Transcripts For CSPAN2 John Browne Make Think Imagine 20240713

Imagine. It is wonderful to have you all here with us this evening at the museum and also to all of you at home who are watching via cspan. We have this evening a wonderful presentation by john browne and then followed by a discussion with professor daniel of rice university. Without further ado i will hand it over to john browne. Help me welcome mr. Browne to houston. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, i want to thank the Houston Museum of Natural Science for inviting me. As someone who served on the boards of several museums and galleries i have a deep appreciation for the role that institutions like this play in the local community and indeed in society more generally. As a window on the path and an explainer of the present and as a guide to the future they are indispensable resources which go above and beyond what you can read in books. Houston is fortunate to have this place and it is a great pleasure to be here. As a natural scientist and subsequently an engineer ive always sought to maintain a board perspective about the arts and being involved in cultural organizations that go beyond our core discipline. When i applied for scholarship to the university of cambridge in england i had to submit an essay about something completely different to my main area of tuudy so i submitted a piece about the architecture of and i can explain later to anybody who is interested in what that actually means. With my first bonus check from bp i bought a print and is a more Senior Executive i served on the boards of organizations such as the Shakespeare Library in washington dc, British Museum and later, the tate. Today it is one of the great joys of a career to be able to spend even more time with organizations. There has been always something that has troubled me. I have heard people assert again and again that arts and culture as a foundation of civilization. Great art is certainly essential by understanding the human conditions and you only have to visit the roscoe chapel here in houston to appreciate just that. In my view it is preceded by great engineering which is the True Foundation on which civilization is built. That is why i wrote make, think, imagine. To make the argument that engineering is the lifeblood of human progress. Today i want to tell you for stories which i encountered either while writing the book or while ive been talking about it after its publication. You can interpret them just as you wish and i hope they start a decent internal discussion with you. My first story is about transcending the limits. A few months ago i gave a lecture at the Francis Creek institute where i am chairman of the board and it is one of europes major Biomedical Research hubs directed by a mobile present winter and home to several more prizewinners. After my talk of research, i was asked a question that made me hiink he asked, arent humans just like e. Coli . [laughter] his question was about the way in which we grow and use Natural Resources because when you put e. Coli bacteria into a vat of fresh nutrients of population grows, slowly at first, and then exponentially. After this period of rapid expansion things go downhill rather quickly as the bacteria rattle it out with a dwindling pool of resources. In the 18th century, thomas made a similar point, arguing that human population growth is doomed to push us towards catastrophic competition followed by decline. In the 1950s the american geologist coined the term [inaudible] but we dont use that anymore as he predicted the production would peak around the year 2000 and tail off rapidly. The club of rome made similar predictions a few decades later as it talked about the limits to growth. Somehow all these predictions about the collapse of civilization have never come to pass. I have no doubt that we face great challenges today, not least the unintended consequences of progress itself. Some of these challenges, such as antimicrobial resistance, and Climate Change have the potential to become existential threats. But we are not bacteria. Time and again engineers have used their ingenuity and imagination to overcome limits, work around resource constraints and Work Together to build a better world. That is why the amount of oil the word uses per unit of gdp has fallen by one third since 1985 as engineering has enabled us to do more for less. It is why texas is, by a longy margin, the largest generator of cheap power from wind in the United States. It is why in recovery they use Carbon Dioxide to make it the lowest carbon source of oil in the world. This is real progress. Its indicated by developments in climate sciencete and accelerated by evolving Consumer Preferences guided by a combination of Public Policy and Market Forces but made possible by engineering. My second story is about unintended consequences. During the 1980s the dominant u. S. Communications operator, at t, was broken up into several smaller companies. This was followed in the 1990s by the loosening of structure and this was all designed to open up the markets and encourage competition. We can now look back and ask what is all of this is achieved thanks to a series of mergers todays at t is actually bigger than it was before it was broken up. But when it comes to innovation and has lost something. Bell labs, at ts powerhouse, was described by some as a mobile prize factory and now owned by the inis firm, nokia. Talent, practical knowhow and intellectual property has migrated overseas, particularly to europe into china. The practical consequence of this is playing out today. American companies do