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Transcript

How To Build A Sustainable World · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Well hello folks and welcome to another episode of Science
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of the Times. So I'm here Simon Khalid and Tim.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Hello I'm Tim Coulson.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: So Tim, turns out that the lovely Sonia is away
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: on a field trip in Borneo this week.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I know, my lovely wife Sonia has abandoned me for
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks. She's teaching our biology undergraduates in Borneo,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: so I'm having to fend for myself. I do all
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the dog walking and I suspect I'll probably be having
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: sausages for tea. I've also been trying to do some
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: DIY while she's away.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: I was like, how's that been going?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I am literally, just as well I'm not a lab scientist.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I am so hopeless at DIY. I've now taken a gate,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: put a gate up and taken it down three times
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: because I haven't done it properly. But I think this
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: time it's going to work. How about you? What have
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: you been up to? How's your week been?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's been a fair bit of travel. I was away
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: in Tuscany, then got back, and I've been listening and
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: watching the Champions League, delightfully seeing PSG defeat and put
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: out Arsenal.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I should say, you know, and this is obviously difficult,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: but congratulations, Liverpool, for winning the Premiership. Yeah.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Looking forward to that guard of honour from Arsenal at
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the weekend.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, so this week, our guest is Paul Behrens,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: and he's an expert on sustainability and how we get there.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: It turns out we're not doing a great job in
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: the West, at least, of living very sustainably.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: No, but from what I've read from his recent works,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: it turns out that it's not all doom and gloom.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: There's a great deal of optimism if we act fairly soon, right?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's right. So it's not, we do have
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: to do something. Humanity has to do something. There are challenges,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: there's no doubt about them. But, you know, I think
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: what's amazing is people like Paul, who's come from a
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: physics background, is someone, you know, he's clearly a very
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: smart man who's thought a lot about this, very broad
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: in terms of his knowledge. And when you hear people
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: like that, kind of A, laying out what the challenges are,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: but also saying that we can we can find solutions,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: but we need to act quickly. That has to be
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: a message of hope, I think. Absolutely.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And when it comes from a pure scientist, I think
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: there's no other hidden agenda. It's not a, you know,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: it's not a politician or it's not someone who's got
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: something to sell or to, to, to gain other than
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: just the, you know, just that humanity thrives.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: No, it's true. Well, he does have a book, but we'll, uh,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: and it's, it's well worth reading actually. I haven't quite,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I must admit, I haven't quite finished it because, um,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: We only managed to set up this podcast a few
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: days ago, but I've been reading it quickly, so I'm
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: nearly there. It's thoroughly recommended.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: We'll include a link.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: The best of times, the worst of times, but we'll
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: do that. Anyway, should we get him on?
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, so hi, Paul.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: It's lovely to have you here as our guest today
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: for this episode of Science of the Times. Would you
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: like to introduce yourselves to our listeners?
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: Hi, lovely to be with you both. So I am
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: a professor at the University of Oxford. I am broadly
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: an industrial ecologist, which sounds like a contradiction in terms.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: How can you be an industrial ecologist? But one of
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: the things that it allows you to do is think
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: about the human systems like ecosystems as well. And so
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: you can think about how the systems itself responds to
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: different pressures like climate change and how we can change
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: that system for the better. So like reduce the environmental damage.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: So Paul, you.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Actually started off life as a physicist, is that right?
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: So I was a physicist originally, and then I worked
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: on telescopes for a while. So I was doing a
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: little bit of astronomy. But I decided to come back
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: down to Earth because I was thinking there's a lot
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: of problems with the environment here. And so over time,
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: I've moved more and more towards, I would say, the
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: sort of environmental social sciences. So trying to look at
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: how do we fit on this planet, what are the
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: impacts we're having on this planet, and what are the
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: major roadblocks that we have for moving towards a sustainable
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: future that's better for us.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: And you've written a number of papers on this that
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: we'll come across, but you relatively recently had a book
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: out called The Best of Times. The Worst of Times,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science. And that's published
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and available by the Indigo Press. And it's on the
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: audio book as well, and I can thoroughly recommend it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: Oh, thank you.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: So in the book, I really wanted to get at
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: this question of what kind of hope do we have
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: for the future? What's the path that we're on? And
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: what's the best we can expect? Because I think a
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: lot of people are struggling at the moment with this
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: idea of doom and gloom about the environment. And this
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: sort of amorphous doom where we can't really express it
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: is not very helpful for anyone. It can switch you
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: off from being active. And then it's the agency, it's
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: the being active that then gives you the hope. And
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: so I was seeing a lot of books coming out,
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: which were either very negative, it's the end of the
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: world type books, or really positive.
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: Oh my God, we've got these amazing technologies. It'll be wonderful.
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: And As a.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: Scientist who works on, okay, well, what are the actual
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: physical limits to some of these things that they're talking about?
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: And what can we expect from climate change and environmental crises?
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: What does it actually look like, the future? And so
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: I took paired chapters of pessimism and hope in different areas.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: And so the pessimism is largely the trajectory that we're on.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: And then the hope is a reasonable hope for the future.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: So it's not a utopia. It's what can we expect?
