Manning Clark House Symposium
Science and Ethics: Can Homo sapiens Survive?
Canberra, 17-18 May 2005

Micro- and macro-Science and Ethics: Can Homo sapiens survive?

Conference paper by Dr Bryan Furnass

I think it is entirely appropriate that this conference should have been organised in honour of Frank Fenner. Frank himself is somewhat puzzled by this since he admits to being rather a pessimist about the future of Homo sapiens. On the other hand there are few who are better qualified than Frank to take that global view of the problem which is required to properly address it. Having achieved an international reputation in microbiology, he has over the past few decades undergone a metamorphosis to macrobiology, swapping his microscope for a macroscope, which he has focused on the human condition in the biosphere. In this he resembles two distinguished predecessors - Rene Dubos of the Rockefeller University in New York and Nobel Laureate Sir Macfarlane Burnett of Melbourne, who in their later years changed their allegiance from microbes and immunology to environmental science. Frank's publications and honours are too long to list, but notable is his Chairmanship of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication from 1977-79 and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1995. This honour had been bestowed two centuries previously on Captain James Cook for his dietary prevention of scurvy on long sea voyages.

At the venerable age of 90, Frank is an exemplar of ethical science, and is a self-confessed workaholic. He arrives at his room in the John Curtin School at 7.00am, and has rolled out two books over the past couple of years - as co-author of the History of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, with David Curtis, and as editor of the History of the Australian Academy of Science, published earlier this year. Frank has sponsored several environmental conferences at the Academy and is currently writing his autobiography, entitled Nature, Nurture and Chance. He has green fingers, producing fresh vegetables for many of his friends through the growing season, and he plays a set of tennis each week. In some ways he resembles Sir Richard Doll, who has saved over a million lives from his work causally relating smoking to lung cancer, and has just officially retired at the age of 92. As far as I know, Frank has no immediate plans for retirement, but remains a good role model for people half his age.

Despite an excellent meal and a glass of good wine, I feel rather presumptuous standing up here amidst the presentations of learned papers on science and ethics, since I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I'm a sort of fossil physician, with some experience of dealing with members of the species Homo sapiens and their various ailments. In my dotage I have shifted my focus from internal medicine to what I like to call external medicine, with amateur concerns about environmental health and sustainability, from both a rational and emotional perspective. In rational terms it seems pretty obvious that if the environment packs up, human health and wellbeing will go with it. From an emotional viewpoint I have grown to love the enormous diversity of life forms on our planet, including my own grandchildren, and I hate to think of them disappearing under an avalanche of human folly.

As a boy growing up during the Second World War I was fortunate to attend Manchester Grammar School, whose emblem was Minerva's owl, out of whose beak unfolded a scroll bearing the words "sapere aude" - dare to be wise. Following Aristotle's dictum that the beginning of wisdom is the recognition of how little one knows, I have been on a steep learning curve ever since. Unlike some of my specialist colleagues who seem to need to know more and more about less and less I find myself knowing less and less about more and more!

Aristotle paid great attention to logic, ethics and the nature of virtue, including the value of human relationships. He declared that the unexamined life was not worth living, so he would have approved of this conference, as would, I believe, Manning Clark, whose legacy has encouraged creative thinking and social improvement. Although he laid the foundation stones for philosophy in Western society, Aristotle did have some limitations. For example his influence in regarding Homo sapiens as being at the centre of the Universe inhibited the emergence of the scientific method by over two millenia. He also accepted slavery as justifiable and maintained that women were inferior to men, belonging to another species.