not have any distinct competitive advantage in 5g instead, Companies Like ericsson, nokia, the chinese firm huawei are ruining out mobile internet in most parts of asia and europe testing new standards along the way. Unlike many Critical Technologies that is dependent on people and companies in the u. S. 5g can be and is being developed without u. S. Involvement. This would not matter if we had the world underpinned by freetrade and constructive dialogue about standards. It does matter when we are experiencing a technologically driven trade more, major feature of which is deep suspicion of china. As a result the u. S. Is at risk of falling behind. This matters because 5g is a step change but it will provide the speed and low latency needed by the self driving cars, robots and drones that will transform our economies. It will enable physicians to perform surgery on patients on the other side of the world using extended and tactile reality that enables them to feel what is going on and as i recently saw during a demonstration at the Wembley Stadium in london, 5g will offer 360degree Sports Coverage in real time that will completely change the way we experience life sports. At best, a technological and geopolitical standoff would slow the speed and breadth and depth of innovation but at worst that could reverse the globalization of engineered products. Many of you wilbur member having to carry three mobile phones when you went overseas. One for the u. S. , one for europe and one for japan. It is my fear that we are heading down the same path tod today. My third story is about making a practical difference. On december 11, 1945 Alexander Fleming and two other men put on their bowties to receive a mobile prize for their research into penicillin. While the ceremony unfolded in stockholm a little known phenom called Margaret Hutchinson russo was the looking after her sons at home. Hutchinson russo had almost been written out of history but she is the real star of the penicillin the story it was she who took a promising but highly unstable chemical substance and solve the significant engineering problemub necessaryo transform it into the drug that saved more lives than any other. By the time of the Normandy Beach landing in june 1944, the allied forces had 2. 3 million doses of penicillin. One year later production stood at 650 billion units a month. This is all things to hutchinson russos tenacity. The story demonstrates perfectly what engineering is about and why its such a powerful force in our world. I think of engineering as being like the ancient roman god who had two faces. One looking at the past and the other looking at the future. In the case of engineering one face looked to the fruits of scientific discovery while the other looked at the needs of commerce, humanity and customers and the important bit happens in the middle where engineers integrate all that they see and come up with solutions. These are the tools and systems that we use to understand and shape our world. Time and time again engineers have applied their art to overcome seemingly impossible challenges in the past 40 years they have driven a 250 fold reduction in the cost of solar electricity that the ambassadors are on a similar learning curve. I hope and expect that the same will happen with the days expensive Carbon Capture technology so it becomes the cornerstone of our response to Climate Change. As hutchinson russos work shows us so clearly this is what engineering does. It takes tools that were once unattainable he expensive and impractical and makes them available for everyone to use to make a practical difference in the world, printed books, lightbulbs, airplanes, automobiles and Artificial Intelligence algorithms all were written off in their time before going on to transform our world. My final story is about imagination. It takes place in the 19th century as engineers were building evermore efficient steam engines. The power produced by these machines was offending the established social order in prilding the prosperity and opportunity that would eventually ripple through society. These engineering advances were also unleashing the imagination of some of the earth best scientists, the french physicisr interest in these new engines using what he saw to elucidate one of the fun mental principles of the universe. The second law of thermodynamics, first form related by mr. , is what gives time its arrow and it states the universe as a whole is always moving towards a state of greater disorder and many assume that the Engineering Works in a new way always translating ideas into practical products. Very often it works the other way too. Only once the steam engine was made and working did he gain the maspiration to make his great imaginative leap and that is why i called my book, make, think, imagine, in that order. The things we make fuel our creativity, engineering allows us to imagine places weve never visited, times weve never lived in and things that have not yet been built. That is the job of business leaders, particularly in the Energy Industry because the future can sometimes look difficult and uncertain. The needs and demands of our customers are almost always changing. It is likely to peak in 20 years and today oil and Gas Companies represent the smallest portion of the s p 500 for the last 30 years and as investors put their money elsewhere they take it from oil and gas. Young talented people would much rather work in palo alto then in the [inaudible] basin. There is no doubt that we will rely on hydrocarbons for a very, very long time to come. It accounts for 85 of our energy today and some will