Vídeo: Peter Frankopan: planeta em mudança não é assim tão simples

🗣️ Transcrição automática de voz para texto.

a [Music] hello and welcome to a very special edition of it’s not that simple we are filming this episode in front of a live audience in central Lisbon climate change is the biggest challenge humanity is facing that’s not my opinion it’s the opinion of the vast majority of guests that we’ve had on this show over the last couple of years but of course it’s not the first time that we as humans are facing phenomena and threats from the climate it’s happened throughout history and we’ve had to adapt the way we’ve lived as a result today the planet is changing and that is precisely the topic of this show today planet and its change and we’re going to be discussing it with our special guest our star guest who’s here with us today Peter frankopan Peter I could go on about your CV for quite a few uh paragraphs I would say let’s just summarize it and say of course that you’re a professor of global history at Oxford University University you’re also a senior fellow uh research fellow at Wester College um you’re a world-renowned author uh as well as being a historian you shot to worldwide Fame I think it’d be fair to say with your book the Silk Roads in 2015 I was very famous at home and I hope you still are well I’ve become less famous with my my my children but anyway sorry it’s okay um uh now you’ve got another bestseller for the last year this book has won a variety of War of awards um Earth transformed an untold history and of course you look at the history of the planet and Humanity from a very different perspective which is the evolution of the climate so many of the threats we’ve faced before so my first question has to be what kind of solutions did Humanity manage to find in order to overcome so many of these challenges historically well thank you Pedro thank you to the foundation for hosting me in real life uh rather than online so it’s a real pleasure to be back in this beautiful city I’m also incredibly grateful that the draw for the Euros put Portugal tomorrow night saying rather than tonight otherwise I suspect it might be just you and me and you wouldn’t be happy to be here so thank you accurate accurate thank you um well do you want iose I can give you good news answers I give you bad news answers the bad news answers had we adapt um for almost all human history and we didn’t adapt you know we died out settler colonies that left Africa tens of thousands of years ago most of them went to places that they couldn’t sustain life and that was it most of Human Experience is failure and sometimes we over focus on the things that work and it’s businesses like that restaurants like that it’s the things that don’t work um that are probably more in the majority so I suppose when you look at when things do work um a lot of that unfortunately it’s probably also still bad news which is good luck you know sometimes it’s not about making smart decisions it’s about being lucky and surviving so if you if you take history I mean my my book I I cover 4 and a half billion years um I’m not quite sure what the sale price is here in Portugal but if it’s about €0 or so my publisher sitting in front of the row 440 50 60 7 oh my God thank God what €225 €25 so it’s €1 per 500 million years right so if you could find a better better better deal than that at a anywhere in Lisbon please let me know um when when you go back to the beginning of human history and a lot depends on when you think our species really becomes distinct but you know if you go back about 100,00 years a lot depends on um on chance but a lot depends on the impulses of why you move and how you set things up in the first place but we don’t have the capacity in that tiny little time frame to adapt biologically you know our ancestors if we were sitting here 30,000 years ago would have been much the same as You and Me Maybe not quite so well dressed and so well groomed um but you know th those changes in our species don’t happen quickly so our ability to adapt mean about our ability to come up with solutions that solve problems and one thing that is very good about us as a species is that we are are very good at problem solving when we’re in groups that’s one reason why communities start to grow and start to to differentiate between different tasks um and and we’re very good at passing on knowledge to Future Generations so one of the reasons we’ve done well I suppose in the past going back into deep time is the resilience to kind of keep on going and to keep telling ourselves it’s worth it rather than rather than giving up so that’s not a particularly good answer for what we do for the 21st century as here in Portugal some of the expectations are that Global summer temperatures in Lisbon will be 8 degrees higher than it is today and that is that that poses lots of different kinds of questions um Science and Technology will play a role if you can air condition and if you can air condition in a way that doesn’t make the climate even hotter by not using fossil fuels um then you could be fine indoors but at those temperatures um you know you can’t be productive outside and there’s a risk to life but when you look back in time and you try to identify really the biggest challenges that we faced how difficult was that and how much did you learn and what was the biggest Insight that you took from that that you weren’t expecting because this is a different perspective when you look back at at history right so it’s so hard it’s so nice com give these talks but to get the balance of sounding both modest but also not you know but also show off a bit so it’s it’s hard hard you can show off well I mean you know what does it what did I learn well what last time we spoke was was in in the middle of the pandemic and I’d been working on pandemic diseases and their risks and threats for quite a while before I wrote the book it’s one of the reasons that