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Oct. 31, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
45:57
Delingpod 43: James Lovelock
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Welcome to the Dellingpot with me, James Dellingpot.
And I am so excited about this week's guest.
I know I always say that, but actually, this person is really one of my favourite people in the whole world.
One of the most amazing people I've ever met.
And so I'm having him back for a second time on the podcast.
And he's got slightly older since the last one.
He's now 100.
His name is Jim Lovelock, James Lovelock, inventor of Gaia theory, independent scientist, general legend.
I mean, you did amazing things in World War II, stopping sailors getting burned, all sorts of stuff you've done.
But first of all, I want to just talk about your amazing birthday party that you had, the 100th birthday party.
How good was that?
Did you enjoy it?
I was in the middle of it, so I couldn't really tell.
And I was a bit overcome because I found myself sitting next to a delightful middle-aged lady who said all the right things and you felt really comfortable with.
And it was only halfway through that I suddenly realised she was the Duchess of Westness.
Duchess of Richmond.
Right, well, right, okay.
Richmond, sorry, no.
Right, so she was probably not literally descended from the Duchess of Richmond who had the ball on the eve of Waterloo.
That's right, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
It was quite a weird event for me because...
You had an amazing, amazing guest list.
And my table was really interesting.
I sat next to your daughter-in-law, who's fantastic, who was born in northern Uganda and ended up, I think, being driven out by the Lord's Resistance Army and saw some terrible things.
But your son married well there.
She's a really clever girl.
And what I loved about her is that even though she's African and even though she's worked for the UN, she's completely against all that nonsense about give us more aid, we are Africans, we are stuff.
She's really against that.
She wants to do it herself, yes.
You obviously got some independently-minded children.
How many have you got?
Four.
And how many grandchildren?
Oh, too many.
I got eleven great-grandchildren, mostly in Australia.
Blimey.
That must be quite rare to live long enough to see eleven great-grandchildren.
Have we seen them?
I think we have, yes.
Well, I mean, to be on the same planet as them.
That's right, that's something.
That's pretty amazing.
And planets are important.
Well, we'll come to that in a minute.
What I want to know is...
See, I'm dying already and you're fine.
You're looking really, really well.
Thank you.
And you're...
You're totally there.
And what I want to know is, how do I get to live to 100 and beyond and be as sort of hale as you are?
It's not a difficult question, really.
I think the most important thing is not to smoke.
We are of a generation now, they've stopped it anyway.
When I grew up, my mother was a suffragist, and part of the suffragist sort of belief was that it was women's right to smoke.
Men alone should not be...
Oh right, so they were smoking as a political gesture?
That's right.
So I grew up in a house full of cigarette smoke.
Hardly see the other wall.
Is that what put you off, do you think?
You just couldn't bear...
No, it didn't.
It made me a confirmed smoker, so I smoked for about 30 years.
Right.
Yeah, and that gave me a heart attack.
And I thought, hey Jim, you've got to stop this now, or you won't live to be a husband.
And did you smoke seriously?
I mean, were you sort of, what, 30 a day or something?
Yes.
Because people did in those days, didn't they?
What did you smoke?
Capstan full strength or something?
No, players.
Players' Navy gun?
Yes.
If you're a writer, I think smoking's almost an obligate drug, isn't it?
Totally.
Totally.
Well, I mean, it depends what kind of writing.
I'd say that for general writing, smoking is pretty essential.
And you definitely build up a connection between the act of writing and smoking.
That's right.
You think of that sort of phrase they use.
The coughing hack with a hacking cough.
Well, yeah, exactly.
Which I suppose is why a lot of...
And the drinking, of course.
Where are you on drinking?
Nowhere at all.
Never have?
Occasionally, but never liked it.
And it always left me feeling a lot worse the next day, so I thought, oh, to hell with this.
My vice, I have to say, is the weed.
I like marijuana.
Oh, so do we.
