In Conversation with Lord Martin Rees on Life Extension, Climate Change and Space
‘They wanted to be rich, now they’re rich they want to be young again – and that’s not so easy.’
Roger Harris via Wikimedia Commons
Lord Martin Rees is the Astronomer Royal and co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk based at the University of Cambridge. His books On The Future: Prospects for Humanity (2018) and If Science is to Save Us (2022) have explored extinction-level threats from climate change to AI, and our best hopes in safeguarding humanity against them. We discussed such topics as posthuman evolution and climate change, including their far-reaching consequences for democracy and politics.
In On the Future, Rees has discussed the potentials of genetic modification and cyborg technologies and how such developments could ‘inaugurate billions of years of posthuman evolution’. I opened by asking him how such technological developments could be shared fairly, especially when controversial neuro-enhancement technologies such as ‘Neuralink’ (a brain-computer interface) are being currently developed by private companies. Rees reminds me of the speculative nature of such technologies, for example, the CRISPR gene editing technique may be fine ‘for plants and single genes that cause diseases, but it’s dangerous and premature to try and edit the human genome in any large-scale way’.
Rees then points towards the Altos Labs (one being based here in Cambridge), dedicated to developing ‘life extension therapies’: the success of these labs, funded considerably by billionaires, is ‘pretty doubtful – though they may understand ageing better. If this could be done but was only accessible to a privileged minority that would be a fundamental inequality we wouldn’t want’. Rees ends wittily at the expense of the billionaire funders behind the project: ‘I’ll be cynical and say that these guys, they wanted to be rich, now they’re rich they want to be young again – and that’s not so easy.’
I give an alternative example of Dominic Cummings’ controversial remarks on the topic of “designer babies”. Cummings discussed how if genes relating to high intelligence could be identified in the future, genetic screening could be made available to all through the NHS to avoid unfair advantage to the wealthy. Is using public, state-funded bodies the fairest way to go in terms of technological developments then? Rees stresses the if: ‘well that will be a very long time before that is feasible to do in a safe way – possibly never.’ Yet, ‘if science is able to produce significant enhancement and changes, if designer babies become conceivable (in both senses of that word), then one would have to worry about minimising those fundamental inequalities in access and in outcome.’ That could be through the NHS, ‘or more fundamentally through cutting down financial inequalities in the country’.
Switching to the topic of climate change, On The Future discusses the prospect of geoengineering and how, worryingly, that could be within the resources of a single nation, perhaps even one single corporation. How do we ensure that such actions on climate change are taken internationally and democratically, to benefit all? Alternatively, is it not a good thing that a single corporation may be able to pull a “quick fix” on climate change through funding geoengineering projects? Rees reminds me that geoengineering is only a ‘Plan B’ in the case that CO2 levels have risen dangerously and not been cut down by other means. Geoengineering is a precarious solution because, as Rees explains, ‘we don’t understand the climate well enough to predict the consequences’. Rees continues that large-scale geoengineering is dangerous ‘until we can understand and model the climate much better’ – and it would be ‘even worse if it’s done by some commercial organisation.’
‘This raises the question of democracy and also international authorities’, Rees resumes: ‘If we look at the problems confronting the world: climate change, population trends, loss of biodiversity, feeding the world, and pandemics… avoiding the downsides of any of those things involves international collaboration. These are not effects that are limited by national boundaries. So generally, without being too specific, one can confidently say that we need more international bodies rather like the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency.’ And we need ones that can strengthen the WHO so that it can ‘monitor dangerous bio-labs and identify new variants of pandemics’. We also crucially need a new international body that can ‘verify compliance with pledges on CO2 reduction’, which could be done through monitoring emissions via satellites. We also need one that can effectively control the ‘massive conglomerates, Facebook and the rest of them, because as we know they escape paying a just amount of tax [and they can only be] enforced into paying their share by some sort of international agreement’. Ultimately, ‘as we become more globalised there’s more need for global regulatory agencies’, the WHO is one, but we need others for ‘different aspects of technology which span the world, certainly beyond any national boundaries.’