the pandemics plays such an important role zoonotic disease jumps from animals into human um into into human form zoonosis um has been the the biggest killer of all things like small pox um measles all these diseases that have come from animals Corona viruses to um leprosy Etc are extremely dangerous I mean small box alone killed 300 million people um in the 150 years before it was eradicated in 1977 so I was in I was invited into number 10 d Street to come and advise the government in Britain about what the next 10 years the threats and opportunities were and I said the only thing I’m worried about is um Global pandemics and the lack of Global Response right when the when something goes wrong are there systems set up that allow people to share information quickly and to put up screens and walls in the same way that populations did in Venice and Lisbon and Constantinople hundreds of years ago and the idea that people you know a millennium ago have better responses to pandemic disease than we did it’s pretty sobering so what did I learn I learned that um when I told the government that we should prepare for a pandemic and that someone in the room across whiteall would have to decide in the next 10 years when would we close airspace who counts as a primary care worker um how do you get food to people in the houses if they locked down um how do you have nursing facilities how do you have bed bed care how do you have PPE and syringes and things like that um uh what surprised me was that the day that I gave that talk was the day Wuhan told Beijing there was a problem um I then wrote about it was put on the front cover of prospect magazine where the editor said there’s no way this is ever going to happen in the next 10 years and I said okay if it doesn’t happen in 10 years time on 31st of January 2029 I’ll buy the beer plus no remember and if people accuse me saying I was wrong I’ll say maybe the next 10 years and the day that came out in print was the day Beijing told Wuhan told told the World Health Organization there was a problem so what I learned was that if you asking the right questions at the right time you can get L the timing lucky but I’m particularly interested in how vulnerable Global networks are trade networks you know ecosystems and um we have a game in England I don’t know if you have it in Portugal was called klunk you have lots of straws with marbles in the sort of Glass Tower and everyone had to pull out a straw one by one until the marbles start to fall through and it feels to me that we’ve taken quite a few of those out and that you know there are lots of of reasons to be positive but the warning signs are are pretty severe at the moment so I think we should be thinking around hierarchies of what to prepare for and you know difficulties also is are sometimes a good thing they’re the mother of all invention necessity the mother all invention so we you you know we can learn a lot from past experiences I think what we saw in the in the pandemic uh in my opinion is something which is my greatest fear when dealing with any kind of global crisis which is the lack of cooperation politically it seems that the world is becoming increasingly polarized so the fact that let’s all get together and pull through doesn’t really seem like an option to work it out even if the life of the planet or life of humanity as we know it on this planet is is at stake when when you look at this geopolitical Dynamic that we live in at the moment and and and then you try to get together whether it’s science whether it’s technology whether it’s it’s inside knowhow we can’t really be that confident that that that the great superpowers can solve this together right well um you know leadership isn’t that hard it’s not that it’s not that difficult to explain what the problem is and to come up with Solutions unfortunately we’re at a particular moment in time where we have simplistic um problems being identified that’re more or less non-existent and they get used to to extend individual power I mean so for example you know been doing a lot of migration recently 85% of all refugees and migrants live in the country next door to where they come from because most people want to live near where they where their family are from in similar ecosystems and so on we think in the west that that the world is all on the move but you know compared to 1960 about 3% of the world’s population were classed as migrant or refugees today it’s exactly the same 3% it’s just that there are more of us so it feels like a bigger problem but I think the misidentification of issues is because we we we we want simple answers and we don’t have the patience and tolerance I don’t think that’s because of Education or new technologies I think it’s just that um people who speak with great confidence about how they can solve things um can be can sound very attractive and we probably didn’t do a very good job in history faculties explaining that because otherwise we wouldn’t be having the rise of either hard left or hard right most normal people I think would want to be somewhere in the middle hear both sides of an argument and go well I can see both points of view can’t we split the difference rather than um the kind of populist things that we see at the moment but for for what it’s worth you know we in Britain um with brexit and things like that we we probably are good at one thing apart from making crisps um we’re very good at being ahead of the trend generally you know in terms of fashion and music and things like that and it could be our drift towards the right which now all of Europe is following uh We’ve got over that in the UK and it looks like in a couple of weeks at the election there’s going to be a swing very hard away from farri parties or at least in terms of the numbers of votes that get translated into parliamentary seats whereas you know we were just saying I’d have thought the chances of a farri prime minister sitting alongside