This Week in Venture Capital - Kelly Hwang, Associate at GRP

ASTROCLIP: Photograph the Moon with your iPhone 4

Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk

I just did something I've never done before. I spent a week at sea on a research vessel. Now I'm not a scientist, but I was accompanying a remarkable scientific team from the University of South Florida who have been tracking the travels of BP's oil in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the boat we were on, by the way. The scientists I was with were not studying the effect of the oil and dispersants on the big stuff -- the birds, the turtles, the dolphins, the glamorous stuff. They're looking at the really little stuff that gets eaten by the slightly less little stuff that eventually gets eaten by the big stuff. And what they're finding is that even trace amounts of oil and dispersants can be highly toxic to phytoplankton, which is very bad news, because so much life depends on it. So contrary to what we heard a few months back about how 75 percent of that oil sort of magically disappeared and we didn't have to worry about it, this disaster is still unfolding. It's still working its way up the food chain. Now this shouldn't come as a surprise to us. Rachel Carson -- the Godmother of modern environmentalism -- warned us about this very thing back in 1962. She pointed out that the control men -- as she called them -- who carpet-bombed towns and fields with toxic insecticides like DDT, were only trying to kill the little stuff, the insects, not the birds. But they forgot this: the fact that birds dine on grubs, that robins eat lots of worms now saturated with DDT. And so, robin eggs failed to hatch, songbirds died en masse, towns fell silent. Thus the title "Silent Spring." I've been trying to pinpoint what keeps drawing me back to the Gulf of Mexico, because I'm Canadian, and I can draw no ancestral ties. And I think what it is, is I don't think we have fully come to terms with the meaning of this disaster, with what it meant to witness a hole ripped in our world, with what it meant to watch the contents of the Earth gush forth on live TV 24 hours a day for months. After telling ourselves for so long that our tools and technology can control nature, suddenly we were face-to-face with our weakness, with our lack of control, as the oil burst out of every attempt to contain it -- top hats, top kills and, most memorably, the junk shot -- the bright idea of firing old tires and golf balls down that hole in the world. But even more striking than the ferocious power emanating from that well, was the recklessness with which that power was unleashed -- the carelessness, the lack of planning, that characterized the operation from drilling to clean up. If there is one thing BP's watery improve act made clear, it is that, as a culture, we have become far too willing to gamble with things that are precious and irreplaceable -- and to do so without a back-up plan, without an exit strategy. And BP was hardly our first experience of this in recent years. Our leaders barrel into wars, telling themselves happy stories about cakewalks and welcome parades, then it is years of deadly damage control, Frankensteins of sieges and surges and counter-insurgencies, and once again, no exit strategy. Our financial wizards routinely fall victim to similar overconfidence, convincing themselves that the latest bubble is a new kind of market -- the kind that never goes down. And when it inevitably does, the best and the brightest reach for the financial equivalent of the junk shot -- in this case, throwing massive amounts of much-needed public money down a very different kind of hole. As with BP, the hole does get plugged, at least temporarily, but not before exacting a tremendous price. We have to figure out why we keep letting this happen, because we are in the midst of what may be our highest-stakes gamble of all: deciding what to do, or not to do, about climate change. Now as you know, a great deal of time is spent, in this country and around the world, inside the climate debate. On the question of, "What if the IPC scientists are all wrong?" Now a far more relevant question -- as MIT physicist Evelyn Fox Keller puts it -- is, "What if those scientists are right?" Given the stakes, the climate crisis clearly calls for us to act based on the precautionary principle -- the theory that holds that when human health and the environment are significantly at risk and when the potential damage is irreversible, we cannot afford to wait for perfect scientific certainty. Better to err on the side of caution. More overt, the burden of proving that a practice is safe should not be placed on the public that would be harmed, but rather on the industry that stands to profit. But climate policy in the wealthy world -- to the extent that such a thing exists -- is not based on precaution, but rather on cost-benefit analysis -- finding the course of action that economists believe will have the least impact on our GDP. So rather than asking, as precaution would demand, what can we do as quickly as possible to avoid potential catastrophe, we ask bizarre questions like this: "What is the latest possible moment we can wait before we begin seriously lowering emissions? Can we put this off til 2020, 2030, 2050?" Or we ask, "How much hotter can we let the planet get and still survive? Can we go with two degrees, three degrees, or -- where we're currently going -- four degrees Celsius?" And by the way, the assumption that we can safely control the Earth's awesomely complex climate system as if it had a thermostat, making the