Discussion with professor from Rice University welcome to houston. [applause] ladies and gentlemen thank you for the Houston Museum of Natural Science for inviting me to someone who sits on the board of several museums i have a deep appreciation for the role of institutions that play in the local community as a window of the past and a guide to the future the indispensable resources i go above and beyond what you read in books. Houston is fortunate enough to have this place its a great pleasure to be here. As a natural scientist i have always sought to maintain to be involved in cultural organizations and when i applied for scholarship at the university of cambridge i had to submit an essay about was completely different to my main area of study. And a piece about the architectures i can explain later to anyone who is interested what that actually means that my first bonus check and the more Senior Executive such as the Folger Shakespeare library in washington dc the British Museum today its one of the great joys to spend even more time with these organizations. But something is always troubled me. I have heard people assert again and again culture is that the foundation of civilization. Certainly it is essential for understanding the only have to visit the chapel here to appreciate. But in my view it is preceded by a great engineering which is the True Foundation of which true civilization is built thats why i wrote think imagine that it is the lifeblood. Today i have four stories while ive been talking about the book after its publication. You can interpret just as you wish and i hope it sparks an internal discussion with you. My first story is about transcending limits a few months ago i gave a lecture at the institute were i am chairman of the board. It is one of the major Biomedical Research hubs home to several prizewinners. After my talk and ask a question that made me think are humans just like e. Coli . [laughter] s question was the way that we abuse Natural Resources because of the oak lawn e. Coli bacteria population grows slowly at first and then exponentially. After the period of rapid expansion things go downhill rather quickly as the bacteria battle it out for resources. And 18th century tim thomas made a similar point arguing human population growth has more catastrophic competition followed by decline in the fifties american geologist coin themselves as they predicted around the year 2000 and stopped rapidly to make so many predictions and limits to growth but somehow all of these predictions of the collapse of civilization have never come to pass. So together we face great challenges today. Not the least of which unintended consequences of itself. Some of these such as Antimicrobial Resistance and Climate Change have the potential to become existential threats. But we are not bacteria. Time and again engineers have used their ingenuity and imagination to overcome those resource constraints to Work Together to build a better world that is why the amount of oil the world uses with gdp has fallen by one third since 1985 and engineering has enabled us to do more with less why texas is by a large margin the largest generator of power in the United States and why by using Carbon Dioxide could make it the lowest carbon force of oil in the world this is Real Progress instigated by developments accelerated by evolving Consumer Preferences guided by a combination of policy and Market Forces made possible by engineering. My second story is unintended consequences. During the 1980s the dominant Communications Operator at t was broken up into several Smaller Companies followed by the loosening of structures all designed to open up the market and encourage competition we can now look back and ask what this has achieved thanks to at t is actually bigger than it was before was broken up but when it comes to innovation it has lost something. The r d powerhouse was described as a nobel prize actuary now owned by tokyo talent and practical knowhow to migrate overseas the practical consequence of this plays out today American Companies do not have any distinct competitive advantage of five g. Instead Companies Like ericsson, no caps and the chinese for huawei are rolling out five g mobile internet in many parts of asia and europe setting new standards along the way. Five g is being developed. This would not matter if we lived in the world underpinned by globalization and free trade. But it does matter when we experience a technologically driven trade war a major feature of which is of china and as a result we are at risk of falling behind this is a change with five g to provide the speed what is needed by the self driving cars and robots and drones to transform our economy enable physicians to perform surgery on patients on the other side of the world using extended and tactile reality enabling them to feel what is going on. And as i recently saw during a demonstration at the Wembley Stadium in london five g will offer 560 degrees Sports Coverage in real time which will completely change the way we experience life sports the technological and geopolitical standoff with the speed and breadth and depth of innovation at worst it could reverse the globalization of products many of you will remember having to carry the phones going overseas one for the us one for europe and one for japan. Its my fear we are headed down the same path today. My third story is about making a practical difference december 11, 1945 Alexander Fleming and two other men put down their bowties to receive a nobel prize for their research into penicillin. As a ceremony unfolded in stockholm a little known female chemical engineer was at home looking after her young son. Broadly she has been written out of history. It was she who took a promising