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: are some of the trends that we see happening now?
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: And would they be better than a future than we
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: could possibly imagine now compared to the future that we're expecting?
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: And so that made it quite interesting.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: So talking to people because, you know, some people are
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: really pessimistic already and they go, oh my God, you're
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: so hopeful. And there's some people who are really hopeful
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: and they go, oh my God, you're so pessimistic.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: So you want to read the pessimism chapter in each
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: pair in the morning so you can have a sort
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: of slightly down lunch, but then read the more optimistic
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: future one before you go to bed.
• 6:36
  Speaker 5: That's exactly right.
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: What I say to people is never leave, never finish
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: on a pessimistic chapter before going to sleep.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: And I've heard people do that and then they've lost sleep.
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: So do not do that.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: So, Paul, when.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: You're even beginning to sort of think about tackling a
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: project like that, it seems, I think, thinking I'm putting
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: myself in your shoes now and thinking, I don't think
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: I'd even know where to start.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: So what was your starting point?
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a it's a really big question, isn't it?
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: Where we're where we're heading. And my starting point was really,
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: what are the long-term changing dynamics within our societies that
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: we're seeing? So in terms of the population demographics, in
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: terms of consumption, and then look into the different areas
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: which are further away from, say, the natural sciences. So,
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: for example, looking at demographics and population inequality first. and
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: then moving into energy, which is a very fundamental requirement
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: for human flourishing, then food, then looking into climate change
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: and what that means for the future in those different sectors,
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: and then into the economics, and then looking towards the future, basically.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: So you get more speculative as you move more and
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: more through the book, because ultimately, we don't really know
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: what's going to happen to politics and democracies and these
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: big questions about how we organize society, but you can
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: say physically, this is what's going to happen on the
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: ground due to climate change. Like we know, for example,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: that we will have sea level rise. We will have
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: crop failures. We will have all these things from climate change.
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: We might not know exactly how and when, but we
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: know they're going to happen. So let's describe that and
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: how we can deal with that before we move on to,
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: you know, all of these things about how we organize society.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: But won't we also have better crops and better materials
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: and new technology and machine learning and AI saving us
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: from all of these challenges ahead?
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: Well, I think some of that is wishful thinking. I
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: think there's a role for some of it. And so
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: I talk about that in the book. Ultimately, though, if
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: we had started these transitions that we knew we needed
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: to start in the late 80s, the 1990s, we might
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: have been able to hold on to some of these practices.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: They may still not have been healthy for us. For example,
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: you know, in the future, you know, we know we're
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: going to have to have some dietary shifts, you know,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: and we know we're going to have to make some
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: shifts in the way we move ourselves around on the planet.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: And if we'd started early enough, maybe some of those
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: technological solutions, for example, for flying might have been developed
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: by now. But unfortunately, we have such a short timescale
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: now to make the changes we need. For example, to
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: meet 1.5 degrees, which is the major climate target a
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: lot of people talk about, we would need reductions now
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: above 10% in the emissions year on year, more than
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: we saw during COVID. And in fact, arguably, we're moving
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: through 1.5.
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: Degrees right now.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: We really need extremely fast reductions, even for two degrees.
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: So what this implies is we need both the technology
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: and the social and behavioral change now.
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: We need to do everything everywhere all at once.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Which one?
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: In a way, I guess it's difficult to tell which
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: one's more difficult, right? The technological changes or the societal?
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: behavioural changes, and the latter won't be even across the
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: whole planet either, right?
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: That's right, yeah.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: It's really, it is hard to sort of see how
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: different sort of interventions, the different technologies and different social changes,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: how fast they can really move. We do know, though,
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: that yes, technologies can be very powerful. Once we get
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: the costs down for technologies, we start to adopt them anyway.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: So the big example on this is renewable technology. So
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: the renewable technologies of wind and solar, for example, have
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: come down massively in price. We call this a learning rate.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: So the learning rates that we've seen in wind and
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: solar have been mind-blowingly good. So when we thought about,
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: so when you look in history and you look at, say,
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: the Model T Ford, which is a great example of
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: doing things at scale, For every doubling of Model T
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: Fords on the road, you would get a reduction of about, what, 14.5%
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: in the cost of the Model T Ford. So it
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: would come down in price as you did more of it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: For solar, it's mind-blowing. It's way above 20%. So it's
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: much faster reductions. And so, yeah, some of these technologies
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: are absolutely vital. And, you know, they are really coming
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: at the right time in the energy system. The problem
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: often is integrating them into the system. So, you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: having the transmission lines, having the market dynamics, making sure
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: that the fossil fuel companies move out of the way.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: These are all social questions and those things tend to
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: take time. Now, on the social changes question, what we
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: do know is that humans learn from each other. You know,
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: we're sort of these intelligent apes that we interact and
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: we know that there's a contagion of ideas as well.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: And so when we see over time, we can see
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: these sorts of tipping elements in societies as they shift.
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: From one practice to another.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: And the research there seems to suggest that if you
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: get enough people involved in a new practice, let's take
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: dietary change, for example. If we start moving towards plant-based diets,
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: we can talk about why that's sort of absolutely essential later.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: But if we look at the numbers of people adopting
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: that behavior, it turns out that between about 15 and
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: 40% is the number of people you need adopting that behavior.