likely account for 70 with a significantly larger base by 2040. The challenge for leaders is to build a future in which oil and gas still underpin human prosperity but in which the claimant is not afraid of unintended consequences. We need to take the carbon out of hydrocarbon. That is something ive been trying to encourage people to do for several decades. In 1997 as ceo of bp became the first leader of the major oil and gas company to recognize the threat posed by Climate Change and pledged to do something about it. Nd that was more than 20 years ago and theres a huge amount still to do and i have some ideas about what actions oil and Gas Companies might take today but we can certainly discuss those things later. But for now, let me, if i may, conclude with a quotation i my favorite quotation from president abraham lincoln. Speaking at the end of 1862 he said, the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. We must think on new, act a new, we must disenroll ourselves. Thats a wonderful philosophy and one which ive always tried to follow because it is not the job of leaders to administer the advent of the inevitable. It is their job to write the future. It is their job to imagine and then create the actions for tomorrow. This cant be done without the discipline of engineering, our ability to engineer is all that it allows us to bring order to disorder. Engineering creates eddies and counter in the relentless and chaotic flow of the universe when we call them civilization. Engineering allows us to dream of a better world and then go out and make that vision into a reality. Without engineering it all comes apart and our fate is sealed like a glass of bacteria. Thank you very much. [applause] welcome to houston. Thank you. Today we are going to talk about the book. We will try to discover what is inside and also try to uncover the side of the writer that we have with us. We will have a chance to read it but we wont have other times to talk with him here so take notes to write your question and to get it out later on so we can read it. I just want to explain the title. Make, think, imagine, in that order, my kid said [inaudible] then the subtitle engineering the future of civilization and the author, john browne, you are just introduced as board brown but we are not used to that title here in houston, lord. What is the title of that for you personally . As a practical matter i madeo permanent member of the second legislator of the house of the United Kingdom. You have to ask why in history it is an appointed house and its history goes back to a very lon way. It was the house of the barons to make sure that the king kept in order. We dont do that anymore. The king, the queen, heads of states have no active power and neither does the house of lords. Its not it does do a very good job of promoting times, engineering and technology within the United Kingdom. So, i would like to start from the very first page in here which is the dedication. It says to my father, who told me to get a real job. [laughter] what was your relationship with your father . I had a great relationship with my father who i wanted to do Everything Different from what he had done in his life. My family has a history of being [inaudible] and he was a great soldier during the war and he fought in the desert of north africa and other places and he eventually after being a professional for a long time joined the oil industry and was sent to iran where everyone spoke not arabic but rc. Fortunately, my father corrected the Personnel Department is that i will learn it before i get there. He did. I spent my teenage life aroundd oil and gas wells and i was determined i would never join in Oil Gas Company ass. So he influenced your choice. Yes, he did. I went to university and was determined to stay and do research into civics at the time with some really great people who had uncovered the mysteries of continental drift at cambridge and by then, under pressure on my father, said get a job and i said i dont want to, ive got one here already and he said thats not a real job, go in get a real job and do it for a year and see if you like it. If you dont, go back to doing research university. I then rather arrogantly went to see bp and my father retired that very day and i said i would like the job and they said really and i said yes for a year and then i said what is once more i want to get to the United States because i did want to leave the uk at the time. It was in knots good shape and it was in the 60s. Either they said yes to that to and imagine myself getting to do work around new york or houston even. The letter came in those days they were written in direct terms and that is how the Hr Department would adjust in those days but they were posting in anchorage, alaska so off i went to Anchorage Alaska to become a trainee engineer to do studies to convert myself to an engineer and to work in the field drilling and testing wells in the [inaudible] and to live 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle which i did for quite a little while and it was very exciting. One year led to another and after two years i said to professor i love it and he said stick with it and very few people of what they are doing. It was a good piece of advice. [inaudible] from my professor, my father was vindicated and that was enough. Good relationship with your father. There are always complexa between a father and a son but there are no complex between a mother and a son. Your mother is paula. Here you write in the very first chapters the commandments of lord browne and you write that you were inspired by yourat mother to solve