planet not too hot, not too cold, but just right -- sort of Goldilocks style -- this is pure fantasy, and it's not coming from the climate scientists; it's coming from the economists imposing their mechanistic thinking on the science. The fact is that we simply don't know when the warming that we create will be utterly overwhelmed by feedback loops. So once again, why do we take these crazy risks with the precious? A range of explanations may be popping into your mind by now, like greed. This is a popular explanation, and there's lots of truth to it. Because taking big risks, as we all know, pays a lot of money. Another explanation that you often hear for recklessness is hubris. And greed and hubris are intimately intertwined when it comes to recklessness. For instance, if you happen to be a 35 year-old banker taking home 100 times more than a brain surgeon, then you need a narrative, you need a story that makes that disparity okay. And you actually don't have a lot of options. You're either an incredibly good scammer, and you're getting away with it -- you gamed the system -- or you're some kind of boy genius, the likes of which the world has never seen. Now both of these options -- the boy genius and the scammer -- are going to make you vastly overconfident and therefore more prone to taking even bigger risks in the future. By the way, Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP, had a plaque on his desk inscribed with this inspirational slogan: "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" Now this is actually a popular plaque, and this is a crowd of overachievers, so I'm betting that some of you have this plaque. Don't feel ashamed. Putting fear of failure out of your mind can be a very good thing if you're training for a triathlon or preparing to give a TEDTalk, but personally, I think people with the power to detonate our economy and ravage our ecology would do better having a picture of Icarus hanging from the wall, because -- maybe not that one in particular -- but I want them thinking about the possibility of failure all of the time. So we have greed, we've got overconfidence/hubris, but since we're here at TEDWomen, let's consider one other factor that could be contributing in some small way to societal recklessness. Now I'm not going to belabor this point, but studies do show that, as investors, women are much less prone to taking reckless risks than men, precisely because, as we've already heard, women tend not to suffer from overconfidence in the same way that men do. So it turns out that being paid less and praised less has its upsides -- for society at least. The flip side of this is that constantly being told that you are gifted, chosen and born to rule has distinct societal downsides. And this problem -- call it the perils of privilege -- brings us closer, I think, to the root of our collective recklessness. Because none of us -- at least in the global North -- neither men nor women, are fully exempt from this message. Here's what I'm talking about. Whether we actively believe them or consciously reject them, our culture remains in the grips of certain archetypal stories about our supremacy over others and over nature. The narrative of the newly-discovered frontier and the conquering pioneer, the narrative of manifest destiny, the narrative of apocalypse and salvation. And just when you think these stories are fading into history, and that we've gotten over them, they pop up in the strangest places. For instance, I stumbled across this advertisement outside the women's washroom in the Kansas City airport. It's for Motorola's new Rugged cellphone, and yes, it really does say, "Slap mother nature in the face." And I'm not just showing it to pick on Motorola -- that's just a bonus. I'm showing it because -- they're not a sponsor, are they? -- because, in its own way, this is a crass version of our founding story. We slapped mother nature around and won. And we always win, because dominating nature is our destiny. But this is not the only fairytale we tell ourselves about nature. There's another one, equally important, about how that very same mother nature is so nurturing and so resilient that we can never make a dent in her abundance. Let's hear from Tony Hayward again. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant that we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." In other words, the ocean is big; she can take it. It is this underlying assumption of limitlessness that makes it possible to take the reckless risks that we do. Because this is our real master-narrative: However much we mess up, there will always be more -- more water, more land, more untapped resources. A new bubble will replace the old one. A new technology will come along to fix the messes we made with the last one. In a way, that is the story of the settling of the Americas, the supposedly inexhaustible frontier to which Europeans escaped. And it's also the story of modern capitalism. Because it was the wealth from this land that gave birth to our economic system, one that cannot survive without perpetual growth and an unending supply of new frontiers. Now the problem is that the story was always a lie. The Earth always did have limits, they were just beyond our sights. And now we are hitting those limits on multiple fronts. I believe that we know this, yet we find ourselves trapped in a kind of narrative loop. Not only do we continue to tell and retell the same tired stories, but we are now doing so with a frenzy and a fury that, frankly, verges on camp. How else to explain the cultural space occupied by Sarah Palin. Now on the one