's kind of tough to read.
But I think it's important
for those of us in technology
to understand this feeling.
Eiseley says, it is
with the coming of man
that a vast hole
seems to open up
in nature, a vast black
whirlpool spinning faster
and faster consuming flesh,
stones, soil, minerals,
sucking down the lightning,
wrenching power from the atom
until the ancient
sounds of nature
are drowned in a cacophony of
something that is no longer
nature, something
instead which is loose
and knocking at
the world's heart,
something demonic and
no longer planned.
Escaped it may be,
spewed out of nature,
contending in a final giant's
game against its master.
Those are tough
words from Eiseley.
But I think they very poignantly
point out the frustration
that many people
have about the way
things are moving under
the influence of advancing
technology.
Most recently, Pope
Paul, just this month
on the 20th anniversary
of [INAUDIBLE] encyclical
warns about science
and technology progress
as putting humanity at risk.
And I think that
while that's true,
that's but one side of the coin.
And I'm afraid
that it's up to us
to make sure people understand
that with every powerful idea,
including technology,
one has the power
both for good and evil.
So what lessons do I
draw from this litany?
First of all, the power
of free and open society,
of open markets, and seed
ground for innovation such as we
find in our country
provides for efficiency.
There is a concomitant need,
though, to manage externalities
and to assure level
playing fields.
But there is an
enormous power never
before witnessed in
terms of creativity
and its influence on
the way people live
and their options
and opportunities
that derive from technology.
The second observation
or lesson is
that the power that
science and technology have
to provide brand new options
to do things, to achieve goals,
to provide for our
wants and needs,
both the goods and the
bads, but you can't have one
without the other.
The third observation
is this extraordinarily
pervasive and growing
dependence that humanity
has on science and
technology for its livelihood
and its future.
Fourth, the stresses
imposed on societies
and social institutions by
the high and even accelerating
rates of change
driven, of course,
by science and
technology change.
And the results of
this can be seen
in so many ways, the
rise of neoconservatism,
of creationism.
A lot of other, as it
were, retreats, I think,
are outward examples
of the concern people
have about this almost
intolerable rate of change
that they seem to
see being imposed
upon their traditional
thoughts and values.
And finally, in
terms of observations
from this litany
of the recent past,
in general, I think the dynamics
of exponential expansionism
are catching up with us.
The exponential
has for a long time
been the surrogate for progress.
As long as we can grow,
things can get better.
Growth measured by way
of the extent to which we
consume raw materials.
I reserve the word growth.
I'd rather call it
expansionism because growth
can mean different things
to different people.
But this 20th century paradigm
of growth through expansionism,
of the exponential being
our salvation, I think,
is now anachronistic.
Robert Heilbroner,
who is a, I guess,
combined sociologist
and economist, Chuck,
if I remember right,
wrote recently
that the coming
generation, he said,
will be the last
generation to seize control
over technology before
technology irreversibly
seizes control over it.
A generation is not much time,
he says, but it is some time.
And that's pretty
serious business
to say that somehow technology
as an external force somehow
from society has that kind
of capacity and power.
And I think it confuses
technology on the one hand
from ourselves on the other.
And I think we need to
concentrate and understand,
though, the feeling that
arises in people who would
make statements like that.
Well, what about
the 21st century?
That's what I came
here to talk about.
But you can't look ahead without
looking back a little bit.
I would make
several observations
about the 21st century.
First of all, I
don't think there's
any end in sight for
discovery or the development
of new options.
Every day tells us that
we're still, if anything,
on an accelerating
pace of discovery.
Lewis Thomas said before
he died that he thought
history would show
that the greatest
discovery of the
20th century was
the discovery of the
extent of human ignorance.
And I think that may well
carry over to the 21st century.
But it certainly
is an apt statement
about the extent to which
knowledge is constantly
an unfolding phenomenon.
And that will happen
right straight
on into the next century.
The second thing I would say
is that our economic market
basket is growing and
will continue to grow
but that the contents
of the market basket
are and will be
shifting depending
on how we go about
providing goods and services
for the people's wants.
There is no apparent limit,
as far as I can tell,
to greed or avarice that seems
to be in our genes somehow.
But there is indeed some
hope and some evidence
that we're beginning to think
more carefully about what
we mean by growth and progress.
For example, one statement
that is very appealing to me
is that there is a big
difference between being
rich and being wealthy.
Being rich, on the one hand,
is making lots of money.
Being wealthy is
having lots of time.
And I think that notion
of trade off between money
and other desiderata
is something
that we may well want
to pay more attention to
in the coming century.
And maybe technology
will help us get there.
Third statement about
the 21st century
is that our global problems
are indeed looming up on us.
And I think it will be
a century in which we
will have to become constantly
and ever more carefully
thinking in global
terms and linking
our local actions to global
actions and our actions
now to events and
actions in the future.
Population is growing.
We hope that the
21st century will
exhibit a leveling
off or at least
a tendency in that direction
of global population.
We know our atmosphere
is becoming markedly
changed by human activities.
And I'll return to
that in a few minutes.
And we know that our biosphere
is being significantly impacted
globally by human
activities in terms
of diversity and
depletion of species
and the loss of habitats.
As a consequence of some of
these as well as other things,
social stresses are
indeed amplified.
And as I said before,
religious fundamentalism,
economic frustration emerges
from these kinds of stresses
and can result in
violent conflict.
And in terms of global problems,
deadly conflict and terrorism
is certainly not
new in the world.
But it is more intense
and more deadly
with the modern technology.
There is indeed no
hiding place now
anywhere over the globe from
this kind of frustration
exhibiting itself in terrorism.
So just as economics are now
globally tied and integrated,
so too is environment
and security.
Now the thing that strikes me
is that many of the biggest
challenges presented to us,
population, climate change,
biodiversity, have large
hysteresis in them.
And they present conflicts
of time constants involved.
In other words,
they seem to develop
fairly slowly as measured in
terms of political response
and the attention
gotten by the public.
And at the same
time, many of them
are nearly irreversible or
even completely irreversible
in the future.
So there's not a symmetric
oncoming and outgoing.
There is a hysteresis
in the process.
And that presents
some real problems.
Adlai Stevenson once observed
that American people never
seem to see the
handwriting on the wall
until their back
is up against it.
And I think it's
probably a truism.
It's not just American people.
It's generally people
have that feeling.
The closer to them personally
or in their backyard,
the more attention it gets.
And global biodiversity change,
global climate change are not
things that, at
least superficially,
present a lot of
handwriting on the wall
until our back is up against it.
And Mario Merlino
knows all about--
hi, Mario-- knows
all about that.
And the question
is, how can you take
such an enormously important
thing, the planetary commons
and transform it from a Never
Never Land way down the road,
therefore, I'll forget about it
to an issue that is perceived
and interpreted as something
of immediate concern
to us, immediate long-term
rational self-interest concern?
Most of these issues lie outside
the traditional marketplace.
They are indeed the
so-called global commons.
And the problem
is that we are now
treading on the global
commons to the point
that it's not a free good
anymore as we used to think.
I remember when I was a kid.
Chuck, I'm older than you are.
But I remember when
I was a kid, people
would say, what do you mean?
It's a free country, ain't it?
And free country meant, in those
days, it's a linear country.
If you get into
trouble, you just
need to move a little
bit farther away
from your neighbor.
It had no sense of that
kind of interconnectedness
or non-linearity that now
is reality for all of us.
Well, what's the point?
The point is, I think, that
was sufficient lead time,
and I would proffer this,
with sufficient lead time,
many, if not most of these
issues that I've spoken about
can be addressed using ingenuity
with science and technology.
