"Value of good science speech" to WasteMINZ conference

WasteMinz Conference - The Value of Good Science

13 October 2010


Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today.
It’s good to be here and to hear the news the Minister has just given us.
But unlike the Minister I do not come bearing gifts.

Your conference  theme – the value of good science -- is a challenging one.
Preparing this talk has stretched my brain in the last few days.
It is a theme that tends to lead your mind in a philosophical direction.

What can I say to this group of practical people in the real world that might be remotely interesting, insightful, or even useful?
Let me see – philosophers of science.
One of the most famous is Karl Popper.
He spent some years in New Zealand – at Canterbury University – after fleeing from Nazi Germany.
So maybe his kiwi experience makes him relevant?

I tried Wikipedia.
Brace yourselves.

“Popper is known for his attempt to repudiate the classical observationalist / inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical falsification instead, for his opposition to the classical justificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism, ‘the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy.’”

Get that?  I wasn’t sure I could read it with a straight face.

So I turned my attention elsewhere.

Recently National Radio had a feature on one of my favourite scientists – the American physicist Richard Feynman.
Feynman was a brilliant communicator of science and quite a character.
In his spare time he was given to playing bongo drums and picking combination locks.
His last words were “I’d hate to die twice – it’s so boring”.
Feynman was a lot more fun than Popper so I’m going to use his definition of science.

Feynman’s definition of science was:

“Science means, sometimes, a special method of finding things out.
Sometimes it means the body of knowledge arising from the things found out.
It may also mean the new things you can do when you have found something out.
Or it can mean the actual doing of new things.”

Now that is a lot more digestible.
I take from Feynman that:
 “Good science” is finding things out in the sound rigorous systematic way that we call the scientific method.
It is also taking these well discovered things and combining them into a body of well developed knowledge.
It’s using this well developed body of knowledge to think of better ways of doing things.
And finally, it’s doing these things in new and better ways.

And looking at the conference programme, I think this is largely what your Waste Management Institute does.
You are finding things out, sharing them, and combining them into a body of knowledge that grows and is refined as more is discovered.
And most importantly, you are using this knowledge to manage waste in new and better ways.
And that’s great.

Waste management does two enormously important things for our environment.
First, it keeps it clean.  I’d hate to be living in a time when chamber pots were emptied out of windows on to the heads of people passing by.
Second, it helps us make the most of the natural resources we take from the earth – it helps us to be frugal users.

Waste is of course just one issue that comes across my desk in my role as Environment Commissioner.
In many ways it’s one of the easier ones.
I know it won’t seem so to you as you struggle with daily realities,

So why do I say it’s one of the easier environmental issues?

Solid waste is visible and tangible.
We experience it directly through two of our senses – sight and touch.
Sometimes we experience it through a third – smell.
We could experience it through taste as well but I’m not going to go there.
The only sense which doesn’t pick up on solid waste is hearing – waste is silent.

So waste is very real and immediate to us – we experience it directly.

I have a memory about my godson Tim that I treasure.
One birthday years ago he was given a pair of roller skates.
He must have been about six at the time.
He put them on and set on in a very clonky manner – walking rather than rolling – he was seldom good at physical activities.
He picked up a plastic bag and I asked him where he was going.
The answer was “I’m going to pick up pollution”.

What Tim meant of course was litter – solid waste.
I may have been responsible for a little brainwashing, but putting that aside...

Pollution to him was what you could see and clean up.
There’s a quote from the Bible which goes something like “out of the mouths of children comes the truth”.

Over and over again when I tell people that I work in the environmental area, the response is “I care about the environment – I recycle.”
It’s waste they think of – where their minds immediately go.
Because it is so concrete and real.

But there are very important environmental problems that are not real to people.

Take carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Climate change is by far the biggest environmental challenge of our time – and for times to come.
The main culprit is carbon dioxide – a gas that is invisible, intangible, odourless, tasteless, and silent.
It’s a tiny percentage of our atmosphere.
But that atmosphere – which is the only thing that separates us from deep dark cold space – is like the skin on an apple.
It’s fragile and it holds radiation coming in from the sun and radiation going out from the earth in a very delicate balance.

For all sorts of very good reasons we strive to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions.
It’s an extremely logical thing to do but the logistics are challenging.
I’m refering to the Emissions Trading Scheme – the ETS.

Every so often I remind myself why it is so hard despite the basis for it being so logical.
For six years I was involved in the transport sector – including acting as Chair of Transfund and later Land Transport New Zealand.
I know well how hard it is for Governments to add a cent to petrol tax.
How much harder to add several cents for the invisible carbon dioxide coming out of the exhaust pipe.

Another major environmental problem is nitrate in water.
The main source is cow urine.
It sounds harmless enough.
But it’s not.
Nitrate compounds are very soluble.
So it’s really difficult to stop them leaking through soil into groundwater and eventually into rivers and lakes.
You can’t pick it up – even on rollerskates.
The nitrate that ends up in our waterways is invisible, intangible, odourless, tasteless and silent, although resulting algae will not be.

