Question
I know in the States, you talk about the guy and the heat pump, but there are people who can generate their own power locally on their farms or wherever they are and put it back into the grid.
Aubrey Manning
Yes.
Question
That would be another way of approaching that, wouldn’t it, if we can produce – well, I don’t know how we could do that in a city, but certainly in rural areas we could be contributing back into the grid rather than drawing from it all the time.
Aubrey Manning
Sure.
Duncan Stewart
The heat pump is a great solution.
Aubrey Manning
Well, it’s one part.
Duncan Stewart
As you say, two and a half, even four to one coefficient performance. But the problem with this –
Aubrey Manning
Ah, you will know about this, of course. Yes.
Duncan Stewart
‑ the big problem with this is that – with heat pumps – and, I mean, it’s a good, a great technology, because it is working at, you know, 250% efficiency, up to 400%. But the problem is we’re generating electricity at such an incredibly low efficiency – a 35% efficiency. Two‑thirds are wasted before it –
Aubrey Manning
Oh, it makes you weep, makes you weep.
Duncan Stewart
‑ gets to our buildings. The problem with it is – and then it’s, in Ireland, it’s still 94% fossil fuel.
Aubrey Manning
I know.
Duncan Stewart
So we have two major problems with our electricity. And unless we do as you’re talking about, look to micro wind generation and to all of the sources of energy from the oceans and from wave energy, we’re not going to solve that problem.
Aubrey Manning
No.
Duncan Stewart
Because the same thing applies with our transport, doesn’t it? You know, are we going to continue with fossil fuels much longer for driving our cars or have we got to make a shift to electric cars? I mean, are these the challenges that we face with our transport too?
Question
With regards to overpopulation, you slightly suggested that the figure of 200,000 is a little bit alarming and you didn’t really go into what your thoughts were on that. So, can you be the heretic?
Aubrey Manning
Well, Duncan mentioned that I have been a conservationist since 1966, so that’s 42 years and that actually makes me quite an old stalwart, really, because I think one of the things we can take encouragement for is that we’ve had150 years of – more, nearly 200 years of industrial revolution and the increase of wealth, but we’ve only had about 40/50 years of people thinking, ‘Hey, wait a minute. This is not all the thing.’
So, well, yes, my thoughts are first of all that up to now it’s been the policy which dare not speak its name. It’s been regarded as something which is so intimate and personal and so connected to the most wonderful things in human life – having children, raising a family – that how could anybody possibly suggest that it’s not just your personal affair? It’s very difficult to get past that. And I think the only… one has to do it very gradually and, I mean, I repeat what I said. The first thing is to get a recognition that, actually, human numbers are part of the problem. I think we haven’t even got to that first base, if you like, yet. I don’t think many people would think it’s relevant yet, but it’s slowly come through. And as Duncan and I were talking before this meeting – and it’s slowly getting through.
About two weeks ago, one of our Government Ministers said that he thought – in fact, he, I think he went further and said that the Government would not wish the population of Britain to rise above 70 million. It’s 63 million at the moment, I think. Boy, that is an achievement. I mean, that is the first time anybody has ever said that. And, you know, I’ve been involved in lobbying MPs and so on for a long time and most of them don’t reply, two or three say you’re right and about 10 write abusively – we can’t interfere and so on.
But, of course, Government policies across the world have tended to make people have more children than they might at first want. They’ve made various types of family planning difficult. They’ve prohibited abortion. They’ve kept – we’ve had very poor educational status for women, so that women have got no power within many cultures and so on. All of these things have tended to increase the birth rate. And I would agree that on many occasions children are wonderful and they have a way of making you love them. That’s how they survive. And so many of these children, who were not initially wanted, become welcome members of the family, but many do not. You can buy children in many countries of the world right now. Many children are left abandoned in Mexico, in Kenya – my son works in Kenya. I know this. There are a lot of unwanted children.
Duncan Stewart
60% of births, I think, are unwanted on the planet today.