Oh, do you?
Yeah, but we take it medicinal.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, of course.
Well, it's meant to be very...
What's it called, um...
CBD oil.
CBD, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Hemp extract.
Gets rid of all the eggs.
I wouldn't be without it twice a day.
Right, right.
Well, where is it?
Grown.
No, no.
Is it legal or semi-legal?
Oh, completely legal.
Right.
You can buy it over the internet, can't you?
It's grown in Israel, I think.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, that's been one of the massive developments of the last 10 years, hasn't it?
The growth of this marijuana industry.
I should think the drug companies are going furious because it's a complete competition on profits.
Yeah.
And it's getting heard about more and more.
If you tell people you're taking a ha, they say.
Yeah, they think you're taking the wacky-backy and you're getting out of it.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, what I would say against the weed as a kind of recreational drug as opposed to a sort of medicinal drug...
Is that it's probably good for creativity.
It's probably good for writing rock songs.
But it's probably not very good for writing kind of scientific books, I would imagine, or anything that requires concentration or...
Well, a lot depends on the sciences.
I can think of some scientific writing that could badly do with simple art.
LAUGHTER Yeah, yeah, there is that.
There is that.
You've had a book out this year, which I think is, there can't be many hundred-year-old writers, called The Nova Scene.
Yeah, well, it was partly written with Mike, sorry, Brian Allaby.
Oh.
Brian Appleyard, yeah, the Sunday Times.
He was a very good journalist.
And a good friend, too.
Yeah, he was another...
Your guest list was amazing.
Actually, before we go on to the Nova scene...
I had some sticky moments because, as you know, I am not a fan of a lot of elements of the environmental movement and the kind of...
Neither am I. Well, we can come to that as well.
But some of the people, Crispin Tockel, for example, who I know is a...
A good mate of yours.
But I consider him, you know, a wrong one.
Because he goes round lecturing people, goes round sort of lecturing church chores, telling everyone that we're doomed and it's all our fault and there's nothing, you know, unless we embrace kind of renewables and stuff, we're all going to die.
And I just, A, I don't believe it, and B, I think what he's advocating is completely the wrong thing to save the planet.
Is he really doing this?
Yeah, my dad went to see one of his things in Malvern, which is actually, it's like pushing an open door in Malvern.
Malvern's like going to Totnes or somewhere.
They're all kind of into that hair shirt stuff.
Well, the problem is, you see, I consider Christian the best of friends.
Yeah.
And I do you too.
So you can't be rude.
No, I'm not saying you're rude.
Yeah, you can't be that bad, no.
And he was the first person in the country of any significance To recognise Gaia and see that it was a theory that was, you know, fairly likely to be accurate and he could put his shirt on without running too much risk.
And he's stuck with it ever since.
So faithful people are quite something special.
I think Gaia theory now is generally accepted as a, you know, it's taken for granted now.
But when you first wrote that book, did people think you were a complete nutcase?
Yes, and it was worse than that.
There's a certain American group that can't bear the thought, I think, of any Brits coming in and producing stuff.
And there was some very nasty anti-Guyan propaganda, is the only word I can think of, and tricks played to try and put it down.
And if you've got The American power and force behind their arguments, then it's very difficult to stick with it, and that's been a pretty hard, I don't know how many years, 30 years is it?
It's a hell of a long time.
Actually, Jim, if you move your microphone, because you're looking at me, because you're polite, just move over here, because you're so polite looking at me, and the microphones are...
That's alright.
Yeah, that's better.
Yeah, I mean, it makes...
You made the intuitive leap, because you weren't bound by any particular field.
That's right.
You're like leaping all over the place.
And also nobody paid me any money for it.
No, no.
I mean, apart from book publication.
I mean, that's not the same thing.
So you mean that, in a way, when you're being paid money for things, it kind of, it sort of corrupts your way of thinking?
No, I wouldn't call it a very reverse of corruption.
