The university's essential role in greening humanity

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak today. It's an honour to be here, but nevertheless I
stand before you with some unease. The reason is that I haven’t done enough. But it's not just me.
My generation as a whole has failed to look ahead as we should have done. The fact is that as our
society gets more and more complex, both the effects of what we do and the solutions become
more complex also. I hope the next generation will not only do as much as ours, and also have as
much fun as ours, but in addition will do better at looking ahead. That is really what we are here to
discuss today.

With these thoughts in mind, I shall put it to you that universities have a special and irreplaceable
role in securing the future for people. My comments are couched in terms of science - both because
I am a scientist and because in science we see sharply certain dilemmas - but the arguments apply
equally to all strands of academic activity.

In referring to universities, I have in mind the whole range of academic institutes, public and
charitable, and foundations - not least the Eugenides Foundation, which has done so much to
further Greek education and to whom we are indebted for hosting us here today and at the meeting
to follow. The vision of the Foundation over half a century has been inspiring young people to feed
their curiosity about the natural world, to marvel at the ability of humans not only to understand but
to control and alter it, and so in time to participate themselves.

I think a key factor in scientific education, most particularly expressed through interactive museums
such as the one here, is to maintain the spirit of playfulness with which we begin life and which is so
easily discouraged, even beaten out of us. A distinguishing feature of human development is the
prolonging of childhood - with the downside of lengthened dependency but the huge upside of
exploring in individual ways rather than solely by received experience. We have a splendid example
of such playfulness in this year's Nobel Prize in Physics, announced last week, which has gone to a
pair of researchers at Manchester University: Geim and Novoselov. Many of you will have heard
how they managed to obtain a sample of a novel form of carbon, graphene, by the simple expedient
of peeling layers off graphite (the same material that you use in your pencils) with a piece of sticky
tape. Child's play indeed - but then applied systematically and alertly to determine the
extraordinary properties of this substance, which we shall soon be using in many of our gadgets.

Both aspects of the work were needed, of course. It is fashionable in some quarters today to decry
the accumulation of knowledge - to consider that all is relative and today's instant idea is as good as
that thought out and tested over many years. Such relativism is misguided, because a second
distinguishing feature of humans is our ability to record and transmit our collective experience both
horizontally in the present to others and through time to succeeding generations.

Getting the balance right between these opposing requirements is crucial, not least in the practice of
science. We manage the conflict by accumulating knowledge but always being a little sceptical of it.
Often, we make advances by trying out things that others say won’t work. At times, it's helpful to be
unaware of negative findings. Perhaps people told Geim and Novoselov that their method wouldn't
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work, but if so they ignored the pundits. These considerations give me an excuse to avoid reading,
which on the whole bores me, and instead fiddle about (i.e. play) with things, which I enjoy. One of
my earliest mentors, Francis Crick, had a sign on the wall in front of his desk that said: READING
ROTS THE MIND. Francis' sign was partly in jest of course - he was actually tremendously
knowledgeable and erudite - but it had a hard core of wisdom. In natural science we don't refer to
ancient scientists very much. We don't disrespect them - we are all aware that we stand on the
shoulders of giants, but their work is melded into the general understanding, constantly refined and
added to, and there is no reason except for fun to go back to see what they actually said. Rather,
ideas are constantly if erratically tested against reality.

There are many different motives both for doing and for funding science, but through its processes
of internal communication it results in a growing body of knowledge and understanding. Peer
reviewed publication in particular provides some assurance of accuracy and allows the attribution of
credit for achievement. There are occasional spectacular leaps, though nothing like as frequently as
the headline writers would like! Irrespective of motivation and leaps, scientific research frequently
gives rise to goods and services that are novel and valuable; this process has latterly come to be
known as innovation.

Indeed, many regard innovation as the sole purpose of science. This can be misleading in two ways.

First, and obviously, taking a short term view of innovation is hopeless because the greatest
advances arise from unexpected findings. So it’s important that a goodly part of science funding is
directed towards general investigation. To see the key role of uncommitted research one has only to
think of the revolution in biology in the mid 20C; it was resourced by organisations like the Medical
Research Council in the UK, the Pasteur Institute in France and the NIH in the US, all of which looked
beyond short term gains.