and highly unstable chemical substance and solve engineering problems necessary to transform it into the drug to transform more lives than any other. By the time of the normandie Beach Landing june 1944 the allied forces had two. 3 million doses of penicillin one year later production has 650 billion units among them with the ingenuity and tenacity to me the story demonstrates perfectly why such a powerful force in our world like the ancient roman god who had two faces one looking at the past the other looks at the future in the case of engineering the other looks at humanity were engineers do what they see and come up with a solution these are the tools and systems we use to understand and shape our world. Time and time again. Engineers have applied their art to overcome those challenges and in the past 40 years the cost of totality along with a similar learning curve. I suspect the claim will happen one the same will happen with Carbon Capture technology with Climate Change. So this is what engineering does. Once impractical and expensive to make them available for everyone to use to make a practical difference in the world lightbulbs automobiles Artificial Intelligence algorithms all written off in that time to transform our world. My final story is about imagination taking place in the 19th century as engineers building ever more efficient steam engines the power produced by these machines was appending to establish social order to build the prosperity and opportunity through society these advances were unleashing the imagination the french physicist took an interest in the new engines what he thought would release some of the fundamental principles of the universe first formulated is what gives time its arrow that it was always moving many assume that they were always translating ideas into practical thoughts but very often at work the other way to. Only once a steam engine was made and working could he make the imaginative leap thats why call it make, think and imagine in that order. The things we make fuel our creativity and engineering allows us to imagine places we have never visited times we have never lived in and things that have not yet been done. Thats the job of Business Leaders in the Energy Industry because the future can look difficult and uncertain to meet demand for customers is always changing today oil and Gas Companies represent that biggest portion of the s p 500 over the last 30 years. And investors put their money elsewhere. And young talented people would much rather work from welfare although we rely on hydrocarbons for a long time to come that accounts for 85 percent of our energy today and likely 75 percent of a significantly larger base by 2040. The challenge is to build a future in which oil and gas depend on human prosperity and the climate is not at risk from unintended consequences. And other words take the carbon out of hydrocarbon. Thats what i have been trying to encourage people to do for several decades. In 1997 is ceo of bp i began to recognize the threat of Climate Change and pledged to do something about it. That was more than 20 years ago and there still a huge amount to do i have some ideas what oil and Gas Companies and the steps they can take but for now let me conclude my favorite quotation from abraham lincoln. Speaking at the end of 1862 he said the quiet past is inadequate to the stormy present they must think anew and act anew from ourselves that is a wonderful philosophy that i always try to follow because its not the job of leaders to be the advent of the inevitable its their job to write to the future and to imagine and then create the actions for tomorrow. This cant be done without the discipline of engineering and the ability to engineer to bring order to disorder with the relentless and chaotic flow of the universe that we call civilization engineering allows us to go out and make that vision into a reality. Without engineering it all comes apart like a glass full of bacteria. Thank you very much. [applause] so today we will talk about the book and try to discover what is inside and uncover the mindset will have a chance to read it and other chances to talk with him here. So please devise your question and thank you for explaining the title my kids said should i do the opposite . And john brown said were not used to that why that title for you personally quick. As a product one practical member as a member of the house from the United Kingdom it is an appointed house and the history goes back a very long way when the barons made sure the king kept order we dont do that anymore and while the head of state has no effective power or the house of lords but this is the preamble to the legislation but it does a very good job of science and engineering and technology within the United Kingdom as well. Starting from the very first page that my father said to get a real job. [laughter] what is the relationship with your father quick. You have a great relationship with my father i wanted to do Everything Different from what he had done in his life. My family had a history he was a great soldier during the war and in north africa and among other places and eventually joined the oil industry where everybody spoke farsi not arabic. Fortunately my dad said i will learn it before i get there and he did. I spent my teenage life around the oil and gas world i was determined i would never join in oil and gas company. [laughter] i went to university and i was determined to stay i was in geophysics at the time and those who uncover the mysteries and then under pressure and then my dad said get a real job. Do it for one year and if you like it and if you dont go back to research university. So then rather arrogantly i went that day and i said i would like a job and they