Philosophers do have a reputation for other worldliness. Such was the case for a professor of philosophy at Oxford, who commendably used to cycle to his lectures every day. One morning he emerged from his college to find that his bicycle had a flat tyre. He borrowed a bicycle pump from the porter and started to pump away, becoming rather red in the face in the process. An interested knot of students gathered, one of whom plucked up the courage to say "Excuse me, Sir, but did you know that whereas you are pumping up the rear tyre, the flat tyre is on the front wheel?" With an appearance of astonishment on his face, he looked up and declared "but do they not communicate?" Despite these idiosyncrasies, I think the basics of logic and ethics should be taught in all schools, bearing in mind the need to listen to children as well as to talk to them, and remembering Thoreau's view that the really important questions in life are those which an intelligent child asks, and getting no answer, stops asking.

Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, had his feet more firmly on the ground than Aristotle and made some interesting observations on humans and their habitat which are relevant today, In his treatise Airs, Waters and Places, he wrote that the physician who is an honour to his profession is the one who takes note of the climate, waters and soils of a region and of the diet and regimen of its inhabitants.

Hippocrates also wrote of the importance of harmony between humans and the natural world. The need for a holistic approach to humans and our environment is of course implicit in the word health, which is derived from the Old English haelo, meaning whole. Plato, who was Socrates' pupil and Aristotle's mentor, described this in his dialogue Charmides:

The reasons why the cure of so many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas is because they are ignorant of the whole which ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well …….for this is the great error of our day that the physicians separate soul from body - a lesson here surely for modern medicine.

Plato was also an acute observer of environmental conditions around 400 BC, when the forests of ancient Greece had been stripped of trees for boat building, heating and particularly for the smelting of metals which was essential for the Greek economy. Denuded hillsides eroded into over-silted rivers, irrigated cropland, collapsing under increasing levels of accumulated irrigation salts and nutrient exhaustion. In Critias Plato writes

What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left.

Plato's description might well apply to parts of Australia today, as graphically illustrated in Mary White's book: Listen, our land is crying. It also foreshadowed Jared Diamond's recent book Collapse, which attributes the decline of civilisations to overuse of resources by their expanding human populations. This applied to the Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman and Mayan civilisations, as well as to isolated communities in Greenland and Easter Island.

Clearly, other influences are also responsible for decline of civilisations, including hubris and the human propensity to violence against our own species. Arthur Koestler, in his book The Ghost in the Machine attributes the human predisposition to mass homicide, torture and human sacrifice to the rapid (in evolutionary terms) development of the neocortex of the brain, with inadequate control over the violent propensities of the mid-brain. Koestler maintained that it is not personal feelings of aggression which are the main danger to humanity, but rather identification with and devotion to groups and causes. Examples include manifestations of mass hysteria which occur when emotion is uncoupled from reason, such as during the pre-war Nuremberg rallies of the Nazis, the behaviour of some football crowds, US presidential election rallies and emotive outpourings of some fundamentalist religious groups.

The question of collapse also arises in relation to the exploitative activities of our industrial civilisation, threatened by the three Ps - Population, Pollution and Poverty. The human population has increased sixfold, to over 6 billion since the beginning of the industrial era, and threefold since the year I was born. We already appropriate 40% of the earth's photosynthetic activity and are using the equivalent resources from 1.2 biospheres for a single planet. If everyone on earth were to achieve the standard of living of the average Australian, we would need 3 or 4 planets.

Science has made enormous strides since Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton shattered Aristotle's idea of the Earth being the centre of the universe, since James Watt introduced the industrial revolution by the harnessing of fossil fuels to machines, since Einstein gave us new insights into time, space and energy and since Schroedinger and Heisenberg threw up the new intellectual challenges of quantum mechanics. Just as Frank Fenner's skills have embraced the use of the microscope and the macroscope in biology, physicists have used the ultra-microscope of the particle cloud chamber and the ultra-macroscope of the radio-telescope to study Nature on its tiniest and grandest scales. The ANU has been well represented in this research, in keeping with its motto Naturam primum cognoscere rerum - to understand first the nature of things - which makes it one of the world's great universities.