hand, exhorting us to "drill baby drill," because God put those resources into the ground in order for us to exploit them, and on the other, glorying in the wilderness of Alaska's untouched beauty on her hit reality TV show. The twin message is as comforting as it is mad. Ignore those creeping fears that we have finally hit the wall. There are still no limits. There will always be another frontier. So stop worrying and keep shopping. Now, would that this were just about Sarah Palin and her reality TV show. In environmental circles, we often here that, rather than shifting to renewables, we are continuing with business as usual. This assessment, unfortunately, is far too optimistic. The truth is that we have already exhausted so much of the easily-accessible fossil fuels that we have already entered a far riskier business era, the era of extreme energy. So that means drilling for oil in the deepest water, including the icy Arctic seas where a clean up may simply be impossible. It means large-scale hydraulic fracking for gas and massive strip mining operations for coal, the likes of which we haven't yet seen. And most controversially, it means the tar sands. I'm always surprised by how little people outside of Canada know about the Alberta tar sands, which this year are projected to become the number one source of imported oil to the United States. It's worth taking a moment to understand this practice, because I believe it speaks to recklessness and the path we're on like little else. So this is where the tar sands live, under one of the last magnificent Boreal forests. The oil is not liquid; you can't just drill a hole and pump it out. Tar sand's oil is solid, mixed in with the soil. So to get at it, you first have to get rid of the trees. Then you rip off the topsoil and get at that oily sand. The process requires a huge amount of water, which is then pumped into massive toxic tailing ponds. That's very bad news for local indigenous people living downstream who are reporting alarmingly high cancer rates. Now looking at these images, it's difficult to grasp the scale of this operation, which can already be seen from space and could grow to an area the size of England. I find it helps actually to look at the dump trucks that move the earth, the largest ever built. That's a person down there by the wheel. My point is that this is not oil drilling, it's not even mining. It is terrestrial skinning. Vast, vivid landscapes are being gutted, left monochromatic gray. Now I should confess that as I'm concerned this would be an abomination if it emitted not one particle of carbon. But the truth is that on average turning that gunk into crude oil produces about three times more greenhouse gas pollution than it does to produce conventional oil in Canada. How else to describe this, but as a form of mass insanity? Just when we know we need to be learning to live on the surface of our planet, off the power of sun, wind and waves, we are frantically digging to get at the dirtiest, highest-emitting stuff imaginable. This is where our story of endless growth has taken us, to this blackhole at the center of my country -- a place of such planetary pain that, like the BP gusher, one can only stand to look at it for so long. As Jared Diamond and others have shown us, this is how civilizations commit suicide, by slamming their foot on the accelerator at the exact moment when they should be putting on the brakes. The problem is that our master-narrative has an answer for that too. At the very last minute, we are going to get saved just like in every Hollywood movie, just like in the Rapture. But of course our secular religion is technology. Now you may have noticed more and more headlines like these. The idea behind this form of geoengineering as it's called is that, as the planet heats up, we may be able to shoot sulfates and aluminum particles into the stratosphere to reflect some of the sun's rays back to space, thereby cooling the planet. The wackiest plan -- and I'm not making this up -- would put what is essentially a garden hose 18 and a half miles high into the sky, suspended by balloons, to spew sulfur dioxide. So, solving the problem of pollution with more pollution. Think of it as the ultimate junk shot. The serious scientists involved in this research all stress that these techniques are entirely untested. They don't know if they'll work, and they have no idea what kind of terrifying side-effects they could unleash. Nevertheless, the mere mention of geoengineering is being greeted in some circles -- particularly media circles -- with a relief tinged with euphoria. An escape hatch has been reached. A new frontier has been found. Most importantly, we don't have to change our lifestyles after all. You see for some people, their savior is a guy in a flowing robe. For other people, it's a guy with a garden hose. We badly need some new stories. We need stories that have different kinds of heroes willing to take different kinds of risks -- risks that confront recklessness head on, that put the precautionary principle into practice, even if that means through direct action -- like hundreds of young people will to get arrested blocking dirty power plants or fighting mountaintop removal coal mining. We need stories that replace that linear narrative of endless growth with circular narratives that remind us that what goes around comes around, that this is our only home; there is no escape hatch. Call it karma, call it physics, action and reaction, call it precaution: the principle that reminds us that life is too precious to be risked for any profit. Thank you. (Applause)