Second, and profoundly, science is a cultural driver, which challenges and reshapes our perception of
the human condition and of the universe around us. Is this a justifiable end in itself? On the one
hand, any increase in understanding can eventually lead to improvement in human life, and that
expectation is sufficient justification for research that has no immediate practical goal. As George
Porter remarked: pure research is merely research that has not yet been applied. On the other
hand, what is the purpose of human life? I would say that I don’t know (and indeed there may be no
answer), but that for the moment exploring in every way possible (for which science is one of our
best techniques at present) is a pretty good reason for continuing our existence. When the
destination is unclear, travelling hopefully is a good strategy.

A major role of the universities is to accommodate and nurture these diverse goals, to find ways to
do research that is not financially profitable, indeed to play, and to keep alive the flame of thought.
All of which is vital for the well being of society.

However, in the last few decades there has been a trend to increase the funding of science from for-
profit sources , invested in the expectation of financial return, and concomitantly to decrease
funding from not-for-profit sources. The picture that is emerging is one of increasing private
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ownership of the scientific process as a whole, reaching back into the most basic elements. This
trend is welcomed by political leaders, who are able to save taxpayers' money, and by investors who
gain more control of the direction of research: a win-win situation, seemingly. However, the
downside is the channelling of science into financially profitable areas, and the concomitant
appearance of neglected areas where there is no immediate or obvious return on the investment.

These changes are of great significance to the issue of greening that we shall in various ways address
over the next two days. Some of my interviewers this afternoon asked me what we meant by this
phrase. To which I replied: Sustainable development, flourishing rather than merely surviving, and
avoiding destruction of the rest of the living world. I look forward to hearing further interpretations,
but these three will do for this evening, along with global economic governance which underpins all
the others.

Despite much talk of the green economy, such developments are not going to happen automatically.
If greening could happen spontaneously, under a business as usual scenario, then it would. In fact in
certain specialist niches, it does. For the most part, though, it's going to take organisation and
intervention to change practices.

As a way of exploring what is required, let us consider the recent history of human health. This is a
well researched area, and the conclusions apply forcefully to overtly green fields, including climate
change, food security, energy and the world financial system. Furthermore, unless we succeed in
dealing equitably with health, there is no hope for the greening programme.

With regard to health, it is important to emphasise at the outset that medicines are not the most
vital factor: that title goes to basic infrastructure - food, water, housing and education.

Once these requirements are satisfied we are left with a need for treatment of disease. We need
research that leads to successful medicines, and here the channelling effect of private funding has a
number of consequences. In developing countries, there is now the phenomenon of ‘neglected
diseases’. In developed countries there is excessive production of unneeded drugs, sold by
aggressive and unethical marketing practices on a budget twice that for research and development.
Everywhere there are unaffordably high costs of treatment for minority diseases. These are failures
in the just distribution of the fruits of science.

The current system is underpinned by the machinery of intellectual property. In order to gain
control of market revenue, advances are patented at the earliest possible stage and as broadly as
possible. It is evident if one thinks about it that this is both bad science and bad business. For
example, the practice of patenting genes or whole genomes is clearly anticompetitive, since the
protection is being acquired at a stage where most of the uses cannot be foreseen and the subject of
the patent cannot be invented around. This is misuse of patents, the whole point of which is to
encourage competitive invention, not just to protect the patent holder. In a case recently brought
against Myriad Genetics by a consortium including ACLU, the practice of gene patenting was judged
by a New York court to be illegal: a step, to my mind, in the right direction.

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Excessive reliance on intellectual property rights is also bad for the internal conduct of science in
that patents, far from leading to openness as often claimed, frequently lead to secrecy until issued
and to blocks thereafter. There are some ill-defined research exemptions, but since universities are
now locked into the commercial reward system most are doing precommercial research and so are
not eligible. At its core, science needs to be open access, which is both equitable and beneficial to
everyone.

These issues are explored further in iSEI's Manchester Manifesto, which was signed by 50
contributors including a number of the participants here today.

These inefficiencies would be greatly alleviated by the restoration of public funding to create a
better balance. But where is the public funding to come from?

For the moment, the main sources of public revenue for global health are charitable. These sources
are working well to finance public-private development partnerships that are leading to new
treatments for neglected diseases, but this present relief should not cause complacency.
Philanthropy has a long and honourable history, and indeed before the 20th century the funding of
science by patronage or personal private means was usual. This tradition goes on, and the gifts
continue to be hugely valuable - not least of course those from the Eugenides Foundation which has
brought us here today. But in an increasingly complex world, I fear that reliance on philanthropy
alone is not a stable way to proceed. For one thing the resources are unlikely to prove sufficient,
and for another it betrays a terrible lack of solidarity if we don't take collective responsibility.
Charities notwithstanding, we need in addition serious resources from governments - that's to say
from all of us.

