Crawford Lecture: Retrofitting Civilization for Climate Change

The 2007 Sir John Crawford Memorial Lecture was presented in an extraordinary setting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing by theoretical neurobiologist Dr. William Calvin, Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

Dr. William Calvin delivers the 2008 Crawford Lecture

The Crawford Lecture, a highlight of the CGIAR Annual General Meeting, is named in honor of the Australian Sir John Crawford, a passionate supporter of international agricultural research for development, a founding father of the CGIAR and the first chair of its Technical Advisory Committee.

The lecture is sponsored by the Australian government and seeks to challenge the agricultural research and development community to think outside the proverbial box. This year’s presentation, entitled “The Great Use-it-or-lose-it Intelligence Test,” provided plenty of food for thought as the CGIAR, its members and partners seek more effective ways to confront major global challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and rural poverty.

Calvin explained humanity’s tardiness in taking climate change seriously as “the status quo bias.” Part of the problem is that most climate scientists are trained to think in terms of certainty and understatement, not in terms of risk and its management. Another is that politicians remain unwilling to make hard decisions.

These factors, he believes, have left us with a very conservative explanation of what humanity is now facing and what must be done to reduce the impacts of climate instability.

Following a sobering description of what may well be in store without brave action on climate change, Calvin’s optimistic conclusion was that humanity may, in fact, find the intellectual depth and leadership to make the changes now needed. After all, he pointed out, within the 50,000-year timeframe of the modern mind, periods of enlightenment have been linked to periods of severe climate change or instability.

Calvin highlighted a number of suggestions for both the agricultural and energy sectors in fighting the climate change battle.

“Certainly, many of the opportunities to fix our global climate lie in the agricultural sector, because there is so much ‘low-hanging fruit’ there: irrigation, tillage and fertilizer practices being what they currently are,” he said.

On the energy side, some of Calvin’s suggestions included support for a carbon tax balanced by tax relief to reward those who carpool, insulate their homes and buy clean-fuel vehicles; plug-in hybrid cars; banning new coal plants; cloning nuclear and geothermal power plants; and helping developing countries with solar thermal or geothermal installations, which run steam plants, in return for binding agreements not to add fossil carbon to the air.

“Thanks to our accumulated intellectual achievements, a Third Industrial Revolution is likely coming, one that will replace fossil fuels and create nonpolluting agriculture. The problem, however, is time.”

“ Our present civilization is like a magnificent cathedral, back before flying buttresses were retrofitted to stabilize the walls. Civilization now needs such a retrofit and the agricultural research community has a significant role to play,” he concluded.