Aubrey Manning
I’d believe that.
Duncan Stewart
60%.
Aubrey Manning
I could believe that. And what we want is every child a wanted child from before conception. And if we do that, as we were saying before, the basic birth rates of the whole of Europe are below replacement level. But that is terrifying to many politicians, who think, ‘We’re going to run out of labour. We don’t have people to pay pensions. We’re going to have shortages of skills.’ and so on. But this doesn’t really make any sense. Firstly, I don’t think most people realise their full potential. Secondly, to increase the birth rate, to encourage, as Australia and Germany are actively at the moment encouraging an increase in the birth rate, to do that in order to solve the pension problem is a bit simple‑minded, isn’t it? Because the new people whom you’re adding to the population are also going to grow up and get older and want pensions. And so you’re going to have to have more children born to replace them, and so the population’s going to go on growing, because you’re always going to need more and more babies born to pay the pensions 60 years down the line. I mean, it’s not exactly rocket science, is it?
Duncan Stewart
How do you deal with the subject, too, of all of us wanting to see everybody living a higher quality of life, a higher standard of living, and when we look at us in Ireland, you know, every one of us on average emits 17.5 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. And we compare with people in the developing world, who are very poor and, if you like, undernourished, who are starving to a great extent, but they would be, we would be contributing 200 times the CO2 emissions of them. But yet we want everybody to rise out of poverty. How will this planet deal with that issue? What’s the answer to it?
Aubrey Manning
I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think there is an answer, frankly. I really don’t. I think the trouble is that we are in such – I don’t know what, what’s the opposite of a fireproof position? A fire‑vulnerable position. How can we preach to India or Pakistan or Bangladesh or Burkina Faso and say, ‘Look, I’m sorry. We think that you really had better not develop your economy. You certainly better not develop your transport system, reliable, depending on cars, because there isn’t any, there’s not enough fuel to go round and anyway the world’s going to…’ – how can we go to them and say that? I don’t understand.
It has to come from two ways. I mean, we have to get people above a certain level. We can’t sit by without that. But surely it must mean sacrifice on our part. I don’t see – and how are we to get sacrifice on our part? How is anybody going to suggest de‑growth? I’m sorry, I don’t want to – I was determined, absolutely determined not to preach doom and gloom. It’s so counterproductive.
You know, there was a Paul Ehrlich who wrote in 1965, I think, a book called, The Population Bomb, which was very, very influential. He was asked to go everywhere and he made a lot of money. And he actually used to hire private jets to fly on his lecture tours and so on. And somebody said to him, ‘Paul, how can you possibly live this life of luxury when you’re telling us that the world’s going to hell in a handcart?’ And he said, ‘Well, if you know you’re on the Titanic, why travel steerage?’ Desperately cynical. But what is one to say?
This is what the United Nations should be debating, instead of how to stop genocide in Sudan, how to stop fighting in the Congo. This is poor people scrabbling for some of the Earth’s resources, trying to build executive jets, trying to stuff Swiss bank accounts, because, believe you me, and those of you who have any knowledge of Africa, I have a little knowledge of Africa, boy, does Africa deserve better politicians than it has now. It’s a desperate situation.
I don’t have any easy solution to that. I suppose all I can say that’s encouraging is that more and more people are slowly coming round to this kind of thinking and more and more young people too. Among young people, there is a feeling, a desperate feeling that it can’t go on. I mean, it may not be going in the right channels, but it was impossible not to feel moved by the sight of those crowds of young people at Obama’s rallies and so on. They were hungry for something, weren’t they? And, I mean, it’s maybe not the kind of solutions that I’m seeking for here or maybe you are seeking for, I don’t know, but it’s, I mean, that’s the encouraging thing. I mean, I think that’s why I love being a teacher, because each year you get a new injection of monkey glands, a new lot of young people come up.