Financially, this is asking for a great deal, and many consider it unaffordable. People tend to prefer a
flutter on the stock exchange to paying taxes, and most of our savings and pensions are financed
through mutuals, which in turn depend on the value of stock and so lock us all into the existing
system. Practical proposals to correct the problems are of various kinds, including biomedical
treaties, prize systems and market commitments, but most leave the existing system intact and do
not address the deep problems.

Whatever the exact tactics, the common ground is that the unregulated free market inevitably fails
to provide many of the goods that collectively we acknowledge are needed. Economists use the
term "market failure" for this result, which always makes me think of a space suited figure on the
moon. He removes his helmet, and as he dies gasps "atmospheric failure, atmospheric failure". His
problem is not failure of atmosphere, but that there was no atmosphere in the first place. So it is
with so-called market failure. It's a euphemism for something that's missing altogether from
standard economic models.

These remarks of course fly in the face of current norms, but I do not believe that current norms will
secure our future. Nor were they important in the past. Think of the early days of vaccines. It was
not accidental that Jonas Salk, when asked whether he had patented the first polio vaccine, replied
"Would you patent the sun?"
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In this regard I am continually struck by appeals to Charles Darwin and the concept of evolution to
defend current practices. The extraordinary insight of evolution theory is that all the complexity of
life is explained by competition for reproductive success, building on variation introduced in the
course of reproduction, so that new life forms emerge and replace the old. Our more bullish
brethren like to feel that the rather unfortunate phrase "survival of the fittest" is tailor made for
them and justifies ruthless behaviour in competing with their fellows.

Last year, being Darwin's centenary, comments along these lines came up frequently. So let us
consider what we should actually learn from Darwin of matters sociological. Darwin was a product
of his age and class - an advanced humanitarian in, for example, his abolitionist views on slavery but
at the same time effortlessly confident in the superiority of his own people. I suspect he was well
aware of the sea change in evolution that humans represent, but for people of his day the world
seemed ordered and progressive, and it was reasonable to think that natural selection might
continue to take us forward.

We have now reached what is in some ways a bleaker patch in human history. Notwithstanding
previous false alarms we are coming up against limits to the endless extension of simple
competitiveness. A common error is to conflate the solidly grounded account of human origins that
natural selection provides, with the need to plan wisely our social and economic arrangements.
Knowledge of our past, in other words, should not be seen as directing our future.

Through both innovation and understanding, science continually betters the human condition. But
of late there has arisen a careless assumption that all innovation is good, and it is spoken of
politically as the one goal that science and technology must strive for. This fits with free market
philosophy, and compares favourably with stagnation from hidebound subservience to unchanging
doctrines. But the free market – a wonderful servant on the small scale – is a dangerous master on
the global scale. Driven by economic competition, innovation is proceeding at a frenzied pace,
making us more and more successful to the point where we are damaging the earth. It is
increasingly evident that our only enemy is ourselves. Too many people, consuming too many
resources, in a world which, far from being made more equal by globalisation, is more unequal than
ever. Because each government, trapped by the imperative to compete in the world market, feels
obliged to drive its scientists to innovate, and its consumers to consume, all in order to boost its
GDP. No matter that GDP doesn't equate to happiness, nor that competition to rivalrously increase
GDPs is destroying our planet.

Some authors are critical of such a negative perspective. They see it as pessimistic, and complain
that it spreads gloom. What do they want? A careless world of false optimism, of people
manipulated by self-serving advertising and lulled by smooth words into complacency? That's how
we drifted into financial recession, and how we shall continue to drift towards far more catastrophic
events if we ignore the issues. It's understandable that many, faced with such complexity, find the
selective punditry of the so-called optimists persuasive. Yet they are utterly misleading. I reject the
label of pessimist, but am rather a real optimist who believes in a great future for us, which we can
bring about thoughtfully and ethically.
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No, indeed, the future doesn’t have to be bleak at all, but there is a pressing need to put our house
in order. Scientists could contribute greatly by adopting a more proactive stance in applying
discoveries to the collective good rather than enrichment of the few, if the system allowed them to
do so. However at the moment the system encourages the opposite, and personal enrichment is
presented to young scientists as the only path of good sense and indeed virtue. We have already
trained a generation into economic pragmatism, sometimes even greed, and they are passing on this
worldly wisdom to their students.

In order to be successful, a society has a need to balance different interests. Democratic

government is supposed to fill this role, but has been increasingly hobbled by the power of
commercial lobbyists. Corporate responsibility is supposed to offset this trend, but, let’s face it, a
company has only a limited range of manoeuvre in a competitive environment.

