Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?
The industry’s not stupid. The industry knows that if those foods are labeled “genetically engineered,” the public will shy away and won’t take them.
Turning points in human consciousness occur when new energy regimes converge with new communications revolutions, creating new economic eras.
We are entering a new phase in human history – one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population.
Today we are raised with the notion that to be secure is to be financially autonomous. Amassing wealth is viewed as the primary rite of passage to a secure, autonomous existence.
When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?
We are already producing enough food to feed the world. We already have technology in place that allows us to produce more than we can find a market for.
What I’m suggesting to you is that this could be a renaissance. We may be on the cusp of a future which could provide a tremendous leap forward for humanity.
It may be that everything the life science companies are telling us will turn out to be right, and there’s no problem here whatsoever. That defies logic.
Being both entrepreneurial and social is no longer an oxymoron, but rather a tautology.
Many of the genetically modified foods will be safe, I’m sure. Will most of them be safe? Nobody knows.
Generations of human beings were transformed into machines in the relentless pursuit of material wealth: We lived to work.
James Watt patented his steam engine on the eve of the American Revolution, consummating a relationship between coal and the new Promethean spirit of the age, and humanity made its first tentative steps into an industrial way of life that would, over the next two centuries, forever change the world.
The hydrogen economy will make possible a vast redistribution of power, with far-reaching consequences for society. Today’s centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies and utilities, could become obsolete.
We’re finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it’s going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet.
We’re creating multiple personas. We’re creating a thespian sense of personality where we see ourselves as works of art, and we see everything in our environment as a prop, as a set, as a stage, as a backdrop for filling ourselves in. We don’t see ourselves as ever completed. We are in-formation.
Using less of the Earth’s resources more efficiently and productively in a circular economy and making the transition from carbon-based fuels to renewable energies are defining features of the emerging economic paradigm. In the new era, we each become a node in the nervous system of the biosphere.
We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.
We are hopeful that you will want to visit our planet in the near future. We are in the process of restoring our environment to its original grandeur, and hope to have completed the task before your RSVP.
I wanted to make sure that this be the first scientific and technology revolution in history in which the public thoroughly discussed all the potential benefits and all the potential harms, in advance of the technology coming online and running its course.