"Following their announcement of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing on Oct. 15, 2010, the dynamic conservation duo spoke to Wired.com in Palo Alto, California, about their mission “to get people to give a damn” about biodiversity.
Wired.com: Why a science-writing award?
Harrison Ford: Because of the belief that an uneducated public is a dangerous public.
E. O. Wilson: That’s a critical idea.
Ford: This proceeds from my longtime involvement with issues of the environment and conservation, and also the quality of the public dialog which we now enjoy, or don’t enjoy. I have the belief that something should be done about that.
I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that the facts of science are often unpalatably presented to the general public and, because of my acquaintanceship with Dr. Wilson and having read a few of his books, I have seen what quality communication can do to make science important on a humanistic level.
Wilson: The continuity here is storytelling. Scientists are storytellers. They just don’t know how to tell a story [laughter].
The way they make discoveries and the way they piece them together, particularly when they add the evolutionary part — how it came to be, the impact of the phenomenon on the body or on the ecosystems — is fundamentally historic. The challenge very few scientists choose to undertake is how the story touches not just on the public’s desire to have a story told to them. It also touches on the archetypes.
Hollywood, for example, has mastered them. These are the mythic archetypes. I don’t how Harrison feels about this, he might even disagree, but you know, the scenes that electrify us in a really good movie include ones like the clash between good and evil. The champion who appears and, against all odds, repels the invader. The discovery of new worlds. And the death and rebirth of worlds.
These are grand themes that, in small detail or in grand epics, are what draw our attention. And scientists can tell those kinds of stories if they know how and they try. And this is one of those challenges I think we as scientists need to beat.
Wired.com: On that note: Which world problem worries you the most?
Wired.com: On that note: Which world problem worries you the most?
Wilson: Harrison and I know how we’d like to see the world change, but to make a change in the right direction, the problem — and it’s a big problem — is this: Setting aside much larger reserves than we have now, and setting them up so they’re sustainable with the people in and around them taken care of properly, in terms of economic aid and assistance, and helping them develop sustainable agriculture.
Ford: The struggle is the preservation of biodiversity. That is, intact biological organizations that continue to generate and sustain complicated interrelationships between species. That’s the very fabric of life on Earth. That needs to be sustained, encouraged in every possible way.
It’s threatened by climate change. It’s threatened by unsustainable development. It’s threatened by greed and destruction. It’s threatened by ignorance. All of our efforts are to try, at base, to preserve this reservoir for the future. The ability of nature to sustain itself. The ability of nature to serve humanity through our capacity to further understand the interconnections and how things work in nature.
The mission is to get people to give a damn. At the highest level, to get our political leadership to make the effort that’s required to safeguard nature. The United States government needs to sign a convention on biodiversity. We need to better compel our public leadership and tell them that we will not stand for them failing to address the issues and continually put it off, and put it off, and put it off.
It’s a critical necessity that they create meaningful climate legislation, that they engage with the international community and mitigate at least some of the threats to the environment. The U.S. needs to step into a leadership position as we should, befitting our power and our capacity and our scientific understanding, and get these things done."
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