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: And then that tends to flip the majorities. So you'll
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: still have some people eating meat. You still have, you know,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: those practices, but it will be just much less because
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: you'll tip into a different thing. So, you know, it
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: depends where you are on these sort of adoption curves,
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: both these technological adoption curves and these sort of social
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: adoption curves. And, you know, as I say, things tend
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: to move in contagion with this. And so once you're
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: over that tipping point, things can change really quickly. You know,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: and in food systems especially, I mean, you know, when
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: I was growing up, there wasn't such a thing as
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: avocado on toast. That was not a thing, you know.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: So we adopt actually these changes much faster than we
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: think that, you know, our habits are far less ingrained
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: than we think.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: But do you think also, sorry, Tim, go ahead. I
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: was just going to say that.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Do you think then that that also puts a sort
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: of perhaps a responsibility on when you understand these things
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to get out there and talk to people and lobby
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: people and try to facilitate these behavioral changes or accelerate
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: them if possible?
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really, it's a really good question.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And so.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: As a practicing scientist, we have a good consensus base
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: now on how the food system has to change, how
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: the energy system has to change. There are some discussions
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: around 20% of the solutions, like maybe there's more of
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: a role for nuclear for some people. Maybe there's more
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: of a role for hydrogen for some people. At the edges,
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: there's discussion. But in the scientific consensus, we kind of
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: know how things will change or have to change. And
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: I think there is a role for scientists to be
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: involved in advocating for the science, at least. So the policymakers,
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: the public know that's where the science is because they're
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: being told all sorts of other messages by largely vested interests.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: And so actually being able to describe exactly what the
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: change is and how exciting that change is from scientists,
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: I think is really important. And so I do think
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: that we can be involved as scientists in helping people
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: understand where that future is looking. And that's not necessarily activism.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: That's advocacy for what the scientific consensus is saying.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: So what happens if we don't make these transitions? So
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: what happens if we don't move fast, very quickly to renewables? And,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: you know, and I'm not asking you to predict the future,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: but at what point does civilisation collapse? Do you think it's,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: you know, a decade, 100 years, 200 years? You're not
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: going to be drawn on that. I know asking a
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: scientist to make predictions like that is always dangerous.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Well, as it said, a prediction is hard, especially about
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: the future. I think we can start to sort of
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: draw the contours of this, though. So let's talk about
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: what is collapse. I would say collapse is a reduction
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: in complexity in society. So it's a simplification of things.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: And if we look at the society right now, we're
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: looking at the complexity of economics, of technology, of AI,
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: of administrative sectors, they have to do an awful lot now.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: And we're at a very, very high level of complexity. Now,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: if we have a look and zoom in into the
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: food system, for example, I'm extremely worried about impacts in
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: the next sort of couple of decades on the food
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: system driving societal instability. And the reason is, is because
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: we've systemically underestimated how bad things could get. The estimates
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: for the amount of warming that we would expect for
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: an amount of emissions have been pretty good through the years,
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: although recently it's really, it's been higher even than we thought.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: But what we systemically underestimated, and I've got sort of
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: various things that I talk about here, is That we've
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: systemically underestimated those impacts. So what we thought would happen
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: at about five degrees of warming back in 2001 for
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: the same amount of warming. So for the, sorry, for
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: the same amount of impacts, we now think these things
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: would happen at around two degrees or just over two degrees.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: And it's the same thing for the ecological and environmental
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: aggregate impacts. So. What we're sort of saying here is
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: that over time, things have got a lot more scary.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: And this is one of the reasons why we've moved
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: from two degrees to one degrees in a lot of
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: the discussions. And actually what's scary is some of these
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: large scale changes in the planet. I mean, we are
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: a planetary changing species. Some of these changes are potentially
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: unfolding even lower than we thought.
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: So even around 1.5 degrees.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: So things like these big ocean currents changing, these might
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: be changing Way earlier than we thought. So if we
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: don't make these transitions, what this basically means is suffering
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: for a lot of people around the world. And zooming
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: in on this food system area, what the research suggests
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: is as the temperature goes up, you get more and
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: more impacts on bread baskets around the world. So to
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: put some numbers to this, one study suggested that for
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: pre-climate change times, so back in what we call the Holocene,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: so last century, We would expect a multi-breadbasket failure. So
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: this is a failure of at least 10% of yields
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: across multiple breadbaskets in maize once every 16 years. At 1.5 degrees,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: that goes up to once every three years and at
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: two degrees to once every two years. That is an
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: extreme one because maize or corn is more sensitive, but
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: you see the same jump to 1.5 degrees in the other.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: So the jump between yesterday and 1.5 degrees is much
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: larger than 1.5 degrees to two degrees. And so what
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: the outcome of that is, is that you get food
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: price inflation. So what you will see is food prices
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: going up. Now, what's not talked about enough in the
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: politics and media is estimates suggesting that about a third
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: of the food price inflation that we saw in 2023,
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: for example, was driven by climate change. Now, clearly, you've
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: got these other inflationary effects. So you've got things like Ukraine.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: You've got the hangover from COVID. All of this matters.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: But what the climate change impacts do is they put
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: another layer of stress on society. And then you can
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: easily tip society over. And so what we saw during
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: those periods was, well, public sector workers striking in this country,
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: in high-income countries. In middle-income countries and low-income countries, you
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: saw political decay and collapse.
