WEBVTT - Lord Browne Discusses the Equilibrium of Engineering 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:06.840 This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:10.440 This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest. 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.200 His name is John Brown, perhaps better known as Lord 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.079 Brown or Sir John Brown. He is the former CEO 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:21.599 of BP and the author of numerous fascinating books. He 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:27.880 is incredibly forthright and straightforward. Without any hesitation, he discusses 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:32.760 all sorts of really fascinating things, from engineering to his 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:38.120 personal life, to BP and the impact of hydrocarbon's on 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:41.600 the environment. If you're interested in what it's like to 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.840 run a company, what it's like to lead a double life, 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:50.040 what it's like to be at the vanguard of engineering, 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:52.920 then you're going to find this to be an absolutely 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:58.120 fascinating conversation. So, with no further ado, my interview of 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:03.520 Sir John Brown. This is Masters in Business with Barry 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:08.039 Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is the 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:13.080 Right Honorable Lord Brown of Mattingly, better known as John Brown. 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:18.200 He was the CEO of British Petroleum from to two 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.600 thousand and seven. He is also the former president of 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.399 the Royal Academy of Engineering. Since two thousand and one, 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:27.680 he has been a member of The House of Lords. 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:35.640 He is the author of five books, most recently Make Think, Imagine, Engineering, 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:40.800 The Future of Civilization. John Brown, Welcome to Bloomberg. Very 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:44.640 good to be him. So you have a fascinating background 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.960 and and quite an interesting career. But I have to 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.240 go back to your education. You you earn a degree 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:55.240 in physics at Cambridge and then you get a MS 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.920 degree in business at Stanford. What was it like going 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:02.520 from the UK to California. That must have been a 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.920 little bit of a culture shark. It was very different. 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.880 I found the whole It was ten years after I 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:14.280 graduated from Cambridge. I went to Stanford. And I went 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.359 to Stanford because everybody said, don't go to Harvard. It's 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:21.359 just a pale shadow of what Cambridge actually is. Founded 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:25.680 by someone who graduated from Cambridge. So go somewhere years ago. 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.240 They have a very short memory of long memories, I 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.360 should say. So I went to Stanford, and of course 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:36.639 I found a completely different set of people, a very 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.160 great set of people, entrepreneurs even then. This was in 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:44.240 the late sevent the early eighties, and they were fascinating 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:49.239 and the teaching was interesting, the leading edge thinking was interesting, 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.960 and the quality of people both the students and faculty 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.400 was something you couldn't see elsewhere. I don't think so 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.240 I'm gonna I'm gonna cross Harvard off my list, second 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.440 year school, Cambridge and Stanford. That's what wouldn't have send 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:07.800 the kids. So you graduate, you literally joined BP as 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:11.799 an apprentice while at university and you were a mean 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.840 with the firm your entire career. That that's fairly unusual 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:20.320 these days tell us about having a career with a 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:24.680 single company. Well, in those days, it wasn't that unusual. 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:28.720 I have to say. I joined I technically joined BP 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:32.760 in nineteen sixty six the day I went up to 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.600 Cambridge University. They helped pay for my studies, which was 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:41.480 very important. In fact, I paid for myself entirely from 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.680 the age of eighteen for everything I did by winning 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:49.000 a couple of scholarships to Cambridge, one which was involving 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.080 the across disciplinary approach if you were a scientist who 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.480 had to write a thesis on something to do with arts, 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.320 and I wrote a thesis about Iran where I had 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.760 lived at the Safavid architecture of Isfahan. So I won 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.360 a lot of money and that kept me going through university. 