problems that others had not yet considered and to helpno find Practical Solutions to humanities most pressing problems. Which pressing problems have you tried to solve . Hiss ive tried to solve a few and some of them are still in the process because they were pressing but one which is sees me which is what oil and Gas Companies were doing to their global claimants and that worries me a lot in the mid 90s and i was convinced thatce we could both produce hydrocarbon and reduce the amount of carbon that we were putting in the atmosphere and that is the problems that i started working on nbp and i thought progress w has been made known want. That one and the other one was to gain acceptance for gay people in business which i subsequent to my outing, we can talk about that later, was, in my mind, very important to. My mother, by reference, was a very determined person and had managed to survive being in the holocaust in auschwitz and came out believing that the best was always yet to come and that you didnt look back in history was not that important but what we were going to do tomorrow was really importantnt. Talking about the huge personal problem once you left bp at the top why didnt you open a new Company Going beyond petroleum . Well, i kind of did. Its hard to start a company which has a big impact and you do need to have quite a big impact in this area. I decided to go into private equity and set up a fund which purely dealt with non Hydrocarbon Energy and respond, as a result of that, several companies that are alive and well doing things today around the world which are changing the way people think about energyin. Theyre not the only companies in the fund i set up was the Worlds Largest Renewable Energy fund and it is surprisingly against all the odds, made people good, positive investment return. Not only does it do the right thing, which i believe it did, but it also produced a proper return on investment. Many people when we started this would look at me and say in private equity we were regarded as i was very often introduced and that person who loves hugging trees and watching gas gives you a good warm feeling but you dont get money and that was not actually true. We made a lot of money but we also made some very good nine hydrocarbon [inaudible] the Second Chapter you see [inaudible] i dont know if that was imperative or everything is active. Okay. And there you write making things is at the root of all progress. Re in my whole life both my hobbies and things like early days photography. [inaudible conversations] are used to tinker with cars and i moved forward in the things that i do but to my mind its very important and i noticed with a lot of people may be almost everyone i know i dont know everyone in the world but everyone somehow wants to feel like they are making something whether its a garden or car or cake or something to wear and whether it is carpentry or something bigger like a full house there is a certain sense of satisfaction and achievement that is very human and i also think it is why we somehow if we gotten office group of people working with papers and computers doing administration we close the factory this produces a something and then it will be equal numbers of people let go and both organizations i believe we would feel more strongly about the factory that we would about the office and there is something about having people make things that appeals to all humans. I think its very basic point it seems to me. O at the root of the award of engineer is the lack of [inaudible] which translate to generate we all generate so engineers we are all engineers. We are. They can also be intellectual products and it can be software for example. So you dont really mean [inaudible] correct. There are things and i start the chapter in an area which is the book and of civilization which is agr syntax which when you handle, ive had the privilege of handling several, they are beautiful and practical things and the main thing they did was change the way in which we, our nutrition of the human being which changes the way human beings developed. We cut up things with [inaudible] when did you feel that you really are an engineer . When do you think did you feel like an engineer . When i wrote a book which is a process of making because i write i cant write the whole time. I have other jobs. This is a night job. The day jobs are full. I write to a very strict outlier and engineered outline, if you will. The reason for that is i can pick it up, drop it, and pick it back up again without having to start over again. Without that you would get lost and have no direction. I regard that as one of the schools of engineering. The point i would say is that no one [inaudible] i like the fact that you interviewed 100 people to help you and then you have more than 50 pages of the bio sketch of those people and so i was wondering all these meetings that you have in interviews who did you who impressed you the most among these hundred people that you interviewed . All these people are distinguished and so its always risky to pick the best because you never want to ask the question who was the worst. [laughter] it was an extraordinary man at mit and his name was bob and he started life as a chemical engineer and tried 40 times when he graduated not to go and join humble oil and Refinery Company to work in refineries but wanted to go into a hospital to work and no one understood why a chemical engineer could work in a hospital because in those days there were medics and there were engineers and they never did not Work Together. Eventuallywe he made it and he created or engineered