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Mike Berners-Lee is Professor in Practice at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting. His books include How Bad are Bananas?, The Burning Question and There Is No Planet B and he is a contributing author to The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg. His latest book is A Climate of Truth.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better future?”

Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the YouTube and Spotify above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.

00:00 Clips

01:02 Welcome

03:03 Mike’s Intro

– “A professor of what… I’m not really quite sure… a professor of the future?”

– Academic: Climate change, carbon flows, sustainable food systems, AI, technology

– Small World Consulting “help organisations to respond to the environmental and wilder polycrisis that we are accelerating towards”

– “Trying to create a better world for humans and other beings to live in”

– From climate change to “the climate emergency… crisis… breakdown”

– From trying to deal with climate change in isolation to… “all these things are just so joined up… climate… nature… food… population… social questions… politics… economics…”

– “You can’t deal with that separate from questions about what matters, who matters, does truth matter… you have to go deeper and deeper…”

– Philosophy “I’m very pragmatic about it.”

– “It’s important to work at all of these levels at once”

– “I lose patience [with fellow academics] when they lose contact with everyday reality”

– “How much of how we basically think and how we basically run society is fit for purpose… and how much we need to go back to the drawing board?”

– The Anthropocene “the era in which suddenly it’s humans that are so powerful”

– “How we do economics… politics… how we think… it all dates back to a time when we could just expand our activities… the world was a robust playground… we could get away with anything we liked… Now we’re right up against the stops… a hard physical boundary”

– “We’ve given ourselves enormous physical power and we just haven’t given ourselves, yet, the wisdom with which to wield that power”

– “We’re like babies running around with machine guns”

09:52 What’s Real?

– Mathematician parents “they also went to church”

– “They asked a lot of questions [about religion]… they were not literalists”

– “They felt that the world was fundamentally a beautiful place and that people were fundamentally of value”

– Teenage explorations of solipsism, free will…

– “I live my life as if there is a concrete reality out there… and it’s very, very complex… that makes the world interesting”

– “We should all be very cautious about ever making a claim that our way of understanding it is better than another person’s”

– Focusing less on belief and more on “what effect does it have on the way that that person lives in the world?”

– “Does it give them a way of looking at the world that enables them to be a more positive force… if the answer is ‘yes’ I’d be very slow to criticise that even if the scientist in me could very easily do so”

– Scientific perspectives can be “as fundamentalist as any form of religious fundamentalism…

– “…science on its own is a very blinkered, reductionist, inadequate way of trying to understand existence”

– “That doesn’t mean to say that we should fall into the trap of ‘there’s my truth and there’s your truth’… there are also some facts”

– “There are facts and there are opinions and there are worldviews…”

– “That’s important when it comes to things like climate change… there’s no such thing as ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’ on whether greenhouse gas emissions are causing the temperature to increase”

 – “We may not be able to perfectly understand but we can get meaningful, good enough proximations to the truth”

– “Being truthful is much, much more than just not lying… it is doing the best that you practically can to enable another person to understand reality as best you understand it yourself”

– Dealing with “hideous complexity”… “find some very simple and important things that you can be just about certain about… those things can tell you a lot about what you should do next”

– Food systems: “food and nature and climate and livelihoods… but one thing comes out really, really clear and simple… we will have a better and more sustainable and heathier food and land system if we can reduce by a long way the amount of meat and dairy in our diets… That is as close to a truth as you’re ever going to get on a complex subject like that”

– “We can all take action 3 times a day on that piece of information… if you run a food business or a hotel or are a farmer…”

21:53 What Matters?

– “The ethical issue with the climate crisis is its going to cause humans and other beings to really suffer and die”

– “There’s such a thing as quality of life – to exist can be better than not to exist”

– “The experience of being alive can be a good thing – and its one that can be optimised and enriched”

– “How separate are we from others?”

– Drawing on some spiritual traditions. The Buddhist idea of interdependence and interconnectedness

– “When people start to see themselves as isolated islands… it’s a fundamentally deluded position and it leads to them being discontented”

– “When people start to find ways of tuning into a connection with other people… the richer their lives become”

– “Life is not just about avoiding suffering, life is about having a good time too… flourishing”

– “What’s frustrating about the sustainability agenda is that there’s really nothing not to like about it”

– “An absolute meta crisis of probably catastrophic trouble… we’re probably heading for a really uncomfortable time – en masse”

– “There’s no technical reason why we need to be heading for this trouble – it’s completely avoidable… really easily avoidable”

– “Why do we have people in the most powerful positions in the world… they’re just clearly not the qualities that we need”

– “How have we allowed those particular people to be the ones calling the shots… it’s not even going to work for those people themselves”

– “How can we stay out of the grip of psychopaths?”