Rees sees the difficulty in tackling climate change in its long-term nature. It is hard ‘for politicians to rate it high on their agenda’, even harder ‘to make the public concerned’. The problem, Rees continues, is that ‘most politicians think on electoral cycles’. Long-term threats to humanity, such as climate change, will only get put on the agenda if ‘a wider proportion of the voting public takes these issues seriously, and the way this will happen is if the voices of scientists are amplified by more effective influences’. Rees talks of the ‘quartet’ including Pope Francis, David Attenborough, Bill Gates and Greta Thunberg who have collectively grown awareness around climate issues. Michael Gove for example, though ‘not one of our most enlightened ministers’, would only have ‘bothered introducing legislation to ban non-reusable drinking straws if the issue of ocean pollution by plastics had been raised in the public consciousness by Attenborough’s programme’, Rees argues.
If Science is to Save Us discusses how information technology is successfully democratizing science in our era. Within the context of misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic, I asked Rees if such democratization of scientific information is necessarily a good thing. Rees accepts that such issues are hard when the most ‘strident media is often the least reliable in many cases.’ The important thing is to ‘listen to the experts’, but of course, during the pandemic, they were ‘learning at the same time’ as the wider public. Rees’ message to educators is this: ‘given the world young people are growing into, it is important that education gives them a feeling for what’s credible and what isn’t… a feeling for numbers, so that they are not bamboozled by bogus statistics’.
This Astronomer Royal is one who has talked of being a ‘tech-optimist’ as well as pessimistic in terms of the gap between the way the world is and the way it could be. I ask Martin Rees is there not a middle ground between these two poles – a ‘tech-realist’ perhaps? Rees first asserts that our political system is currently ‘suboptimal, so let’s hope there can be some improvements.’ Next, Rees argues, we need to ensure that ‘scientific effort is channelled towards areas that are clearly going to be benign for the world’, such as ‘health and clean energy’.
At the same time, we need to ensure a safe world: ‘We need to reduce the grounds for legitimate embitterment, which everyone in the poorest half of the world has’. Given how disastrous ‘high-tech conflicts’ can be, then it’s ‘all the more in the interest of the rich world to ensure that the amount of embitterment is minimized.’ That may be a ‘platitudinal thing to say’, admits Rees, ‘but it’s more and more important that we minimize the numbers of grievances’.
Are some of our “tech leaders” concerned about the wrong issues then, in light of phenomena such as the “billionaire space race”? ‘Yes, I think they are’, replies Rees, ‘we shouldn’t have such disparity in wealth so individual people like that have so much influence’. In the context of space, Rees argues that any ‘publicly funded space programme should not involve human space flight.’ Space has led to lots of crucial scientific applications such as SATNAV, Rees continues, and that sort of ‘space activity is funded by a mixture of public and private sector’. But the kind of space which involves humans, Rees only views that now as a ‘spectator sport’. Robots have replaced the ‘practical need for sending people into space, such as exploring the surface of Mars.’ Moreover, robots ‘can do this far more cheaply’. Ultimately, we can deplore the fact that some people have access to so much money, but Rees would rather have ‘Musk et al. spend money on space than yachts or buying a football team’. Rees stresses he is not against such inspirational goals as ‘having thrill-seeking people in space in the long run, accepting higher risks than NASA could impose on publicly-funded civilians’, but ideas like ‘mass migration to Mars to escape the earth’s problems are crazy.’
‘Musk has become a guru on things he doesn’t know much about… but to be fair, I think you’ve got to give the guy some credit, he’s transformed two massive traditional industries – cars and space – so it’s not just talk.’ It is a ‘pity that wealth is so concentrated, but at least some rich people have changed the world in a benign way’. In contrast, those that have ‘made their billions through financial manipulations – hedge funds and the rest of it – they are socially useless and damaging’. We end on this somewhat optimistic note.