Through it all runs the fourth estate of the media - ah, the media. I despair at times (don't we all?)
of the frantic search for novelty, the lust for conflict, the misleading headlines. The columnists
picking on a single observation to say that global warming is false, whilst ignoring the body of
evidence and modelling that makes that unfortunate reality inescapable. And the consequence is a
dispiriting populism in politics that makes it very difficult for even the best intentioned leaders to
follow a rational course. Restraint buys few votes: greed is good. Yet there is no alternative to a
free press if we want transparency in our democracy and politics. Those countries that succumb to a
monopolistic press suffer badly. Years ago a journalist in Romania brought this home to me when
she phoned to ask about the human genome project. I complained about our press coverage. How
would you like to have a single media controlled by the state? she asked. Yes indeed, and in Britain
right now we have to beware lest we hand over our press to the empire of Rupert Murdoch. The
media is essential - always important in communication, and sometimes a campaigning force, but
necessarily facing all ways.

For the moment we are left with NGOs as key players in striking the balance. They are an eclectic
bunch but truly democratic (except those who in their turn get hobbled), and they are so important
that they are now collectively known as civil society.

And this is where I turn again to the universities. Beyond research, beyond teaching, the great
universities have the potential to be the best NGOs them all, for they are far more than the sum of
their parts, and have the opportunity to be far more than business models. But they will scarcely
recognise this title, for they increasingly deny their true role and see themselves primarily as
businesses, thereby falling into the very same trap as government. They too become subject to the
channelling effect that we have seen. Further, the business approach leads to unproductive
competitive pressures in university research, taking us away from free enquiry. Excess of
competitiveness leads to pressure to publish: paper after paper saying much the same thing,
because publication count is used to determine career progress. And this in turn can lead to
academic misconduct, attempts to please the boss by getting a paper in Nature.

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If we really care for the future of humanity we shall encourage the universities in their special and
vital role, not just regard them as machines for invention and teaching.

For it goes without saying that as well as research the university's role is to teach. The students
come to be educated, both for their own sake and that of society. But in addition they are the
greatest moral resource that the university possesses. They are mostly young, uncommitted, often
idealistic but also realistic. If they are allowed, they will help the university to rise above the short
term interests that try to control it, and they have a personal interest in shaping the world that they
and in turn their children will inherit.

Let me give you one example. This was demonstrated in a very striking way at Yale in 2001 when a
group of students conducted a campaign to provide more egalitarian access to an HIV/AIDS drug
(stavudine) which had been developed from research done at the university. Remarkably they were
successful, and the contract with Bristol-Myers Squibb was renegotiated. Nobody lost out. The drug
was made available to countries where there were previously no sales because it was unaffordable,
so the company lost no profit and of course gained goodwill. This event led to the founding of the
student movement UAEM, not only as an effective pressure group but also as a source of
information and a forum for discussion.

Activities of this kind greatly enhance the university’s role in discussing and contributing to policy in
the widest sense. All good, but for it to work the university must be, and be seen to be, a trusted
source of information. A further adverse consequence of the trend to profitable activity is the loss
of non-aligned experts - who are needed for good policy making in a highly technological society, but
are difficult to find if everyone is bound up in commercial contracts. Reliance on statements of
conflict of interest is not an effective solution. For example, clinical trials have frequently been
written up with a favourable bias by marketing departments, and then published under the names of
senior professors - who are thereby reneging on their duty to give people good independent advice.

I have discussed at some length the universities' potentials, using health as an example. The
conclusions apply equally to the rest of the green agenda.

The universities' job is not usually to conduct large scale development, though certainly it is to
research the management of development and to promulgate their findings at the policy level. In
terms of innovation their role is to research freely and try to ensure that the products are made
widely available - the route that UAEM is promoting in medicine, and which should be followed for
all green technology because it needs to be widely shared. We have already seen how universities
have unique potential in this regard, but that countervailing forces are pushing them back. It's
worth noting at this point that the great majority of new medicines, possibly all, have their origins in
universities and institutes, not as is often thought in companies.

Universities have a vital role in collecting data and modelling. For example they are major
contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, without whom we would still not
have solid evidence of the anthropogenic causes of climate change. In biodiversity, too, we need the
universities' databases, and funding to maintain and implement the findings in an open fashion.
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Turning to food supply, the first green revolution of plant breeding, hugely successful in averting
famine for a generation, was done in the public domain by universities. I doubt whether the hoped
for second green revolution will be as successful if it continues to be bound up with intellectual
property, high prices and lack of transparency. We need publicly funded crop science departments
in universities to make it work.