Ma at the Paris Olympics so extremely high here in Portugal with chga on the Move uh maybe not so great in the not didn’t so well in the elections at the European elections but lots of lots of the mood feels to me that lots of people recognize there are problems and we’re all searching for someone who can give us answers and the first wave of answers that people want to listen to are things that are very simple you know stop the boats Deport people to Rwanda leave the European Union all sounds easy in fact in all those cases probably make things worse rather than better but you know I’m not I I don’t think that our capacity to work together is bad I think that there’s of leadership globally globally okay yeah I think there’s lots of I mean parts of the world I work on um people positive about the future here in Europe we’re chronically depressed and maybe there are good reasons for that but but in most parts of the world people feel that the world for their children and grandchildren be will be better than for them and that energy and optimism drives Innovation cooperation collaboration and investment I think if you’re scared you make defensive decisions and often those are those are those are poor ones I I’m talking like I’m a politician I’m a historian you know so I I can I can tell you how that that Maps back to the past but you know I’m not here to tell you to votee for me but but we should probably think a bit harder about what kind of Representatives we want to be making policies in which world’s better I I think it’s difficult to be positive when we have so many conflicts that are affecting uh uh crucial relationships when it comes to um the Dynamics between the world’s superpowers I mean when you look at the situation in in Ukraine firstly when Russia seems to have natural resources where it can continue to fund a a military campaign there it has the support of of of China where do you see this going Peter um and and for how long do you see it going both from the Russian side and and the support financial and Military Support that Ukraine continues continues to get uh well I I probably have to choose my words reasonably carefully I mean I think that um you know I guess taking a longer run at the answer you know some of us felt that the Cold War never ended you know the dissolution of the Soviet Union if you knew the Soviet Union if you’ve traveled into Central Asia the caucuses you know this is not a Russia that woke up two years ago with an invasion of Ukraine this is a entity that has functioned and behaved the same way for at least 20 years maybe you can make the case that 98 the collapse of the ruble collapse of the Russian economy at that point where all Russian businesses more or less are put into the hands of about 30 individuals maybe that maybe that was a breakpoint rather than 91 and the collapse but it’s the same people in charge Putin’s been there ever since lvov has been there ever since uh you know patev has been there ever it’s the same people the same language the same way of doing things um so I don’t think Russia has changed I think I think we we fooled ourselves here in the west into what we were dealing with and that’s the same with China we fooled ourselves on that we fooled ourselves about social media companies and Technologies we fooled ourselves about climate we fooled ourselves about lots of things and and I think that we should probably take quite a long think about how we educ young people because again I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job on on giving the tools to understand the world around us um where does it go well um you know I’m I’m at the I have a probably slightly different view to the mainstream I think that the Russians believe the momentum is with them which was not the case last summer in the spring in in May and June last year people in Moscow were really worried that the ukrainians would break through and that that might have a domino effect onto Russian economy politics there was maybe a moment where if Ukraine had been given more weapons at the right time and so on the right kinds of weapons that might have concentrated Russia’s mind I don’t there’s any Prospect at the moment at all for Russia to think about a negotiation um but you know with 350,000 casualties on the Russian side you know you do start to drain the provinces and you know the calik and the budh buds and and minorities in Russia you start to need to start to recruit from Clos to to the home that becomes more difficult uh probably 8% of Russian GDP is going on the war that no Russian really understands what benefits there are you know apart from hurting Ukraine you know the territory and the you know there’s nothing that that has any particular strategic or military value um and so Putin we we we keep will keep on going that that might change if if later on this year things start to move forward that might change things but it’s a question for Ukraine about whether and when they’re willing to uh offer terms but I think everybody in Kiev takes the view rightly that whatever ceas fire stalemate or freeze happens the Russians will almost certainly go back regroup rren and then come back again so it’s it’s how do you find a defense mechanism I mean the United States United Kingdom and Russia had guaranteed the territorial Integrity of Ukraine in The Budapest memorandum in 1994 uh you know just before you know 6 months before Russia invaded Ukraine Putin wrote an essay essay called on the on the historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainian people which he signs off at the end saying we never had a problem with the ukrainians we would certainly never use Force it’s up to ukrainians to choose their own destiny but we’re brothers um you know since that point you know you see how they how they’ve treated Ukraine so I don’t there’s I don’t there’s a quick fix I think in the west we need to concentrate our minds to work out are we