But we need the
political will to do so.
We need to catalyze a
political or public will
to take action on issues
before our back is up
against the wall.
There are some
successful lessons.
I think you all know
about stratospheric ozone
as a good recent example
of a successful lesson
in this regard in which between
Mario and some other people,
they finally understood what
was happening in the atmosphere
and were concerned about certain
manmade chemicals affecting
the thickness of the
stratospheric ozone
layer, which in
turn protects life
on the Earth from ultraviolet
rays from the sun.
And people began to worry about
what other kind of chemicals
could be used for refrigerants
and the likes that didn't
have this unhappy property.
And so they began working
along and the chemists
came up with some wonderful
technology substitutes
for these unhappy,
these molecules that
are triggering the destruction
of stratospheric ozone.
Industry understood that
this was a market opportunity
and that they could
substitute one for another.
In fact, there were
some substitutes
for the chlorofluorocarbons that
were cheaper and more effective
than the chlorofluorocarbons.
And just as we were trying
to form a public policy
to collectively have all the
world's nations work on getting
this stratospheric
ozone protection up,
along came the observations
of these enormous holes
in the ozone in the Antarctic.
And the explanation related
back to human activities.
And to me, it's still
a wonder because I've
been to the South Pole to
look up into the heavens
whether it be in Boston
or in McMurdo Sound
and see this enormous
atmosphere up there
and know that it is being
materially affected,
specifically by human
activities, for the first time
since humanity came about.
But it's a good example of where
we did as a world of nations
find a technical alternative,
institute some price
changes, which pushed the
market in the right direction,
and put in place
a process whereby
within about 50
years, 30 to 50 years,
we will find the ozone depletion
dropping off and moving back
toward greater protection.
But mind you, it'll take
about a half a century
before we really see significant
improvements in that erosion,
a long time constant.
Another is the Clean Air
Act, which as you know
was passed with
great trepidation
because there was concern
about the cost of cleaning up
the air.
The estimates turned out to
be about 10 times more costly
than the actual
facts of the matter.
Now why did the
facts of the matter
end up being so much less
costly in cleaning up the air?
Two reasons.
One was innovative technology.
And the second was to institute
trading of clean air rights.
So that those who could
clean up the air least costly
were able to sell their
capabilities to those
that were emitting
pollutants but it was
too expensive to clean them up.
So by trading these
emission rights, where
they were able to
go the minimum cost
path for the improvement
in air pollution,
and we ended up with about 10%
of the original cost estimate
to do the job that was needed.
We're going to need some
more of that in the future.
But it's another
good example where
collective action can work.
Well, what about
the future then?
C.P. Snow once
said, incidentally,
that a sense of the
future, and that's
what we're here today to talk
about, a sense of the future
is behind all good politics.
Unless one can have
it, one can leave
nothing either wise or
decent to the world.
It's really incumbent on us
just to have the commitment
to think about the
future, not to know
where it's going, but
have a sense of where
it may be going
depending on the actions
we take between now and then.
As Al Gore has frequently
said, the thing
about doing for the future is to
do it smart and not do it dumb.
And we know ourselves
that we've done
some dumb things in the past.
And we hope that we don't
repeat those in the future
and that we can pass on
some of those lessons
to the third world.
Doing things smart means
using elegant and thoughtful
technology.
Some of those examples, I
would like to mention to you.
One is the term sometimes called
green manufacturing, others,
industrial ecology.
It's a very simple
thing in principle.
Elegant in practice
and making its way now
especially in Europe
but also in the United
States and the other advanced
industrial countries.
The old method is to simply
take a linear flow of materials
and products and waste streams.
And the newer notion is
to integrate all the way
across from the initial
design of a product
to its ultimate disposition
and use of the materials.
And in doing so, make
a materials choice
at the design end
that's going to make
the tail end of the
system work a lot better.
In other words, put a bubble
around the entire production
process rather than segregate
these off into different parts.
A good lesson early
to me in Tennessee
was coal strip mining.
Where the mining people used
to just strip off the dirt,
dump it down the
hill, mine the coal,
and then either leave
or come back maybe
and push some of the dirt back.
That was very expensive
and not very effective
because they separated the
recovery or restoration process
from the mining
process as though they
were two different things.
Then they began to realize
that if they would integrate
these two processes together
and make recovery part
and parcel of the
mining process,
they could do a
more effective job.
And that's what's caused now the
ability with full integration
of the ultimate recovery
and use of the land
an integral part of
the mining process.
And it has resolved a lot of
problems in the coalfields.
The same generally in
manufacturing, I think,
is a very important
idea to be going in.
And we're making
some good strides.
The second is in the
transportation sector
as an example.
We now have, even though
petroleum's prices
are lower than
they've ever been,
we are making good
progress on being
able to use fuels for
transportation, for instance,
in automobiles at perhaps
three times the efficiency
of present automobiles with
the same degree of comfort
and safety and attractiveness.
And this has so many
public benefits as well as
private benefits that there
is a consortium of government
and industry working together
over a 10 year period
to push the technologies
ahead to the point
that this can be a
practical reality,
a substitution, therefore, of
elegant technology for what
we used to have in the past.
As a consequence of
that kind of work,
you can devise the following
sort of future scenario,
this is time versus
millions of barrels per day
of oil for the United States.
And the green is
domestic production.
The red is net imports.
And the yellow line at the
very top of the envelope
is future demand for--
domestic demand for petroleum
in the transportation sector.
And you see if you introduce
over time improved technologies
simply for more
efficient use of energy
and also for alternative
and supplementary fuels,
you see what can happen.
You can move from our
domestic oil production
upward by additional
fuels from Alaska
plus some alternative
fuels, for example,
from biomass and other
domestic sources.
This cuts into the net
imports from the bottom.
And then one can lay
in different scenarios
of introducing efficient
automobiles and trucks
into the fleets so that
the energy demand drops
even though the expansion
of transportation continues.
This means one can
move from an envelope
of domestic consumption like
this and very large imports
down to a point that we
could have imports that
would be at almost a level
amount by the time we get to
between 2010 and
2020, which may well
be a very important
time because that's
the time in which the
demand from the emerging
nations, India,
China, others, will
be having a much greater call on
global petroleum availability.
And this will help ease the
pressure on global availability
of petroleum.
An example, therefore, of
long-term capital stock
turnover, where the property
of the capital stock
is to provide that good or
service with less energy
intensiveness.
Along with that in
the 21st century
is the undoubted
question of how we
move toward the next
cycle of primary energy
availability in the globe.
These are cycles historic up to
here of the dominance of wood
and then coal and then oil and
now very shortly natural gas.
And that pattern continues
on to about the middle
of the coming century,
during which nuclear
and other advanced
forms of energy
are going to undoubtedly
have to begin to make
their play in the market.
And how that divides out between
different energy sources,
or I call it energy
sorcery, depends
a lot on where technology
takes us in the interim.
But it's going to be an
interesting half century.
Incidentally,
historical context,
look what's been
happening to the carbon
intensiveness of energy.
This is a global plot.
It goes from about 0.85 down
to about 0.55 between 1850
and the year 2000 as a
result of that substitution
of moving from coal to
petroleum to natural gas.
So the carbon intensiveness
of our energy system
has indeed been
changing quite steadily.
And that's to our credit.
And we have more to go.
But it's going to get
tougher as we move on
out into the 21st century.
In biotech, we have an
enormous opportunity.
As the president said, this
may be the century for the life
sciences where the 20th
century was the century
for the physical sciences.
