Anthropocene Issue #4.Pdf
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Innovation in the Human Age 4 Innovation in the Human Age The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Natural isn’t —Alvin Toffler what it used to be ISSUE 4 We are a digital, print, and live magazine in which the world’s most creative writers, designers, scientists, and entrepreneurs explore how we can create a sustainable human age we actually want to live in. Cover art by Javier Jaén published by Editor’s Note No Turning Back Now Nostalgia tugs hard at our narratives about na- same exhilarating and profoundly disturbing ture. If we could just hold nature still, even ways that social media reframed our con- for a human lifetime, then we could save it. nections with each other. Seeing the world’s But we cannot. Long before humans 3 trillion trees in real time allows environ- emerged as a planetary force, we have had mental watchdogs to catch criminals. But it to negotiate and renegotiate our relationship also means that the data riches of big tech’s with nature. At various times, it has been an unblinking eyes will go to whoever can evil presence to be beaten back, a resource pay top dollar. to be mined, a treasure to be restored, a When scouting the future, the technol- place of spiritual renewal, and a source for ogy trail is always the easiest to follow. But technological inspiration. it’s far from the only one. The economics And now, here we are in the Anthro- of nature conservation are also changing in pocene, face to face with an existential surprising ways. Forty years ago, a group of riddle. Oliver Morton captured it eloquently conservationists embarked on a bold experi- in The Planet Remade: “Humans have be- ment. They sought to integrate conservation come so powerful that they have become a and development by fostering new indus- force of nature—and forces of nature are by tries—from finding new miracle drugs in definition those things beyond the power nature to ecotourism—that could generate of humans to control.” revenue for the people living near protected This is strange and difficult territory, areas. Economist David Simpson asks, “So just the sort of stuff that we created this how did that go?” His observations are both magazine to cover. And in that spirit, we’ve jarring and instructive. What if the key to assembled a cadre of premier writers to ex- saving wild biodiversity isn’t to show that plore how our understanding of nature, and it’s useful —rather, it’s to make it “useless.” our connection to it, is shifting yet again— As you peruse the issue, you may also and how conservation might look very dif- notice the absence of some familiar nature ferent in the twenty-first century than it did themes. For example, habitat loss imperils in the twentieth. more and more species, and we humans David Quammen starts us out with an must rein in our voracious appetites for epochal idea. What if evolution isn’t linear, more resources. The urgency hasn’t gone as Charles Darwin proposed when he first away—but those sorts of warnings and sketched the tree of life? What if, instead of admonitions alone seem increasingly species’ passing their DNA to their off- insufficient in this new Human Age. The spring from one generation to the next, Anthropocene demands that all of us, they are exchanging genes throughout their conservationists included, loosen our grip lifetimes? Quammen deftly explains the on how we think the future will unfold— concept of horizontal gene transfer—and and get creative. Nostalgia serves a variety then muses on how it could upend current of purposes in our lives. But negotiating thinking about everything from antibiotic change and moving forward generally resistance to cancerous tumors. aren’t among them. A Next, Wayt Gibbs explores how satel- lite surveillance technology is reframing —Kathryn Kohm our connection with nature in some of the Editor-in-Chief ©Brock Davis 3 Issue 4. June 2019 | Natural isn't what it used to be 24 How to Die in the Anthropocene 1. Death is inevitable, but its environmental toll Idea Watch may not have to be By Jennifer Monnier 8 The Climate Change 27 93 Apocalypse Problem A Symbol for the Tweaking photosynthesis Thinking about apocalypse, Anthropocene 2. like thinking about one’s There could be more than 94 own death, is not something 60 billion chairs on the Deep Dives Humanity’s changing that most of us have planet body shape much enthusiasm for By Vybarr Cregan-Reid 40 By Ted Nordhaus 62 95 EVOLUTION Do plastic bag bans 30 TECHNOLOGY make a difference? 