If you accept, shall we say, some really hefty sum from a publisher, which you'd never get, like 10,000 quid, you feel an obligation.
You've got to do a good job for it.
Oh, I see, yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, so...
Now it makes sense that the planet is one organism.
But where do we fit into all that?
Because one of the things that disturbs me about the environmental movement, and I think this is particularly a problem with ecology as a field, is that it seems to start with the view that we humans are a cancer on the planet.
Whereas I kind of think, well, we're a key part of it.
I mean, we're the one that gives it consciousness, and we're the ones that create art, and we're not the plague that I think a lot of environmentalists see us as.
Oh no, you are absolutely right.
The planet would not be worth a damn without us.
And we're the triumph of life's existence in many ways.
It's quite amazing that just a few atoms, no more than a few, billions of atoms could come together After a supernova explosion, the biggest nuclear explosion you can think of, short of the Big Bang, and fall themselves into all these oddities like living cells and eventually animals.
And eventually us.
It's the most wonderful and remarkable event.
I mean, there have been, not series I call it, games invented by people who like to think of the cosmos as this collection of bits and pieces and somehow they come together or somebody moves them together like pieces on the chessboard.
Until you fall on the kind of earth we've got.
But the very unlikeliness of our existence is also the reason why...
I was very sad to read this in your book.
There isn't other life out there.
That's right.
We're not going to find another planet with people like us on it.
No, not a bit.
Which is a bit lonely-making, maybe?
Not really.
Not to me, it doesn't.
I grew up very much a loner, so the absence of other sorts of people is no loss to me.
Do you think that we're going to colonise other planets one day?
No.
Definitely no.
It's quite likely that we are the only planet with life on it.
Right, but could we not make other planets habitable?
Oh, you mean deliberately?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, in a way, that's already been done.
I mean, there's been men on the moon.
You might say, therefore, the moon was inhabited by people.
Yeah, but I'm talking about kind of domes with vegetation.
They have domes, sort of.
Yeah, but really, really big domes.
I know what you mean.
Like in science fiction movies.
Well, there's no point in it.
And who put the money up?
Well, yes.
I suppose it depends, doesn't it, on your view of what population's going to do and when it's going to peak.
I mean, I read somebody this year quoting a figure of 11 billion, but that seems quite high to me.
By when?
By the end of this century, they said.
Well, if we reach the end of this century, which some people seem to have doubts about, I don't think there'll be that number on.
If there were, then it would kind of prove itself.
That would be too many.
Right, right.
Well, you don't seriously think we're not going to make the end of the century, do you?
I don't know.
I mean, I think probably you won't, because you told me the last time we met that the longest you get to live is 110, isn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
Good memory.
So you've got nine more years.
That's a long time.
That won't see you to the end of the century.
But, I mean, yeah, I'm feeling...
Don't depress me, Jim.
I mean, I'm feeling pretty confident we're going to make it.
You know?
I mean, that means my kids are going to see...
Yeah, my kids will see the end of this century, and my grandchildren certainly will.
I can't do sums.
My arithmetic's terrible.
Is it?
Always has been.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I failed my exams in arithmetic, and I can prove it.
It was exhibited in the Science Museum some time ago.
I assumed that because you're a scientist, you'd be good at the maths.
No.
No, I am, but not at arithmetic.
Well, what other maths is there, then?
I mean, to start with, Newton said, God, this arithmetic is terrible.
I've never passed my exams here at Trinity.
And so they invented calculus.
Right, okay.
Which is so difficult from the academic point of view that they thought, ah, this is perfect.
That's what we want.
Yeah.
One of the themes in the Nova scene, which is basically...
Correct me if I'm summarising it wrong, but...
You're arguing that we're coming to the end of the period known as the Anthropocene, which is really industrial revolution, where man really makes an enormous impact on the planet.
And now that period is just about over and we're going to enter a new age where sort of robot-like things are going to live in parallel with us.