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:14.480 But I joined, and about every year I thought i'd leave, 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:19.960 and so I be offered jobs, and somehow BP offered 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.679 me a better job, and every time I was thinking 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:26.000 of going, I had a bigger and bigger challenge. So 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.760 I I went to Alaska in nineteen sixty nine because 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.200 I had asked to go to the United States. Alaska 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:35.719 was not quite what I had in mind, but I 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:40.400 found myself working two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:46.200 near Point Barrow on the testing oil wells, which turned 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.560 out to be the Prudeo Bay oil Field, one of 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:52.880 the greatest oil fields ever discovered in North America. So 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.600 that's what I did, and up from field work it graduated. 0:04:56.640 --> 0:05:00.000 One day my I was about to leave my Bosque 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.360 aim In and said, um, would you like to come 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.320 to New York with me? I said, when do we pack? Uh? 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.680 And off I went to New York and for four 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.279 years and life carried on from that. Our weather in 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:15.880 New York is not great, but it's certainly better than 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:20.080 than the Arctic Circle. You mentioned the work you did 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.920 in Iran. I'm reminded of of some of your travels 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.760 in your book Beyond Business, where you describe meaning some 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:33.000 of the world's let's call them most colorful despots, Colonel 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:37.920 Kadafi in Libya, Vladimir Putin at his country, Docta, Venezuelan 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:42.839 leader Hugo Chavez, as well as UH communist despot despots 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:49.359 in Kazakhstan and secret meetings with Russian oligarch's. The obvious 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.640 question is why this motley crew? But I think we 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.440 all know the answer. They seem to be where the 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.960 oil is correct. I mean it's I think someone said 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:04.320 once that God had played a joke on people and 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:06.840 put the oil in places where people didn't want to go. 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.880 We can't find oil under London, it's probably very good thing. 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:13.880 We would never be allowed to produce it, or or 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:17.600 in New York. You can find oil in California, and 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:21.120 it's very difficult to develop and produce. There's plenty of 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.719 oil in the North Sea, so you have access not 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.479 too far fur not, but not enough. It was a 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.680 very important discovery the North Sea, both in the UK 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.800 and Norway, and it's still producing quite a lot of 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:38.200 oil and gas, but there's more oil and gas outside 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.680 those areas. And and in those days, of course, the Permian, 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:46.080 the Permian Basin was a place which was declining. I 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.320 went there for field training when it was sort of 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.479 on decline, and you were taught how to save one 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.880 cent because that made all the difference to the profitability 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.320 of a well. So it really taught you the basics 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.480 of act. But now, of course it's a tremendous place 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:06.480 where everybody wants to invest and growing like gangbusters. And 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.320 that's strictly because of the new technology of fracking and 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:14.600 the ability to take what was previously not productive fields 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:18.120 and turned them to giant winforce. So it was a 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.840 way of releasing what geology put in place, what history 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.920 put in place that couldn't flow naturally. So this is 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:29.320 so called hydraulic fracking, hydraulic fracturing, a technique which I 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:33.000 may say was invented by one of the companies in 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:38.920 the bp group, by AMCO, the Standard All of Indiana, 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.480 which is part of bp UH. And so it's a 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:48.480 it's a very very h the likely used activity until 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:52.160 suddenly the Permian appeared and when it was became a 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:57.600 very heavily used and quite controversial technique. So one of 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.080 the things you mentioned in in I believe it was 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:05.040 beyond business. Vladimir Putin was one of the few people 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.360 you said you were determined to say goodbye to before 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:13.080 leaving BP. Why is that? Well, I think I had 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.040 Whether this is the Stockholm syndrome working, I'm not sure, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:20.280 but I'd spent so much time with him. Recall that 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:25.800 we're pulled together a big deal in Russia called t 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.080 NK BP, and we were the biggest foreign investment in 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.280 Russia and also the fastest growing or in gas company 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:39.120 in Russia. We applied modern management, contemporary technology to some 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.680 very good assets that were declining under the Soviet Union's rule. 