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: So that's where we're heading.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: And now the thing that really concerns me is that
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: as we try to deal with these impacts over time,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: and it's not just in food systems, it's in infrastructure,
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: it's in energy, it's all of these impacts, then those
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: costs sap the government and the state, the ability to
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: deal with those changes. So basically you're doing more and
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: more what's called defensive expenditures. You're spending money on sea
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: level defense, you're spending money on bailing people out. And
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: then you don't have the investments or the resources because
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: money ultimately is about, you know, the apportion and the
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: scarcity of resources. You don't have that to deal with
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: the future. So you could quite easily see yourself getting
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: into a little bit of a doom loop here, uh,
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: where you end up sort of going down the tubes
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: a little bit.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: So, so what you're saying, sorry, what you're saying, um, uh,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: just for our listeners is, um, You know, we're starting
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: to see signs that we need to act quickly, but
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: we still have time, but we do need to act quickly.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: So we need to be doing things in the next
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: decade or two to really address some of these issues.
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: I would say we need to be doing things in
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: the coming years which are completely different. unprecedented in society
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: to avoid these futures.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: But going back to, but there is some positives. So,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: for example, you're talking about tipping points in the food
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: sector and what we eat. And I think you said,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: you know, tipping points occur when you get to sort
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: of 15 to 40 percent of the population doing a
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: particular behavior. I think in the UK back in 2023,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: a paper reported that we were already at 15 percent
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: of the population being vegetarian. So we might be at
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: that tipping point. And as you said, more and more
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: people are putting solar on their houses. And, you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: the UK has done quite well on wind farms. So.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I don't want our listeners to think it's all gloom,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: but so there are some positives.
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: That's exactly right.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: And when I say unprecedented, that's not taking into account
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: those tipping points. We know society can change really quickly.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: The other really important point for this is that.
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: Everything that we do matters. Every action matters.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: So a lot of the things that we know we
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: need to do for the food system and for the
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: energy system would allow us to roll with the punches
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: of climate change better. Because if you think about what
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: that means for changing the landscape, for example, basically going
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: towards plants, not fully plant-based diet, but going towards plants,
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: frees up a huge amount of land and that land
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: would better absorb the flood waters, the storm surges, it
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: would lower the cost.
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: It would lower the suffering for people.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: If we look at energy systems, when we have renewable
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: energy in our system, we lower The air pollution massively.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: So millions of people are dying around the world from
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: air pollution. Well, this move towards renewables isn't just a
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: climate thing. It's an air pollution thing. It saves so
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: much health. And it's the same thing for food. Actually, arguably,
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: it's even more for food because food, if you look
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: across the whole suite of different climate and environmental challenges,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: you know, food systems, one of the largest ones.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: OK, so maybe on this positive note, we should take
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a little break, Tim and Paul, and head back in
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: a couple of minutes.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: That's great. Hi, Tim.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: You're looking particularly snazzy today.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: What are you wearing?
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I'm wearing a piece from a company called Grace and Garbo.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And actually, you know a little bit more about them
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: than I do, to be honest.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, I do.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: You're the fashion queen.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I'm also wearing a piece from Grayson Garbo. So this
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: is a delightful knitwear outfit set up in Birmingham. What
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: they do is they source knitwear, quality knitwear from all
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: around the world. It's vintage, one-off pieces, many of which
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: they then hand embellish, like the one you're wearing today
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: with its beautiful purple flowers. And so they're big on
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: sustainability and you know, nothing goes to waste. Everything is
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: sort of recycled and reused. And if you want to
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: know more about them, then have a look at the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: link beneath this episode.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: And thank you very much to them for supporting our podcast.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I hope their sales soar.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Grace and Garvo.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Welcome back after having heard the message from our sponsors.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: So let us continue talking to Paul. We're talking about
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: through some of the challenges and mainly you've been talking
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: about food, Paul, but one of the things that you've
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: also talked about, um, in your book and you've written
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: papers on is, is actually some of the, the, the
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: requirements that we will, you know, we will need to
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: fulfill in an environmentally sustainable, um, uh, well, you know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: on our transition to an environmentally sustainable future in terms
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: of things like sand and, um, and cement and other materials.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: So I think you, and you've done some work on
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: actually working out what those are demands are going to
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: be and how they might be met as well as any,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: you know, perhaps you can, you can give us an
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: overview of some of your recent work in that area.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really an exciting transition that we're moving towards
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: in the energy system. We've historically used a huge amount
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: of materials. So Humans right now, we move more material
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: than all the natural processes combined. I did one calculation
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: for the bird, which is that if you were to
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: add up all the plastic that we produce and turn
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: that into cling film, we could wrap the planet. The
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: amount of concrete that we've used so far would be
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: enough to cover the entire surface of the Earth, so
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: with about two millimetres. In a recent study, we looked
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: at the total amount of materials used since 1970 and
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: that would be equivalent to about three to four millimetres
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: of the entire Earth's surface.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: So we use an awful lot.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, one of the favourite ones, I think, is
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: the fact that just in terms of plastics, that there
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: are probably more small Lego people on the.
