Surviving the Century

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lecture 2: 'Surviving the Century'

In the second of this year's Reith Lectures, recorded for the first time in Wales in the National Museum Cardiff, Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, continues to explore the challenges facing science in the 21st century. Our planet is coming under increasing strain from climate change, population explosion and food shortages. How can we use science to help us solve the crisis that we are moving rapidly towards, as we use up our natural resources ever more quickly? Professor Rees explores the urgent need to substantially reduce our global CO2 emissions, or the atmospheric concentration will reach truly threatening levels. To do this, we need international cooperation, and global funding for clean and green technologies. He calls for the UK to keep one step ahead of other countries by developing technologies to reduce emissions, and says we should take the lead in wave and tidal energy, among other solutions. Science brings innovation but also risk, and random elements including fanatics can abuse new technologies to threaten our planet in ways we never dreamt of. The challenge, for our scientists, governments and people, is to confront the threats to our planet and find the solutions in science.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Martin Rees. Thank you for downloading this podcast of the 2010 Reith Lectures from the BBC.
0:06.5	You can find out more, listen again, read transcripts and subscribe to the podcast at BBC.co.com
0:13.5	UK slash Reith Lectures.
0:16.3	Hello and welcome to Wales. We're at the National Museum, Cardiff, for the second in this year's series of BBC
0:22.8	Reith Lectures. We have an audience of scholars, students, experts and commentators from fields such as
0:30.0	astronomy, physics, earthquake engineering, oceanic studies, and many more. The series is called
0:37.0	Scientific Horizons, and our lecturer is Martin Rees, Master of Trinity
0:42.1	College, Cambridge, Astronomer Royal, and President of the Royal Society.
0:47.3	He's exploring the role of science in today's world.
0:51.2	As a cosmologist, he has an awareness of the immense scale of the future
0:55.9	and the threats to our existence. He believes science can provide solutions to many of them,
1:02.3	but are we capable of implementing those solutions? We are stewards of the world at a very special time,
1:09.2	he says. Man has the future in his hands.
1:13.2	Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the BBC Reith Lecturer 2010, Professor Martin Rees.
1:32.2	Martin, you are in fact almost Welsh, aren't you?
1:35.4	Well, almost. I'm afraid I can't really say I'm Welsh. I grew up in a village near Ludlow, which is just one mile the other side of the border.
1:41.1	So I'm really a Shropshire lad, but I come to Wales whenever there's a chance,
1:45.1	and one of the bonuses of being the Reef Lecturer is the chance to come to Cardiff today.
1:50.2	But hence your full title, Lord Rees of Ludlow, you're not very keen on titles, are you?
1:56.3	Do you hate being called Lord Rees?
1:58.5	Well, I think it does sound a bit pompous, doesn't it?
2:04.1	But one uses it to impress public officials, et cetera.
	...

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