supporting Ukraine because we think it’s um in our a national interests and it’s our national security that’s at stake are we helping Ukraine because we feel sorry for what’s happening for them and those discussions there’s not perhaps as much Clarity of thought in some NATO countries as there are in others but on the Eastern flank of Europe um you know there’s a lot of anxiety about what’s happening and how things might get much worse you know radic Sosi for Min oppland he says you can either have you have a choice either Russian tanks on Ukraine’s border or on Poland’s border so you know it it’ll keep on going until one or both sides are exhausted how were yeah my guess is that the West would outrun the Russians okay and I I wanted to ask you how this conflict can affect the relationship between the US West and China and all the implications that can have from a trade perspective and a financial perspective as well I think it’s it’s it’s broadly irrelevant okay I mean we make a lot about it here in the west and think tanks are talking about the alliance of China and Russia there’s there’s something there uh but much less than we normally perceive I mean the Chinese are are fairly risk averse don’t really want to get involved they’ quite they’ve been quite careful in trying to give Russia some support but they haven’t gone as far as they could have done uh they’ve exploited uh the position economically with Russia to their advantage and you know they played their cards i’ have thought in a not not a not a completely surprising way you know quite you know if you’re Chinese seeing from their point of view reasonably sensibly um but you know lots of people have done really well from the war in Russia you know Indian government is is powering an economy um unsubsidized Russian energy in return for silence or exstension at the UN and elsewhere um you know this this is a great moment if you’re Mercedes-Benz dealer in to B SE or Central Asia and the Germans are busy exporting as much as they can to get into Russian markets so you know if you want to get your Bentley serviced in downtown Moscow there’s no impact on whatsoever and I think we in the west have been pretty slow to close some of those trap doors okay um but I think the the the China stuff is is of course very important for the US side and what a lot will depend on what happens in the US election in in November perfect link into my next question actually um because as as someone who lived in the United States for nearly a decade and have followed American politics quite quite closely um I’m I’m incredibly worried about the the outcome of of the election in in November uh how worried are you and and how much is is at stake here when it comes to the decision that such a polarized country is going to make in a few months time yeah there got to be better people than me to ask I think about that um I don’t know if the answer I mean I think that fear is is not a great you know being optimistic or pessimistic is not always useful to let yourself be emotional I think it’s it’s trying to work out what the specific consequences are either which way around particularly with China right um but you know a lot will depend on who wins in what way who they appoint to their cabinet whether those appointees get through the Senate um and you know but you know it’s probably not optimal to have uh the world’s greatest nuclear greatest military power and a probably the world’s greatest nucle nulear power who is able to launch nuclear weapons without needing to go to Congress to ask for permission to do so um or with a mental health test before doing so so these are this the revisions of what what what should normally be done to try to make sure that there are breaks on Powers like that have not been put in place and you know let’s hope there aren’t consequences but you know Trump in a in some ways was um not completely irrational when he was president I mean for it’s worth and I’m not here to betray my own political views or allegiances uh Biden has put more more tariffs on China than Trump did he’s allowed more um oil and gas pipelines than Trump did he’s stopped more immigrants getting into the United States than Trump did and that there’s a lot more similarity between policies that but he’s built more of the wall than Trump did uh there’s a lot of similarities I think between how these things work so it’s important to not just play the the man as we’d say football but to play the ball you know so it’s not just about Biden and Trump it’s about the infrastructure that sits underneath them and you know by and large no one in America particularly wants a war nor do they want a civil war so you know one would assume that won’t happen but it doesn’t take much for the butterflies Wings to Flap and then the world we we live in changes we mentioned that that that in Europe we we’ve had the uh rise of of populism and the far right um how how serious is that threat to uh the continent’s ability and and the eu’s ability to to be a a major player internationally and and compete with China compete with the United States you know look we’re in a country where you had a military dictatorship right so having 50 chga MPS is probably not that bad right it might not feel great around the dinner table in central Lisbon but a lot of countries in Europe have experienced a lot worse than than people saying that they don’t believe in climate change or saying that we should Deport migrants you know we’re a long way away from what proper fascist totalitarian systems look like which you know was was part of part of Europe for most of the 20th century so you know I think that that that we have to believe that democracy works we have to believe that people when they vote might make a mistake and they might change their mind but they get a chance four years time to vote for somebody different and you know we’ll see maybe that’s macron’s genius master plan is to allow the far allow the