discoveries that help humans whether its artificial skin or one of the other things he has done but thought about the bloodstream as a river and along the river you can float things and float things to a tumor and a tumor can kill the tumor. Rather than putting all the chemicals in the river you can put one little vote and the river and get it to the tumor. If he succeeds in that its an extraordinary event and it doesnt pollute your body but just goes to the target and he has some success. I find it impressive is not only is his breath of development but known as the edison of medicine and 25 billion of companies have emanated from his lab but when i asked him what his purpose was he simply said i would just like to reduce suffering and i thought that is probably the most impressive thing i heard anyone tell me. Where did you write the book . I had several reasons but one was i had the privilege and opportunity to not only write about myself because all the books i have written are about in the first person and about things ive been involved in in my life and ive been lucky to involved in lots of things but ive had the opportunity to get the greatest people in these areas and ask if i could talk to them and so in some ways i was trying to bring my readers into [inaudible] around the world to talk to people but chances are they cannot talk to and thought that was important and it was secondly, very important to me to make this key point that civilization contains O Engineering and in order to keep civilization progressing we need to do more, not less of this activity so when things go wro g the reaction sometimes is lets do less of it so if its antimicrobial resistance, antibiotics that are used and now we find drugs that are not working against certain bacteria we say the whole thing does not work. Wrong answer but we have to riengineer [inaudible] drugs but when there are problems, for example, with privacy or with facial recognition we love opening our iphone with our face but we dont much like it when social recognition is used to use surveillance against people or classes of people or discover nate against them as we see happening in china and we dont like that. We have to do something about it if it happens in our country and we cant do anything about it someone elses country but we have to recognize that everything we do has that unintended consequence or bad use as well as a good one. I wanted to make that point. The third chapter in this chapter you write the pan as a symbol for what is unique about. Our brain and what do you think when you look at a pan . I look at a pan as well as the ultimate rise of transferring of what is in your head to some other medium with great discipline because it is tough to use and its very difficult. Are used, as an example in the book, the dick biro because it democratized pens that are very easy to use and were invented by hungarians and he invented a very simple visibly designed engineered project i, very chea, and you could ride upside down even and with it you do not have to have ink and pen and blotting paper and a big apparatus but you have one simple very cheap objectivity and it allows you to do amazing things. You continue on saying i must commit to the words i put down on the page and the momentary resistance between the idea and its recording gives me space to think so describe when and where you experience those crucial moments of deep think. When i said about trying to solve a problem w and i think ie constructed my life as the point about what i do is to solve problems, big or small. The way i think i discipline myself is i know that when i can write it down and i thought about what ive written down and i can read it back and it makes sense and i read it aloud and it still makes sense i think i might get closer to a solution and i cant wave my hands and e say you know what i mean or about that or approximately that i heard it on the street and so i wrote it down but actually its a decent discipline and its that resistance and that moment that allows you to have discipline to get something down that does hold water and does make sense. I cant do that with a screen, too easy to delete. I would say the same. I took a lot of notes here in the book and for me that happened after i had three kids or also when i run but there is a moment where i deeply think and for you you also have a verr dynamic life so is it always nighttime when it happens or do you have to write it down. I dedicate a lot of vacations if im on [inaudible] i go and exercise and come back, have breakfast and then i write. Often i do this in venice because it inspires me and it allows me to whenever i stop to see something that is inspiring before i go back [inaudible] what is the most profound chapter in this chapter in which you really had to get a depth. The most difficult was the last chapter you mentioned. Ic i was trying to make one singular point which is that the human being, despite of whatever we can engineer has an exceptional quality and an exceptional quality and its the quality to imagine and cant find machines that do that yet and maybe never and so i wanted to describe that in various dimensions and picking the dimensions was the most difficult thing to do so i naturally started the brain and that i went through to the universe. At this point i like to ask you what is the most profound and Important Message of the book that you wrote . It is about progress in this book is about progress in the fact that it does have the ups and downs that we see the whole time and that should not put us off. We make things and we invent things and we think about things