Day 2 began with Tim Harford speaking about challenges and solutions, and success and failure.  The presentation followed a narrative path to start with. This story was of a man trying to make some toast but he did not want to make it with a toaster he could buy. Instead, he decided to make his own toaster from raw materials. Of course this involves many complex processes so the solutions he found were not ideal: he had to try and smelt iron using bins and microwaves, make plastic from vegetables and avoid death in the mean time.

The process of trying to make the toaster was littered with failure and to no avail: when he plugged his toaster into the mains, it (and not the bread) became toast.  Tim developed his speech by acknowledging the scope and scale of solving the issues around climate and development relative to the “simple” task of eating some toast. 

Bringing the speech to a close, Tim explained that most of human success has been surrounded by failure and thus we must try until we succeed, learning all the time. 

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