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:48.240 So I met him at least once a quarter and 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.160 we had a standard agenda which I went through to 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.080 tell him how well we were doing, and he would 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.600 always say you must do more, and then we would 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.080 have a discussion about who owned it. And I did 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.680 a deal, a very important deal which said that BP 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:09.880 and and the Russian part and Mr Putin always said 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.560 that will never work, it will blow up and really 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:17.360 should be and I'm Mr Putin want fifty one, and 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.559 so when Mr President, I want the other way around. 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.520 So that's why we're fifty fifty. And actually it worked 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.920 remarkably well. Now things a number of people have over 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.679 the years have complained that it's very challenging to do 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.640 business in Russia, that the rule of law is not 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:38.240 the same as it is in Europe or the United States, 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.800 that you can't rely on contracts, that there is a 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:46.840 black market as well as an underground that makes business challenging. There. 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:51.320 You guys seem to have done pretty well there. What why? How? 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.959 First of all, how accurate are those descriptions? And second 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:58.320 why was BP able to succeed where lots of other 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:02.640 companies were unable? So I think the description is accurate, 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:06.079 but it changes over time, you know so, because Russia 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.600 doesn't stand still either, so it gets better and worse depending. 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.200 So I think the most important thing about this sort 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.120 of business that BPS in or any other company like that, 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:18.880 is you have to be sure you're wanted and you're 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.880 doing something that the country really wants you to do. 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:27.360 And so that's what kept BP in the position that 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.200 it could do business the way I wanted to do it, 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.760 because Putin said, I see I need a foreign investor, 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:36.640 I need to demonstrate to the world that these people 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:40.840 are doing good things. I'm growing, I'm modernizing, And BP 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:43.520 did all those things, and as a result, we were 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:47.280 able to with scale, with the big scale that we had, 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.680 and with our partners, who were pretty good, they're very good, 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.640 we were able to navigate a path which kept us 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.360 on the straight and narrow, and that's really what we did. 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.880 Do you still have a good relationship with the Putin 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.559 or has everybody's interests move on and they've all moved on? 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.640 I mean, I haven't seen Mr Putin since I left BP. 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.160 And what what he was by that point in time? 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.720 He was President of Russia? Yes he was, Yes, I 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:18.120 remember he. I first met him when he came to London. 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:22.280 Let's see, I think in late nine when Yeltsin was 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.200 the president and we were all looking at Mr Putin 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:30.079 saying this is a young and refreshing person who talks 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:32.560 about the rule of law and getting things done, and 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:36.360 we thought this was terrific. Um. And actually his first 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:41.040 term that's exactly what he did, quite quite quite interesting. UM. 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.640 I wanted to bring up something you had said in 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:49.000 an interview not too long ago along the those lines 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.520 you mentioned you would like to see more scientists and 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:57.959 engineers in top corporate and political positions. Explain you're thinking 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.680 behind that. I would like to see them in these 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.600 positions because they're trained in a way of thinking that 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:08.640 is different from being trained in economics, that sale, political science, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.800 or journalism. It's very different. It's a it's a very 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.120 different way of looking at facts and building theories and 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:23.600 testing them, and very practical too. Engineers, after all, have 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.040 to get things done and they were and they have 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.400 to get them done, and they have to work without 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:31.839 beyond a shadow of doubt. I mean, you don't want 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.560 to walk across a bridge which has a fifty probability 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.120 of standing up. It's not a good idea as opposed 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:40.840 to the forecast of the average economist may or may 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:45.440 not career remotely. You can't do that. So it's a 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:48.840 different way of thinking. It's a practical way of doing things, 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:54.280 and it's actually a very truthful approach. I think most 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:58.320 scientists and engineers are taught that in the end, you 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.240 have to say that you have to talk about the truth. 