I can't separate them
out that well myself.
it's Harold Varmus
said, medicine
would be almost nowhere now if
it weren't for crystallography
and x-rays and all sorts of
fancy physical techniques
in order to do research
and to carry out
medical procedures
but an age of science.
And biotechnology in terms
of its impact on health,
including its more
effective means for birth
control, especially for
the developing countries,
and biotech for food production
will be enormous and important.
And I think the challenge
is full of opportunity
for the coming century.
In a sense, it'll be a
molecular level succession
to the green revolution in our
food sector if we do it right
and do it carefully.
In information
technology and its impact
on education and learning
on worker productivity,
on efficient use of resources,
including energy and materials,
enormous opportunities
still lie ahead of us
as we move more deeply into
the age of information.
And it's very
difficult, as you know,
to predict where
things are going
to go when things are changing
still so very, very rapidly.
But that just simply
tells you the opportunity
is there both
upside and downside.
And finally, in
weapons, I have to say
that the opportunity now
for the sequestration
of nuclear weapons materials
has never been greater.
Things are happening
pretty rapidly now.
But we can ill afford
to wait or slow down.
The disposal of
plutonium is a challenge
but a lot of opportunities
for doing things
if we set our minds to it.
The use of technologies for
effective national technical
means of verification and
monitoring are very important.
As nations who don't
necessarily trust
each other must learn how
to work with each other
in terms of being comfortable
about what the other country is
doing.
That all depends very deeply
on technology development
and the use of
existing technology.
And there are some downsides.
I'll give you four
quick examples.
One downside is proliferation
of all sorts of weapons
and methods for doing ill.
It does go beyond nation
states to individuals.
And on top of
this, I'm, frankly,
personally very
concerned about the talk
of weaponization of space.
That simply would open up in
the name of somehow building
a magic shield over our
heads, which won't work,
a way to spend a
whole lot of money
as we did in the
'80s for naught.
And we simply can't afford
those kinds of spare resources.
But mark my word,
I think there's
going to be a big fight in
this coming decade in terms
of understanding the cost
of that impossible dream
of building somehow a shield
over continental America
that will put in space
the same thing we
used to have for the oceans.
It's essentially an
isolationist concept
that I'm very much
concerned about.
Not about battlefield
protection,
ground-based protection against
missiles but about continental
wide area protection.
Fast way to spend money.
I almost lost my
job at OTA when I
fought the space-based weapons
back in the early Reagan years.
So I know what of I speak.
And I think another downside
is the further loss of privacy,
the further inroads
to the notion
of intellectual property.
All of the other
downside potentials
of this extraordinarily powerful
information technology that
is going to be our
salvation and yet,
at the same time, something
that will require careful
thought on the governance of
this extraordinary development.
But the slowly changing
things worry me even more.
Let me speak just for a few
minutes about two of them.
First of all, I want to speak
a little bit about population.
Now I think most of you
know about some demographics
and the so-called demographic
charts of age distributions.
This is of male and female to
the right and left of zero line
simply to show a nearly
symmetric function.
And if you look at
the United States,
this is about what it looked
like about five years ago.
It hasn't changed that much.
Namely, we have a bulge of
population in the 20 to 40.
That's most of you, isn't it?
Here you are in the bulge.
And that's partly due to the
baby boom and the large number
of children being born post-war
World War II era and beyond.
And then a move back toward
a replacement rate fertility
rate.
And of course, as this bulge
moves toward the later years,
you run into a lot of
problems of Social Security,
of jobs, of working people
versus retired people,
a lot of very important
sociological implications
of a transient nature of
moving from a expanding
population to one that
is dynamic or static.
Now if you look at Italy,
it's almost a vertical line.
It's almost
distribution straight
from old to very young.
If you go and look at, say,
our neighbor in Mexico,
you find this kind
of age distribution,
enormous number of young
people with very few
of the very old people,
which should make these folks
feel better because they have
all the young folks to help
take care of them when
they're old, right?
But that can't go on
forever because that
produces a kind of
a population growth
that's simply not sustainable.
And China has gone from
this now to try to move
toward a stable population.
And they have that
problem of the bulge.
And if you try to move that
bulge too quickly by decreasing
birth rates over
time, then you find
that you have too few young
people entering the labor
market and too many old people.
So this thing can't change fast.
It takes a century or
two to make a major shift
in the population
profile of our countries.
It's the kind of insidious
slow moving thing
that unless you think
about it carefully and plan
for it over the long term, you
can get into a lot of trouble.
I'll show you an example because
not doing anything is in itself
a very bad idea.
Here is southern Africa,
south [INAUDIBLE] Africa.
And these are not data.
These are projections
based on population
in 1980 of about a half a
billion people with three
different scenarios, namely
that the growth rate,
the fertility rate moves from
present relatively high numbers
to replacement level, in
this case, by the year 2030.
Alternatively, to
postpone it and have it
hit replacement level and
then stay there at about 2045.
Versus waiting until
about 2065 until it
gets to the replacement level.
And from that point
outward, the same.
Now the resulting
population from waiting
30 years versus 50
years versus 70 years
is an ultimate population that
changes from a little over 1
and 1/2 billion people to
about 4 and 1/2 billion people.
So waiting that extra
time, essentially,
more than triples the population
of south [INAUDIBLE] Africa.
And that's known as sort of
the momentum of population
and the time delays between
fertility of stability,
as it were, and
ultimate population,
the run of population.
And if we think
that Africa is going
to be better off with 4
and 1/2 billion people
instead of about
1 billion people,
then we're thinking wrongly.
An abject lesson in the
reality of the numbers,
was it Bertrand
Russell that said,
man would rather commit
suicide than learn arithmetic?
And I think getting a feeling of
the arithmetic on these things
is going to be very
important for us
as we go into the
21st century because--
can you see that OK?
This is population
and development.
I'm sorry it's so faded.
I'm not very good at
making color graphics yet.
You see I'm no longer
at the White House.
This is developed countries.
And you see by
about the year 2000,
it's more or less a
level number here.
This is the so-called
developing regions of the world.
And you see what's
happening since 1950.
And the optimistic projection
by the United Nations
is that somehow almost as if
by magic after the year 2000,
we're going to suddenly
change our mind
and start leveling
out population.
I will believe it
when it happens.
I hope it does
happen with I think
the help of advanced family
planning and health care
delivery and economic
growth for these people
in the right sectors, we can see
population begin to level out.
Otherwise, you can see
the enormous problem.
And that will show up in a
few minutes in another way.
So that's the first question.
The second question is, and
I only have a couple more,
is water availability.
When I visited
China a year ago, I
was taken down to near the
mouth of the Yellow River.
The Yellow River is one of
the roughly five major river
systems that were the cradles
of civilizations in the past 10
millennia.
The Yellow River for months of
this year was dry at the mouth.
It was all taken out for
agriculture primarily
but other uses as well
as climate change that's
occurring in northern China.
That is a microcosm of a general
issue of water availability
as populations grow
and as needs grow
driven in part by the
demand of people for water
and also for changing
climate and the depletion
of fossil resources such as
our water under the Ogallala
formation in the Midwest
that was stored up
during the Pleistocene
period and is now
being used up over a period
of less than 100 years.
Biodiversity loss is enormous.
The species are suffering from
invasions of foreign invasives.
The habitats are being destroyed
systematically, especially
in the most productive of
our biological regions,
the tropical forests, the
germ lines are being depleted.
And that you can reflect
back on land cover changes
where we see how quickly
here since 1900 an erosion
of the amount of forest
lands and the rapid expansion
of pasture lands and crop
lands due to people's
expansion of these uses.