If you don't mind, I'll say you put that the wrong way round.
Okay.
The Anthropocene was the time machines took over.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
The Novocene is the time that the machines are downgraded to what they are no more than machines.
And whatever is the life form, the central one, takes over.
I don't know what it will be.
Right.
So initially we're going to create these things ourselves to be our servants and then they're going to start doing clever things themselves and eventually have a sort of parallel existence with ours.
Yes, the model really is the perfect vacuum cleaner that not only serves that purpose but also is a butler and a housemaid, everything.
Right.
Yeah, that sounds good.
Well, yes, but I don't see that running the planet.
Well, yeah.
I mean, what's it going to do when the gaffer comes in and says, look, it's no use, the supply of vegetation is now not meeting the requirements of the oxygen level of the air.
What are you going to do about it?
Is that the point where it sort of starts killing us?
Yes.
Well, this is the worry, isn't it?
It is.
I mean, you mention Asimov's first three laws of robots.
One of them is they're not allowed to kill us.
That's right.
Yes, that's right.
But you make the point that actually this assumes that robots obey the rules.
And why should they?
Because we don't.
That's a good point.
Well, it's your point.
But we do obey the rules.
If we didn't, we'd be all dead long ago.
Up to a point?
No, accurately.
Well, not all of us obey the rules.
Yes, we do.
We don't know we do, but we do.
I mean, you don't breathe in any more oxygen than you need, or it is just right to balance the eating of stuff that's made by sunlight synthesis.
Right, in that sense, yes.
It's all in balance, beautifully.
Okay, but we break other rules.
I mean, you know, we're naughty and sometimes it's through breaking rules.
Well, it's nice.
Yeah, we achieve things, don't we?
Yeah.
I mean, I like, I have to say, I like breaking the speed limit because I... I don't see why the police should tell me how fast I should drive, you know, within reason.
Seems wrong to me.
But if the robots start thinking this way, and to follow your example, if they start saying, well, you know, these humans are consuming too many resources for the planet's carrying capacity, we better take action.
Well, we're entering the realm of Terminator, aren't we?
You've seen the Terminator films, but that would worry me slightly.
No, I haven't seen them.
Do you think I should?
Well, I mean, you've imagined it anyway.
I mean, this is the world that may come to exist where there are these robots which look like us but perform much better than us.
They're virtually indestructible.
And if they turn bad, then that's not good for us.
And you can kind of imagine the Chinese doing that.
You can imagine the Chinese building war robots, can't you?
Yes, I suppose so.
Although people change.
The Chinese suffer from too many of them.
They have done for a long time.
I suppose they had such an ideal setup in China with the food balance and the climate and everything else that they just multiplied to a point where they just reached this sort of stasis and stayed at the same sort of civilization for how long?
A couple of thousand years.
Remarkable, really.
Well, yeah.
Well, do you think that...
I've often wondered this, particularly since reading, you know, your Gaia theory.
Do you think that when, for example...
A nation of 1.4 billion, probably 1.2 billion 20 years ago.
I don't know what it was when Mao first appeared.
But when a country like that sort of discovers communism and gets really into it big time...
Do you think that that is a kind of a way of this massive population is sort of unconsciously self-regulating itself and stopping itself growing, thus secretly serving the interests of the planet?
Or do you think it's just a kind of random thing?
Well, that's an interesting theory.
I've never heard that before.
Well, I wouldn't rule it.
You'd have to test it, which ain't going to be easy to do.
Well, you couldn't test it, could you?
What could you measure it against?
But things like, okay, so communism is just one example, but okay, wars, for example, or indeed the rise and fall of civilizations.
Or this new thing, what is it, that they're standing on top of trains about...
I wanted to ask you about that.
Extinction Rebellion.
Have you seen the footage?
I was going to show you actually.