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:04.120 You have to be fact based and you can't spin 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:08.240 anything or add a layer of complexity to it. So 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:13.000 people can't quite understand it in the end, because advances 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:17.720 about challenge, and it's about challenge and testing, which is 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.800 based on facts and truth. So perhaps that explains why 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:25.800 there are so few scientists and engineers as politicians. It's possible, 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:31.400 it's possible without the spin, it becomes very much a 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:35.080 challenge to get elected. If you're telling the truth and 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:38.160 telling people what they don't want to hear from time 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:42.720 to time. I suppose that's called a technocratic politician. And 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:48.320 sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, uh, you know. For example, 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.600 Italy has had a series of when they really get 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:56.240 into a trouble, they have a technocratic prime minister and Monty, 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:00.280 for example, Mario Monty work pretty well, sort of dow 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:03.360 a lot of stuff. Very unpopular though, because he kept 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.400 talking about the truth. And I have to start with 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:11.080 the quote of yours early in the book. Engineering is 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:15.960 wrapped all around us like a protective and life sustaining blanket. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.360 Explain which is what I firmly believed. Let me say so, 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:22.640 I like to start a little bit back from there. 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:27.720 Everything you look at in the way the progress and civilization, civilization, 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:32.720 progressive civilization of humanity is based on engineering. Whether that's 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.360 the flint ax, you know, hold a massively beautiful objects 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.000 in your hand, was very important to begin to think 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.720 about how you carve up an animal and how you 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:48.640 change the way you survive through to looking at something 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:54.760 which opens the imagination, like the James Web telescope. Butut 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.880 Godard Space Center, this is an amazing thing. We're going 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.720 to fire it into space a million miles away from us, 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:04.040 the so called Second Grange in Point, and it's going 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:07.440 to sit there unfold like a piece of ore gamy, 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:11.040 a hundred and forty folds, and then it's going to 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:18.040 look towards the beginning of time. Now that's incredible. It 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.040 just fires the imagination to think you could actually look 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.760 towards the beginning of time and you might actually see 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.360 some planets on the way, you know, and they might 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:31.440 actually tell you something about life. So I think I 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:36.160 find that very exciting. That's about civilization. It's wrapping our mind. 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:40.320 It's giving our mind a blanket which allows it to 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:45.320 think securely and imagine, which is what human beings do. 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:48.480 So I think engineering is the is the golden thread 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.880 through everything. It protects us, of course it does. It 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.080 protects us from disease. You know, we all get healthier, 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:58.360 we live longer. It protects us from poverty. You know, 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:03.280 were world is getting rich less, people living in in 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:08.040 in extreme poverty. And actually it protects us from violence 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.160 as well. When I was writing this book, what I 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:15.080 found fascinating was the world has actually become less violent 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:20.440 the more advanced the weaponry has become. And so that's 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:25.040 a protective blanket. It's the engineering has allowed everyone to say, Okay, 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.360 I get it. If we start doing something, someone will 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.280 do something to us. It's not necessarily mutually assured destruction. 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:33.760 Not it's not, but it's a deterrent. It's it's mutually 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:38.320 assured disturbance, you know, big, big disturbance, And that's what 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:42.080 keeps us in equilibrium. And and engineering does all of that. 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:47.720 And remember it really is something about safety, because I 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:53.280 contend that engineering engineers have saved far more lives than 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.880 all the physicians in the world because of the ability 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:03.080 to public health engineering, molec fuels, engineering drugs. Go to 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.879 a hospital, Look at the kit, look at the equipment, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.959 m R eyes, cat scans. Uh. You know what's in 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:14.560 an intensive care ward robotic surgery? You know, which is 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.760 you don't damage the nerves. You know, much more precise 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:23.080 than much more precise the knives that cut the flesh, 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.359 that immediately can detect whether they're close to a canterrous cell. 