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: Planet than humans.
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: They're definitely going to last longer than us. I tried
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: to verify this because Lego used to do this, sort
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: of report this over time. But when they realized it
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: was getting very, very close to the number of humans
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: on the planet, I think they decided it probably wasn't
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: a good look. Anyway, so we look into sort of
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: these vast material flows in society and how they're used
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: and how they're integrated into society. So one of the
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: interesting studies for your listeners is on energy systems. So
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: what we had a look at there was We know
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: we need these materials for solar, for batteries, for wind turbines.
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: And yeah, you know, you can say these are fairly
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: material intensive. You know, they're physical things in society that
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: are going to sit there. And people are really worried
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: about this. They think, well, isn't this just more mining?
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: Just more and more and more mining. And so what
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: we wanted to do was have a look at, well,
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: how does this compare? How does this compare to the
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: mining we already do for coal, for example? We mine
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: an awful lot of coal. And what we found was
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: that even under a scenario where we use loads of materials,
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: so lots of people get electric vehicles, lots of people
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: get batteries, it's not necessarily the future that I would
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: necessarily want to see. I would personally like to see
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: more electric bikes, for example.
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: But it's a future.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: We're making our life harder for ourselves by saying we
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: need loads of materials. Even under that future, we would
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: be extracting... fewer materials than coal today, even under the
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: peak year of that energy system rollout.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: But coal's quite close to the surface often, isn't it?
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: It's relatively easy to get out of the ground, but
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: some of the other materials that we'll need, it's actually
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: much more challenging, I think, to extract it. Although I suppose...
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: You know, people are mining, um, uh, are extracting hydrocarbons.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: So oil at the moment from sort of eight kilometers
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: down and under 18,000 pounds per square inch and what
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: have you. So I suppose, I suppose I know maybe
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I've answered my question.
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: There is a bit of that, but also we did,
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: we looked at about, we looked at the amount of
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: material moved as well. So we take, we took that
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: into account in the, in the study. Um, also interestingly
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: on the, um, bringing things up from very deep, deep,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: deep underground. Geothermal, for example, there are now companies looking
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: at extracting these materials from the geothermal production. So, you know,
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: you could actually sort of have this combo where you're
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: producing energy and you're also producing some of these materials
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: for the transition. So we find that even under the
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: peak period of this extraction, the amount of mining activity
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: you'd need would be about 40% lower than the amount
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: of mining we do for coal today. And that brings
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: you to a second sort of question of, well, what
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: do those materials... What's the comparison between those materials? Because
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: the coal we're constantly dragging it out of the planet
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: and then we're burning it, putting it into the atmosphere,
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: causing all these problems. But for the energy transition, it's
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: embedded in society, then it's a physical thing. And that's
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: an amazing thing because then you can continue to reuse
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: it as much as you can. Of course, there's thermodynamic
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: limits to that, but you can continue to reuse it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: And so it's called a stock in society. So our
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: energy system is then a physical thing rather than something
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: that we're having to constantly extract. And coming back to
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: that point about inflation, a large part of the total
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: inflation that we experience is also due to energy prices.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: And if we have a stock of materials in society
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: and it's very stable and we're just recycling as much
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: as possible, then we're far less exposed to that inflation
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: that I mentioned before.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Why can't we use hydrogen, more hydrogen as a fuel?
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: It's highly abundant, the most abundant element in the cosmos.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: um or what you know what opportunities does um nuclear
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: fission hold for example because you hear about fission reactors
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: being made by you're a physicist by training and you
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: know vast amounts of opportunity you know vast amounts of
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: energy locked up there and occasionally you'll hear in the
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: news claims about you know these that where we can
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: go to a hydrogen-based energy system or we can go
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: to nuclear fission is that still pie in the sky you.
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: Know it's So hydrogen, there's a lot of hydrogen on
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: the planet, but unfortunately it's bound up in other compounds.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Like in water.
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: Like in water, like H2O.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: And unfortunately, to produce that hydrogen, we need to put
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: a lot of energy into it. And the energy that
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: we have to put into it really means the efficiencies
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: of the hydrogen goes down massively. So to give a
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: specific example, if we're using heat pumps, that are powered
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: by electricity, like renewables, you can get about three or
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: four times the amount of heat out for the power
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: that you're putting in. With hydrogen, it's a fraction of 100%.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: So you actually lose a lot of energy in that process.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: There will be roles for hydrogen because we need some
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: hydrogen in industrial processes. And so we will need some
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: amount of hydrogen. But what we've seen over time is
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: that the role for hydrogen seems to be getting smaller
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: and smaller and smaller as innovation happens in electrifying things.