This morning, it'll probably be last week by the time this appears, there was footage all over social media of this chap standing on top of a tube train and the furious...
The furious punters, the commuters, just weren't having it.
And they started trying to pull him down.
And he tried to kick the head of one chap who tried to pull him down.
And eventually he got pulled off the top of the train.
Because these people who are on their way to work and probably are being paid by the hour, so they can't really afford the luxury of watching this.
How do you feel about these Extinction Rebellion protests?
Do you think they're doing us a favour or do you think they're a menace?
A young person's angry rebellion about anything.
What's in their minds, I think, is not so much the climate or anything else.
They're just working out their hates.
It's pretty rotten having to go to work every day on an overcrowded tube train.
But to be fair, Jim, these people probably haven't got – the ones who are protesting probably haven't got to commute to work on a tube train.
They've probably got trust funds and things from mummy and daddy.
Honest?
Yeah, they're very middle class, these – Well then why are they in a tube thing?
No, no, no.
The ones queuing up on the platform are the workers.
Just ordinary folks.
Yeah, yeah.
They're the ones who don't like these middle class kids standing, you know, indulging themselves.
Ah, I got you.
Yeah.
Oh, well that's too complicated.
I mean, that's sociology.
I didn't do that subject.
Well, you don't have to have done – I didn't do sociology.
I did English.
I've got a view.
I don't think you need to be – but this is where I am and you can tell me where you are.
I don't think it's right that pampered middle-class kids should express themselves through the medium of environmental protest – At the expense of ordinary working people who just want to get on with their jobs.
I entirely agree.
But then I think, had I been about, you know, their sort of age group and standing on that platform, how would I have reacted?
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Well, did you go through a radical phase?
Oh, yes.
Who didn't?
Well, so what was your radical period?
Making bombs and blowing up things.
Well, what's radical about that?
You weren't an anarchist.
No, you think that's just commonplace.
Well, no, I mean, are we talking about World War II here?
Before that.
What, you were making bombs for the purposes of anarchy?
If you like.
Well, tell me about that.
Oh no, I can't.
What, you seriously were?
You were kind of an anarchist?
Yes, I think most kids pass through the phase of that kind.
But what were you specifically angry about?
What were you trying to stop?
I had very strong views during the Spanish Civil War and a lot of kids of my age group felt much the same.
Right.
So you saw the fascists and Hitler fighting their proxy war in Spain.
Yeah.
I mean, were you tempted to go and fight in the Spanish Civil War?
George Orwell?
Tempted to do things, yes, if I could.
I should add there that I grew up in a very left-wing family indeed, and rather glad I did because it gave me completely a very hard view of one side of the picture.
And as a spectator reader, obviously, I've come from...
Well, clearly you have, but you must have a vestigial sympathy with the proletariat or whatever you'd like to call them.
Of course I do, yes.
I mean, I think that makes sense.
Had you, of course, gone out to Spain to fight in the Civil War...
Yes.
I would probably have finished up like Orwell.
Well, Orwell was lucky because he got wounded and just got out just in time.
But I think he would have been shot by his own...
Absolutely.
You'd have been shot by your own people.
Yes.
Because the commies were at least as bad as the other side.
Oh, yes.
No, I'm very well aware of the nastiness of some of that lot.
Yeah.
So, okay, well, because you're wise and benign, how do we channel this youthful rage in a good way?
Or rather, how do we channel it in a good way and how do we stop it kind of disrupting the lives of people who want to get on and bring up their families and give their children a better future and stuff?
That's no easy question.
I think the first answer I give is everyone has their own way of dealing with that cluster problem.
Try and stay fit and healthy as you can because if you do, your brain will work a bit better and there's no harm in the intelligence factor.
It's the one thing we need more than anything.
Yeah.
I read this amazing book a few months ago, and I actually had the chaps on my podcast who have this theory, and quite well supported, that the average IQ of humans is dropping And the reason for that is that advances in medical technology mean that,
you know, sort of the underclass, as it were, the sort of the people of low intelligence who would hitherto have been the first to go in any kind of starvation or disease situation.
