杏吧原创

Why try to predict the future? Haven鈥檛 most attempts failed miserably?

Worrying about the future alone in your room can seriously damage your health. Worrying about the future and setting up a multimillion-pound research centre where you can worry about it with other people is another matter. That鈥檚 what physicist turned computer guru and business consultant James Martin has done. Based at his alma mater, the University of Oxford, the 21st Century School has already attracted such luminaries as philosopher Nick Bostrom and neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. Martin tells Liz Else about living in eco-affluence, his ideas for a new leadership system for the planet and why he has no plans to retire.

I鈥檓 not such a defeatist! I believe that by using logic, and by understanding history, technology and the behaviour of complex organisms we can explore the future properly and find solutions 鈥� which is what really matters to me. That鈥檚 why I think the centre is important, because we need a very high level of integrated scholarship to define problems, solutions and train future leaders who can cope with the challenges we face. They have to be able to think about everything from pandemics and global warming to human migration, ageing and left-field wild cards we haven鈥檛 thought of yet.

What drove you to set up the centre?

My career has been in computers, networks and future planning in business, and I gave seminars around the world. It became more obvious as I did this that the world was getting itself into all sorts of different types of trouble, but with no solutions. So when I finished my business career I decided to have this as my next career.

Is this just an intellectual luxury for a retired multimillionaire?

Certainly not. I want to use my time in the most valuable way possible. The 21st Century School is concerned with the most urgent problems that humanity faces. These are extremely serious, but there are solutions which politicians and the public are ignoring. It鈥檚 especially important right now because we live in a transition time. This is the critical century: get it right and we could have an incredible future, get it wrong and we face irreversible disruption that could set humanity back centuries 鈥� or worse. The biggest problem is apathy: the public is not putting pressure on the politicians.

Couldn鈥檛 this be a symptom of depression in the face of unprecedented problems?

Not necessarily depression. A lot of apathetic people are as happy as pigs, watching reality TV shows and getting drunk on a Friday night.

Are markets and capitalism the problem?

No. We have got some very big problems to solve requiring complex, expensive solutions and the only safe bet is to do this through corporations. You can set up corporations motivated by profit, and the management will deal with the problems.

How will you persuade global CEOs, driven by profit, to act sustainably over global warming?

Ultimately they may be persuaded that they can make a big profit out of solving the big problems. It鈥檚 interesting what has happened to General Electric recently. The company has set out to transform 12 product lines into the kind of ecologically inventive products they think customers will want five years from now.

Suppose Al Gore had become president, and he told General Motors, you can鈥檛 run cars on petrol.

That would be fabulous, and that鈥檚 the sort of leadership we want. I have this idea of a world upper house, rather like the UK鈥檚 House of Lords, which oversees the elected House of Commons. It would be populated by statesmen who have been through the political mill and know how to get action, as well as scientists who can talk to and trust the statesmen.

They would help make decisions about the new energy sources or forms of transport we鈥檇 use?

Yes. And they would choose anything other than carbon. Right now there seems to be a strong motivation not to have non-carbon solutions because of the subsidies. The total subsidy for the car and petroleum industries is around a trillion dollars. Huge profits are being made out of huge subsidies and these profits are going to destroy the planet.

Won鈥檛 global warming overrule everything?

I think James Lovelock鈥檚 view of runaway global warming is going to be proved right. The ice in the Arctic 鈥� which is the size of the US 鈥� is melting, and if it disappears, the Earth will absorb massive amounts of extra heat. If we took action right now, we could slow it down, though it鈥檚 not clear whether we could stop all the self-perpetuating processes that have already begun.

Have we got time for that?

We may not, because there is a lot of apathy. If everyone was excited about solving the problems, it would work fine, but that鈥檚 not the case. It will take a catastrophe to get most people interested 鈥� this is how things happen. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration tightened up its regulations after the thalidomide scandal, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights was drafted after the Holocaust. We鈥檙e almost certainly going to get some kind of catastrophe in the next 20 years or so, such as a flu pandemic.

How would a positive future look?

Right now it isn鈥檛 poor people who are damaging the planet, it鈥檚 the rich. What if you could turn them to eco-affluence, with a high standard of living which doesn鈥檛 harm the planet? This will involve a huge transition away from a consumer society. And a lot of ideas to solve global warming will be politically controversial. If you put shades up in space to shield our planet from the sun, for example, this would affect countries around the world differently, so would cause controversy.

Are you living in eco-affluence?

Where I can. When I bought my island off Bermuda, the rock was porous, so even though you get a lot of rainwater, there wasn鈥檛 much vegetation. We have caught a lot of rainwater that would otherwise have run out to sea, and now it鈥檚 lush. We have to live on that rainwater too 鈥� we don鈥檛 have any option. Now we have the most flowers of all of the islands.

You started out at Oxford in the 1950s, reading physics. What was it like then?

I come from a very poor family in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in the English midlands, which was a very unsophisticated place. To get from there to Oxford was amazing. My father couldn鈥檛 afford to pay for my education, but fortunately I got a scholarship. I was an only child, and my family were worried about me going away 鈥� nobody else in the family had left. I loved it there: it was a wildly exciting experience, very much the Oxford of Brideshead Revisited with rich aristocrats, drunken parties and so on.

鈥淚t isn鈥檛 the poor people who are damaging the planet, it鈥檚 the rich鈥�

I met people from all disciplines; you were encouraged to listen to interesting people. We used to go to hear C. S. Lewis and Bertrand Russell. I didn鈥檛 do an exam for three years but the demand for excellence throughout was much more important. Now people are driven to develop specific skills to make money. There鈥檚 a wisdom deficit in our world.

Many people of your age might be tempted to wind down a little. Do you feel that way?

I met an alumnus recently who had done well in the church, and he said he felt he鈥檇 had a really wonderful life. We were the same age, and it suddenly dawned on me that I feel like I鈥檓 at the beginning of my life aged 73. When I was 18, I remember Russell saying that the key to being 90 is to keep learning.