– Iain McGilchrist’s work on balancing right and left brain thinking

– “The kind of Elon Musky, Trumpian type, neoliberal approach… it fundamentally can’t see what it doesn’t understand”

– “We can contain them in society as long as together… we’re really clear about their need for containment”

– The need for “basic values that will hold us together… kindness or compassion or just caring… the wellbeing of other people matters… in its own right… we’re totally capable of that… and we can cultivate it”

– “Now that we’ve globalised we need to get better at doing it in a slightly more abstract way… tuning into an emotional response when we hear about something that affects the lives of a few million people on the other side of the world who live in a different culture from us who we’re never going to meet… rather than just something more visceral like a baby lying on the street in front of us.”

– “We’ve been telling a story about ourselves… the kind of neoliberal story… all humans are greedy… that’s the only way we’ve ever got anywhere in life is by harnessing our greed… that’s a very unhelpful and inaccurate story to tell about humans”

– “We’re capable of being pretty nasty… but we’re capable of being really nice to each other… enormous self-sacrifice… enormous thoughtfulness…”

– “The people who lack empathy the most tell these stories the hardest because it normalises their own behaviour… ‘what’s wrong with the way I’m carrying on it’s just the nature of humanity’… it’s not”

– “Anybody who acts as if only they matter – we need to take them out of positions of power – they need to be contained”

– “At election time it needs to be on the agenda… what is the evidence that this particular person is primarily driven by the best interests of everybody else… let’s dig deep into that… what’s the evidence that these people are fundamentally kind and thoughtful?…”

– JW: “If you pick someone whose drive and motivation is will to power and might makes right you might not get a chance to pull the power back”

– “As the Americans are going to find out in the next 4 years… and we totter on the edge here in the UK”

34:00 Who Matters?

– “We all find certain parts of the ecosystem easier to identify with than others”

– “All people should be treated as though they’ve got fundamentally equal value as human beings no matter who they are or even what they’ve done… me, my own son, Donald Trump, somebody on the other side of the world… our experience matters an equal amount”

– JW: “This might seem a weird question – but why do humans matter?”

– Being asked by Mike’s son “what’s a more important sentient being… an unborn baby the size of your thumbnail or an earthworm the same size?… I don’t know the answer to that question – I’m not going to go there”

– JW: “For me… all living humans matter because of their sentience… that’s the characteristic of humans that makes them morally salient… for others it is just a species solidarity… they’re my club”

– “I don’t have species solidarity… this idea that humans have souls but other animals don’t – I don’t buy into any of that stuff… we have this narrative… what a special species we are”

– “We’ve become the most powerful species… but you could argue the case that we should be the most ashamed species on the planet”

– “Everybody should be encouraged and enabled to live their lives in whatever way is the most meaningful to them in negotiation with everybody else’s equal right to do likewise… we have a principle to work from”

– “A pragmatic perspective… there are 8 billion of us… a very fragile planet… it only takes a small number of us to try and cause trouble and we can rock the boat for everybody else”

– “If we don’t have a society in which we treat everybody properly with equal respect… we’re just not going to succeed in having the global and international co-operation that is absolutely essential if we’re going to thrive here in the Anthropocene”

– Extremes of maximising sentient beings or eradicating them

– “The importance of the capacity to empathise… some people who empathise with other species more strongly than I do…”

– Finding out the family dog was terminally ill “Some people in my family were crying their eyes out and I was just vaguely a bit sad for a day or two – we’re different in this way”

– “Some people appreciate the rest of the natural world… more strongly than I do… it’s a skill to acquire as best you can”

– “If you look at what goes on on a chicken farm… then your emotional reaction to eating that chicken changes… partly because you contemplate the life of that animal… the ugliness of the whole situation”

– “For me… I will understand it logically… I will say this isn’t good… therefore I’m going to care about it… a bit more of a conscious thing”

– Biocentrism and ecocentrism? Are blades of grass and rivers moral beings that matter intrinsically?

– Interdependence: “You can’t have one without the other… you can’t have healthy sentient beings without the healthy river… what’s the point in distinguishing”

– Buddhist perspective: “There’s only one existence”

– Is much modern environmentalism really just anthropocentric? (pretty nature, ecosystem services, comfortable temperature ranges – while non-human sentient animals are excluded and exploited)

– “We have to treat animals… other beings as if they matter… not just because they can serve us but because they matter in their own right”

51:05 A Better World?