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: So we thought we'd need hydrogen for trucks. Well, now
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: I was seeing the other day, I think it was
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: VW now have, you know, 5,000 electric trucks out there.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: So it's more that, you know, over time we're realizing
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: that hydrogen is a very inefficient way of doing things.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: We will need it for some stuff, but the role
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: for it will be much smaller than we thought because
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: it's just more expensive.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Simon, you had a question.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just thinking about the comments about hydrogen
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and just other, I guess, gases, but materials in more general,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and thinking about the role in the future, the possible
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: role of synthetic biology. You know, this idea where we
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: get back to, you know, we already know that there's
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: some bacteria that exists that perhaps digest and eat up plastics.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: And we know there's bacteria that can produce hydrogen. So
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I was just thinking that perhaps... We might see synthetic
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: biology in the future playing a bigger role. So us
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: manipulating biology to get it to do the things we
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: need it to do.
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, there may be some advances there that
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: will make an impact. For example, we work a little
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: bit on trying to understand vertical farming. And, you know,
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: vertical farming, the plants are very different in vertical farms
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: and they are in very different conditions inside than they
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: are outside. And so really we need to start optimising
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: those plants for growth inside, you know, so there are
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: options there. In terms of the synthetic biology for microbes, yeah,
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: there seems to be a lot of opportunities there. But
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure what the learning rates, again, coming back
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: to the learning rates, I'm not sure what they look
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: like in synthetic biology, to be honest.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Well, it's great to hear there might be a role
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: for biochemists, Simon, isn't it? Yeah.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Maybe I'll still have a job in a few years.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: So going back to the points about complexity that you stated,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: one of the things I think you said in the book,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: and I think this, you know, collapse, a societal collapse,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: hopefully we avoid that, but it's about that loss of complexity.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: And I think you make a point in the book
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: that there's probably very, very few people on the planet
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: who would know how to make a pencil, all the
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: steps being involved in making a pencil.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Let alone a toaster. I think that was, was that
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: one of the lines you said something along those lines?
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: And then you think about the smartphone or you think
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: about so many other things. I mean, it really, it is,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: it's kind of astonishing how complex our civilisation is at
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: the moment.
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that is one of the big questions coming up
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: is if we do get this simplification, how far simplified
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: do we go? Because when previous civilisations have collapsed, They've
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: had to sort of deal with these environmental pressures, for example.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: They've tried to transition to other technologies or other plants,
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: and that's often failed. So then it's sort of a
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: question of where do they migrate to? So a great example,
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: for example, is ancient Sumeria. So back in Mesopotamian times.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: And when they were irrigating the fields, they weren't draining
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: them properly. And so they got salination in the field.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: The salt basically built up in the soils. They tried
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: moving towards barley and towards crops that might be a
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: little bit more resilient to the salt, but that didn't
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: really help. They couldn't maintain the complexity of the society
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: that they lived in, and then they had to migrate.
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: And so then that's the big question is, if we
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: start getting all these supply chain disruptions, these environmental interruptions,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: these climate change interruptions, how far back do we turn
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: the dial? And I don't think people really, we don't
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: really have a sense of this as very science fiction.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: And it's kind of remarkable that we are living in
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: a science fiction world right now with this. But one
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: thing's for sure, the resilience in general is going to
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: improve the further through these transitions that we go.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: So, sorry, what do you mean by that? There is the,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I see the resilience of the civilization there. So even
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: though we remain complex, our civilization would remain resilient. Yes.
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: So, If you think about sort of plant-based diets, for example, um,
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: we are simplifying the agricultural system massively because in the
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: animal agricultural space, we are growing loads and loads of
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: plants to feed to animals that we eventually eat.
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: And the animals throw.
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: Away between, you know, uh, 80 to sort of 97%
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: of the calories that we feed them depending on the product.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: And so that's food that we can eat directly. And
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: a simplification is actually just to eat the plants. and
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: remove that whole complexity, which requires loads of investment, it
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: requires loads of labor. And so if we're able to
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: make that simplified, then we're able to be more resilient.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: It's a little bit similar in renewable energies. Arguably, it's
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: harder to sort of make those things, obviously. But once
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: you have the distributed generation of solar and batteries, and
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: we have wind, then you can start thinking about distributed grids.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: So you can think about grids that can be islanded
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: from larger grids. So you can be more resilient if
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: climate change impacts one area of the grid, then there's
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: more likely to be storage or production on another area
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: of the grid. So some of these things that we
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: know we need to do would make us more resilient.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: So if we do that transition to a plant-based diet,
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: there's a load of equipment and a load of infrastructure
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: and a load of jobs associated with animal protein production.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: You know, so you're going to put all the livestock
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: farmers out of work sort of overnight? I mean, you know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: what happens to them? All the milking machines, you know,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: all of this. Yeah.
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of assets. So we've looked at
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: this in research. And yeah, these assets, we don't need
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: as many of them. But fortunately, agricultural assets are what's
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: called depreciated over time faster than, say, fossil fuels. So basically,
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: when you buy an asset, you start reducing the value
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: of it as you're using it because it's not a
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: new thing anymore. And agricultural assets tend to be depreciated
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: much faster. So that means that really, as long as
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: we're really clever about this, there shouldn't be these assets
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: left over that people can't use anymore. They should be
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: fully depreciated and basically sort of worthless by the time
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: we've made the transition. In terms of the people, people
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: in rural landscapes can be employed in so many other
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: different ways for communal goods. So that's actually what's starting
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: to happen in the UK in terms of the environmental
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: land management schemes, for example, where people are being paid
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: instead of having to produce agricultural products, they produce community benefits.