Duncan Stewart
Well, it’s amazing when you think eight years ago we had the Bush administration and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all of this on top of us. And now the US has, if you like, made an about turn. Now, it does show that there is hope there. That one can go from this incredible, you know, neo‑cons that were bringing the US into such an incredible situation. The Iraq War, all of the implications. But now we’ve seen that there is hope there.
Aubrey Manning
Yes.
Duncan Stewart
That the people can actually vote. To me, it’s incredible to think that what’s happened in the US. You know, this is something that we have never in my life experienced and it’s incredible that it’s happened.
Aubrey Manning
I agree. I agree.
Duncan Stewart
And there is hope.
Aubrey Manning
Absolutely. There is indeed. And, you know, James Burke said it all. You may think you can’t do much, but just talking to your neighbours and… I’ve got a 22‑year‑old son and I’m just trying to get him, get him engaged in it. You know, I naïvely sort of sat him down the other day and said – he’s interested in acting, he wants to be an actor – I said, ‘Come on, Josh, look, I just want you to know, you know, the sort of things I’ve been engaged in here’. ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I know about that. We’re knowing about that. We’ve got, you know, we’ve got a play going in Glasgow which is about environmental resources. Don’t worry.’ I felt a bit better. I mean, young people are… it’s, it’s their world. It’s, you know, there are a lot, there’s enough left of the beautiful world left to see me through, but, I mean, anybody who has children is attached to the future. We are attached to the future.
Question
I think the thing in Ireland I feel that we’re slightly lacking in the kind of outputs that should be about the environment and sustainability and not just programmes sectioned off for them, but it’s actually in public discourse and on politics shows. It’s just not something that I hear enough of. And I think the BBC is obviously under so much fire now and here’s hoping that the Daily Mail can’t bring them down, because it would be a huge disservice, I think, to society in the future if the BBC wasn’t there and able to do the kind of programming that they’re able to do at the moment.
I think on the note about science, from my point of view, in Ireland we slightly lack people like yourself, I mean, people who are very, very passionate and very able to speak in a very engaging way and willingly to the public. And I don’t, you know, want to offend any scientists, but I think we need more scientists who are willing to come out and engage in a very accessible way with the public in Ireland.
Duncan Stewart
You mentioned the media, by the way. Is the media doing enough in Ireland? How do you feel? Television? I’m in television. Radio, press media? Is there enough going on in the media to bring out science and to bring out a lot of this, the information that needs to be brought out? Is that happening or not happening in Ireland? Any comments on that?
Question
I think that mankind will start thinking only when they hit the bottom. Until some people are doing well, some not, the levels of life are so different – a huge gap between the levels of life here and there. And since we can think, Ireland can think about its own part of the world, we have only a world shared between all of us. So we can fix, we can solve much easier tasks all together. I mean, just tourism or, you know, you name it. It’s a lot of unsolved tasks we can solve, I mean, mankind as a group.
So I think we will have only a very small amount of time when we hit the bottom and we, all of us, just realise, OK, we couldn’t see the Sun tomorrow. Only then will people start really thinking, not only like, you know. I appreciate your efforts. I greatly, you know, I love you, but the point is that you are just only one of millions of people who don’t care and they wouldn’t care about the Earth because they don’t have food to eat and every minute a child dies because of hunger and because of politicians’ ambitions, the elite’s, so‑called, ambitions and so on. It’s like turbulence on the oars, something is caught, and we always have cycles in turbulence, because, you know, something hot and cold flows and so on.
The same in our society. Someone poor, someone rich. It’s always moving, a lust for power, a lust for a better life. You know, mass media. It depends on the country. In Ireland, mass media; in other countries, just, you know, different. So, I’m afraid, you know, pessimistic. I mean, just at the moment there is all these things that, you know, it will happen maybe after my death, which is actually not good news for my son, but maybe, you know. I mean, just a kind of pessimistic note. I’m sorry for this after this lecture.