我剛完成一件從未做過的事 我乘上一艄調查船，在海上待了一個星期 我並非科學家 但有一個優秀的科學家團隊與我同行 團隊成員來自南弗羅里達大學 他們正在追踪BP原油 在墨西哥灣的流向 這就是我們所乘坐的那艘船 與我同行的科學團隊 並非研究原油及散油劑對大型生物的影響 像是對鳥類、烏龜、 海豚、其它美麗生物的影響 而是研究原油對微生物的影響 較小的生物會吃掉微型生物 小型生物最終會被大型生物吃掉 他們的研究顯示 極微量的原油或散油劑 對浮游植物來說都是劇毒 這是個很糟的消息 因為很多生物都以浮游植物為生 所以不同於我們數月前聽到的- 也就是75%的原油 神奇似的消失了 我們用不著再擔心- 事實上，災難還在持續擴散 災難正沿著食物鏈向上延伸 我們不該以此感到訝異 瑞秋．卡森 現代環保之母 很早就警告過我們 早在1962年之時 卡森指出她稱為 環境控制者的人 污染了城鎮及田野的各個角落 他們噴灑DDT之類的毒性殺蟲劑 是為了除掉昆蟲之類的小型生物 本非為了除掉鳥類 但他們忘了： 鳥類以幼蟲為食 知更鳥所吃下的蚯蚓 體內都累積了大量DDT 結果導致知更鳥的蛋無法孵化 歌聲悠揚的鳥兒大量死亡 城鎮因而變得安靜 因此卡森寫書名為《寂靜的春天》 我一直試圖解釋 是什麼不斷吸引我回到墨西哥灣 我是加拿大人 祖先並非來自墨西哥灣 我想自己不斷回來 是因為我認為大家尚未真正理解 這場災難的影響 親見大地被撕裂 究竟代表什麼 看見原油從地底衝出 在電視上被實況轉播 每天24小時 數月如此，究竟代表什麼 長久以來，我們告訴自己 工具及科技可以控制大自然 突然之間，我們必須面對 自己的軟弱 我們束手無策 看著原油由地底衝出 就算用盡方法也無法阻止油漏- 試圖「蓋頂」、「封頂」 以及最讓人難忘的，投擲「垃圾彈」-- 這個天才法子 要發射廢棄輪胎及高爾夫球 堵住地底的漏洞 但比起那股由地底上衝的力量 更加駭人的是 人們的魯莽、輕率 輕率所帶來的 是粗心大意、缺乏計劃 計劃整個草率進行 從鑽油到清理油污都是如此 如果我們從 BP 缺乏實質的改進計劃學到些什麼 那就是，在現今的文化下 我們總是肆無忌憚地下注 賭的是我們最寶貴的資產 無法替代的資產 但我們並沒有後備計劃 也沒有退出策略 此外，BP事件 也並非近年來的首見 我們的領袖一頭鑽進戰爭 卻用美好的故事自我催眠 想像著閱兵儀式及迎軍遊行 但接下來卻是數年的災害控制 無數城鎮被封鎖，各地興起反叛勢力 只得再次鎮壓反叛勢力 同樣，我們沒有退出的策略 而聰明的金融界人士，一再地 因過度自信而失腳 他們一再說服自己，這次的泡沫 代表一種新型市場 而這新的市場絕不會垮 直到泡沫化真的發生 那些最優秀、最聰明的人 求助於金融界的「垃圾彈」-- 意即，要將大眾急需的公款 大量投擲到 一個很不一樣的漏洞 與 BP 一樣，洞是被封住了 至少暫時封住了 但至此 已付出巨額代價 我們必須想想清楚 為何讓同樣的事一再發生 因為現今所處的時期 要求我們拿出或許是最高額的賭注： 決定要對氣候變遷 做什麼，或不做什麼 如你所知 美國以及世界各國 已花了許多時間 討論氣候議題 也不斷在問，如果政府間氣候變遷小組的科學家 都錯了呢？ 