that have great intended consequences and they also come along with unintended consequences. The unintended consequences are things that we can set rights by doing more engineering on them rather than abandoning and saying its too late and we cant go ahead and its this continuous thrust of progress which i believe is so important for the human condition. Do you think [inaudible] attitudes good most deafening. For example, decisions made with less than complete information have called for some very interesting and very tough situations. The advent of genetically modified organisms seems to make cereals and was heavily rejected and carries on in the u. S. I think it was based on fears that were promoted that were not correct and really were notct correct and there would be some form of genetic transfer as a human being that i think at one stage i readne in some newspaper that we would be having snowdrops going out of the top of our heads. These fears are very bad. For example, i think the Anti Vaccination Movement is very dangerous indeed. Very, very dangerous. We need to think carefully before that happens in spreads and these things could setback humanity in a big way. Has response ability to the point and avoid this collapse. We all do. It is what we expressed to our communities and to our politicians and how we express it will get things done for us. We live in democracies of a different type and im talking about the u. S. And europe. Expressions of what we believe and what we want will eventually change things. It may not the first time but they will eventually change things and t keep progress on track, equally they could stop progress. A mentioned civilization and i was wondering if you write this book for [inaudible] but i cannot understand i needed to first ask you what did you mean by civilization . First, i wrote this with my own experience, not with the experience base of chinese scholar or Chinese Business who i think might write a very different book. It would be presumptuous of me to write such a book. I wrote this book about what i know about and civilization is about the progress of humanity and it is about the building of people with a great aspiration, in my view. To think we all have one organization or would do we have organizations . Many different societies and indeed, different starting points and probably different ending points but all different. But its the same civilization . They have different what is emphasized is different in parts of the world but in the end they all want to improve. They all want to improve. They all want to improve overall there are lots, i would say. It depends on what it is. When i look at civilization progress i look at the world and say it is a better place and is less violence, less healthier people live longer and less children die and more people can read and there is greater good indication and there is actually greater transparency, all these things are good things. Do you think that what is driving this innovation is engineering and what is [inaudible] there is more to progress than engineering and more to progress than discovery. What it does is provide the opportunities but the inaction of it in the end comes to the will of society producing the right environment for progress to take place. Thats of course is the act of politics and Public Policy so economic signals and edicts for example to develop products and they always are. That is not something that is engineered naturally but something that the public and therefore the representatives of public get done because they think it is the right thing to do. You are in a fantastic position because you are part of the uk parallel and you can do something that none of us can do here. What do you do and what could you do being a representative of the people in the Uk Parliament . Remember, we are a Second Chamber without budget accountability. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] i talk about the things that im interested in that i do believe needs change. Things like Climate Change for example, things like the Energy Provision and of course, ive been a very big advocate for lgbt rights and abuse the platform for these positions. Do you see that you are successful . In some cases, it moves very slightly and in some cases very quickly. For example, i think the reforms icd lgbt rights moved quickly through our limits and so i was one of the voices which i moved it forward. I think some of these things, for example, in Climate Change we are not, i think, quite yet at the point where enough of all populations want something done good we are moving and i think it is on the agenda, probably the top of the agenda of the incoming european president and certainly on the agenda of every politician in the United Kingdom. Something will be done good Public Policyhe will move to mae that happen i see increasingly the federal level but a different state levels in the United States, the same thing is happening here. Do you believe societies the progress is higher and you have more problems wary of society that have inclusion and diversity . Generally is more sustainable and much more sustainable and very often i think Business People asked would you prefer to work with the dictator or with a democracy and people o immediaty leap to the conclusion that a dictatorship you get the decision made very quickly but that may be true but equally it can be unmade very quickly. In a democracy and may take longer but it takes even longer to unmake [inaudible] so this is where i think because you were going withde the grain of sociey and thats where you have to be careful. [inaudible] what