Some weird things have appeared as a result of research at the ultra-micro level. Electrons, protons and neutrons are no longer considered to be the fundamental particles of matter, but 150 or more sub-particles, notably of mesons, positrons and the ultimate building blocks - quarks, in waves or strings which compose matter throughout the known universe. Some observations have shown positrons moving back through time. Particles have a quality known as spin, and according to quantum theory, the moment you determine the spin of one particle, its sister particle, no matter how distant away, will immediately start spinning in the opposite direction.

Such experiments were described by Einstein as "spooky electrons at a distance". He felt uncomfortable about quantum mechanics since it challenged his special theory of relativity, that the speed of communication was limited by the speed of light. He famously criticised the unpredictability of quantum theory by stating "God does not play dice with the universe".

At the ultra-macro level, the Hubble telescope has discovered that distant galaxies recede at ever increasing speeds, and that by a recent reckoning the universe may be 13.7 billion years old. Some collapsing stars disappear permanently into black holes at the speed of light. Considering the billions of stars in the Milky Way and the billions of galaxies in the universe it seems highly probable that life forms similar to those on Earth and civilisations in advance and more sustainable than ours have existed or continue to exist.

In his book New Pathways in Science published in 1935, the astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington described this probability in a little poem:

There once was a brainy baboon

Who always breathed down a bassoon

For he said "it appears

That in billions of years

I shall certainly hit on a tune".

While believing in the evolution of life, I personally cannot accept that the mechanistic view of random genetic mutation combined with natural selection

(as in Richard Dawkins' Book The Blind Watchmaker) provides the whole explanation of the evolutionary process. Hamlet was surely right in saying "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". In wonder says Aristotle, does philosophy begin; and in astoundment says Plato, does all true philosophy finish. One of the triumphs of evolutionary biology may be that using the capacity of the human cerebral cortex for thought and reflection enables us to recognise our own material insignificance, perhaps thereby achieving some mental or spiritual significance.

Although I am not a religious person I find the writings of some church leaders relevant to the human condition. A recent article by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, entitled A planet that's literally on the brink, published in the Independent newspaper and reproduced in the Canberra Times refers to the need for us all to recognise the human stewardship of the earth, and to accept the responsibility of being guests rather than plunderers of our planet. One of Williams' predecessors, the intellectually gifted William Temple, in 1932 gave a theoretical construct of the natural world in the Gifford Lectures to the University of Glasgow, later published under the title Nature, Man and God, sub-titled A study in Dialectical Realism. For its poetry as much as for its philosophy I quote from the book's chapter headed Truth and Beauty:

For what manner of mind is that of which our science forms but an inkling in its analysis and systemisation of the experienced world? From the play of minutest particles to the sweep of stars in their courses, the work of Mind is found - of a Mind so mighty in range and scope, so sure in adjustment of infinitesimal detail, that before it all our science is clumsy and precarious.

There is clearly a need for a secular code of ethics which should be complementary to, rather than in conflict with, the foundation principles of all the world's great religions. My choice would be for an ABC of enlightenment. A stands for Awe - at the vastness of the cosmos, the complexities of matter and the intricacies, diversity and interconnectedness of the web of life. B stands for beauty. One does not have to be an astronomer to gain wonderment from the night sky, which is hidden from observers in many large cities by pollution. One need not be an ornithologist to appreciate the colours of a king parrot, or a musician to recognise the spiritual quality of Beethoven's later string quartets, or a sociologist to observe the beauty of an act of kindness. C stands for compassion or love, not only for fellow human beings both close at hand and at a distance but also for the biosphere both in our immediate neighbourhood and, as the zoologist Charles Birch has suggested, for the Earth as a whole.

Quantum mechanics has turned on its head our established notions of mass, energy and time, no less than Copernicus overturned Aristotelean cosmology. In a book entitled The Mysterious Universe, published in1937, the physicist Sir James Jeans wrote:

Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a giant thought than a great machine.