So when the job that you seek to do weighs you down, be thankful that the environmental area in which you work is so real to people.


But back to science.

I was trained as a physicist.
Physicists study two things – matter and energy.

Matter and energy are the fundamental components of everything.
Einstein put the two together in E = mc-squared and essentially said they are the same thing.
But that’s not relevant to our reality here.

But I want to make the point that when you focus on minimising waste – which is matter - don’t forget about energy.

I’m superconscious about this because much of my working life has been spent on reducing energy consumption through using it more efficiently.

I don’t know what the story is about recycling aluminium cans these days.
The big cages outside supermarkets filled with aluminium cans don’t seem to be so common any more.
Maybe it’s because bottles have taken over from cans.
Or maybe the market isn’t there because Rio Tinto isn’t being charged enough for the electricity it consumes.
I’m sure someone will enlighten me at morning tea.

But I’m talking about aluminium because more than anything I can think of, it’s a brilliant substance to recycle.
There is of course the aluminium itself - the matter – it doesn’t rust and crumble away.
But the energy saving is magic.
No need to add three more electrons to each aluminium ion.
You may remember as I do from school laboriously writing Al+++.
Getting rid of those three plus signs by adding electrons takes a lot of electricity.
 
And there’s the transport energy.
The cans can be easily crushed – you can fit a lot on one truck.

So my message here is by all means minimise waste, but don’t do it using huge amounts of energy.


I want now to say a few words about what science cannot do for us – about its limits.

I find that many people believe that good science will lead to good environmental policy being developed and good decisions being made.
No such luck.
Of course our understanding of the environment must be based on good science.
But in my office, that is often the most straightforward part of the analysis we do.

No matter how good the science is, or how much research has been done, action that really makes a difference is usually a big challenge.

When I was studying at Harvard I rather foolishly in my first semester took a very difficult course taught by Professor of Political Economy Richard Zeckhauser.
Any one who has been to the Kennedy School of Government will know of him.
He is a terrifyingly brilliant man who speaks terrifyingly fast.
I remember one story he told about his elderly mother which illustrates a point I am about to make.

His mother had been taken to the hospital with some ailment or another and given two options.
Either surgery or a further diagnostic test.
Her son asked what would follow the test.
Well, said the doctor if the test result falls one way we’ll do the surgery.
If it falls the other we’ll want to do the surgery because the test is not very conclusive and we really need to get a look inside.

You get the point.
Another diagnostic test - more science – wouldn’t have changed the decision to operate.


My role is fundamentally about giving advice to Parliament.
Not Government, Parliament.
I am politically independent like the Auditor General and the Ombudsmen.

I cannot compel anyone to do anything except give me information.
So the crucial element of the advice I give – whether in reports or advice given to Select Committees – is the recommendations that I make.

Along with my staff I think about the recommendations that I make long and hard.
Seeking to make them capable of leading to real change.
But also pragmatic.

And once having made a set of recommendations, chase them up – if you like, market them.
Persuading decision-makers to adopt them in order to look after our environment better.

I find that very often recommendations in reports are for more science to be done, more information to be gathered.
I try to avoid this.
Because I really believe that if you know what to do, you should just get on and do it – there is such a thing as too much science at the expense of other things.
I don’t mean to sound anti-science.
My point is that more information, more research does not necessarily lead to better decisions.

And certainly perfect information does not lead to perfect decisions.

We need to make judgement calls on when we have enough science.
To turn our attention to using what we know to solve problems.

A related common misperception about science is that it provides certainty.
And following hard on the heels – the idea that we can’t act without that certainty.
I can feel climate change coming on again!

A few years ago I sat on a committee chaired by  Sir Peter Gluckman who, as you will know, is now the Prime Minister’s science advisor.
Sir Peter was dead on the mark about this.
He used to say “People think science is about providing certainty when it is actually about reducing uncertainty”.

In my role as Environment Commissioner I have found myself on a very steep learning curve, despite being toward the end of my working life.

Currently, there is a project underway in my office on 1080.
This seems to be a case where more science has been called for and done.
Yet the results do not seem to be incorporated into belief systems.

I have been highly trained in rational thinking.
In fact I seem to be known for it.
For a few years I taught a course at Victoria University and was somewhat aghast to hear when one student asked another what’s Jan like, the answer was “she’s very analytical”, as if this was unusual.

But what I, this analytical person, have learned in this job, and continue to learn is this.
Good science, good information, rational analysis, and even clear communication of the science and the analysis – only takes you so far.

To improve our environment we need more than good science.
More than rigorous analysis and logical deductive thought.
We need to persuade, to convince, to paint pictures of what is and what might be.

Thank you again for the invitation and do enjoy your conference.