Lord Rees on the world in 2050

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Lord Rees on the world in 2050

22 Feb 2009

Speakers: Ian Goldin

Lord Martin Rees shares his thoughts on the future and the perils facing the earth in the 'Anthropocene' epoch. He begins by sounding a cautionary note about the dangers of predicting the future - as exemplified by Lord Birkenhead's 1930 book The World in 2030 AD, but goes on to discuss the main social and political problems awaiting the human race in the next four decades. These problems, whilst mostly of human creation, have significant ramifications for the rest of the natural world.

High on Lord Rees' list of priorities is combatting climate change, a challenge that brings other problems in its wake. He discusses emission reduction targets, the need for research and development into green technologies (namely carbon capture and storage technologies and nuclear reactors), the possibility of a pan-European DC power grid linked to solar energy production in the Sahara desert, and the respective and overlapping roles that developing and developed countries will play in averting global disaster. The problems of climate change are likely to be exacerbated by population growth - the world's population is likely to have increased by over two billion people by 2050, and most of this increase will be in the developing world.

Another main concern is the advance of science, and the fear that scientific progress will eventual breach dangerous, or ethical, boundaries. As technologies such as bioscience advance, and as more and more people are integrated into the global village, the possibility of science being used against the world's population by a dangerous minority or individual becomes more of a worry.

Lord Rees finishes his talk by looking beyond the earth, discussing the possibility of the existence of life elsewhere in the universe - the discovery of which, he believes, will alter the way we see humankind's place in nature.

This video was kindly provided by The 21st Century School