In effect, what Jeans was saying was "Never mind matter. Matter doesn't matter. Only mind matters". At the human level, quantum theory raises questions of whether the unrespectable topics of ESP, telepathy and pre-cognition may be worthy of serious scientific investigation. Since physicists refer to matter and anti-matter, perhaps psychologists should consider the concept of mind and anti-mind?

There are negative aspects to the acquisition of knowledge about the natural world, which impinge on the survival of humanity. 2005 is the year 60 pH. In this context, pH does not stand for hydrogen ion concentration but post-Hiroshima, born of our expertise in nuclear physics, an application later profoundly regretted by Einstein. In the year 10 pH came the hydrogen bomb, 2000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Thermonuclear weapons have introduced a new dimension to the human psyche. From time immemorial we have been concerned with our individual mortality. After the hydrogen bomb we are faced with the possibility of mortality of the entire human species. Following the first hydrogen bomb test explosion, the philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and several nuclear scientists who had been involved in the Manhattan Program signed a manifesto urging the progressive elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. Despite this wise advice, there now exist over 28,000 nuclear warheads, 96% of them in the hands of the United States and Russia, each of these nations holding 2,500 on hair trigger alert. These weapons have the potential of pulverising our species and our habitat several times over, in a possible act which Stephen Boyden colourfully refers to as macro-imbecility.

The more nuclear weapons there are around, the greater the likelihood of deliberate or accidental disaster. For example, as recently as 50 pH (1995), Russian radar systems detected what was interpreted as an American missile, and Boris Yeltsin was brought his nuclear command control suitcase. He was about to press the button which would have unleashed a nuclear war when an aide asked "why do we not wait for just one minute, Mr President?" At the end of that time, the supposed missile, which was in fact a Norwegian weather rocket, had disappeared from the radar screen and fallen harmlessly into the sea. Had that question not been asked, we would not have been sitting here today.

While the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is being debated in New York, the swashbuckling military junta in the Pentagon who drive Eisenhower's military-industrial complex appear not to recognise the true horror and devastation which nuclear warfare would bring. The consequences have been outlined grimly in the May/June 2003 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

Nuclear weapons have vastly different destructive properties. A single one can physically destroy an entire city instantaneously, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and leave lingering delayed radio-activity that will deny access to a very large area for many years. A nuclear weapon is truly a weapon of mass destruction - of both people and of the facilities and services that would be needed to care for a very large number of wounded and irradiated victims.

There are of course many more benign outcomes from knowledge of the structure and function of atoms than have emerged in the application of nuclear fission. My favorite subject in medical school was biochemistry, and my hero was Albert Szent Gyorgi, who won his Nobel Prize in the 1940s for his exploration of the pathways of cellular electron transport in photosynthesis and respiration, finding them to be remarkably similar - an introduction, as it were, to submolecular rather than to molecular biology. He distilled his findings into two short sentences which might be appealing to school children but possibly threatening to his biochemical colleagues for making energy transfers seem deceptively simple:

What drives life is a little electric current, kept up by the sunshine. All the complexities of intermediary metabolism are but a lacework around this basic fact.

Our offshore nuclear reactor creates energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. Sunlight takes about eight minutes to reach us and is likely to remain the Earth's non-polluting power supply for another 3 billion years. The solar currency from photosynthesis, temporarily stored in foodstuffs, provides for all our personal metabolic energy requirements (referred to by Stephen Boyden as the human energy equivalent).

Apart from a small proportion of energy provided by nuclear fission, hydro-, power geothermal energy, tidal energy and renewable energy sources, by far the greatest proportion of power to drive our industrial civilisation is presently derived from fossilised solar capital stored in hydrocarbons as coal, oil and natural gas, dating from the carboniferous period 300-400 million years ago. At home we have recently installed a solar hot water system. It is comforting to know that the free hot shower we enjoy in the morning is derived from solar currency which is eight minutes old rather than the previous electrically carried and greenhouse gas producing solar capital which is 3-400 million years old.