So the list goes on: energy, water, demography, and so on. The sparks must be struck in the
universities, the nurseries of human culture, before the products can be rolled out.

Underpinning all other aspects of greening is the need for improved governance: to somehow
square the circle of democracy - which despite all its faults is our bulwark against autocracy - with
the need to plan and act on a longer term stage. Here we move out of my comfort zone of natural
science onto the territory of humanities. Perhaps my earlier remarks about ignoring the ancients no
longer apply here? Or perhaps they do with even more force - the need to reality check our
concepts and road maps with what is actually happening. But of course it isn't easy - this is about
people. But it's in the universities that new paradigms will be formed.

In the final few minutes, let's ask ourselves the question: why do we want a green agenda anyway?

Many of us feel that greening is sufficiently - even amply - justified by our role as stewards of the
earth. It is also necessary for our own survival. But of course if we weren't here, or if there were a
lot fewer of us, then there would be no issue. There's no time to talk more about population today;
but note that our sheer numbers are the direct cause of all the other problems.

Does it actually matter whether humanity and its moral descendants survive? Of course, we are
here because most of us love life, we want to continue in order to get more of it, and want our
descendants to have it too. But aside from all that, are there other reasons?

The first point to register clearly is that we are the uniquely intelligent life form on the planet. Not
withstanding the many interesting studies on intelligence of other primates and birds, which help to
illuminate our origins, we have taken a step change on the evolutionary path. Having somehow
gained the power of transcendent thought, and combining our individual abilities through
communication and records, we have hit on ways of continually growing our knowledge and
expertise, so that we are now progressing in a way entirely different from biological evolution. It is
now the evolution of ideas and skills that counts, no longer dependent on the slower workings of
genetics for the generation of novelty.

One consequence is that, for good or ill, control of the earth is in our hands. We must face up to our
responsibility as the most powerful organism of the earth.

Not everyone is happy about this. Quite a lot of people (and these are the real pessimists) think that
we've made such a mess of our remit that it would be better all round if we don't survive. They feel
that our species is hopelessly morally defective, and will never be able to form a society that is

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stable, peaceful and just. It's true that our track record so far is not great, but consider the
alternatives. I hear mention of two scenarios going forward.

One is that, having become extinct like the dinosaurs (though unlike them through the use of
weapons of our own construction), we shall in due course be replaced by evolution of another
intelligent species - maybe a dolphin, say, or a corvid. But how long will it take? We have already
taken half the age of the earth in getting to this point, we have no idea how likely or unlikely the
development of high intelligence is. Alternatively, a few of our kind may linger on, as portrayed in
many a science fiction plot; but then remember that not only will records and skills have been lost
but also we have already dispersed the most accessible ores so that reindustrialisation will be much
more difficult the second time around.

A second scenario is that the universe is teeming with a myriad life forms originated independently,
so that, although for some reason having to do with physics or alien choices we haven't seen them
yet, the loss of our own kind doesn't really matter. Some suppose that the probabilities are such
that intelligent life must have developed many times, but actually we have no idea of any of the
probabilities. That position of ignorance may change, most likely will change through scientific
discovery, but at the moment we simply don’t know.

Therefore our working assumption ought to be that we’re alone in the universe – or multiverse if
you like - because so far we have no shred of evidence that there is any other intelligence anywhere.
It is conceivable that the development of our abilities and prospects has actually not been duplicated
anywhere else, ever. We don't yet understand the origins of thought, or reasoning, or creativity, and
until we do, or come across other examples of them, we should treat our origin as a precious and
just possibly unique event.

Such a conclusion is uncomfortable for scientists, who are more accustomed to handling
reproducible situations. I don't even suggest that it is very likely, but the point once again is that we
have no way at all of estimating the probabilities. Under the circumstances a vote for collective
annihilation is crazy.

On the contrary the onus on us to survive, and to survive in good shape, to flourish, is high. Bear in
mind that if we can do that, we’re not short of time at all. The earth still has a few billion years to go
if we let it, and anyway we should soon be in a position to move a few of us out to spread our
options. The drive to ever faster innovation for its own sake is a false goal: an artefact of crude
economic systems.

This position is far from pessimistic. True it gives us a responsibility - to survive and not make any
more mess in the process. On the other hand life is so much fun and there is so much to do. Let’s
not throw it away. We have the whole universe before us to explore. Potentially, our future is
limitless. I look to the universities to give us the chance.