is the role of art and we talk about engineering and what is the role of art . Art, i would think enlightens and educates and entertains humans. It enlightens them. They have to have the ability and means thereby and if we were simply surviving we would be just in survival mode and most of what we think about as art changes or perhaps even disappears but when we have the time to think about what we will do as we survive then art provides enlightenment and it provides certainly education so it transfers what one generation does to another one and these are very important aspects. It also entertains. [inaudible] you write that the portions of this book will go to a tradable trust where they will you be used for educational [inaudible] and support the arts. Correct. What exactly will happen with that money from the book . They go to a place where for sure they will simply be used for the education of people who cant afford to be educated, at least in these topics. That is what it is used for. We have to stop talking about the book right nowow and lets y we go to the very last page, what would you like the reader toge do, what is the action you want the readers to do once they have closed the book because they read the last page . This is no business book. Its not to improve yourself with the following four things. But it is a book, which i hope, allows you to say let me think about what is going on and look at different ways of making things better and having a dialogue which is based on a little bit more information i think that is what i would like to have is people thinking that progress is a good thing and it can be and can continue in the bad things can be sorted out in the end but we must keep going and we do have to make some Big Decisions on some x essential threat and we need to get those done soon. I hope we discover the book and uncover the mind of john browne. I really think [inaudible] so, if anyone would like to represent you or [inaudible] i have lots of questions from the audience. So, several people wanted to know if john browne can give us insight to us texans on brexit. [laughter] its a bit easier tonight because i believe we will have an election on the 12th of december and i think thats important because managing the house of commons, the first chamber, the crucible chamber, of the elected representatives in the United Kingdom without having a majority without the government having a majority is proving to be quite impossible. We are, you know, committed under a plebiscite referendum which does not sit well with the way the system is working in the uk with the population voted to leave europe and that must be our move. We will proceed to do that unless the election miraculously produces a party in charge that does not want to do it. It seems everybody well, it seems that the majority want to leave europe and that means we will do that. Personally, i wanted to stay but now theo election its the will of the people to leave. So, more of that later. I would say that i have a record of forecasting in this area which is roughly ten mistakes, no successes. [laughter] why would you like tos study . I am a Firm Believer that a greater collection of people woeates in europe in particular it reduces tension because when we Work Together we trade together and there will be lower tension which i think is important in this area. Provided for two long. Thats. 1,. 2 its a practical matter which trade very heavily with each other. We should probably Stay Together to do that. We also do science and engineering together. We should continue to do that. Having said all that, if youve im confident that the uk will do very well. It has to change what its doing eet they will be inspired to create a future. A lot of these i am complaining because they are similar. So, what leadership is needed to progress. It has to be an acceptance between the leadership level and companies and the leadership level of the relevant political bodies. That action now needs to be taken which is realistic and done in a verydo clear way. Many people around the world in texas say we must get rid of hydrocarbons. I dont believe that is actually possible. Its not possible. I do believe that we will probably be consuming about the same level in 2040 as we are doing today. Its not going to grow much, but we need to get people to say given that, how do we e. Carbonized it and for example, do we collect Carbon Dioxide that results from burning it and take it away in a sequestered anand sequestered itand bury itd reservoirs . Do we convert it into natural gas, into hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide and use the hydrogen to burn, not the hydrocarbon and wellknown Chemical Engineering technique. What else do we do, so i think that is one area. We have all of the basic technology is we need to apply it best in order to apply it in wide scale it needs proper economic incentives or disincentives and thats where the Public Policy comes in so that is what they should be advocating. I think it goes with a grain of younger generations. They have been saying the same thing for a long time anden for today we see more localized evidence of the damage occurri occurring. So i think it is time to do something about this. It would have been easier had we started a long time ago because the problem with w the smaller. We talk about reducing carbon. Where do we see the biggest impact coming from Nuclear Energy or batteries or storage . They are two different things. One is the use of hydrocarbon. There is an enormous amount of energy in 1 ounce and the only other thing that has probably more energyt, is