Carefully done, I
think we can do OK.
But if we aren't
careful about what
happens to diversity
and resilience
of our biological systems,
we're going to be in trouble.
And if you look at the
mammal species, both mammals
and birds, over the period
from about 1600 to now,
you see that that chart is
rising very, very rapidly.
And it's a matter of
concern because that's
our biological warehouse of
very interesting molecules
and animals.
As well as a lot of the
joy of living, I think,
is to live in a
very diverse world.
And we're in trouble there.
How much more trouble,
we don't know.
But the 21st century is going
to be that time of, as it were,
a moment of truth
in that regard.
There are things we
can do technologically
to assure that we maintain our
existence in a biologically
diverse world.
But it won't happen without
some careful thought.
And last, I want to talk a
little bit about climate change
because, to me, it's sort of the
epitome of the issues we face.
This is a combination of
mostly ice core data, which
relates to global average
temperature and CO2
in the Antarctic over a period
of about the last 160,000
years.
It now goes back about
a half a million years.
And you see that while
there are very clearly quite
significant differences
in these curves,
that the growth
effects are similar.
When one goes up,
the other is high.
When one goes down,
the other follows it
over the last 160 millennia.
If you look more recently
and take the ice core data,
this is carbon dioxide
ice core data from--
sorry.
I don't have these flaps off--
from 1600, sorry,
1860 to the present,
ice core data to here
and then measurements
directly from the
atmosphere over there.
Incidentally, that
was begun in part
due to Roger Revelle and
their monitoring that
began around 1960 at Mauna Loa.
And in 1960, Al
Gore took a course
from Roger Revelle on
resources and environment
when these measurements
were just beginning.
And Gore, who was a
political science major,
became so excited about this
that it was his transformation
that you see how one lowly
professor can affect the future
of some of these politicos.
Anyhow, what one sees here
is atmospheric measurements
that show the annual up and down
due to the summer versus winter
CO2 sequestration versus
emission during the wintertime
but, nonetheless, following a
very sharp upward direction.
Now if you take the
average temperatures,
which are observed, and
that's the histograms,
from 1860 to about 1990 and
compare them to the models,
you find some
interesting things.
One is the green model is what
greenhouse gas additions alone
would do to the
average temperature.
And you see it sort
of falls behind
after about 1940 or 1950.
But then if you correct for
aerosol emissions, which
goes along with industrial
development and CO2 emissions,
you find that because
aerosols are cooling things
whereas greenhouse gases
are warming things, one
offsets the other
and one has been
a chart that would follow
much more directly what we're
observing.
So what we're
beginning to observe
are global temperature
changes that
are the net result
of many things
but primarily of greenhouse
gases on the one hand
offset by aerosol
particles on the other,
leading to an increase.
Now what concerns me is that
you can take aerosols out
of the air pretty fast.
And we'd like to for the sake
of our lungs and other things.
On the other hand, you can't
take CO2 out very fast.
It'll take centuries
if not millennia
for that CO2 to
equilibrating with the oceans
where most of it is stored.
So that rapid upward rising
is a matter of great concern.
Where does it take us?
It takes us, as
far as we can tell,
into the great unknown of
the 21st century, which again
is the question, are
we leaving ourselves
better off or worse off?
In terms of carbon dioxide,
it could go business
as usual, rapidly upward.
Or we could be careful
about the CO2 we emit
and begin to start
leveling that off.
More likely is
this middle curve,
which is a sharply
rising curve taking us
on up to several times
pre-industrial CO2
by the end of the next century.
And the consequent temperature
change, while uncertain,
is quite significant and
moves us up in the direction
that I'll talk to you
in a moment about what
its implications are.
Now again, one mark
of the educated person
is they can be emotionally
moved by statistics.
To me, that kind of upward
movement on something
that is part of
our global commons
is enough to make me more
than a little bit nervous.
Well, if you look a
little bit farther,
what you might expect
to see, we look
at US national precipitation.
And if you do enough averaging
of the observed, which
are the yellow lines
and the purple lines,
to the light blue, which
is partly averaged,
and then to this sort
of line, what you find
is that over the century, we
have seen a slight increase
in national
precipitation of rain.
Why?
That's just what
you would expect.
If you're a slightly
warmer world,
you're evaporating more water.
That more water gives
you more precipitation.
But the fact is
that it's not only
giving you more
precipitation but it's warmer
and it becomes more
concentrated in violent storms
and less spread
out in light rains.
And if you look at the
precipitation index here,
you find that, first of
all, we are getting wetter
in parts of the country
and drier in others.
This is just of a
100 year profile.
And this is consistent
with the notion
of how you would
see changing climate
patterns inside the continent
due to climate change
phenomena.
But because it's
warmer when it rains,
it means the ground is warmer
and the water evaporates
faster.
And it means that,
therefore, paradoxically, you
may have more rain
but more drought.
And this is a drought severity
index, and you can see,
for instance, substantial
worsening of drought conditions
over the past, in this
case, about 10 years.
This is too short
a time to say, oh,
that's global climate change.
But it's all data that are
consistent with the kinds
of things one would
expect to see happening
from global climate change.
And finally, what one would--
no, not quite finally,
next to finally,
one would expect to see
the increased CO2 increase
certain kind of
agricultural productivity.
This part of the good news.
And you see that in the
northern hemisphere especially,
we would expect to see
considerable significant gains
in grain productivity
for growth of grains
under the conditions of a double
carbon dioxide, which is almost
assuredly going to happen
even if we worked very
hard at leveling things out.
The bad news is
that further south
in the southern hemisphere
it, gets worse, not better.
And here, we're
up in New England,
and I'm just looking out
at these sugar maples.
Here's what happens
to sugar maples
for a doubling of
pre-industrial carbon dioxide.
And this is, incidentally,
a curve showing
what happens if you just
increase the temperature.
But if you're realistic
and change temperature
and the moisture
changes that go with it,
you find that the current
range, which is yellow,
would move up in this
direction to the blue, which
would take the southern
extent of the sugar maple
on up to just about
the bottom end of Maine
under conditions
of a double CO2.
I'm not sure how happy
even West Virginia would
be without sugar
maples, Chuck, but I
think New England
would be very unhappy.
And with warmer temperature
comes what happens
to water when it gets warmer?
Any answers?
It expands, right?
OK, you knew that.
Here's what happens
with a one meter
rise in sea level, which is a
little over doubling of carbon
dioxide.
We don't have to worry about
much about the Everglades
after that because they'll
be under sea level.
And those incursions
on coastal areas
would be particularly
tough on many
of the third world
countries like Bangladesh
and some of the island states.
And so it's no laughing
matter that rising sea levels
due to warming oceans can be
a very important phenomenon
even in this coming century.
And then to reiterate, to
go back to the beginning,
here's what happens in
the right time scale.
Here we are with
the original curve
I showed you of temperature and
carbon dioxide concentration
over the last 250,000 years.
Here is the Pleistocene period,
this little bump and shelf
right here is the last--
this is time of civilization.
And here's where we are now
in terms of CO2 concentration.
Yes, up here.
And temperature will presumably
be tracking behind it.
This level, even at
the current level
is a level of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere
that we've not seen for many
hundreds of thousands of years.
And we are almost
undoubtedly committed
to a time of doubling
of pre-industrial CO2
in this coming century.
And we have not seen that
for 50 million years.
And I don't think we
should be blithely saying,
well, maybe it'll be OK.
Because I get nervous
about numbers that say
we haven't been
there for that long
and we're not quite sure
where it's going to take us.