再說一個更為要緊的問題-- 就是 MIT 物理學家 Evelyn Fox Keller 所問的 -- 若是氣候變遷科學家都說對了呢？ 由於影響深遠，針對氣候問題 我們必須立即採取行動 行動應本於預防為主的原則上 預防原則說 當人類健康及環境 受到極大威脅 且潛在的傷害將無法逆轉時 我們就不能等待-- 期待見到科學確據才行動 寧可謹慎也不要後悔 再來，談到舉證責任 一項行動是否安全 不該由可能受行動傷害的公眾來證明 而應該由可能從中獲利的產業來證明 但富裕世界的氣候政策 -- 如果這政策真的存在的話 -- 並不是基於預防原則 而是基於成本效益分析 -- 所尋找的行動方案，是經濟學家認為 對國家生產總額 影響最小的方案 因此不像預防原則所問的 我們可以儘快採取那些行動 以預防可能的災難 我們反而問奇怪的問題，像是： 現狀最久可以維持到什麼時候 然後才需要認真的降低排放量？ 可以維持到2020 2030, 2050? 或著我們會問： 地球溫度還可上升幾度 而人類可同時存活？ 可再加上2度、3度，或是-- 現在是說-- 可再上升4度？ 順便一提 我們假設自己可以安全地控制 地球絕妙複雜的氣候系統 好似地球有個恆溫器 可將它調整到不太熱、不太冷 剛剛好的溫度、恰好適合居住的溫度 這純粹是幻想 這種想法並非出自氣候科學家 而是來自於經濟學家 經濟學家將機械性的思考 運用於科學上 事實是我們根本不知道 我們所造成的暖化 何時會因為循環作用 使得地球無法負荷 所以我再問 為何我們拿最寶貴的東西 下這場賭注呢？ 一連串的解釋 可能正從你腦海中冒出 像是貪婪 許多人都如此解釋，而當中也不乏道理 因為我們都知道，承擔極大風險 會帶來極大的利益 大家常為輕率所做的另一個解釋 是傲慢 貪婪以及傲慢 兩者時常如影隨形 特別是在談到輕率之時 例如，如果你恰巧是一位35歲的銀行家 所賺取的收入 是腦外科醫師的100倍之多 那你就需要使用敘事技巧 並需要一個故事 讓收入差距合理化 而事實上，你沒有太多選擇 你要不是技術高超的騙子 厲害到可以瞞天過海、掌握全局 要不就最好是個天才小子 且是全世界都沒見過的那種 而這兩種呢--天才或騙子-- 都會讓你變得過分自信 也因此更有可能 在未來冒更大的風險 順帶一提，BP 的前總裁東尼．海沃德 在他桌上有一銘牌 上面刻了這段引人發省的標語： 「如果你知道自己不會失敗， 那你會嘗試做什麼事？」 這銘牌倒是挺流行的 喜歡的人各個野心勃勃 我猜你們當中也有人有這銘牌 別感到羞愧 將害怕失敗的心情拋諸腦後 可以是一件好事 像是當你在接受鐵人三項之時 或當你在準備 TEDTalk 之時 但我個人認為，這些人擁有強大權利 可以對經濟及生態造成破壞 他們的牆上若有伊卡魯斯的畫像 或許會成就更好的事 因為--未必一定要掛伊卡魯斯的畫像-- 但我要他們想想失敗的可能性 無論何時都想到那可能性 所以我們都同意 我們都變得過分自信/傲慢 但既然我們來參與 TEDWomen 可以一同想想有什麼做法 或許可以貢獻一點微小力量 來抗衡社會的輕率魯莽 接下來這點，我不會說明過多 不過據研究顯示，同為投資人 女性比起男性 較少輕率地冒風險 這是因為，就如我們所知的 女性不會像男性那樣 過度地自我膨脹 