Currently in Australia and USA humans use an average of up to 50 human energy equivalents per capita to pursue our affluent lifestyles, mainly from fossil fuels. Not surprisingly, this is having adverse environmental and personal consequences. Globally, steeply rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide from the profligate burning of coal, oil and gas leads to an enhanced greenhouse effect and consequent climate change which poses the most serious human-induced environmental threat to the survival of our civilisation this century. At the personal level, in industrialised cultures as well as amongst associated indigenous communities, excessive consumption of energy- rich foodstuffs combined with physical inactivity poses a major threat to health through the prevailing widespread epidemic of the so-called metabolic syndrome, which is a combination of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and associated cardiovascular disorders. If I might take a taxonomic liberty, sufferers from this condition might be said to represent a hybrid cross between Homo affluensis and Homo sedentarius.

There is a gross disparity in the distribution of solar energy stored in foodstuffs and fossil fuels around the world, with 20 per cent of the population in industrialised countries consuming 80 percent of the planet's resources. In addition, over two billion people are on the brink of malnutrition or starvation, one billion people have no access to clean water supplies and over 2 billion no access to proper sanitation. Apart from ethical considerations, these inequalities in resource distribution, which are increasing, themselves pose a threat to the survival of the human species. Water shortage, with associated reduced agricultural productivity seems likely to become a crucial issue for survival, exacerbated by global warming. In Australia, which is the world's most arid continent, water consumption restrictions, re-cycling of sewage and grey water, harvesting of storm water and solar-powered de-salination of sea water may become permanent features of life this century.

Clearly, if Homo sapiens is to have a sustainable future we must adopt a revolutionary change to our way of life which will be no less radical than that which occurred during the agricultural and industrial transitions, 400 generations and 10 generations ago respectively. It has been estimated that industrialised countries need to reduce their fossil fuel emissions by 60-70% to stabilise atmospheric CO2 levels by mid-century and avoid the potentially fatal risks of runaway global warming. This amounts to humans using 20-30 rather than 50 human energy equivalents of energy, which was probably the same intensity as half a century ago. While several European countries have made a start in that direction, the USA and Australian governments, by failing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and preserving their financial and ideological addiction to fossil fuels have shown themselves to be both scientifically and ethically irresponsible.

Energy conservation, sustainable agriculture and atmospheric protection measures are entirely feasible in both technical and economic terms if they start from the premise of improving efficiency and reducing waste. Such measures are in conflict with the prevailing ethos of economic rationalism (or economic irrationalism) which is devoted to converting non-renewable natural resources as rapidly as possible into wastes, regardless of adverse environmental consequences.

Although champions of individualism will disagree, any effective measures will inevitably require the wise application of social engineering, on a scale similar to the introduction of public health measures into Britain in the nineteenth century, to the benefit of the population as a whole. They will entail less emphasis on private transport and more on public transport such as urban light rail and fast inter-city rail transport for both people and freight. There is a need for accelerated research and development into fuel cells, including the manufacture of hydrogen from electrolysis of sea water, using solar power.

A sustainable energy policy will entail increased energy efficiency of private and public buildings, including appropriate solar siting, more effective ventilation, insulation and the universal installation of solar hot water systems, to utilise Australia's infinite resource of renewable non-polluting energy. By pouring funds into fossil fuel industries at the expense of renewables, our present government and that of USA have shown themselves to be uninterested in meeting their local and global responsibilities for promoting a sustainable energy future.

When he was in political power, Bob Hawke wanted Australia to become "a clever country", which seems a superficial and short term viewpoint. It could be argued that we are already too clever by half and not nearly wise enough, in the sense of lacking a vision for our own future and for that of our neighbours that would enhance sustainable human wellbeing rather than simply promote the concept of short term economic growth, mindless of its causes and consequences. When I worked in the ANU Health Service, Nugget Coombs would pop in to see me from time to time, ostensibly for a prescription, but really for a cup of coffee and a chat, no doubt to the annoyance of other patients in the waiting room. In discussing the myopia of our prevailing economic and international policies I suggested that we should convene a conference of anthropologists to re-name the human species Homo stupidus. Always a stickler for accuracy, Nugget's immediate rejoinder was "No, that's not correct - it should be Homo bloody stupidus. (Incidentally, Nugget's book The Return of Scarcity is worth a read).