So how do we fix it?
If you look at how one
could go about getting off
of that business as usual
curve of carbon dioxide
and moving to limit the maximum
ultimate concentration of CO2
to perhaps double
pre-industrial CO2,
although I think it'll
probably go beyond that,
you see that a minimum
cost path to get there
in terms of overhauling
our industrial systems
and replacing our capital
stock at a reasonable rate
will take us some time.
It'll even have to increase
before it decreases.
We simply can't move
that fast without making
too much economic hardship.
But you will note that it
needs to peak up and start
coming back down again even by
about the year 2040 or 2050.
So we don't have
that much time if we
hope to hold anywhere near a
doubling of pre-industrial CO2.
That's not much time.
And that brings us to Kyoto.
And I'll talk in
future talks about some
of the machinations that went
on with respect to Kyoto.
But you recall in
Kyoto, the issue
was can we level out our
rates of emission of CO2
from the US and other
countries to the present level
of emissions.
The present level of emissions
would carry us on up well
beyond this.
They would continue to load
into the atmosphere in terms
of concentration because
it doesn't come back out
of the atmosphere.
So what we're talking
about is not even
getting off the
orange line in order
to follow along
the Kyoto Protocol.
So let's have a
lesson very briefly
in some simple arithmetic.
The current carbon emissions as
I showed you, that green curve,
are about 6 billion tons a year.
That's about one ton per
person globally, right?
The US is about five times
that, about five tons
per person per year.
The third world is
around a half a ton
per person per year,
about 1/10 of ours.
You can see why they say
it's our problem not theirs.
The least cost trajectory that
I showed you just a moment ago
that would take us to about 550
parts per million concentration
in the long term implies by the
time we get to the year 2100,
that we should still be at
about six gigatons of carbon
per year, about the same
amount we're producing now.
And that means with
population growth, about 6/10
of a ton per person per
year instead of one ton now.
Now if you assume a 2% growth
rate, which some economists
would say that's
intolerably low,
that means a factor
of about eight
in 100 years in terms
of resource consumption.
And if you don't change the
amount of carbon per energy
produced to make
that kind of growth,
then the allowable amount of
carbon per person per year
becomes less than 1/10 of
a ton per person per year.
Well, that compared
to five tons per year,
which we're trying
to hold to now,
means that we have
to essentially move
from a relatively high number
and not just stabilize it,
as we would for Kyoto, but
essentially wipe it entirely
out in the course of 100 years.
That's the simple arithmetic.
If we choose not to do that,
then the later generations
will suffer on account of it.
The extent to which
we can achieve that
means that we're taking the
load off of future generations.
Well, to remind
you, the US is 1/4
of all of the action
in terms of the CO2
that's up in the atmosphere.
I understand exactly why
the third world says,
you folks ought to lead because
you got us here to start with.
But if you look a little bit
ahead in the 21st century,
you find that by the year
2035, the developing countries
in terms of emissions
will equal and then
begin to exceed those of
all the industrial nations.
They understand this.
The Chinese full
understand that they're
going to be in the same boat
as us in terms of emissions
and responsibilities here
within the next several decades.
But don't forget where
we're coming from.
We're coming from
being totally dominated
by the developing nations.
And what about our energy?
It's very simple, about 1/3
each in buildings, industry,
and transportation.
I talked about
transportation a while ago.
There was a recent analysis,
a rather draconian analysis
about what we might have to
do to level out our emissions.
And one number, which is from
a patently pessimistic study
by the Energy Information
Administration,
says we might have to add
as much as $0.60 a gallon
on our gasoline over
the next decade or so.
Here's the price of
gasoline in the '90s.
And if you add $0.60
to US gasoline,
and I'm sure we'd never have
to do anything like that,
but if we did, it would
take us out to about here.
And we would be maybe up
to Canada in terms of what
we're charging for gasoline.
Still far, far,
far behind all the
rest of the
industrial countries.
Sacrifice?
Yes.
But how big over 10 years?
I'm not sure.
We endured nearly a tripling
of prices in the '70s
and grew right through
the whole period.
So let me now wind
up very quickly.
I think we have a lot
of attractive options.
There a lot of cost factors.
Time is needed
because much of this
requires the turnover of capital
stock and its replacement
by improved capital stock.
We need to have international
trading and emissions
of carbon.
And we need to have offsets.
For instance, a recent
resources for the future study
shows that probably a good 30%
of all the costs of doing this
are direct savings from
other pollution costs
which would drop
on account of it.
So you could offset probably
1/3 of it for that alone.
And I think there are a
lot of other instabilities
and concerns we ought to be
thinking about while we try
to make our way toward
doing what we can
for having a global
climate system that
is a little bit less
moving into the unknown
than it is right now.
We know many of you
have heard of the issue
of potential instability of
ocean currents, especially
the North Atlantic.
Other instability such
as the positive feedbacks
that could come from
the melting of methane
clathrates in the oceans.
The recent break off of another
50 square miles of the Larson--
was it 50--
of the Larson ice
shelf in the Antarctic,
another example of
changes in ocean currents
and other positive feedbacks.
As Harvey Brooks
said some years back,
it's probably not those
things we know about
that we should be really
worried that much about.
It's those things that we
haven't even thought about yet
that we probably are going
to have to worry more about.
And I'll just give
you an example.
Here, to me a shocker.
If you look at the
amount of nitrogen
fixed in the whole planet,
it's about this much
for, I think, it's teragrams per
year from all natural sources,
lightening, bacterial fixation,
all these other processes.
Here's what's happened just to
anthropogenic nitrogen fixing
since the turn of the century.
We've gone from a small fraction
of natural nitrogen fixing
to the point now
where we substantially
exceed all of the
so-called natural sources
of nitrogen fixing
on the whole planet.
Now what does this mean?
I'm not sure what it means
except it tells me, again,
that human activities are
beginning to dominate some
of our global parameters
and that the 21st century
is going to have to be
a moment of truth for us
to at least understand these
things better if not try
to do something about them.
And where does that take me?
It takes me all the way back
to a rather strategic statement
that was developed
I think originally
by John Holdren
and Paul Ehrlich,
namely that if you
talk about an insult,
pollution let's call it, and
break it up into identities,
then you can talk about
how you can tackle it.
We can break up pollution into
pollution per unit of energy
produced times the amount
of energy per GNP produced
times GNP per
population unit times
population, a very
simple mathematically
incorrect but helpful
strategic approach
to thinking about things.
What we've talked about today
is the use of technology
to reduce the
amount of pollution
per unit of energy or goods
produced with efficiency.
We've talked about
market basket changes
in terms of energy required
to produce a unit of GNP
again using technology.
We've talked a little bit
about GNP per population
but we hope GNP, however
defined by new market baskets,
is going to be able
to continue to grow.
And then ultimately,
there's a population factor.
Technology in particular
is extremely important
for these first two
terms and is ultimately
relatable to the
ease with which we
can introduce effective
family planning to people.
So across the board, technology
in terms of its challenge
to either help
provide for people
or to give us problems
in the 21st century
is all the way across the board.
And of course, these are
things that politicians want
to jump on right away, right?
I don't know whether
you can read this
so I better read it to you.
He says, our sun is more
than 4 billion years old.
And it's already reached about
half its life expectancy.
It's now time to plan for
the future of mankind.
And a positive first step
is the election of someone
who's willing to face
this vital problem.
I think we're going to face
that problem not with respect
to the sun but with respect to
some of these other things that
are very much on our plate
for the 21st century.
