Scientists and politicians the world over are looking for ways to halt or reverse [climate changes], a task that is fraught with difficulties in a world hooked on fossil fuels. One option increasingly discussed is terraforming—deliberately altering the environment in a way that cools the planet... Instead of creating global engineering projects, why not create life forms that do a similar job instead... — MIT Technology Review
Ricard Sole and his associates at the ICREA-Complex Systems Lab in Barcelona are experimenting with the potentials of using synthetic organisms to terraform the planet. One advantage to such a project – as opposed to other terraforming ideas that would require engineering feats of unprecedented scale – is that the landscape could be changed with minimal human input, using "the growth and colonizing potential that life offers."
Of course, as the article notes, the potential problems are also massive, like, for example, unintentionally triggering feedback mechanisms that accelerate global warming, or devastate global food supplies. Looking back at other historical attempts to engineer biology to suit human interests, this seems a more likely outcome than not. But Sole and his team are trying to develop preventative measures against such runaway growth. And as the article notes, one day this may be an urgent necessity: "if and when that day comes, let’s hope we’ll be glad of the research that has characterized how this terraforming will occur."
4 Comments
A terrifying concept if there ever was one. Fascinating article, even more fascinating discussion in the comments at the bottom. I've never seen a more informed, and plain spoken discussion on the interwebs.
Some people have this crazy idea that technology got us into this mess and technology will get us out of it.
Let's fix it with technology is especially ironic when it's the results of technology that need to be fixed.
Required reading: Summa Technologiae, Stanislaw Lem
These types of proposals always worry me because there are always unintended consequences.
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