The current obsession with gross domestic product (GDP), otherwise known as grossly distorted philosophy as an indicator of progress is non-discriminatory, giving Brownie points to cigarette sales, road crashes, consumption of non-renewable resources and military expenditure, so long as they result in profit. GDP needs to be replaced by GPI. When I was a medical student, GPI meant general paralysis of the insane, due to tertiary syphilis. The modern terminology means something more benign than that. It means genuine progress indicator, which will give priority to the preservation of non-renewable natural resources, to the building up of social and biological capital and to encouragement of the re-use and re-cycling of energy and materials currency. Far from being a threat to employment and prosperity, such a policy could lead to sustainable economic and employment growth in the long term, beyond the next election.

While there have been unimaginable gains in the scientific understanding of the cosmos, of the material world and of biological systems since Aristotle's day, progress in human ethical behaviour has been more debatable, whether regarded in terms of Aristotle's virtue or Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian principles of the greatest good for the greatest number. Thus, while slavery has been almost universally condemned, in theory if not in practice, and while we no longer routinely throw Christians to the lions or burn supposed witches at the stake, or make a public spectacle of human sacrifice and execution (at least in the Western world), torture as an instrument of military policy persists, as does imprisonment without trial and racially-biased capital punishment of criminals in the world's self-styled greatest democracy.

In a recent book entitled How ethical is Australia? Peter Singer and Tom Gregg maintain that Australia's ethical behaviour has taken a downturn over the past decade, citing the present government's rejection of the "grand constructs" of the 2000 Millenium Summit in New York, preferring a hard-headed pursuit of our own national interests at the expense of international responsibilities. They cite the erosion of our support for the United Nations, failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the Optional Protocol on the Convention Against Torture and our mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Despite our generous response to natural disasters, we have been less than generous in our on-going contributions to foreign aid, donating 0.25% of GDP compared to the 0.7% recommended by the United Nations and the 1.0% achieved by Scandinavian countries.

Science as an exercise in the pursuit of truth can be perceived as ethical, but its applications are not necessarily so and many of them are regarded with suspicion by the public. Thus, over 90 per cent of scientists in the USA are employed in the so-called defence industry (which is really a euphemism for an organised homicide industry), including the manufacture of nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction. The Green Revolution of the 1960s had the benign ethical intent and achievement of great improvements in crop yields, thereby temporarily refuting Thomas Malthus, but has left many soils degraded. The proposed widespread introduction of GM crops appears to be driven mainly by commercial rather than by environmental and ethical considerations. The explosive increase in use of chemicals in agriculture and industry has resulted in widespread distribution of health-threatening persistent organic chemicals.

To avoid being labelled as a grumpy old man by disturbing your digestions and stressing only the negative aspects of science and technology I must at least mention some of the enormous benefits to humanity in terms of both quantity and quality of life which have resulted from altruistic and ethical scientific applications. Control of infectious diseases through public health measures, immunisation and judicious prescribing of antibiotics is one such initiative, for which Frank Fenner and a former chancellor of the ANU, Howard Florey, are globally applauded exemplars. In terms of cultural developments, it must be admitted that over the past two millenia, Homo sapiens has reached sublime heights of creativity and understanding in both the sciences and the arts, as well as profound depths of destructiveness and depravity.

