Climate, food and science

The third morning began even earlier with a breakfast meeting organized by Nestle to discuss the mounting food crisis and what to do about it. Talks by the CEO, the head of he FAO, and a few more. Most of what was said was fairly familiar and obvious. But one speaker, Dr. Robert Berendes (who happened to be sitting with me at last night’s dinner) and is the CEO of Syngenta a Danish agribusiness gave the most interesting talk on the technological potential to improve the productivity in the growth of wheat, rice, corn, soy, etc. His analysis was very specific and fairly optimistic. He saw no big leaps but a fairly steady if small increase in annual productivity that over the long run will make a very large difference.

The next session was on the future of science chaired by the editor of SEED, Adam Bly. The first talk was by another friend Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and head of the Royal Society in Britain, talked about how much they were refocusing on using science to make a difference in a number of areas of human need, e.g. health, environment and poverty. Shirley Jackson the President of RPI observed the importance of the new science team of Obama, after nearly a decade of ideological bureaucrats in many science policy posts. Brian Cox, of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (also spoke with me at TED last year) gave a terrific presentation. Too much funding can be bad as it leads to conservatism and does not enable the kind of serendipity that is often the source of scientific advances. He also said that in five years we will finally know what mass is and it is only 20 years to practical fusion. John Gearhart the Director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Penn was also glad for a new administration because he had had to testify before congress 160 times in the last eight years because of their work with stem cells. Tom Insell the Head of NIMH observed that it was only in the last eighteen months that we had discovered that over 80% of our DNA is not human. It is in the vast population of microorganisms that inhabit the human body and live in harmony with it. This opened up huge new questions and new possibilities.
After a few conversations I will return to later, I went to a significant presentation in the main hall on a new initiative on global governance. It was organized by the Forum and led by the foreign ministers of Switzerland and Qatar and the Environment Minister of Singapore, Jakob Ibrahim (whom I met with later in the day). They are setting in motion a task force to help build the next generation of global institutions. It has the possibility of being quite important.

This was followed by a big panel chaired by Tom Friedman, on the coming climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. It began with the PM of Denmark, Anders Rasmussen who laid out very specific things the negotiations needed to accomplish, set long term targets like an 80% cut in CO2 by 2050, intermediate targets, with developing countries having lower targets like 20%, the financial mechanisms needed to finance the transition to a low carbon society, He also suggested that we use the summits like the G8 as laying ground along the way. Al Gore was great. He focused on the huge change in the administration, linking the climate and economic crises by talking about subprime carbon investments. And we might be seeing a double collapse, economic and ecological. Al said that what was needed from Copenhagen was a clear vision. Jeroen Van Der Veer, the CEO of Shell, also a friend, told the full hall that a shared vision had come together for the nearly ninety key companies of Europe and they were already working on collaboration with the Climate Action Partnership here in the US. In developing countries the focus ought to be on key sectors rather than a broad strategy. And the UN Rep, Yvo De Boer, argued that the keys were creating a financing mechanism to enable the rich to finance the poor.

In the afternoon had a deep conversation with Tom Friedman. I don’t want to scoop his column so I won’t say much about that. The Steve Roach of Morgan Stanley who said that Japan was falling fast and that he agreed with Martin Wolf that we are in uncharted waters. This was followed by a discussion with Jakob Ibrahim on the current climate change debate in Singapore. He said that they were moving in a number of areas and that our major study had made a big difference. Floyd Norris economic columnist for the NYT on his approach to his column and Hamish Macrae who writes one for the Independent and I also discussed the options in this crisis. The afternoon ended with a conversation with Mike Porter.

The evening was mainly around two receptions, Accel Partners and Google. Accel has the best wine and you can actually talk in the lovely setting of an elegant modern art museum. The wine is actually spectacularly good…the sommeliers were from the French Laundry. Just across the street in the grand old hotel was the Google event. It is the party with cache. If you weren’t on the list you could not get in. And the mob trying to get in was intense and inside even more so. More time with HRH Haaken, the Crown Prince of Norway who is working on education to teach children about human dignity. Dan Yergin…more on the economic crisis and Nelson Schwartz NYT writer who is looking at an apt in the same building where Cathleen and I lived in Paris. Arianna Huffington who was there with two other very outrageous and powerful looking women…we came in together. Talked with her, but never met her mates. And Jimmy Wales and his views on how Wikipedia and the Smithsonian could interact. The Google and the Accel Parties were only slightly less lavish than last year.

Well 1:30 again, but tomorrow is not so ferociously early