Get best of the week

Forget the Anthropocene: we have entered the synthetic age



The genetics of the Asian tiger mosquito has been modified in laboratory experiments with CRISPR technology in an attempt to limit the spread of disease. Image is in the public domain.

One fact about our time is becoming increasingly known: no matter how far you go, in whatever direction you point, there is no place on Earth without traces of human activity. Everywhere the chemical and biological prints of our species, moving around the globe by strong atmospheric winds, inexorable ocean currents and spacious cargo compartments of millions of vehicles driven by fossil fuels. Virgin nature has disappeared forever.

These planetary changes were characterized by geographers, geologists and climatologists as the end of one geological era - the Holocene - and the beginning of the next - the anthropocene. In this "human age" the influence of our species on the oceans, land and atmosphere has become an integral feature of the Earth. The idea that humanity has caused a geological transition attracts people's attention not only because epoch changes are rare. It attracts attention because our species is embraced by the thought that we possess planetary power.

Another fact about our era is much less recognized: we are changing the way the planet works.The point is not only that human activity has tarnished every point of it. The appearance of a whole series of powerful new technologies at once begins to signal the potential interception of the most basic functions of the Earth by its most daring form. From now on, technologies like the CRISPR gene modification technique and climate engineering will turn an already desecrated planet into something more and more synthetic.

In February 2019, when entomologist Ruth Muller opened a container with genetically modified mosquitoes in a laboratory with a high level of security in the Italian city of Terni, she did not just experiment with a new powerful tool in biotechnology. She made changes to Mendel’s laws on heredity, which govern all life on Earth.

Her mosquitoes, carrying the “gene drive” created using CRISPR [1] , will show whether people can successfully introduce some trait into an entire population. The laboratory in which Müller works was designed so that the change is carried out on a reliably limited scale. But gene drives can theoretically spread themselves anywhere in the world where populations of interbreeding mosquitoes live. They change the laws of genetics, wherever they are.

If you ask a question like “How much does your research change planetary rules?”, Then Muller’s laboratory is far from alone.

In early summer 2019, a team of researchers from Harvard University was about to conduct the first field test of climate geoengineering. They plan to use a high-altitude balloon to spray reflective particles in the stratosphere over the arid areas of the southwestern United States. They will see how efficiently the particles reflect incoming solar energy. With appropriate scaling, in the future this technology can be applied to change planetary norms similar to changes made by gene drives. [2]

Anthropogenic climate change has already changed the movement of heat through the system. Although destructive, until now, climate change has not been the subject of deliberate planning and design. Our species did not try to calibrate what comes from the Sun before. This thermal coefficient was wired into the physics of the solar system. If as a result a large-scale throwing of reflecting particles into the stratosphere is made, then we will rewrite this equation with our own hands.

Technologies such as genetic drive and climate engineering go tremendously beyond what the stratigraphs noted when they recommended renaming this era an “Anthropocene”. Random changes are completely different from intentional. David Keith, one of the researchers at the Harvard Climate Engineering project, points out the huge difference between deliberate designing something and breeding a mess. In the first case, the sense of responsibility is much higher, just as intentional killing is much worse than unintentional.

In contrast to the destruction of habitats, carbon emissions and other signs of the anthropocene, the technologies currently being tested are designed to consciously control some of the key physical processes that shape our world. Of course, the fundamental laws of nature do not disappear, but they are subject to deeper intervention. You can think of them not only as “cosmetic” changes, but as “metabolic” ones. Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel and the laws of atmospheric physics are becoming the subject of subtle revision.

Crossing this line opens up a fundamentally new territory for both our species and the planet. Nature itself will be shaped by processes redesigned and “improved” by geneticists and engineers. This transition should be called the beginning of the "synthetic age" - the time when natural constants are increasingly being replaced by their artificial and "improved" versions. This alteration of the Earth’s metabolism strikes at the very core of how we understand our environment and our role in it.

Researchers, politicians and people of all nations will be divided in their opinions about crossing these lines. For some, they undoubtedly offer exciting prospects. But for others, they are absolutely terrifying. So effective technologies should be subjected to the most complete and comprehensive public control.

The anthropocene era requires one type of psychological adaptation. The synthetic era requires something much more.

1. (.: gene drive; ) , . , , , . , , .

2. Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, SCoPEx ( ).
, , , , ( ).
, . , , , .
SCoPEx , , , , - .

From a translator:
This is an essay about understanding that a person has not just affected the environment. It will be fuller and more accurate to say that a person through his actions created, supports and develops a new world. The idea is that so far man does this - in a global sense - unconsciously; and it’s time to approach such a redesign of the world on a planetary scale carefully. Is it possible to?

More articles:


All Articles