– “I’m always looking for the points of leverage… the things that we could do something about that will make the most practical difference”

– Writing “A Climate of Truth” – “We’ve talked about sentient beings mattering and people mattering… it’s about how truth matters”

– “Maybe it [truth] matters in its own right”

– “The practicalities of the polycrisis – how are 8 billion people going to thrive on this fragile planet when we’re so powerful?… climate… feed everyone… manage our population… look after nature… fend of disease threats… make sure that all 8 billion people have got a life that’s worth living…”

– “These problems are really difficult to solve and we have to have the clearest view of reality as best we can understand it… otherwise we’re going to mess it up”

– “Once we’ve got good intentions – we need the highest quality of decision making that we can get… we don’t have the room any more to throw a spanner in the works with deliberate misinformation”

– Not just lies – but confusion / obfuscation / misleading about motivations / dishonest implications “Money for the NHS on the side of a bus… it wasn’t quite a lie but it was absolutely misinforming”

– “Picking the evidence that’s going to give you the answer you’re looking for”

– Setting out “A taxonomy of deceit” in the book “the myriad ways in which a politician or a media outlet or a business could try to mislead the public”

– “It’s so easy to misinform now… the issues are so complex… all of us are laypeople on almost all of those issues… we have to work out what we trust – that is a difficult challenge”

– “It’s so easy to fabricate plausible nonsense… and AI is not helping us”

– “How are we going to create A Climate of Truth?… We need to care about it much much more”

– “What it looks like when somebody’s being properly straightforward and honest with us… we need to be able to notice that difference… teach our kids critical thinking… teach ourselves critical thinking… careful, reflective questions”

– “What evidence am I using to let me know that I can trust what they’re saying and is that evidence good enough”

– “Am I being driven by some emotive thing that’s pushing me to want to believe it even when it’s not right”

– The neglect of epistemology and critical thinking in education curricula”

– “It’s not just something that we help others to get better at… we all of us need to try to get better”

– JW: “It’s so easy to find holes in other people’s epistemology… the real challenge is – can you challenge beliefs you really want to hold onto yourself”

– Guidelines in “A Climate of Truth” to help us decide who and what we can trust

– “What does it mean to find out that you’ve been deliberately misled?”

– “If we find out that a politician… has deliberately misled us on a matter of policy… that tells us an enormous amount… why would they do that if they had our best interests at heart… it tells us they want something that’s against our interests… it tells us that we can’t trust them… we can’t trust them on anything at all – nothing”

– “It’s not about naming and shaming but… I do [in the book] list out quite a few current politicians as being totally unfit for office”

– “In one hit it tells you all you need to know about whether you should be putting a cross in a ballot box… you might need to be choosing the lesser of two evils… which you should do by the way”

– “It also tells you that any of your colleagues who have been staying quiet in the knowledge that they have been careless with the truth is also unfit”

– “A year ago we had a party [in the UK] in which every single MP had shown themselves to be unfit because all of them were staying quiet while members of their own party were telling routine untruths all the time… we’ve obviously got that going on in other countries at the moment”

– “In the UK we’ve been careless with the truth”

– “It really, really matters… we need to treat it as abuse”

– “We will raise the bar” – more honest and compassionate leaders and publics

– “That will enable us… to begin dealing with the climate crisis… sustainable food system… plastic pollution… inequality…”

– “The kind of decision making that will bring about the quality of life improvements for every kind of being you can think of on the planet”

– Challenges re: free speech and “the marketplace of ideas”?

– Jewish space lasers cause climate change? “They can say that – but then they need to be accountable for that – and they need to be able to put up their case. And if, in the defence of their case they say things that are bogus…”

– “You can show that either they don’t have good critical faculties or they’re deceitful. If somebody says now that they’re not sure that climate change is really a thing… you can’t prove that they’re lying but you can prove that either they’re lying… or their critical faculties are just not fit for purpose… when they read a piece of information they don’t have the ability to see whether it’s fact or fiction – either way they’re not fit for office.”

– “Free speech sure… but there’s a responsibility that comes with that free speech and there are consequences of that free speech”

– “You have the right to deceive us but if you do it we have the right to make it clear… that you are unfit ever to be trusted with any position”

– “It’s not about trying getting our own back or trying to make them suffer – we should still treat them with respect… Elon Musk, Donald Trump, everybody… however unhelpful we think they are in the world… they’re a sentient being”

– “It’s about containing them for the sake of everybody else… they’re in the wrong job”

– “If Elon Musk becomes a boxer… there’s a ton of ways he can spend his days… but not running the world”

– Writing “The Burning Question” book “We need to leave the fossil fuel in the ground… 12 years ago… that was not in the common narrative”

– “We need to use less energy… we just don’t talk about it anything like enough… the energy companies don’t like it – not even the renewable energy companies like it”