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: So things like biodiversity, flood water protection, some of the
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: things that we've been talking about. And in the UK,
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: for example, a lot of the animal agricultural sector actually
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: loses money. And so the only reason why they're afloat
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: is because of the subsidies. And so really what we
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: can do is help the farmers with the debts that
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: they currently have, because they'll have debts because of the
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: assets that they're using for animal agriculture. And then we
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: can pay and help them in this transition towards managing
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: the land for biodiversity improvements.
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: That's the theory.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: I think sort of, I.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Guess whenever I, as I'm listening to you, what's coming
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to me more increasingly is the sort of the inequalities
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: in every sphere, actually across the globe. And all I
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: can think of is sort of how this is going
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to impact different parts of the world in different ways.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: So the developed world versus parts of the world that
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: are sort of up and coming and how we sort
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: of say to people, okay, we've lived this great life
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: and we've had all of these things. And now that
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: you've developed the means to do that and have this life, actually, no,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: you can't do it.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: And so that, I think also is going to take careful, um, I.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Don't want to say management cause that doesn't even sound right.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: But you know, just careful navigation, I think.
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: So I think there's two things there. First, um, it's
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: highly incumbent upon high income nations to the check. That's
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: why we focus mostly on high income nations with a
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: dietary change. To be clear, we're not modeling these changes
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: for people who live in food insecurity. You know, we're
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: modeling it for people who are already food secure. Related
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: to that, the development pathways for different regions is highly
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: dominated by both what people see as the good life,
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: but also the institutions and the vested interests in high-income
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: nations as well. So they're always looking for new markets,
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: for example, and expanding into those new markets.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: So we have to be really cognizant of that.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: I think one of the stats that I always think
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: is quite remarkable is If you were to take the
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: top 10% of income earners and reduce their carbon footprints
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: to the level of the average European, you would reduce
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: total global.
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: Emissions by a third.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: And I don't think that the average European is living
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: that bad a life.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: And I think we also have to question a little bit. Yes,
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: we have led these lives and you and I, we
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: are quite comfortable. But yes, there is an awful lot
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: in our environments and in our world, which is poisoning
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: us still. So, you know, if you think about some
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: of the... development pathways that we've chosen with fossil fuels. Yeah,
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: every day we breathe in a bit of diesel, we're
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: basically killing ourselves. Every day we're surrounded by foods which
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: are unhealthy for ourselves. We're inducing suffering through diabetes, through
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: cardiovascular disease. So we really haven't got things really cracked ourselves.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: And if you look at the happiness across different countries,
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of that is sort of driven and the
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: well-being is driven by a lot of those inequalities within society,
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: not necessarily across society. So I think there are all
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: these sorts of different questions. And then And then you've
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: got to zoom out to this very big picture that
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: high-income countries and a lot of middle-income countries like India
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: are actually now below replacement rate. So now our countries
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: are actually sort of reducing in size and quite dramatically.
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: Like China, towards the end of the century, on this
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: current trajectory, will lose about 700 million people.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: And they're there but they're down at 1.3 or so
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: aren't they in terms of um yeah they're 1.6 1.6
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: i think.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah i mean south korea is at like 0.8 or
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: something remarkable 0.8 0.9 i read the other day um.
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: And so what this means is that um for.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Our listeners 2.1 is replacement rate right so it's a
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: number of children each woman has to have you know
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: uh but but um some won't survive because of accidents
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: or what have you. So 2.1 is the replacement rate.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: So this is an India drop below that a couple
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: of years back. And Europe will be losing about 1.5
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: million active working age people by 2050. So what I
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: sort of zooming out here in terms of this question
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: of like, well, how do lower income people in lower
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: income countries get to live this life? Well, You know,
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: I think one of the clear, obvious answers here is
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: you've got massive climate impacts in those regions. We're responsible
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: for it. Our demographics are changing. And we need a
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: new narrative about migration. And we need a new narrative
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: about well-being and thriving across the world. And I think
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: that's going to be incredibly difficult politically. But, you know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: if you look across the world, you look at these dynamics,
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: it's quite clear where some of the methods for alleviating
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: suffering will be.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: So I could keep talking about this, you know, for
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: hours and hours. It really is fascinating. But we are
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: running out of time. So it's only kind of I mean,
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: it really is. It is fascinating. And over the course
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: of my career, I have to say it's it's really
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: noticeable how there's been a change in a the number,
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: but also the kind of backgrounds that people come from
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: who addressing these questions. So, you know, you're a physicist
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: and astronomer who have come in. you're clearly not sort
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: of one of these hippy dippy types that used to
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: be the people driving this Ford. And I think, I mean,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: that has to be a real positive and actually having
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: physicists and biochemists and chemists and historians and having the
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: whole group of people trying to work out how we
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: do this, I think has to be a point of hope. And,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: you know, so I think we should end, ended up
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: on a positive from my perspective that we understand, we're
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: starting to really understand what the challenges are. And there
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: are ways that we can do that. And I think
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to put those sausages back in the freezer
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: and have beans tonight.
