According to super brains such as Stephen Hawking
NICK MCDERMOTT
Daily Mail
September 13, 2013
They are an improbable group of superheroes. But some of Britain’s
greatest minds have got together to focus their powers on saving
humanity from itself.
Once the threats have been identified, the group intend to devise ways of ‘ensuring our own species has a long-term future’.
Although nuclear annihilation and a giant asteroid obliterating the
planet remain distinct, if unlikely possibilities, Lord Rees now
believes ‘the main threats to sustained human existence now come from
people, not from nature.’
Other scenarios being considered by the 27-strong group, which also
involves academics from Oxford, Imperial, Harvard and Berkeley, include
extreme weather events, fast spreading pandemics, and war or sabotage
resulting in a shortage of food and resources.
Speaking last night at the British Science Festival at the University
of Newcastle, Lord Rees said: ‘In future decades, events with low
probability but catastrophic consequences may loom high on the political
agenda.
‘That’s why some of us in Cambridge – both natural and social
scientists – plan, with colleagues at Oxford and elsewhere, to
inaugurate a research programme to compile a more complete register of
these existential risks, and to assess how to enhance resilience against
the more credible ones.’
Full story here.