And now multiplying.
And now multiplying.
Whereas the cleverest people can't afford to have children or won't have children because of their careers.
Does that make sense to you, that theory?
It makes a lot of sense, but it obviously varies enormously from nation to nation, country to country.
If you talk to a coma about it, she would have told you that there are parts of Africa where that doesn't apply.
I can believe that where a coma comes from, well, I mean, where there is still the struggle and survival of the fittest, if you like, probably the average IQ is rising.
But I think in the West, we've pretty much peaked, haven't we?
we i mean isn't isn't what's going on now with all the kind of uh the chaos over over brexit the um uh the extinction rebellion nonsense isn't that isn't that all symptomatic of a of a civilization that's that's kind of peaked you're probably right i I don't know, because...
It's easy to make yes or no answers to questions like that, but you've really got to go and look at it and study it fairly closely and see what they're up to.
You can get some nasty surprises.
Like what?
Well, I think the biggest surprise I had in my life of destructiveness was during the early part of World War II. I had the job of wandering along the underground shelters, the old tube tunnels, looking for organisms that might spread an epidemic.
I think the government were mortally afraid of a flu epidemic, like the one at the end of World War II. Which killed more people, I think, than the more.
Under stretcher conditions.
Sorry, not stretcher.
Under the conditions in the shelters.
And that would affect mainly the working class people, on whom they depended much more then than now.
Yeah.
And in the course of this, I found kids, working class kids, undoing the bolts on the side of the steel plates that held the mud outside away from us and selling them.
And...
What do you mean, they were taking apart the...
They take all four bolts off, or nuts off, and go and sell them to the iron monger or whatever.
So did you report that, and how did you do it?
Because, I mean, that could have been a massive tunnel collapse.
One small bomb near the tunnel, and bingo, that would be it.
Yeah.
Oh no.
Well, yes, I passed it on, but everybody knew.
There's all sorts of stuff that...
You can't do anything about it.
What I've realised later on in life is that all the kind of myths I was served up by...
I was at a traditional English prep school in the 1970s and all we ever used to watch on the projector were war movies, things like Dunkirk and stuff and you sort of celebrating the stiff upper lip and stuff.
And what you discover when you read about the war is that it wasn't quite like that.
No, it wasn't.
Tell me some things that would shock me about that era.
I wish I could, because you should have given me notice.
I'm sorry, that's cruel.
Okay, so one of the things that I learned, because I used to interview World War II veterans, was that they would get their tanks out in the desert, which had been shipped over from, I suppose, Liverpool or somewhere.
And what they would find is that the dock workers had chipped off all the compass and all the...
Anything you could get money with.
Yeah.
So that their tanks were...
Pretty useless.
Yeah.
That didn't surprise me at all.
So people weren't all pulling together, and particularly the communists were all supporting Uncle Joe Starlin.
Well, don't forget, if you're talking about Liverpool, a lot of it was part of another war that was going on between Ireland and Britain.
Yes, there's that as well.
That complicated it.
Mm.
Well, you've seen a lot and I'm hoping that you're going to have some cheery messages for how things are going to pan out from here on in.
I mean, you seem to have Your views on just how big a threat climate change is seems to have shifted.
I think in one of your books, what, ten years ago, you were kind of...
That's right.
We were totally doomed and we were all going to have to retreat to the polls.
Well, I think we're discovering more and more about it.
And one of the best books there's been on the future of the Earth during this period that we're in was the one by the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees.
The last, what is it, last hundred years or our final hundred years.
I've forgotten the title, but you can easily find it.
Martin Rees is his name.
Now, that, I think, is one of truly wise books, and much of what I'm saying really follows on from that.
It's just I filled in a few of the details by going out and measuring things.
Right, right.
Well...