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.560 So all of this is amazing stuff. And I I 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.760 love when I spoke to Robert Langer at m I 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:39.320 T it's a great inventor. He's called the Edison of medicine. 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.399 Is is this the Da Vinci machine. No, he's the 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:47.440 one that thinks of blood as a great chemical engineering 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:53.119 experience and tries to get get drugs to the place 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:55.880 they should go rather than throughout the whole body. So 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.359 rather than chemotherapy going through the whole body, actually using 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:02.560 the blood him to get something to an exact place. 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.359 And I thought his phrase was wonderfully said, you know, 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:11.560 my ambition is just is to reduce suffering, and that's 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.919 what engineering allows me to do. That. That's quite fascinating. 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:20.439 Your throughout the book, you you reference the reduction of 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:25.920 things like not only war and crime, but the increased longevity. 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:31.080 Reminded me a lot of Stephen Pinker's book The Better 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.240 Angels of Our Nature or is it the other way around? 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:36.600 Better Nature of Our Angels? Um Better Angels of Our Nature, 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:41.960 which talks about what the media doesn't, which is wherever 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:47.320 you look, whether it's literacy or childhood, hunger or just 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:51.520 come up with a list of markers of human progress. 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:55.359 We've done really well over the past thousand years. Certainly 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.000 I agree. I mean I took a very broad sweep, 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:02.080 and I took also somethings where today I would say 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:05.200 to say that they're really good is controversial in many 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:09.560 sectors of society, for example, oil and gas, for example, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.880 facial recognition for example, the social media, and the issues 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:19.280 to do with privacy. There are many good aspects to 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:21.720 all this. There are also some bad ones, but it 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:26.240 it raises the more general point that all engineering has 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.560 great intended consequences that most de great, sure, but also 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.480 unintended consequences. And the question is how do you balance this, hope, 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:40.240 And that's been happening since people first made a piece 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:46.800 of kit for anything, for sailing, So it's the balances 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:51.560 is partly about rules and regulations you don't use it 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:55.560 for this, partly about education. You know, it's not right 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.000 that engineers should say, let's do it because I can 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.119 do it, should stop for a moment and say should 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:05.760 I do it? Should I do it? And in corporations 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.800 that's of course the role of boards and leaders, But 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:14.160 it's also about engineering itself. I think, you know, in 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:21.240 my area energy, I don't believe anyone purposefully decided to 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:27.520 create an unstable climate by pumping c O two into 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:31.280 the atmosphere through burning hydrocarbons. What they wanted to do 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:35.360 was to give people light, heat, and mobility better than 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:40.400 burning well oil as you or wood or cutting down forests, 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:45.720 but also giving people a very different modern way. So, 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:49.720 but we've created a problem, and I've been on this 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.800 point for almost a quarter century now saying you know, 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:55.480 it's the oil and gas industries that's created this problem, 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:57.600 and we need to fix it. And the way to 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:01.159 fix it is not to stop in engineering, is to 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.840 apply more engineering to solving the problem. And actually in 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:10.720 this area, I would say that we have already all 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.959 the engineering processes to stop pumping as much as the 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.760 CEO two into the atmosphere, and actually even to clean 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.040 up some of the CEO two. The problem is that 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:26.200 the processes, the engineering products are too expensive until they 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.680 are rolled out in massive scale, because isn't that a 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:34.720 chicken and egg problem? Meaning this is where policy comes in. 