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: You'll feel very good for it too, I promise. The
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: research shows health-wise, it's really, really good for us. And
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: if I may just say one final thing for people
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: and listeners is one of the biggest things we have
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: to address is our understanding of one another and the
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: communications about climate change in the environment. And what the
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: research shows over and over again is that people care
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: and want to do things more than you think. So
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: studies from around the world show that, for example, in
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: the US, they ask people, what percentage of people do
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: you think support a carbon tax? And carbon tax is
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: such a dirty word.
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: And they said, 32%.
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: And they said, do you support a carbon tax? And
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: the actual support was at 62%. And so over and
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: over again, when we look at this, the support is
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: much higher. And what we also know from that is
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: that if you know that the support is much higher,
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: you're more likely to be outspoken. You're more likely to
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: want to put money towards these transitions to do these changes.
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: You're more likely to want to go on the journeys
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: yourself because the thing about, we've been talking about dietary
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: change and so many of these other journeys that we've
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: been talking about, They are journeys. Nobody is saying you
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: have to do everything overnight. It is one step at
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: a time. You see whether you like it. You try
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: a different thing. There's lots of opportunities. There's lots of
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: new ways to be involved. And I think that's where
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: things get really exciting is talking to one another, understanding
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: other people care and going on these journeys ourselves and
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: feeling much better for it. Excellent.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: That seems like a good optimistic place to stop.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: So Thanks, Paul. That's really, really fascinating.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: And for our listeners, we're going to include a link
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: to Paul's book with the podcast.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: So take a look down at the bottom of the podcast.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Thank you very much, Paul.
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: Thanks very much. It was lovely talking to you.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that was a pretty broad ranging conversation. Simon,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: what did you make of that?
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: I thought it was really interesting.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: And actually, I think it was what I expected, what
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: we said at the start, that sort of mix of
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it's serious and we have to do something, but there
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: is optimism if we do things sensibly and efficiently and quickly.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: So I think it wasn't surprising in many ways, but
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: some of the numbers were, and maybe we'll talk about
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: those those in a second that some of those were
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: not just surprising, but shocking, I think, but overall, I
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: think the message, you know, I think it was what
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: I expected and it, yeah, there's work.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: To be done.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I think the, I think one of the, the, the
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: things that, that kind of struck me about it is,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: is I think we hear so many doom and gloom
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: messages about the state of the planet and the fact
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: that civilization is going to collapse and, And those messages
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: are almost overwhelming, I think, for some people, some of
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: the time, you know, when you pick up the newspaper
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: and you hear about floods and you hear about famines
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: and crop failures and what have you. And I think
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: some of the kind of messages of hope that you
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: get are kind of a little bit unrealistic, how machine
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: learning is going to save us all. But I thought
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: there was a real level of realism there. But within
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: that realism, the fact that, you know, there is opportunity
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: here and, you know, and and actually, you know, it's
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: very difficult. You know, predict predicting the future is nearly impossible. But,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: you know, laying out the contours of where we go,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I thought I thought it was really interesting. And I,
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: you know, so I came away with actually feeling, you know,
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: probably more positive than I have some time about some
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: of these environmental issues.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: Me too. And I think.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I think something that was, I guess, I hadn't thought
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: about was all the different areas of impact. You know,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: so we think about climate change and we think about
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: sort of food and energy, but it's not just that.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: It was all the other sort of societal aspects. And,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: you know, he talked also about changing the narrative around migration.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: For example, human migration and, you know, hopefully soon we
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: have on the podcast.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Why don't we see if we get Ian Golding on?
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: He'd be good.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Just to talk about his wonderful book about human migration
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and the impacts. And I think, I don't know about you, Tim,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: but I think there's sort of a thread running through
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: our podcast episodes where we see that they, and we
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: haven't engineered it in that way at all, but there's
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: themes that are sort of almost emerging through some of these.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: When I'm talking about threads, even our sponsor, isn't this terrible?
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: That does sound like it's been planned, but it hasn't actually.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: But even our sponsor, Grace and Garbo, are a sustainability
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: outfit or making sustainable outfits by taking garments that are
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: on their way to the dump, the tip, and they're
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: giving them a new lease of life. And I'm sorry
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: I haven't got one on today.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry you haven't got one on today too.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: But before we go, you talked about some of the numbers. And,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: you know, one of them is there are probably more
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Lego figures than there are people. How many Lego figures
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: do you own, Simon?
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I actually, you might joke, but I actually have three
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: little mini Lego figures. And during COVID, when I was
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: giving my lectures online via Zoom, I would take a
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: little Lego figure and place it directly in front of
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the camera so the students felt that it was a
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Lego figure that was lecturing.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: LAUGHTER There you go. OK, I don't have any. But
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: so between the two of us, we have three, which
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: is probably pointing to Paul's point that there are more
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Lego figures than there are people. Anyway, fascinating stuff. Well,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: have a good rest of the week. I know you've
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: got a very busy week coming up next week with
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: teaching and what have you. So I hope that all
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: goes well. But hopefully we'll find time to record another podcast.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. See you soon, Tim.
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: OK, bye.