– “The climate doesn’t care how much renewable energy we’ve got – it cares about how little fossil fuel we burn. At the moment we’re just doing more of both”

– “Rebound effects… when you make an efficiency improvement… the net impact is not by default for the environmental impacts to go down it is for them to go up… because… the amount more that we do of those things goes up even faster than the efficiency improvement… we will not get ourselves out of this by efficiency improvements alone”

– “Fossil fuel companies are just as effective [at misinformation and disinformation] as they’ve ever been. We’ve had 29 climate COPs now over a period of 30 years and during that time we have been accelerating the rate at which we take fossil fuel out of the ground and burn it”

– “The best result [for fossil fuel companies] you can get from a climate COP is to create a storyline that looks like you’ve got somewhere… when actually you’ve got nowhere at all”

– “We who care about truth have got to really care about it… they get away with it – if they’re caught out it doesn’t matter”

– “We need to create an environment where if they’re caught out that matters so much it’s a show-stopper… we won’t try that on again… and every other industry… meat… tech…”

– “There are a lot of industries at the moment that are creating false narratives that are really, really harmful. The people who push those narratives need to be out of their careers.”

– JW: “When you look at statements like ‘the dairy industry is humane and sustainable’ – that’s a claim about facts and the definitions of those words which is completely unsubstantiated”

– “In some ways the food agenda is a harder one too deal with… in other ways it’s easier than the fossil fuels”

– “It’s harder because it’s more complex… more scientific uncertainty… feed everyone… look after nature… deal with climate… animal welfare… health”

– “On the other hand there are some blindingly simple realities… the need to reduce the amount of meat and dairy in the food system… the need to reduce waste…”

– “The meat industry is rolling its sleeves up with just as much cynicism as the fossil fuel industry… it’s pretty dark… the big players… the playbook of the tobacco industry only it’s more sophisticated”

– “Here’s why I think it’s easier… your personal carbon footprint doesn’t come back to hit you… but the way that you eat meat and dairy – what’s in the stuff that goes in your mouth – that comes back to hit you… the life of that chicken… that’s quite personal and tangible in a way that those individual gases coming out of your exhaust pipe kind of aren’t… it feels more direct”

– Antibiotics, lack of nutrients, “that comes back to bite… if this bacon is going to give you cancer because of the way this pig was reared – that feels pretty grim”

– “If the reality is… that you can produce good quality, healthy nutrition far more efficiently and cheaply through a plant-based diet… that reality… that you can be healthier and live longer… and the imagery… the life… the history of what [who] you’re putting into your mouth… all of those things come together to make it feel better… a win-win-win”

– “The fundamental efficiency of a more plant-based system is so great… farmers… food processors… governments… supermarkets… end consumers…”

– JW: “If there two facts I wish environmentalists understood deeply it would be feed conversion ratios and trophic chain inefficiency… and the other one is land use”

– “We looked at a sheep farm in the Lake District… the human digestible nutrition in the sheep-feed that goes to supplement that grass and heather they eat… there was more going into the sheep feed than there was in the sheep when they go to slaughter… even in that situation… they’re just taking nutrition out of the food system… Then we looked at the money they were spending on the sheep feed and the antibiotics and that was more than the farmers were getting for the sheep… The effect on nature [deforestation, biodiversity loss]…

– “The whole thing’s a complete disaster – it’s not what the public generally understands… especially when they think of Lake District sheep”

– “The current food system is propped up on the consumer not understanding it”

– “100 years ago most people stood to live longer and healthier lives if they had a bit more meat because our plant based diets were so restricted… but if you’ve got access to everything in a modern supermarket then those old traditional arguments that gave meat the status it’s got at the moment… are gone… historical fuddy-duddy out of date stuff that doesn’t apply any more”

– “Let’s stand up for this concept of truth that we’ve been so careless about… it’s how we will begin solving those challenges”

01:24:30 Follow Mike:

– “A Climate of Truth” A very simple guide to what’s going on in the world… solutions are there from a technical point of view… the point of highest leverage… a climate of truth… this is your point of agency!”

– Mike on BlueSky @mikebernerslee “I’m on BlueSky and I’m not on X… Please do avoid any social media in which you do not trust the owner… their algorithms… there’s some evidence that they’ve ever manipulated the public to try and do something that may be against their interests… or views that are other than the best view of the truth… If you can’t trust your media whether its social or traditional – please switch right now”.

– Mike on Sentientism.info

Thanks to Graham for the post-production and to Tarabella, Roy and Denise for helping to fund this episode via our Sentientism Patreon and our Ko-Fi page. You can do the same or help by picking out some Sentientism merch on Redbubble or buying our guests’ books at the Sentientism Bookshop.