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.200 So in other words, policy has to push these these 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.640 new engineered products to the point where they become more 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.159 economical exactly. So you can't say, oh, well, we have 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:47.840 to invent all that. You don't have to invent. We 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:51.160 need to apply. And this is where engineering is very 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:54.040 good because as you apply more and more, so the 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:57.000 unit cost comes down. We know that for sure. So 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:01.919 but you need a policy lever my my. When I 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.120 look at all the policy dvas, I say, the biggest 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.960 policy of you need is a price on carbon carbon taxes. 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:11.719 You probably need other things as well, but it's going 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.080 to be priced high enough so that people can actually 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:18.960 do something to get it out of the system. Quite interesting. 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:21.920 I very much like the way you structured the book 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:28.879 via the chapters. The titles are progress, make, think, Connect, Build, Energize, 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:33.439 which we were just discussing, move, defense, Survive, Imagine that 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:36.520 that was really um quite interesting. One of the things 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:41.520 that really didn't get a lot of UM pages was 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:46.879 modern food and agriculture, which is really how we're going 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:51.240 to support eight billion people and keep them fed. What 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:55.840 is it about agriculture that seems to be so different 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:59.640 from the other technologies you discussed, because clearly there's been 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.840 men this progress in terms of yield per acre and 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:07.400 how much a single farmer can produce, so in choosing 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:10.240 what to write about, I only wrote about things that 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:14.639 I've been involved in, and because otherwise I can't actually write. 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:18.600 I'm not I'm not someone writing a survey. So I'm 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.840 writing about things I've been involved in one way or another. 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:24.400 You know, whether it's being on the board of Intel 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:28.280 or Damond Diamond Bentz, or whether it's being on the 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:33.000 board of the Creek Institute, the biomedical Research facility. It's 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:36.560 all these sorts of things. So I said, I've actually 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:39.760 got to have some connectivity here. I used to be 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:43.720 Norman Foster, the Great Architect's chairman at one stage when 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:48.960 he was thinking of taking his company public. So I've 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:51.640 been involved in and out with all the things that 0:23:52.080 --> 0:23:55.640 I've been talking about, and I've never actually done anything 0:23:55.720 --> 0:24:00.080 in food production or agriculture. And so I said, there 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:02.440 are plenty of people who will talk about that. Let 0:24:02.480 --> 0:24:05.359 me talk rather selectively because I get as the author, 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:08.880 I get to choose, and I chose the things that 0:24:09.200 --> 0:24:13.119 I felt comfortable to talk about because I've had some 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:16.320 hands on experience. I had actually met the people I've 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:19.720 been involved and so it allowed me to speak from 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.120 the first person quite quite interesting. I want to talk 0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:26.240 a little bit about a book you wrote in the 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:31.040 Glass Closet, and that's only five years ago, but it 0:24:31.119 --> 0:24:33.760 seems like so much has changed in in half half 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:37.600 a decade. In the book, you point out coming out 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:40.680 of the closet is good business. Explain what you meant 0:24:40.680 --> 0:24:44.280 by that. What I meant was that when people can 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:48.040 be themselves in the place of work, they bring their 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:52.679 whole selves to the work and they can feel included 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:55.800 rather than separate and apart. And one of the things 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:59.639 that I think every CEO knows in their heart and 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:04.480 they statistically is that if you can build teams where 0:25:04.480 --> 0:25:07.919 people really feel included, the actually go and work to 0:25:08.000 --> 0:25:13.000 the purpose of the firm. When people see people being excluded, 0:25:13.560 --> 0:25:16.720 it creates a lot of grits in the system. People 0:25:16.800 --> 0:25:19.600 don't actually give their whole cells. They say, well, I 0:25:19.600 --> 0:25:24.760 could be excluded too. So inclusion is really and part 0:25:24.840 --> 0:25:29.240 of inclusion is being yourself and coming out. I would 0:25:29.240 --> 0:25:32.120 say that that's not a piece of advice for everybody 0:25:32.119 --> 0:25:36.960 because you have to be a situation sensitive. So coming 0:25:36.960 --> 0:25:41.000 out in Uganda not I think be a good idea 0:25:41.160 --> 0:25:44.920 or Saudi Arabia, you know, because it's against the law 0:25:45.560 --> 0:25:51.840 or it's against norms with tremendous punishments, sometimes death, so 0:25:52.160 --> 0:25:56.280 you have to be sensible about this. But in in 0:25:56.359 --> 0:25:59.760 the society of the United States, the United Kingdom, most 0:25:59.800 --> 0:26:04.640 of Europe, then it's something that absolutely people can choose 0:26:04.720 --> 0:26:08.159 to do, and when they do it almost certainly it 0:26:08.280 --> 0:26:13.399 produces a better result than staying in the closet. So is, 0:26:13.440 --> 0:26:16.879 when the book came out in the United States, this 0:26:17.119 --> 0:26:20.520 was not the top of the agenda for then President 0:26:20.520 --> 0:26:25.040 Barack Obama. In fact, he was not the most progressive 0:26:25.119 --> 0:26:29.439 person in terms of his views on marriage equality. And 0:26:29.560 --> 0:26:33.840