You and I disagree on the degree to which anthropogenic influences are catastrophically warming the planet.
I just don't think it's an issue at all.
But if it is an issue, I do think we're going about it in the wrong way at the moment.
Okay, well, I'll state my case.
If we go on burning fossil fuel, the way we've been doing, we are doomed.
Right.
Because, simple reason, you don't have to warm the Earth much to set in course automatic, almost automatic processes in the Earth's physics and chemistry.
You're talking about feedbacks?
That will run up the temperature to impossible levels.
So you're talking about the forcing effects of a CO2 increase, which will trigger various feedbacks, which will make it even worse.
I understand the theory.
So far, I'm not seeing any evidence of this.
In terms of, for example...
No, but if it's going to happen in 50 years, why would you see anything?
No.
Well, that's okay.
So I accept that that's a...
It's a possibility.
And I accept the, well, I sort of accept the idea of Pascal's wager that it's better to do something just in case to avert the, but if we are going to do something about it, I think you and I agree that it's got to be nuclear, hasn't it?
Oh yes, I don't have any doubts on that one.
They're claiming that you can produce 50% of the energy we need in Britain by renewable energy.
I don't know whether that's absolute lies or from the admin.
Or whether it's true.
But assuming for a moment it's true, then it's just possible that nuclear wood is not required in full.
Right.
I think it's lies.
Well, you're closer to the industry than I am.
Well, one of my beefs is with the whole environmental thing.
I mean, look, like you, I'm an environmentalist, a real environmentalist.
I actually like, unlike some greeners, I love nature.
Here we are in one of the most, I think, you've got just about the best place to live on Earth.
Well, we tried hard and we walked a long way to it.
It's just fantastic.
I mean, describe it.
I'm looking out through your window onto Chesil Beach in Dorset, and you've got a kind of palm tree-like thing.
Well, it's not obviously a palm tree.
What is it?
You've obviously got some kind of microclimate down here.
Oh, Sandy, she's a gardener.
I don't know.
So you walk out through your garden onto the beach and I can see the waves coming in and overlooking your house is this upland which is just fantastic views from the top.
And quite high too, by the 800 feet.
And there's Heathland where you got bitten by an adder.
Yeah.
Which I think I'm kind of envious of that.
I think that's quite cool to have been...
Well, there's working with nature, isn't there?
By the way, have you been attacked by any other interesting creatures in your long life?
No.
What, the adder's the best?
Oh, yes, no.
Anthrax organisms.
And you've had anthrax?
Yeah.
And how was that for you?
I don't know.
I was unconscious much.
Oh, really?
What does anthrax do to you?
Well, not very much immediately as I could see.
It just produced a kind of nasty wart on my hand and then I felt ill and then iller and just passed out.
Was that accidental contamination in the lab?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's just one of those things.
It must have been something lab involved because insects isn't that common.
It does exist in Britain.
I mean, a dead cow is quite capable of incubating a lot of anthrax.
Is it?
I thought it was something they'd eradicated.
I thought the last supply was in the lab and they just killed it.
They say that.
Oh, I see.
So it could come back.
Oh, sure.
It's not a very...
How can we put it?
It's not the most deadly disease.
It's not as bad as Ebola, is it?
No.
Nothing.
It's not comparable.
No, no.
I definitely wouldn't want to get Ebola.
It's not as bad as a bad influenza.
Right.
Okay.
Right.
So, you've stopped it being so exciting, you're out there now about anthrax.
But...
Oh, yes.
But it's alive.
Five minutes.
Okay, yeah, good.
So, Jim, I was coming around.
We're talking about what amazing environmentalists we are and how we both love nature.
The really thing that most annoys me about environmentalism Is that it seems to be geared towards pushing renewable energy, particularly wind turbines, which I call...
Is there any money coming in?
Yes, there is.