所以我們發現 獲得較少的薪資及讚美 其實是有好處的-- 至少對社會而言是如此 反之 不斷聽到他人對你說 你有天賦，是萬中選一的人才 生來就要統御他人 這種說法對社會有害 且會產生問題--稱其為特權的危害-- 但我認為，也會讓我們了解 眾人行為輕率的根本原因 因為我們當中所有人--至少在北半球-- 不管男女 多少都受自我吹捧的言辭影響 我所要談的就是這個 不管我們是相信自我吹捧的言辭 或有意識的拒絕 我們的文化依舊相信 一些典型的故事 當中講述我們如何優秀 比他人或大自然還要優秀 故事講述一個新天新地 由拓荒者所征服 這是一個關於天命的故事 關於末日與救贖的故事 當你以為故事已淡入歷史 已被人遺忘時 故事又在意想不到的地方跳出 例如，我有次看到這則廣告 廣告在堪薩斯市機場 女性洗手間的外面 廣告在主打摩托羅拉Rugged系列新款手機 而沒錯，廣告上寫著 甩大地之母一巴掌 我提出來不是要挑摩托羅拉的錯 不過是順帶指出錯誤 我提出廣告是因為-- 他們不是這場演講的贊助商吧？ 是因為，某方面來說 這則廣告是我們故事 的簡易版本 我們甩了大地之母一巴掌然後贏了 我們總是勝利 因為征服大自然是我們的命運 但關於大自然的神話，我們說的還不僅於此 還有另一個，也不可忽視 我們說同樣那位大地之母 慷慨養育眾生，又能迅速復原 我們不可能減損其豐盛富足 我們再聽聽BP老闆東尼．海沃德說的話 「墨西哥灣的幅員廣闊 原油以及我們所注入的散油劑 相對整體水量，顯得微不足道」 換句話說，海洋很大 她承受得住 有這種短視近利的假設 才會使得我們 輕率地去冒風險 真正主宰我們的故事，如此敘述： 不過我們怎麼亂搞 總是有更多資源等著 有更多水、更多土地 更多為開發的資源 新的泡沫會取代舊的 新的科技會出現 整頓我們使用舊科技所造成的混亂 從某方面來說，這故事 就是創建美洲大陸的故事 美洲應該是不會衰敗的新天地 歐洲人因此逃來此地 這故事也是現代資本主義的故事 因為從大地而出的財富 造就了我們的經濟系統 此系統若不持續成長 若沒有新天地的無限供應 便無法存續 但問題是 這故事從來都是個謊言 地球一直以來都有其限制 只是我們看不到而已 但現在我們已來到臨界點 在許多方面皆如此 我想大家都明白目前的處境 卻發現自己困在某種敘事的輪迴當中 我們不僅不停複述 同樣的故事 我們還狂熱地 將其付諸實踐 甚至將其誇張化 否則我們該怎麼解釋莎拉．裴林 佔領文化界的情形 一方面，她唆使大家 鑽油吧寶貝，鑽！ 因為上帝將資源藏至地底 就是要讓我們去榨取 另一方面，在她受歡迎的真人秀上 斐林大讚阿拉斯加人跡罕至 的野性之美 矛盾的訊息既瘋狂又慰撫人心 叫我們忽略潛伏的恐懼 忘記我們已走到盡頭 告訴自己沒有極限 永遠有新的天地 所以不要擔憂，繼續購物 如果這只是莎拉．