Aubrey Manning
OK, but, I mean, if I can summarise maybe what your views are is that things have got to get worse before they get better, and I think I agree with that. That means more kicks on the shin, more taps on the shoulder. But I do believe that this financial turmoil at the moment will set minds powerfully thinking, actually. I do believe that we can get some benefit from this. But of course the fact is that, for most people in the world still, life is a real struggle and the only they can live is by overexploiting and destroying some of the Earth’s resources. I mean, the way that soils are being used, the way that water is being used and so on. And we’re to blame because the way we’re using fossil energy is infinitely destructive – very difficult to go back. Sorry. I beg your pardon. There’s somebody up at the back there.
Duncan Stewart
This is the last question. Yes? Thank you.
Question
I have to first make an admission. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit I’m an economist, so.
Aubrey Manning
OK.
Duncan Stewart
Economists are scientists.
Question
I want to make an observation about the science community, if I may. Do – I mean, I don’t understand all the detail, but are you telling me that the science community actually have the answers and we just need to go to it, or what are you telling us?
Duncan Stewart
If you were leading the world, what would you do as a scientist to heal the problems of this planet?
Aubrey Manning
Well, I think I’m almost going to pass on that, but to respond to you, sir, I don’t believe that technologically, technically the problems are that difficult, actually, because I think we have the way to generate sufficient energy, for instance, for everybody to have a very reasonable standard of living, but it would be lower than now. Science doesn’t have an answer to enabling people to accept a material standard of living, shall we say one‑third less than it is now, which would be quite reasonable. After all, I grew up in the war, with rationing and no travel. We were very happy and lived well. But now we find that unacceptable. And I was quoting to you a wonderful old song, ‘How are you going to keep her down on the farm after she’s seen Paris?’ And that’s the trouble, isn’t it, with us? That we now have such high expectations. But if we took, I mean, that’s what… so many people argue with me about population control. They say that population isn’t the problem; it’s distribution of resources. If we distributed the world’s resources more evenly, we’ve got plenty. Well, we could cope just about, but, I mean, there’s still 200,000 extra a day. So I don’t think ‑ science doesn’t have the answers to the social problems, which are the ones that the Archbishop of Dublin is addressing. That’s people’s attitudes, and that’s for all of us. We’re all of us in that equally, whether we are economists or biologists or gravediggers. It’s the same for all of us.
But what would I do first? I think I would try to call in Farrell Bradbury as an adviser and see if we could get going on a switch away to energy conservation. I think it would generate a huge amount of economic activity. Mind you, I suspect he’d be a difficult person to deal with. If I tell you that if you go onto his website, you will have an amusing time because one of his other interests is creating the ecologically conservative golf course. He thinks that many people would benefit from having golf courses. He has designed golf courses for the roofs of large buildings, which give you all the 500‑yard drives and so on and so forth. He’s a clever, if eccentric man. But I think he’s got something to say to us.
But, look, everybody would have their own thing. The first recognition is, you know, to come to the nature of our situation, come back to it again, recognising that the Earth is not limitless.
Duncan Stewart
Thank you, Professor. And, you know, what a wonderful talk and, I think, very, very good interaction. And thanks everybody for coming here tonight and participating in this discussion. I’d like to acknowledge Discover Science & Engineering, who’s the organisers of Science Week, and the Science Gallery here for hosting the event. Also, this lecture will also be available on the Science Week website, which is www.scienceweek.ie, from next week to encourage people to get involved.
Also, I think, just to say that Discover Science & Engineering is the national integrated awareness programme managed by Forfás on behalf of the Office of Science and Technology. Its objectives are to increase the numbers of students studying the physical sciences, to promote a positive attitude to careers in science, engineering and technology, and to foster a greater understanding of science and its value in Irish society. And they have a website, www.discover-science.ie. And I think that’s just something just to mention, because I think we’re all here because of our belief in science and I think, Professor, you’ve inspired us tonight about our hope and belief and the love for science, because that’s where we have to go. We need science and we need scientists, and we need a scientific approach to this planet if we are going to face the challenges. So, thank you, Professor.
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