A warning to humanity: crunch time’s ahead

Multi-millionaire philanthropist Dr James Martin was renowned as one of the great thinkers of his generation. Here are some excerpts from his speeches and writings:

James Martin on writing: “Some universities are still using text books I wrote 30 years ago.”

How he started the first of more than 100 books: “I remember sitting down in a hotel in London, staring at the blank pad of paper in front of me. After 20 minutes I wrote the first sentence – ‘A revolution is taking place in the world of data processing’. Then I had great difficulty in getting a second sentence and it was several hours before I got one.”

Speaking of the famous Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Wired Society: “But my sphere changed significantly after 9/11. I was already interested in the problems of the planet, so I stopped working on computers and IT and started to focus my efforts on the big problems of the planet.”

On Microsoft founder Bill Gates: “When Bill Gates stayed at my house some 25 years ago, he was endlessly fascinated to talk about software strategy, software makers, the computer industry, running corporations. We chatted till four in the morning. But he had never thought about anything in society at that time. That came much later in his life.”

On his $150 million donation to his old university Oxford: “I find it strange that I am actually the largest individual benefactor to Oxford University in its 900 year history.”

On philanthropy: “I regard myself as not being a philanthropist. I would want to just give money in general like, for example, Warren Buffet. I very much want to make something happen and create something I really believe in. That means investing in great people.”

Encouraging other rich people to give: “So many people who have several hundred millions put it all in hedge funds and money managers where it stays until they die, which is not the way to live. We need to convince them that they will have much more fun if they use that money by investing it in creating something meaningful.

“It is actually in all our interests to invest in the future, but we have to do it in the right way. It is all about harnessing ‘idea power.”

On the Oxford Martin School, which he founded with $150 million: “The world must have global universities dealing with global inter-disciplinary problems. Having observed the rapidly worsening problems of the planet, I began to ask myself, how can I make a difference to the planet and how can I change the planet? So the purpose of the school is to take the biggest problems of the planet and the biggest opportunities and understand and research them in order to make a huge difference to the planet.”

On work: “We are fairly close to the time when 80 per cent of the jobs done by humans today can be done better and cheaper by machines.”

The environment: “I think we know that, in many ways, we are on the wrong path…..and some major changes have to be made and we’re going to have some fabulous technology for creating these changes.”

The future: “In many ways we can look at humanity and say there is a crunch coming.”

“It’s very clear to me we are capable of creating a future which is enormously better than the present that we live in today and what I’m doing is trying to make that happen.”

“Humanity is drifting into a time when there is great insecurity because the population is growing too large, the consumption is growing too large. We’re talking about the footprint, meaning the resources humanity consumes.”

“If we did the right thing, in 20 years the dominant energy would be solar. We can make solar cells much cheaper and mass produce them in vast quantities.”

“The politicians don’t understand what the hell we’re talking about most of the time.” 

Research: Raymond Hainey