right or the far right to have the Reigns of power in par in France and maybe they mess everything up I mean arguably Maloney who everyone was worried about has actually been quite a good political leadership for Italy has done you know has moved away from some of the positions that she took in public before she became prime minister has been quite good on Ukraine has been quite good on lots of different things and in fact from the Roman point or Italian point of view you know you see France go through a transition of difficulty you know Catalonia and Spain being a you know looking like it might disintegrate Schulz more or less Dead Man Walking you know things they they they can resolve themselves and the best thing that we live in world where we are free to express our opinions differently and you know we got to be quite careful not to keep try to say this is the like the 1930s or that uh you know whichever leader we don’t like is like Hitler because that scale of differential of genocide and of mass persecution and of euthanasia that’s not the world that we live in and you know we might get there but I don’t think we’re that close Okay but when you talk about Europe and its uh a place and influence in global politics and the increase in fragmentation in in in the kind of rhetoric uh uh across the board throughout throughout the continent I mean you look you look at Europe and I know you’ve referenced this in in your books I mean not even our football clubs do we really own anymore where’re they’ve been uh uh sold or purchased by by uh uh States or by countries that that that really don’t have a history in the game so when you when you talk about Europe’s place in the dynamic of of global politics it doesn’t concern you that it feels like wherever you look we can’t really get it together look you know I I can’t go back in time and and imagine what it was like living in you know what’s now Angola or mosambique or Sri Lanka when the Portuguese arrived but I imagine people’s reactions are very similar which is like we don’t know who these guys are they’ve got a lot of money they’re buying all of our best assets and um we feel very uncomfortable about it but you have to either adapt or get on with it you know investors don’t need to sell to Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund if you own Newcastle but most people want to sell to the best the highest offer and if you have wealth why why why not if you believe in capitalism and I know what the alternatives are then then probably we should be a bit more relaxed about some of those things high levels of investment drives Innovation and Entrepreneurship and so on has has can have good outcomes so you know I’m I’m I do think that that and I’ve WR I have written about that that you know much though I love Lisbon and Madrid and Paris and Berlin and and London you know the decisions made in those and Rome Etc you know the decisions made in those cities are probably less significant today than ones made in places like um Moscow or Beijing or Delhi you know and even states that are more peripheral we don’t ever spend time talking about like Malaysia which is in the process of becoming the primary Silicon Valley of Southeast Asia you know or Indonesia the largest Muslim country on Earth uh you know when you start to put together Indonesia Philippines Bangladesh Pakistan you know you’re a billion people and you know most people in a room like this don’t know the name of forget about footballer any Sportsman film star leader true these are parts of the world that we’ve turned our back to because we I suppose think we’re culturally and economically Superior and we have the nerve to say when people wealthy have come from making their Fortunes in supermarkets or data cables or whatever in these parts of the world come and buy properties in Lisbon or football clubs and we say you’re the wrong kind of person for us I feel much more comfortable with some with blonde and blue eyes doing it you know that takes me back to a much more darker difficult place that that Europe’s been in rather than you know go out innovate compete build businesses you know find the best educate the best possible way and become Global but I think we in Europe and puga slightly different because you you still have more Global Connections than most countries in Europe but you know young people need to go out and explore the world they need to go and see in what ways are people different do people in the streets of Chennai or Mumbai do they listen to the same music that we do how come everybody in Shanghai can tell you who Tom Cruz is or Cristiano Ronaldo or whoever good pronunciation thank you uh who else can I think of rosta um you know people recognize are are you know Taylor Swift We can recognize all these Western figures but we’ve invested precisely zero in thinking about other people’s histories and at some point that’s a dignity question an equality question when you sit across the table and it also is a it’s it’s also a point of disadvantage if you’re talking and negotiating with someone who knows a lot more about you than you do about them then then things are tricky and um that’s felt very keenly in places like China and Russia the gulf where people have invested in learning English learning about cucumber sandwiches looking at the ways which we do things and we’re busy looking at our own reflection in the mirror sort of complaining about the fact the world is changing talking about the the the difference in perspectives though and with the extent of travel that you have done throughout your your life and career the conversations you’ve had with many leaders um across the world are are do you feel governments and and and cultures and societies are as worried about climate change as we are here in the west what kind of conversations do you have with them there and and and regarding the urgency to make changes because obviously a lot of those countries are