12 Picturing a Way Forward Blurring These Buildings Generate Hacking Nature Climate change, science Life's Boundaries 98 More Energy Than They Use Instead of trying fiction, and our collective Darwinian theory is based on Eco-bricks made to recreate nature's Norway ushers in an era of failure of imagination the idea that heredity flows from sewage energy-positive architecture vertically, parent to offspring, genius, how about By Diego Arguedas Ortiz and that life’s history has reprogramming it? By Lucy Wang 99 branched like a tree. Now we By Lindsey Doermann Old clothes turn into 34 know otherwise. fire- and waterproof 16 Saltwater Aquaculture By David Quammen building materials Bottling Sunshine without Moves Inland 70 100 Batteries Improved technology ECONOMICS A new inexpensive way to Turning sunlight into could give fish farms a 50 convert CO into drugs, liquid fuels or hydrogen gas sustainable foothold The Problem 3. 2 SURVEILLANCE furniture, and more could address solar power’s far from the ocean with Making Nature biggest limitations By Laura Poppick A View from Pay for Itself Science 101 By W. Wayt Gibbs Everywhere All Trying to make nature Shorts How a seaweed-eating the Time valuable has had a microbe could fight disappointing track record. plastic pollution 19 Tech companies are This Is How Blockchain networking the environment By R. David Simpson 88 102 Could Upend the Grid in ways that will transform How different are As corals decline, a new —by allowing people to buy our perception of nature— we after all? kind of reef emerges and sell energy in small just as social media 80 increments from (and to) reshaped our relationships 92 103 their neighbors with each other. What could DESIGN Humanity will be What counts as extreme possibly go wrong? By Katharine Gammon The Curated Wild remembered for its temperature is a By W. Wayt Gibbs moving target Welcome to the chickens 22 brave new world of 104 The Anthropocene artificial intelligence 92 How bringing back lost Nightstand for conservation. Future foods could make diets more nutritious animals prevents By Alistair Scrutton By David Biello and sustainable big wildfires 4 5 1. Idea Watch People and projects pushing the boundaries of sustainability 6 7 The dominant tenor of environmental communication has been apocalyptic. And yet, the sorts of threats that people have generally worsening wildfires are likely to continue. responded to have Global temperatures continue to rise. And been closer to home. Californians show no more sign of aban- doning our suburban and exurban redoubts for fear of wildfires than we have shown willingness to abandon our fault-riddled We hadn’t set out to live in a fire cities for fear of earthquakes. zone. But after living cheek by jowl with The same is true for the two of us. My our neighbors in the Berkeley flats for 17 wife has declared that if we get burned out, years, we found the views and the benefits she doesn’t think she’ll want to return. But of living a little closer to nature and a little neither of us feels much urgency to leave farther from everyone else hard to resist. In preemptively. And we have greater re- this, we were not alone. Millions of Cali- sources and flexibility than most. For those MIXED MESSAGES fornians over the past five decades have struggling economically—tied to 9-to-5 moved up hillsides and into forested areas. jobs, dependent on caretakers, or caretakers And, like many of our fellow residents, themselves—the choices are harder still. we’ve begun to harbor second thoughts Oddly, the thing that we both acknow- The Climate Change after two seasons of catastrophic wildfires. ledge might prompt us to take action now Were a firestorm like the recent ones is not the dreaded fear of fire apocalypse Apocalypse Problem that swept through Paradise, Santa Rosa, but more prosaic concerns about quality of and Redding to sweep through our neigh- life. For the third time in little more than a borhood, our home, seemingly floating year, we spent a week or more sheltering Thinking about apocalypse, like thinking about one’s own in the canopy of an oak forest, would be indoors from the Beijing levels of air pollu- death, is not something that most of us have indefensible and our escape, down narrow tion that had drifted into the Bay Area from much enthusiasm for and twisting roads to the concreted safety fires to our north. The prospect that fires of the flatlands by San Francisco Bay, far of this sort might produce frequent air- By Ted Nordhaus from certain. quality crises almost year-round, more than The situation seems bound to get the fear of losing our home or our lives to In the fall of 2011, my wife and I decided to sell our 900- worse.