said really and i said yes for one year. [laughter] and i really didnt want to leave the uk attitudes were very bad this was the sixties. They said yes to that too and i imagine myself getting to do some work in houston and then the letter came and then the Hr Department sent me a letter. [laughter] so off i went to Anchorage Alaska to become a Petroleum Engineer and to work in the field drilling and testing and live 200 miles north of the arctic bubble which i did for quite a while and it was very exciting than one year led to another after two years i said to the professor i love it and he said stick with it very few people love what they are doing. Thats decent advice. So from my professor my father was vindicated. [laughter] that was enough. So a Good Relationship with your father. But theres always conflicts between a father and son. There was no conflicts. So here you write with the commandments. [laughter] that you were inspired by your mother to solve problems that others have not considered to help find practical solutions. So which pressing problems have you tried to solve quick. I tried to solve a few and some of them are still in process because they are pressing but one that sees me oil and Gas Companies with the global climate. That worried me a lot and i was convinced we could produce hydrocarbons and reduce carbon we were putting in the atmosphere. Thats a problem i started to work on with bp and progress has been made. The other was for acceptance of gay people in britain which subsequent to my outing, that we can talk about later in my mind was a very important thing to do. My mother was a very determined person and managed to survive the holocaust in auschwitz and came out believing the best is always yet to come and you dont look back history is not that important but what you do tomorrow will be really important. So really the company went beyond petroleum. I kind of did its very difficult to start a company with a big impact but you do need to have that in this area. So i decided to go into private equity to set up a fund that purely dealt with no one non hydro come one non Hydrocarbon Energy so respond to several companies that are alive and well and doing things today around the world which is changing the way people think about energy. And was the Worlds LargestRenewable Energy and surprisingly against all the odds made good positive investment return. It also gave a proper return on investment many people when we started this in private equity i was very often introduced as that person and what you get is a good warm feeling that you are not making money but thats not true we made a lot of money but we also made very good nonhydrocarbon. So part of your title make. Everything is active. So as the root of all progress. My whole life. Like the early days i was interested in photography. I use to tinker with cars i moved forward but to my mind its very important maybe almost everyone i know everyone in the world but they all want to feel like they are making something whether a car or something to wear or carpentry or something bigger like a full house a certain sense of satisfaction i also think people that are working just with paper and we close the factory thats producing something and there is equal number of people let go when an organization than we would feel more strongly about the factory as something bad appears to all humans with a very basic point it seems to me. So what those lowlevel engineers there all engineers but the intellectual product. See you dont mean that. Correct and the chapter in the area that i think is great is the bookend of civilization which is a syntax when the british handle them they are beautiful and practical that they change the way the way the attrition of the human being the way they developed. Actually when i write a book i cannot write the whole time i have other jobs. This is a night job and the day job i am full swing have to write to a very strict and engineered outline so i can pick it up and drop it and start again and not have to go back to the beginning and make them bigger and bigger otherwise you get lost and have no direction. But with the very beginning battle and then you have more than 50 pages so was wondering through all of these meetings who impressed you the most quick. They were very distinguished so its risky to pick the best. [laughter] so an extraordinary man his name is bob, he started as a chemical engineer actually he tried not to join amoco to work in the refinery he wanted to go work in the hospital. Nobody understood why a chemical engineer could ever work in a hospital because there were paramedics and chemical engineers but he has engineered discoveries that help the human with artificial skin if you think of the drug screen as a river that you can float things like a tumor and it can kill the tumor rather than putting all the chemicals of the river you can put one little boat and get it to the tumor. It is an extraordinary event instead of to your body just goes to the target and he has had some success. Not only is the breadth of his development 25 billion those companies that have emanated from the lab but then i asked him what his purpose was he simply said i would just like to reduce suffering. I thought that was most impressive thing i heard anybody tell me. Why did you write the book quick. I had several reasons. I had the privilege and opportunity and to be involved in a lot of things in my life but the opportunity to get the people in these areas and ask if i could talk with them. I was trying to bring my readers into rooms around the world to meet people that they could not meet or talk to and i thought that was very important and that was important to me to make that key point that civilization contains eng