in completely different changes of the process of of of evolution from utilizing natural resources from a technological standpoint as well so what do you notice over there and if you say that so many of these decisions that are made in other parts of the world are so important how are those decisions looking like when it comes to climate and the planet well you know again I I mean maybe I’m maybe got the the room wrong and and you’re much more knowledgeable about some of the parts of the world that I that I I’ll mention but you know we had about 200,000 people displaced by floods in Kazakhstan 6 weeks ago you know that’s a lot of people uh to be moved by apocalyptic floods that are kind of once in a 2,000 year um moment in 22 um Pakistan had catastrophic floods that did make the news in Lots SP in the world had had population displac of about between 8 and 9 million people uh about 30 million livestock died uh you know single cow single sheep you know in some cases a family’s only asset um so countries like that you know my friend Sher man who is Minister of climate change how worried was she’s absolutely petrified because these things where they come around catch countries unprepared we know that in there’s a lot of research done around how um climate shocks Central makes make governments more centralized they strengthen authoritarianism because when you have to have a whole of government response to a flood or drought then the government takes more powers and governments that take more Powers tend to not give them up again um so countries in the Caribbean countries in South Pacific uh countries that have had significant single events that have been catastrophic like Bangladesh where low-lying land place like Vietnam where um 20% of the land is likely to be underwater in the next 15 years those countries are absolutely uh I wouldn’t say terrified they’re trying to work out what how they can how how they can best respond and those responses are partly how do you mitigate how do you how do you how do you prevent some is things that I’m been involved in in some cases is about what kind of disaster planning do you need right so for example in place like Pakistan you need to Train Your First Responders how to save people from floods you know here in Lisbon you know you all wor about an earthquake coming again one day but it’s what kinds of new threats require different kinds of responses in some parts of south southern Europe I don’t know Portugal and southern part of Portugal well enough but we’ve establ we new diseases emerging in diseases become established in Mediterranean in the last 18 months that mean that you need to train your doctors in a different way to recognize malaria to recognize zika to recognize Deni to recognize hemorragic fevers and that’s about saying well we don’t just you know we’re trained in hospitals you know as a young medic you need to be learning about things that the generation before you weren’t prepared for so there there are lots of ways in which you can use the the the anxieties and I suppose fears to plan ahead to to to to understand where those Shocks come from but you know we haven’t all been dealt an equal hand in life you know climate change is going to be great for Russia unfortunately climate change is going to be great for a place like Canada but if you’re in the tropics um then then water becomes a problem if you’re in water stressed parts of the world like China then it becomes a problem if you’re in parts of the world where the disease envelope changes then there’s a problem but there are other parts of the world where things are not looking so bad but you know here in in not here in in Rio Grand in in Brazil again apocalyptic floods that are kind of once in a 2,000 year event yesterday in Florida again it’s measured on the sigma you these things shouldn’t happen historically we have the data that shows they shouldn’t happen the amount of rainfall that’s fallen in Sarasota overnight um is the greatest downpour that that Region’s had for Millennia and so um you could be worried about it you can buy an umbrella uh you can stock up on water but but probably more systemic thinking around what is the world not not going to be like in 10 years time what’s it like now but I was wondering from a policy standpoint if countries like India Russia China really have climate crisis at the Forefront of their agenda when they have so many other spinning plates well you know so for example my friend of mine is who’s uh you know genius uh young woman well young woman who’s in charge of um some of the usbekistan um climate response has geomapped every single school every single hospital to be able to establish water resources es electricity needs so that in the point point of Crisis there’s inability to cope green transitions are working pretty effectively in some parts of the world China installed more Renewables in the first six months of last year than the United States in all of its history um you know and the United States is moving quite fast like that too so on Friday last week uh the United States produced 50% of its energy needs through either nuclear or renewable first time ever in history so so there’s lots going on and lots of it’s quite good news but some of the bad news is really bad but you know investing in long-term strategies is expensive but it’s probably less expensive than to have to deal with it at real speed so I think there there are places where those accelerations are happening quite fast but I’m not just worried about warming and and climate it’s also about um water quality air pollution you know here in Portugal five times more people die per year because of air quality or poor air quality than in car accidents and you know if I want to drive a car in Lisbon I need to have a license I need to have lessons I need to have a car with airbags I need to have insurance I need to follow the stop stop and go I have the lights the speed limits