Experts weigh 'planetary emergencies'

By Andrew C. Revkin
Published: August 24, 2008

ERICE, Sicily: This ancient hilltop town, ripe with Roman, Greek, Norman and other influences, has hosted a very modern gathering: a conference on global risks like cyberterrorism, climate change, nuclear weapons and the world's lagging energy supply.
More than 120 scientists, engineers, analysts and economists from 30 countries were hunkered down here for the 40th annual conference on "planetary emergencies." The term was coined by Antonino Zichichi, a native son and a theoretical physicist who has made Erice a hub for experts to discuss persistent, and potentially catastrophic, global challenges.
The participants presented data showing that the boom in biofuels was depleting Southeast Asian rain forests, that bot herders - computer hackers for hire - were hijacking millions of computers, and that the lack of progress on handling nuclear waste was both hampering the revival of nuclear energy and adding to terrorism risks.
The meetings, ending Sunday, were sponsored by the Ettore Majorana Foundation and the Center for Scientific Culture here and by the World Federation of Scientists in Geneva. Both organizations are led by Zichichi with what the physicist Richard Garwin, a longtime Erice conference participant and expert on nuclear weapons, affectionately called "imperious" zeal.
Zichichi, 78, controls every aspect of the sessions, including the seating in the seminars. His goal is to foster what he calls "a science without secrets and without borders," mixing disciplines and cultures, and to laud veterans and emerging talents in the hope of propelling breakthroughs.

In a session on information security, Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, warned that pervasive computer use, while offering the prospect of a global "knowledge society," also made billions of individuals into potential superpowers. "Every single brain on earth is equal and can trigger an attack," he said.
Jody Westby, chief executive of Global Cyber Risk, a consulting company based in Washington, warned that governments were not doing enough to anticipate attacks. She said that the United States, while investing heavily in classified work on communications networks, had only one small program doing advanced research on the vulnerabilities in the private networks that handle the brunt of government communications and information management.
In a workshop on the northward spread of mosquito-borne illnesses, participants discussed the growing gap between wealthier and poorer nations in dealing with health risks.
After presentations on recent outbreaks of the tropical chikungunya virus in Italy, Baldwyn Torto of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi suggested that too much of the discussion had been focused on girding Europe against further outbreaks. A better approach, he said, would be to attack such diseases in the tropical spots where they originate.
The daunting nature of the problems did not seem to blunt the experts' determination to look for answers.
"What option do I have?" said Richard Wilson, 82, a Harvard physicist and an expert on nuclear power and environmental risk. "I could go down to Hilton Head and take a little club and knock a ball around the course, but I don't find that a very attractive thought."