Now our bottom line, I
think, is, as I said,
I think we have plenty
of opportunities
to take things either way.
All of society has that choice.
But science and technology
has a very special role
in that process in providing
the means to understand what's
happening and the options
to do something about it
in a productive way.
And I think our measure will be
our commitment, our investment
in research and
development, and innovation
in the transformation of
production and energy,
and in our orientation
toward preventative measures,
whether it be in health or in
waste or in deadly conflict.
Second, I think a measure
is our responsiveness
to global climate
change challenges.
A conservative
response, we hope,
as if the future
really mattered for us,
a proactive link to other
environmental and resource
challenges so that
we get two for one,
and undertaking it
soon enough that we can
pace our way toward the future.
Third, attention
to the conservation
of living capital, our so-called
natural wealth of the planet,
which may be at least, if not
more, important than all of our
invented wealth.
That means biodiversity,
habitat protection, germplasm,
and species protection.
Fourth, our outreach to
the developing world,
our leadership by
example in terms
of stabilizing our
population, and our use of,
our consumption of resources,
our ability to help them
understand the value
if not the advantage
of taking alternative
growth paths.
Fifth and finally, I
think the new attention
to intergenerational equity,
new measures for growth
and progress, not how
much raw materials
we consume every year, devising
some sustainable futures that
is a sense of
dynamic equilibrium
that can substitute
for exponentiation
as a measure of how well we're
doing and where we're growing.
And that's a whole new way of
thinking about how you grow.
Do you grow through exponentials
where efficiency simply
postpones the time in which
you run into trouble again?
Or do you think in terms of some
movement to a dynamic situation
where changes in
efficiency and the likes
have lasting importance?
They act more like an endowment.
And ultimately, I
think we have to think.
It has to come back home.
We have to connect
local to global actions.
I love Gary Larson sometimes.
And you see here the
logger is forgetting
as he describes how this
tree so miraculously
survived those
millennia of time,
he's forgetting the fact that
he just chopped it down himself.
And of course, you have to
close with Lucy and Peanuts
about are we going to help
or hurt the next generation?
I would hope that
our answer is not
that we will stick
the next generation
but that we will use the
talents that we have,
the opportunities
we have, which are
glorious and manifold to leave
the place a little better
for our great-grandchildren
than perhaps it was left for us.
And I want to thank you for
your patience this afternoon.
That's the end of
lecture number one.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
I'll take a few questions.
And I also want to remind
you that if you grow tired
of questions, our
hosts have provided us
with some wonderful food
and drink outside as soon
as we leave the auditorium.
But I'll stay for a
little bit if you want.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Solving many of the
disturbing trends you mentioned
requires a unprecedented amount
of international cooperation.
Based on your
experience in government
and following the
Kyoto Accords recently,
are you optimistic or
pessimistic about that sort of
[INAUDIBLE]?
VEST: The point raised,
did you hear it?
The point raised was that
this is indeed a global issue.
And therefore, am I
optimistic or pessimistic
given, say, the Kyoto convention
of about whether we can make it
or not?
I think out-- I'm not sure
how it's going to come out.
But we can ill afford
to assume that we
aren't going to make it.
And it seems to me
the thing incumbent
on the intellectual
capital we have
and to our inventiveness
and technology
is to show how we can provide
for this in a way that
has a net win
result for everybody
if you take into account
future generations.
I can't help but
remain an optimist
even though I've gotten bloodied
up a bit here and there.
I do believe that the Kyoto was
certainly no magical success.
But it did put some things
on the table that are now
a matter of global discussion.
And the informal discussions
are much more encouraging
than the official actions.
And that's what
you always expect.
But I think given the
extraordinary success
of the Montreal Protocol
and the stratospheric ozone
as an example gives
me still hope that we
will have an ability to do it.
Meanwhile, we've got to
really try to harden and firm
up our scientific understanding
of what's going on.
We've got to work
very hard consistently
to develop technologies that
enable us to go to less carbon
intensiveness and other things
so that we can get there
even more profitably
or at less of a loss.
And we have to lay
those things in place
so that we can provide options.
If you have options, then it's
an easier political decision
to be made.
And I think everyone needs to
understand it is a commons.
And anyone's win is everyone's
win in this business.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: You mentioned that
it's the educated people who
are motivated by statistics.
And now we see politics,
we're in the middle of coups
essentially in America.
How do you convince the American
people that something like
a $0.60 tax is necessary for
the good of the American people
and the world?
How do you educate everybody?
VEST: Well, it's
kind of hard for me
because I tried it twice,
once when I worked for Nixon.
And I got John Sawhill
to propose a gasoline tax
and Nixon fired
him a week later.
And in this administration,
I worked with Mr. Clinton.
And we proposed an
$0.18 a gallon tax,
and the Congress worked
hard for us and got $0.04.
Very hard.
There's a kind of romance with
making and keeping gasoline
cheaper than bottled water.
And I honestly despair on this.
But I can't help but
feel that if people
could be presented with a
sensible package in which
revenues from raising taxes
on gasoline, as they do in all
the other industrial countries,
and letting that displace
other taxes that are
far more regressive
is a net win for people.
But it has to be presented in
an integrated package in order
to sell it.
And that's a real job for us.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Do you feel
the American people
are less concerned than the
Europeans on these issues?
VEST: Yes, Americans
are less concerned.
I think because we're,
in a sense, more insular.
We don't quite have
the press that some
of the European countries
have, especially
those along the coast
like the Netherlands.
And it's a lot harder for us.
Germany, they have to
do is fix East Germany
and they've got all the
gains to succeed for Kyoto.
All the English have to do is
keep moving toward natural gas
and that'll fix them
up automatically.
So there are a lot of political
games being played in Europe.
And France, of course, it has
a very large nuclear capacity.
They're 80% nuclear.
So they are playing
some political games.
They understand it's
more difficult for us.
But that's the
reality of politics.
And our negotiations
in Kyoto were
to try to get across the fact
that we have a bigger problem
because, A, we've been
growing a lot faster.
We've been really
growing since 1990
and Europe has been
almost retreating
during that same period.
So we're already generating
a lot more CO2 simply
because of economic expansion.
And I think the
understanding of this
is going to come
about as we continue
the dialogue about what is
a meaningful implementation.
And finally, we've
done our homework more,
I think, than most
of Europe has.
We understand the dynamics
of trying to level out
carbon dioxide production.
And some of the other
countries have not
done that much analytical work.
Their statements have been
more on political grounds.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: You don't seem to
be able to explain why we
can't have a $0.50 increase
on the gasoline tax whereas we
really should have
more like a $2 one.
But on the other hand, we
are spending $8 billion
making Boston Harbor clean with
very limited effectiveness,
it seems to be.
The main result,
the main improvement
has been a $100 million
project to stop dumping sludge.
But the rest of it is just
secondary, tertiary treatment,
some exotic treatments.
And we are now in the
process of debating,
if you read the local newspaper,
whether we should have
filtration of drinking water.
In other words, we're
protecting the fish,
but we can't protect the health
of 2 and 1/2 million people.
What makes you think that
we can choose priorities
in this country bases
on limited opportunities
or whether there is something
going on politically
that is just going to
lead to more debauchery.
Germany doesn't have
this kind of problem.
VEST: Well, the people
on the mainland of Europe
say that as soon as
you cross the channel,
you get into trouble because the
engineers are no longer really
that much a part of the
parliaments and the like.
It is amazing to see the change.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
the engineers
are part of the problem.
VEST: Sure.
Yeah.
That's right.
AUDIENCE: The
equivalent of the EPA
is run by engineers
instead of run by lawyers.
