OUR FINAL CENTURY

In this book by the Astronomer Royal and recently appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Martin Rees, FRS, the question mark appears in the subtitle: will the human race survive the 21st century? The subtitle inside the book sounds rather more dire: 'A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future in This Century - on Earth and Beyond.' In his preface, Sir Martin observes that his book arises from the speed of scientific advance and the fact that it has a downside in terms not only of unintended consequences but also from wilful misuse of new technologies. In other words, without an evolution of consciousness and concomitant ethical progress, more potent technologies will fall into the hands of those intent on using them for power or profit. This is hardly a reassuring prospect. Moreover, as the author also points out at the beginning, human-induced pressures on the global environment will engender higher risks of disaster.

In his prologue, Sir Martin reckons that the odds on our present civilisation surviving to the end of the century are no better than fifty-fifty. The rest of the book justifies this assertion. The new century may well seek to alter human beings themselves, not simply the environment in which we live. Both bio- and nano-technologies are proceeding in this direction, although currently reined in by ethical considerations in spite of commercial pressures. The issue here is whether all nations adopt low-risk and sustainable policies, but, as Sir Martin observes, 'this would require an infeasible brake on new discoveries and inventions.' He does spend a chapter discussing this question, but concludes that ethical constraints are difficult to agree and even harder to implement. So his realistic forecast is that we will be exposed to new and more threatening challenges in the current century. He even goes as far as placing a bet of $1,000 that 'by the year 2020 and instance of bioerror or bioterror will have killed a million people'.

We have, however, so far survived the nuclear threat, partly because of the activities of concerned scientists like Sir Joseph Rotblat and Sir Martin himself, who is involved in Scientists for Global Responsibility. Future threats may arise from terror or error, for instance with the use of biological weapons. These are especially insidious since they cannot be detected until it is too late (for instance smallpox, engineered viruses or even nanotechnology 'biovorous replicators'). This kind of scenario can be used to justify an even greater degree of surveillance than is currently in operation. Here technology downsides have already begun to infringe human rights with security measures justified following 9/11. All this serves only to engender and perpetuate a climate of self-fulfilling insecurity rooted in fear. Sir Martin asks: 'Must we, to survive, be cowed by a police state, deprived of all privacy, or tranquillised into passivity?' Now is the time to be debating these issues.

Turning to natural hazards, Sir Martin considers 'threats without enemies' - the possibility of a devastating asteroid impact and supereruptions. He then moves on to human threats to the Earth in terms of population expansion, pollution, loss of biodiversity, global warming and slowing of the Gulf Stream, with which most readers will be familiar. Towards the end of the book Sir Martin widens his lens and almost gets carried away with visions of possible self-sustaining communities away from the earth. However, he returns to his central theme that humanity will be more at risk in this century from the misapplication of science and environmental pressures. Surely a key question here is whether any change in human values and priorities is possible, as indicated above and in my review of Pitirim Sorokin's The Ways and Power of Love elsewhere in this issue. If ethical restraint is unlikely to be effective, then we need a more fundamental approach and a new set of principles beyond what Sorokin calls 'carnivorous competition'. This may require substantial investment in what Ken Wilber calls the Human Consciousness Project and research on how to bring out the best in human beings, both individually and collectively. It is an unprecedented challenge as we are brought face to face with ourselves. As Woody Allen said, 'I have met the enemy and it is us'.