It's a Ponzi scheme, isn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
Well, my view for a long time, which may be completely wrong, is this, that an enormous amount of money is spent on anti-nuclear propaganda.
Yes.
Because...
It's so harmless.
You can see the bloody figures.
If you run a nuclear power station, your insurance company ought to give you almost perfect rates, because it's a very healthy place to work in, and people who work there live longer than the rest of them.
They do, don't they?
What's it called?
Hormesis?
Yes.
But it isn't hormesis, it's just it's very safe.
Oh, I see, right, okay.
Right, just a safe environment, okay.
That's right.
Yeah.
And so it's all lies they're saying about it.
And where does the money for the lies come from?
Well, the coal and oil industries.
And the wind industry.
And, well, they're small compared with the oil and coal.
And they are just deadly frightened of that any moment now is going to really be realised by the major governments.
If they don't stop it, they're done with.
Yeah, yeah.
As I was driving down, I spotted a wind turbine ruining a valley.
I'm very glad to see that there was none overlooking your particular stretch.
Is that because it's a specially protected area?
Yeah.
Well, thank goodness for that.
I mean, because they are the thing...
If I had to ban one thing...
You ban that, so would we.
You join the club.
Well, I might ban the BBC first and then the wind turbines.
But in a way, they're related.
It's like, you know, I don't know what it would be.
It's like, if you eradicate the malaria mosquito, you eradicate malaria.
In the same way, if you eradicate the BBC... Exactly.
Tell me briefly...
What your objection to wind turbines is.
I know what mine are, and I'm always rehearsing them, but tell me about yours.
I think the arguments for using them are silly and inaccurate and misleading, and most of all, uneconomic.
So, no, I just think it's a silly answer to an important problem.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I'm glad you said that.
We've now got to go and have lunch, which is, of course, far more important than me wittering on about my Random views.
Jim, thank you very much for coming on the podcast again.
I hope I was coherent.
You were very coherent.
I'm going to give you your special friend badge and I'm hoping that that This is important, this badge business.
It gives a solidity to the whole thing that otherwise might make me think it was frivolous.
Indeed.
And we couldn't have that.
No, no, no.
But I just want you to promise me that around your 109th birthday, you'll do another podcast, you know, because I fear that 110 might be your final year.
But 109 would be a good age.
Yeah, but I might get another picture from the Queen.
On my 110th.
Well, you would.
You don't even get 100th telegrams anymore, do you?
Oh, yes you do.
Do you?
Yeah, and a beautiful picture.
Oh, okay.
I thought that so many people were living to 100 now that it was overwhelming the royal finances.
They've kind of mechanised it, but it's a nice...
Have you got it, Sandy?
I do.
I need to put it in the frame.
I bought a frame for it.
By the way, have you got a knighthood yet?
No, because I've got a CH. You see, that overrides a knighthood.
Does it?
So if you've got a CH, you don't get a knighthood?
Yeah.
Oh.
No, sometimes people move from the knighthood to a CH. But not the other way round.
Yeah, yeah.
You've made me think, actually, that I'm not going to bother with the knighthood.
I'm going to go straight to Companion of Honour.
Although I rather fear that Charles doesn't like me, and I don't think William's going to like me either.
Well, he wouldn't like me either.
Really?
No.
Why wouldn't he like you?
What, you're a bit common?
Well, my views are the opposite of his.
He's very green.
Yes.
See, you wouldn't describe yourself as a green...
No.
Unless you called me the first one.
Not quite the first, but very early.
Well, in some ways you are the godfather of green, but just tell me briefly why you wouldn't consider yourself green.
Because of the crowd of them.
I don't want to stand on top of very few trains with ordinary blokes going to work.
No way.
I would consider it an outrageous thing to do.
Just because of the theory.
Just because of bloody theory.
Marvellous.
Well, thank you for coming on the Deling Pod.
I'm now going to present you with your red badge.
And let's go and have some lunch.
Thank you very much, Jim.
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