Put green technologies within people's reach, and they'll grab them

Thursday, 4 June 2009

On display outside is an Aston Martin racing car like the one I'll be driving in the Le Mans 24-hour race next week. It runs on second-generation bio-ethanol fuel – it's made up of spent grains, peelings and other waste, rather than purpose-grown crops.
When my team first decided to go green back in 2006, other teams concluded that we'd gone soft. They joked that my pre-race preparations involved overloading on lentils; that I was driving in open-toed sandals. They changed their tune when the car grabbed pole position on its first outing. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know about the science and engineering involved.
My point here is that we need to accelerate new technologies that deliver performance with sustainability and then put them within reach of people. Not just racing cars, clearly, but energy-efficient products for the home and access to the latest digital media. More than that, we've got to get better at marketing them. That marketing has to make green science cool and exciting, rather than dull and worthy. Less sandals, more Jimmy Choos.
So one of the greatest challenges – as I see it – is for us to exploit climate change science not only as the basis for developing green products, but to sell them as well. Where the thrilling technology isn't just the consumer interface which allows you to operate something with a touch screen or by voice control, but also what's going on inside. Do that, and we'll have a public that supports innovation as much for the scientific and technical advances it represents as for the convenience it offers.
People who appreciate how scientists explore ways to make sure we live within our environmental means. Children who decide they want a piece of the action: to be part of the truly epoch-changing discoveries we can expect in future – breakthroughs equivalent to nuclear fission, the World Wide Web or stem cells technologies – that will, I believe, protect our planet's biodiversity and preserve it for human habitation.
Behavioural change often occurs in a crisis – but, with global warming, we mustn't allow the situation to reach crisis point. The answer is to give ordinary people – whose motivations are properly understood – the opportunities and incentives to change for themselves.
Taken from a speech by Lord Drayson, the Science Minister, at the Cheltenham Science festival yesterday