VEST: That's right.
And it's a big help.
What I say is that I
think it can be done.
Whether it will be
done depends a lot
on how well members
of our community
work with the non-technical
elected officials of our nation
and work with them
much more effectively
to help them come to a better
understanding of where we are
and also for us to work
with the American people
because if people
can be easily misled
by the winsome songs of
special interests, then
they're not going to be
motivated to do something.
And it's--
AUDIENCE: We have an adversarial
process whereas in Germany,
it's a cooperative process.
VEST: Well, it's more
cooperative in Germany.
There's no doubt about it.
And their green technology and
the likes, their green industry
is moving a lot
faster than our own.
And we have much to learn from
the Germans in that regard.
But it is a different culture.
And I'm not saying it's easy.
But I'm saying there
are opportunities here.
And they're under
attended in that I
think our community of
science and technology
has not been as
extensively integrated
into the national political
debate as it needs to be.
And I want to praise Chuck
Vest for his engagement
with the university
community even just
in trying to get the research
budgets maintained and held
on to because we had a
lot of problems there.
The majority--
let's see, the whip
of the house some months ago,
I guess about a year ago now,
said one day that he wanted
to get rid of all the NOAA
satellites, weather
satellites because he said,
we've got the television
weather stations.
Why do we need those satellites?
He didn't even understand the
connectivity between those two
things.
And those are the folks
we have to work with.
I think Chuck got to
him within 24 hours.
But what I tried
to point out today
is I think there's
an existence theorem.
And there are a few examples of
where we have made connections.
And I think the challenge
in the 21st century
is not only to reach these
people more effectively
but also push those
frontiers of options
and push those frontiers
of understanding
so that we have a
harder case to make
and a more easily accepted
case because we've
found some excellent
tech fixes to help
make it work with minimum
pain and discomfort.
AUDIENCE: One last
sentence, they
have 800,000 lawyers,
which I'm sure you know,
who have a policy of
forcing technology
by demanding the impossible.
I'm sure you've heard this.
VEST: Yeah, and it's worked
pretty well, actually.
AUDIENCE: Well, the trouble
is that when you really
do demand the impossible,
the only people
you get to make as in
making Boston Harbor clean
are the people who don't
know you can't make
Boston Harbor clean
even for $8 million
or the gangsters
who can get away
with who can get paid
for not doing their job.
VEST: Well, Boston
has a rich history.
I think there was a
county courthouse too,
a rich history in this regard.
I don't want to comment
on Boston's rich history.
But I do remember something
about a courthouse
that just kept absorbing money.
Did it ever get finished?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
VEST: It did?
Well, see, we made
some progress then.
No.
There's going to be waste.
If you look at
this half trillion
dollar budget that
was just passed,
there's a lot of
nonsense in there too.
And we have to contend with
that and remember that policy
decisions are processes.
If we make some mistakes
this year, let's go back
and get them fixed next
year but keep moving it
in the right direction and
don't be discouraged because it
is a [INAUDIBLE] process.
But I don't know of any
that would work better.
I remember Thomas Jefferson
once said that no man's house
or hearth--
no man's home or
hearth are safe when
the legislature is in session.
And I think that always
has been the case
and probably always will be.
Yes?
If you look at the dense ice,
the cores down in these ice
fields of Antarctica and, to
a certain degree, Greenland,
you find a beautiful
written record
if you know how to read it.
And reading the
record means you have
to have elegant chemical
and physical methods
to look at that tiny
little bubbles of air that
are inside the
ice and to measure
the isotopic ratio of oxygen 16
and oxygen 18, which lead you
back to a temperature and the
measurement actually of methane
and CO2 in these tiny bubbles.
And it's extraordinary
because there's
a consistent and well-proven
method now for tracing
our way back in time
to those very, very
long early conditions
which in turn tell
us so much about what
the dynamics were
and where we are now.
Right now at this
moment, they're
looking at similar
cores that are giving us
extraordinary detail about
the last 10,000 years
and what happened in the North
Atlantic that in turn affected
European weather and our own.
And that shows
the enormous value
of investing in
fundamental science
to understand better who
we are, what it is we--
what the Earth is like and
how it's behaved in the past.
But it came from ice core.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
VEST: Well, you go on back
before that, 150,000 years
and find other bumps
and dips and changes.
But it tells you that
what is past may also
be what is prologue.
Except now what is happening is
that things are changing faster
than anything in the last
50 million years probably.
And that's why I called it
because I copied someone
else who used the phrase.
It's a human bolide
or asteroid that
is now smacking the Earth in
a way that is transforming
over the course of a
couple of centuries
transforming the Earth in
terms of its atmosphere,
its biodiversity, all
sorts of other things.
We know that one hit us
76 million years ago,
except it was an asteroid a
couple of miles in diameter.
And that got our
attention because it
happened all of a sudden,
called the KT boundary.
What's happening
now is happening
geologically all of a sudden
over several hundred years.
But it's us not
some heavenly body.
AUDIENCE: So those bumps
were asteroids in the past.
VEST: The one 70
million years ago was.
Those bumps in
the past had to do
with orbital variation,
orbital changes of the Earth,
which happen every,
let's see, what is it?
I forget the Russian's name.
About every 150,000 years.
Who is it?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
VEST: The Milankovitch cycle.
There are several astronomical
cycles that we go through.
There are other things
that happen, volcanism,
other things that can change
the atmosphere and, in turn,
change the radiated balance.
And be happy to talk with
you more about it later.
And if I don't know, Mario will.
So yes?
AUDIENCE: One of the more
interesting articles,
I'm not a specialist
in this area,
but one of the most
interesting articles
I read that relates to what
you've been talking about
was in The New York
Times a while ago,
and it was talking about how
the fuel efficiency guidelines,
and I don't know whether this
was in the so-called cafe
regulations, for
the vehicle fleet
so-called for the United States
had been set in a certain way
but that the so-called sport
utility vehicles, SUV that
are so much in evidence
had been classified
not as trucks but as cars
or in another category
so they were exempt.
And that gains that were
being made in certain areas
were being offset by the
growing use and the growing
sale of these sport
utility vehicles.
VEST: That's right.
AUDIENCE: Now this
to me is a very
interesting and
instructive case study
in the political dimension as
it relates to the technology.
Seems like there's lots
of good information there.
There's a pretty
good understanding
of some of the
technological issues.
There's a pretty good
understanding of fuel emissions
and pollution.
What there seems to be
missing is the political will
to implement the wisdom.
And you talked
about that a little.
But it seems to me
that that warrants
as much as the issues
about technology,
it certainly
warrants, I mean, it
may be the crux of the
matter, it seems to me.
VEST: That sets us up
for the next lecture.
But you're right.
And that categorization
of light trucks
and their special
treatment on cafe
was a masterful stroke on
the part of Detroit, I think.
And it is costing us now
in terms of our emissions.
And I must say,
there are other gains
being made in efficiency
of engines and the likes,
which could roll
into efficiency,
but instead are rolling
into horsepower.
So you find enormous
horsepower still
with vehicles getting
20, 25 miles per gallon.
If they dropped their
horsepower to anything
like they were back
in the late '70s,
we would be up around 35 or
more miles per gallon already.
So those games are
going to be played.
And what our job to do is to try
to see what case should be made
to say that it is in our
self-interest to start trading
power for efficiency
in these areas in terms
of a variety of national
opportunities for lower import
requirements, less
dependent on Middle Eastern
oil, less air pollution in
our cities, and the likes.
And that's a job that
we must be a part
of in informing the public and
helping inform that debate.