huge restrictions quite rightly to protect us seat belts um but the a air quality legislation in Portugal like in every other country in Europe is very poor and if you’re told five times more people die from air pollution we all have a shorter life expectancy even in this room measured in days if you have respiratory diseases if you’re imuno compromised it’s taking years off your life then then probably you should think we should be asking our political leaders to come up with policies that save lives and you know we’ve done better we do better now than we did 30 years ago but not enough last question before we move into our quick fire um from your the extent of work you you did especially from from from your latest book uh Earth transformed um what was the most important learning that you took that shapes a message that you can have for us today regarding what we’ve learned from the planet and what we need to do as a collective race in order to deal with a hand that we are going to be dealt in the in the decades to come that’s an easy that’s an easier one okay it’s a great question you know the the joy of studying the past that is what education is for and you know we think of Education you do it at school then you finish University life is all about acquiring new skills new knowledge new information new way are doing things and what I hope with a book like mine because it’s sort of panoramic and it’s you know kaleidoscopic in what it’s trying to cover everything it gives you a chance to see how incredibly exciting it is to be alive at this time you know I’m the first generation of historian that could ever write a book like this because of the new tools that we have you know maybe I’ll say something more like that wiana but I think it it teaches us all that there is a real benefit in learning and learning systematically about things and if you can do that then you know you can start to ask maybe better questions that affect us all individually we don’t always have to think about who we’re going to vote for and expect our leaders to do things it’s it’s what does this mean for us ourselves so you know I had no idea before I started writing my book that my linen shirt requires 2 and half thousand lers of water which is the same as an adult drinking water for 3 years right so that that that changes the way in which I think about what I need um you know know thinking about which kinds of uh food substances are more energy intensive and more water intensive I’ll make a better decision if I’m better educated and we who are professional Educators in universities like mine we need to share that kind of knowledge and you know ideally with audiences who buy books for for one EUR per I think it’s actually 300 million years so I’ve oversold the value for money without doing my mathematics but you know the more you can be informed the better decisions that you can make for the future and I think that’s quite uh reassuring thing to think about and that’s the way that my book’s been received actually it’s sort of people ask me about the future and I keep telling them I can’t tell them about the future um but I can’t tell them about the past and that the better informed they are that then maybe they would have a better answer than the future than than I would okay quick fire time yeah four questions left so in one word or one sentence right what is one personality trait that a good leader could really benefit from having oh that’s being brave enough to make a decision and then being um brave enough to realize they made a bad one second one I think is is pretty clear especially with this topic that we’re discussing today but biggest challenge Humanity faces oh that’s a long list what’s at the top of that list uh probably climate is up there but you know um that’s not what keeps me awake at night at the moment I think um emerging affection disease andle nuclear proliferation um and also shock events that that decouple all the stuff that we think is sensible so Interruption of food supply is my number one problem that could be a topic for a whole another conversation surely maybe even another book yeah yeah if you could change one thing in the world by Magic today what would that be snap of the fingers uh gosh these are tricky questions uh I’d make Spotify free and we would all applaud um what is What is the I had to subscribe to Spotify because I got small I had small kids at the time and I don’t know maybe maybe was different in Portugal maybe I’ve been profiled but every adver that came on was about practicing safe sex and when that comes on in the kitchen when you’re listening to you know Elvis Presley or frankon Archer or you know whatever it is so I had to cough up yeah but anyway Spotify finally what what’s the most important learning of your life keep learning and the joy and the beauty of trying to think about how much we can learn around us if we open our minds to think about the world in wider Geographic chronological thematic ways it’s it’s unlimited the rewards you get so I mean I’m I’m I’m tiny bit older than up Pedro but you know I compare it to the bid in The Wizard of O where it goes from black and white into Technicolor you know that world which we can look at the past and at the present in these incredibly exciting ways um you know it’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a wonder it really is and we should celebrate wonders rather than always be worried Peter we’ve talked about a lot over the last 14 minutes or so thank you so much for sharing your Insight your expertise with us uh it’s clear the planet continues to change in many more ways than just one and thank you for enlightening us on all the work that you’ve done historically to help us understand uh this rock we live on and uh what what we can do uh uh to help to help make sure that it stays here uh for as long as possible thank you so much fantastic addition of it’s not that simple thank you thank you [Music]