uranium but the is plenty of other problems with Nuclear Power o but many other neighborhoods dont like them enough neighborhood. Some do. So the rate of growth is determined by public acceptance. Everything else is renewable evenergy, wind, biofuels, sugarcane. Its hydrocarbon nuclear, all these things end up with a smaller portion of Global Energy that is expanding an into the display of the population of the world grows or the economy grows, you dont use very much more oil and gas, but uses more of the spring. So we need to continue to develop that. Very different approach to energych provision with some complexity changing the way we transmit the Energy Around the world and around the nation when it cant be made. To make breakthroughs in that area. Can you comment on that one sticks pollution in the ocean is a pressing option . It certainly is. You have to ask where it all comes from and quite a lot ii think it flows down if im not mistaken. You can do something with it and theres no reason why in the United States and europe we shouldnt be doing just that. Transforming it or else burning it for energy and doing something with the Carbon Dioxide so that is all possible. We should also probably use less of it. There are some unusual that we have to rethink whether we should use these things. Lets ban it, not reduce it. Some applications that are truly modern wonders in particular in medicine. I think there are probably remember having injections with glass for certain shows and steel needles which used to be put into an auto glaze and now a days we not unwrapped something which is preloaded. Everything is wrapped up plastics. We need to keep doing this otherwise we will get infections we dont like and will be inconvenienced. A lot of plastics also go to things that are recyclable. Parts of cars and things like that. That is a very different matter. Can you comment on what we have learned . I can cant do it first hand because i work with the ceo of the first time and. Its how every decision needs to be checked because of the drilling for oil is a deeply hazardous process that has been well known in every decision therefore has to be checked and double checked beforesi it is made. Its like checking an airplane before you take off. The pilots go through checklists and im sure they all know that its fine, but they take it very seriously. I think we learned some about that. The orders and the discussion but thats the process point. We learned, too, that a very large disaster can wipe out companies and bp was very close to being severely damaged. Its come back with good leadership but its something people remember vividly. A small set of bad decisions creates a very big disaster. Thank you. Can you comment on Artificial Intelligence and our future of giving Computers Power . To try to summarize this, it is a great thing and its good to see it developed with specific applications. Everything from ophthalmology which has a wealth of applications driving the diagnosis which your suggestions for the purchases are suggested to you on the screen and it continues to get better and better and it continues to look as if it is intrusive so you have to be careful how it is placed again. Its not about ai. Its how we use it and what we think about when we do that for the regulations and engineering prevents it from being abused. I think it is a scam that is an artificial general intelligence which is can you build a human. I think we are a very long way away from this actually happening. You know what the objective is and you can define it. In the case of human intelligence, we dont understand it. We can understand a fruit flys brain is very simple and how it smells and does things like that and the human brain is nowhere close to any other standing. We understand some very basic things that actually emulating it will take a lot of time so i dont get scared of someone coming to see me when i asked ad say you know, i would like everything that you touch turning into gold to actually do it and the world is suffocated by everythingg being gold. I dont think we are going to getto there, ever. Maybe im wrong but i think i might beg gh right. What kind of car do you drive and is economical . It is a very nice car, quite expensive for what it is and they will not penetrate the market. My second car is a very large mercedes and i and joy that very much. And then probably in law expert mercedes but lets see how that goes. Did you see the trend growing with electric vehicles . Yes, but a few things need to be done. They need to be engineered down to the affordable level for this level because there is a limit to what people spend on an automobile. I think weve covered most everything. Can we cover on how the internet is changing most engineering . Tremendously. Its changed everything in the active building and discovery because you can get many more opinions in one placema very quickly. So you can have teams build from faraway places with different views and access to past very quickly. Its changedic everything. Sometimes not well. Its a theres Due Diligence doe on what they learned that you cant certainly learn a lot and collaborate in ways that are inconceivable when i was practicing first as an engineer. Help me thank [applause] for being with us. [applause] enemy of the people which is a phrase i spend a little bit of time in the book about the origins. Its a very ugly phrase that has been used by stalin and used by hitler and during the french revolution. Basically the justification was the people that were targeted by which they were found guilty it uses that phrase enemy of the people. Now on booktv,