As a fossil physician I recognise that there are many ethical questions to be addressed in the current unbridled enthusiasm for some applications of medical science and technology. One such example is the media-and religion - emphasised focus on keeping alive patients on life support systems when the prospect for returning to any reasonable quality of life is close to zero. A more widespread problem is that of an increasingly ageing population, in which half the cost of medical care is devoted to the last year of life. The wise edict that "thou shall not strive officiously to keep alive" needs reviving. The value of palliative care which focuses solely on the quality rather than the quantity of life in terminal illness has achieved public recognition and approval over the past decade. But the more widespread awareness of elderly and disabled patients who have expressed that they no longer wish to continue living raises urgent and profound ethical questions about the right to die which have yet to be solved.

Can Homo sapiens survive? There have been plenty of doomsayers since time immemorial, such as the Egyptian priest who four thousand years ago had inscribed on a tablet of stone at the front of a temple the words "our world is coming to an end - children no longer obey their parents". In 1971 the physicist Denis Gabor who won his Nobel Prize for inventing the hologram, and therefore presumably was able to take a holistic view, wrote of the world's trilemma of population explosion, nuclear explosion and the age of leisure.

Some optimists claim that since humans have hitherto survived because of our adaptability, advances in science and technology will solve our problems. I sometimes think that the human predicament is similar to that of the SS Titanic - hubris concerning an "unsinkable" ship and the desire to break a speed record on her maiden crossing of the Atlantic, denial of warnings of icebergs ahead and inequalities in the provision of adequate lifeboats in case of disaster. At some stage in its forward momentum the Titanic's master could have reversed engines earlier and changed direction to avoid the point of no return.

I retain enough optimism to believe that while Homo sapiens may be close to the point of no return, we still have a choice that radical changes in our behaviour towards each other and towards the natural world may yet tip the scales in the direction of survival and wellbeing rather than collapse. We have the human brain power and resources to change, given the social and political will.

In my view there are three main priorities:

1)The Nuclear Weapon Non Proliferation Treaty must be universally enforced, including the progressive demolition of warheads already held by existing nuclear powers, who must accept the responsibility of leadership on this issue

2) I believe that Homo will never become fully sapiens until the female of the species, in addition to their crucial role in raising children, come to share power equally in male-dominated societies throughout the world. This will require adaptation by both women and men to job sharing between domestic and professional duties, accepting more modest joint incomes in exchange for improved quality of life. There are already signs of this cultural change developing in Australia. In my experience, women are generally more sensible, broad minded, more compassionate, less myopic and less egotistical than men and less prone to generate aggression and violence. There are of course a few notable exceptions in some powerful women who appear to carry an honorary Y chromosome! Early in life it has been shown that female literacy correlates well with lowering of infant mortality, increased life expectancy and smaller families, leading to the possibility of population stabilisation in developing countries. Despite their abilities, women are still grossly under-represented in the power structures of government, economic decision making, the judiciary, academic life, architecture and many other fields where imagination and social justice are lacking. In a politically unstable world, women may have an increasingly important role to play in conflict resolution and in promoting the advantages of co-operation over competition. I believe an optimistic future will be linked to persons with XX chromosomes (assisted by like-minded persons with XY chromosomes) progressively taking over the power structures of our planet.

3)If Homo sapiens is to have a future, sustainability should be integrated in a bipartisan way into all facets of political, economic and environmental decision making, countering the three Ps of population, pollution and poverty with the three Es of Ecology, Ethics and Education. At a conference held in the Shine Dome some 18 months ago and published as a book entitled In search of sustainability one of the ideas which emerged was that a Minister of Sustainability should be appointed, ranked just below the Prime Minister and above the Treasurer, and making economy, as Ian Lowe has suggested, a subset of ecology. Unfortunately such an achievement may require the ethically dubious co-operation of genetic engineers to enable pigs to fly.

I think Manning Clark House, and particularly the imaginative initiatives and hard work of Sebastian Clark, Andrew Glickson, Penny Ramsey and Liz Shaw are to be commended for providing us all with plenty of food for that sometimes painful and difficult activity known as thought.

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