斐林 及她的真人秀就好了 在環保的圈子當中 多數時候，我們非但沒有永續方案 反而持續舊有方法 不幸的是，就算如此 也過於樂觀 事實是我們已經用盡 容易取得的石化燃料 我們已經開始 更危險的交易 進入極端能源的時代 這表示我們往最深的水域鑽油 包括在冰冷的極地海域鑽油 要在那裡清理油污，幾乎是不可能的 為了天然氣，採用大規模水力破裂法 為了煤碳，開始大規模露天開採 規模之大，前所未見 爭議更多的，是開採焦油砂 加拿大之外的人 對艾伯塔省的焦油砂，所知甚少 我對此感到訝異 從焦油砂提煉出的油 預計在今年，成為美國 進口石油的主要來源 我們該花點時間，了解開採過程 因為我認為，沒有比過程本身 更能看出我們的輕率 以及我們所選擇的道路 這就是焦油砂的所在地 位在世界最後一片 美麗的北方森林之下 重油並非液態 無法透過鑽洞、抽油的方式 焦油砂的油是固態的 當中混著泥砂 要獲得焦油砂 首先得砍掉所有的樹 接著挖開表土 然後才開採油膩的砂石 開採過程要用到大量的水 之後將水排到大型、有毒的礦渣池 對住在當地下游的原住民來說 這是件壞事 他們得癌的機率十分驚人 現在看看這些影像 其作業規模超乎想像 從外太空都看得到 範圍可能達到英國那樣的大小 我發現，看那用來搬運砂石的卡車 有助於了解其規模 這是有史以來最大的卡車 輪子下邊是一個人 我要說的是 這不是在鑽油 甚至不是在採礦 這是在破壞地表 幅員廣闊的地貌 被掏空 剩下單調的灰色 我承認自己很擔心 就算這過程不會造成碳排放 開採還是會令人厭惡 而事實是，平均而言 由焦油砂提煉重油 在加拿大 會比傳統的產油方式 排放三倍的溫室氣體 該怎麼說呢？ 只能說是集體瘋狂 就在我們剛了解到 必須依賴地表資源 依賴陽光、風力、潮汐而活時 我們卻瘋狂地挖掘，要獲得 我們想到最髒、 污染度最高的東西 這就是無盡的成長 所帶我們來到的地方 一個位在家鄉中心的黑洞 一個行星的傷痛 就像BP的漏油 讓人不忍卒睹 如作家賈德．戴蒙及其他人告訴我們的 文明就是如此走向毀滅 就在我們該踩剎車之時 我們卻在那一刻 大力踩下油門 問題是我們的故事主線 卻也為此行為圓場： 我們會在最後一刻被救起 就像在所有好萊塢電影裡 或像在末日被提升天一樣 當然，我們俗世的信仰是科技 你可能已經發現 有越來越多頭條像這些 地球工程這個名稱背後的想法是 當地球溫度升高時 我們也許能將硫化物及鋁分子 注入到平流層 可以將部分陽光 反射回外太空 讓地球降溫 最瘋狂的計劃 --而這不是我編的-- 是將18.5英里長的水管 利用氣球支撐 伸入高空 噴灑二氧化硫 製造更多污染，以解決污染問題 可以把它視作終極的「垃圾彈」 真正參與研究的科學家 都強調這項技術 未經證實 他們不知道是否真正有效 他們也不知道 會帶出什麼可怕的副作用 儘管如此，光是提出地球工程 就被一些圈子 特別是媒體圈 以欣喜之心接受 好似找到了逃生出口 找到了新天新地 更重要的是 我們不用改變生活形態 你得知道，對某些人來說 他們的救主穿著一件袍子 對其他人而言，是個拿著水管的傢伙 我們亟需新的故事 我們需要有不同英雄 這些英雄要能承擔不同風險-- 能夠對付輕率的風險 確實採取預防措施 就算要採取直接行動，也會去行 就像有上百位年輕人被逮捕 因為他們圍堵高污染的發電廠 或阻止在山頂開採煤礦 我們需要新的故事 取代無盡成長的線性敘事 開始循環的敘事方式 提醒我們 因果循環不斷 這是我們唯一的家 沒有逃生出口 稱之為因緣也好，物理也好 作用力與反作用力，或稱為謹慎預防 這些原則提醒我們 生命太寶貴 不值得為利益去冒風險 謝謝 （掌聲）