AUDIENCE: What
interests would you
say are driving what you call
Detroit, the major automobile?
What are the interests that
are driving their construction
of those kinds of loopholes?
VEST: Well, one thing, the
SUVs are the most profitable
of all of the
lines from Detroit.
And they've been able to
sell them on a lot of imagery
as well as a lot of very
functional utility to people.
But you notice most of those ads
have these things climbing up
wilderness trails and the likes,
and not probably one in 100
will do it.
It's an imagery thing.
Sort of like Marlboros.
I used to smoke Marlboros.
You know the old cowboy?
But marketing is a
very powerful tool.
And the private sector knows
how to use it very well.
And this is the
most profitable line
that Detroit makes are this
sport utility vehicles.
Mr. Sloan also I believe
said that, sell automobiles
by the pound.
If you had more
pounds to them, they
sell for a higher price
and that's more profits.
So making heavy
vehicles like some
of these extraordinary
things, I've
forgotten the name of them,
Alpine, no, Alaskan Yukon
or anyhow some of those things
weigh 4,000 or 5,000 pounds
and use them to go
down pick up groceries.
So we have an
image problem here.
At the same time, Detroit
has been working hard,
I must say, on some of the
advanced concepts for fuel
cells, for hybrid direct
injection diesel, four stroke
diesels, a lot of other
very advanced technologies.
And my hope is, ultimately,
not whether we win the game
this year but whether
we can put in place
over the next several years
the kinds of technologies that
will give the option
in the first decade
of the next century to really
transform our transportation
system so that it can,
in fact, help move us
in the right direction
that we're going to have
to move in the 21st century.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] How
can you convince [INAUDIBLE]
VEST: The question is if
we did all this in terms
of our development,
why should we
be asking the third world
to slow down and not
do it in their development?
My answer to this is
that, for instance,
if you go to China today, you
won't find anybody putting up
telephone lines.
They're all using mobile
phones, cellular phones.
They are bypassing some of the
ways we did in our development
because it's better.
It's cheaper.
And it's more effective.
And you can go all the
way through the economy
and say, if we don't
just track along
what those folks
did 50 years ago,
but we leapfrog over some
of those bad technologies
and pick up the
best, then we'll move
in a new way of development.
And the new way of
development is far less
demanding on resources
and on energy
and makes far less
carbon dioxide.
It's going as Vice
President Gore says,
it's going the smart way.
As someone said, I think
it's Chinese statement,
that a wise person
learns from experience.
The wiser person learns from
someone else's experience.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: How much is a threat
of drug resistant microbes
and what's being done?
VEST: Can't quite hear you.
AUDIENCE: How much of a threat
is drug resistant microbes
and what's being done in terms
of science and technology
to address those issues?
VEST: Drug resistance
microbes are a big problem.
And they are engendered
by inattentive use
by the medical profession
of antibiotics.
In many countries, you
can simply buy antibiotics
over the counter.
And in many instances
here, a doctor
will prescribe when
they're not really needed.
And by the absolutely
indiscriminate use
of antibiotics in animal feeds
as a way of increasing slightly
their well-being, especially
if they aren't that well cared
for.
And that provides
a subclinical level
of antibiotic, which is perfect
for killing only the weak germs
but enabling the stronger
germs to evolve and develop.
A recent Academy of
Sciences publication on this
affirms what OTA said
about a decade ago.
Namely, our misuse
of antibiotics
is providing the breeding ground
for the new lethal pathogens
that will follow.
The second thing that happens
is that as you go in and disturb
systems, whether it be the
clearing of a tropical forest
or the onset of a rainfall
in a traditionally dry area,
then you find pathogens
that were once
confined to that area
breaking out, as happened,
I think, with Ebola.
It's happened with
cholera in South America.
It's happened with a
hantavirus in the southwest.
And so these are various ways
these pathogens can develop.
And I daresay it's more
serious of a problem
than some terrorist
bacteriologist
doing his or her thing.
And it is a matter
of concern there
is a new so-called emerging
infectious diseases
activity at the Centers
for Disease Control tied
to the World Health
Organization now creating
an international
network of warning
and alerting of the
emergence of new pathogens
that we think is going to help
because a pathogen can move now
because of modern
transportation from one
end of the world to the
other before they even
begin to manifest themselves
in the condition of their host.
I think it's a matter
of great concern.
And I would hope that,
well, I almost hope
that my grandchildren
are going to go
into medicine because these
bugs mutate faster than we can
create doctors to cure them.
And I think if we now
know, for instance,
we only have one or two
antibiotics for some
of the more resistant
strains of several
of the common pathogens.
So the war on infectious
disease is not over.
It's going to be a
continuing struggle.
And it's being exacerbated
by other human activities.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: All through your
presentation this afternoon,
you tried to come
up with one or two
positive observations about
various troubling trends.
As a veteran of the office
of technology assessment,
now defunct because
political leadership simply
didn't want to
understand risk benefit
analysis in any objective way,
and as an observer of a public
and media which seems to have no
real ability to make judgments
about relative risk
and relative benefit
and therefore how to
allocate resources,
can you identify any
promising examples
of trends that give you hope
in that area of educating
the public, making the
media understand and cover
science better?
VEST: Well, I would
hope an example
and maybe I should talk about
this next time of Dolly,
the cloning of Dolly and the
use of an adult mammalian cell
to create a clone and the
treatment of that situation
by the president, the very,
very carefully worded statement
he made which
surrounded the issue
and fenced off research from
being locked up by the Congress
was a good example of where we
try to get the public informed
about just what this
is and what it is not
and, therefore, what should be
the concern of the community
in terms of the
social constraints
on these technologies.
And the creation by the
president of the National
Bioethics Advisory
Commission was very helpful
in that regard.
So I think there
are hopeful ways
but it takes a lot of work.
And without an OTA around,
it's much more difficult.
I would hope that the
various things going on
here right at MIT can be helpful
in that regard because you have
a lot of interdepartmental,
interdisciplinary programs
that are focusing some
very powerful and diverse
capabilities on these problems.
And I think that kind
of thoughtful work,
especially if carefully
moved to the marketplace
of the policymakers,
can be very, very
helpful in the future.
And I think the
universities like MIT
may have to become a distributed
set of OTAs around the country
in the coming several years.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Is there in
your mind a priority
for the kind of global society
and global commons in the range
of concerns you described?
I mean, you obviously put up
a picture, a number of charts
that showed us how
integrated these issues are,
global gases to
energy, population.
But of course, again, as
everyone keeps mentioning,
it's hard to get
folks' attention.
The question is, is there
a most important parameter
that requires the most
immediate attention?
VEST: Is there a most
important parameter that
requires immediate attention?
Well, it's hard to sort
them out because they're
important for different reasons.
I would venture that perhaps
the most important thing for us
in the coming several
years is to spend
a lot of time and
attention on trying
to help in any
way we can to help
Russia get through the narrows.
And our link there is one
of our strongest links
is between our
scientific communities.
The same with China in
getting through their narrows
in moving toward
a market economy
but in their own
form of government
because their government
is mostly engineers.
And I think those
are two countries
that if we had to concentrate
on places that if we work hard
now, the benefits are
going to be enormous.
It's going to be the equivalent
at the millennium of what
the Marshall Plan did at the
end of the Second World War.
I should think that would
be, to me thinking out loud,
a very important way to move.
And it's a special role
for technology and science
because with those people
in China and Russia,
we have special relationships
that we should capitalize on.
Well, thank you very much.
There is refreshments
downstairs.
Thank you.
Thank you.