Quantitative analysis startup Quid

“Quid is from the Latin ‘quid,’ what.” What?


Sean Gourley, trained as a physicist, has turned his scientific mind to analyzing data about a messier topic: modern war and conflict. Full bio and more links

ABOUT THIS TALK

By analyzing raw data on violent incidents in the Iraq war and others, Sean Gourley and his team claim to have found a surprisingly strong mathematical relationship linking the fatality and frequency of attacks.



We look around the media, as we see on the news from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and the conflict seems incomprehensible to us. And that's certainly how it seemed to me when I started this project. But as a physicist, I thought, well if you give me some data, I could maybe understand this. You know, give us a go.

So as a naive New Zealander I thought, well I'll go to the Pentagon. Can you get me some information? (Laughter) No. So I had to think a little harder. And I was watching the news one night in Oxford. And I looked down at the chattering heads on my channel of choice. And I saw that there was information there. There was data within the streams of news that we consume. All this noise around us actually has information. So what I started thinking was, perhaps there is something like open source intelligence here. If we can get enough of these streams of information together we can perhaps start to understand the war.

So this is exactly what I did. We started bringing a team together, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, of economists, mathematicians. We brought these guys together and we started to try and solve this. We did it in three steps. The first step we did was to collect. We did 130 different sources of information -- from NGO reports to newspapers and cable news. We brought this raw data in and we filtered it. We extracted the key bits on information to build the database. That database contained the timing of attacks, the location, the size and the weapons used. It's all in the streams of information we consume daily, we just have to know how to pull it out. And once we had this we could start doing some cool stuff. What if we were to look at the distribution of the sizes of attacks? What would that tell us?

So we started doing this. And you can see here on the horizontal axis you've got the number of people killed in an attack or the size of the attack. And on the vertical axis you've got the number of attacks. So we plot data for sample on this. You see some sort of random distribution -- perhaps 67 attacks, one person was killed, or 47 attacks where seven people were killed. We did this exact same thing for Iraq. And we didn't know, for Iraq what we were going to find. It turns out what we found was pretty surprising. You take all of the conflict, all of the chaos, all of the noise, and out of that comes this precise mathematical distribution of the way attacks are ordered in this conflict. This blew our mind. Why should a conflict like Iraq have this as its fundamental signature? Why should there be order in war? We didn't really understand that. We thought maybe there is something special about Iraq. So we looked at a few more conflicts. We looked at Colombia, we looked at Afghanistan, and we looked at Senegal.

And the same pattern emerged in each conflict. This wasn't supposed to happen. These are different wars, with different religious factions, different political factions, and different socioeconomic problems. And yet the fundamental patterns underlying them are the same. So we went a little wider. We looked around the world at all the data we could get our hands on. From Peru to Indonesia, we studied this same pattern again. And we found that not only were the distributions these straight lines, but the slope of these lines, they clustered around this value of Alpha equals 2.5. And we could generate an equation that could predict the likelihood of an attack. What we're saying here is the probability of an attack killing X number of people in a country like Iraq, is equal to a constant, times the size of that attack, raised to the power of negative Alpha. And negative Alpha is the slope of that line I showed you before.

So what? This is data, statistics. What does it tell us about these conflicts? That was a challenge we had to face as physicists. How do we explain this? And what we really found was that Alpha if we really think about it, is the organizational structure of the insurgency. Alpha is the distribution of the sizes of attacks, which is really the distribution of the group strength carrying out the attacks. So we look at a process of group dynamics -- coalescence and fragmentation. Groups coming together. Groups breaking apart. And we start running the numbers on this. Can we simulate it? Can we create the kind of patterns that we're seeing in places like Iraq? Turns out we kind of do a reasonable job. We can run these simulations. We can recreate this using a process of group dynamics to explain the patterns that we see all around the conflicts around the world.

So what's going on? Why should these different -- seemingly different conflicts have the same patterns? Now what I believe is going on is that the insurgent forces, they evolve over time. They adapt. And it turns out there is only one solution to fight a much stronger enemy. And if you don't find that solution as an insurgent force, you don't exist. So every insurgent force that is ongoing, every conflict that is ongoing, it's going to look something like this. And that is what we think is happening.

Taking it forward, how do we change it? How do we end a war like Iraq? What does it look like? Alpha is the structure. It's got a stable state at 2.5. This is what wars look like when they continue. We've got to change that. We can push it up. The forces become more fragmented. There is more of them, but they are weaker. Or we push it down. They're more robust. There is less groups. But perhaps you can sit and talk to them.

So this graph here, I'm going to show you now. No one has seen this before. This is literally stuff that we've come through last week. And we see the evolution of Alpha through time. We see it start. And we see it grow up to the stable state the wars around the world look like. And it stays there through the invasion of Falusia until the Samarra bombings in the Iraqi elections of '06. And the system gets perturbed. It moves upwards to a fragmented state. This is when the surge happens. And depending on who you ask, the surge was supposed to push it up even further. The opposite happened. The groups became stronger. They became more robust. And so I'm thinking, right, great, it's going to keep going down. We can talk to them. We can get a solution. The opposite happened. It's moved up again. The groups are more fragmented. And this tells me one of two things. Either we're back where we started, and the surge has had no effect. Or finally the groups have been fragmented to the extent that we can start to think about maybe moving out. I don't know what the answer is to that. But I know that we should be looking at the structure of the insurgency to answer that question. Thank you. (Applause)