Green Technology Forum

Last night I took part in a session on the Indy GreenPrint initiative in Indianapolis. I learned a lot about city government, how far we have to go in energy efficiency and conservation, and how eager many citizens and administrators are to get there.

For example, Tim Method, Environmental Coordinator for Indy’s Department of Public works, explained that half of the city’s energy expenditures are for sewage treatment. And when we get a good rain, which happens about fifty times a year, raw sewage overflows into our creeks and rivers. Fortunately, the city plans to spend almost $2 billion over the next twenty years to fix that problem.

But what can emerging technologies like nanotechnology and biotechnology do to help green our cities? Nanotechnology is advancing water treatment significantly, and one Australian city is even using methane from wastewater to power a treatment plant. Advances in nano-solar cell technology could also enhance programs like Indianapolis Power and Light’s Green Power Option, which allows customers to specify an amount up to 100 percent of their monthly electricity to be generated by environmentally friendly, renewable resources.

I’m looking forward to helping make Indy GreenPrints a reality and introducing environmentally friendly and energy-saving nanotechnologies and biotechnologies where appropriate.

What if we make an all-out, global effort to slow global climate change. How long will it be before we see signs of improvement? Months? Years? Most experts believe it will be decades before our efforts to slow climate change will result in measurable changes at the global scale. After all, the causes of global climate change—increased carbon emissions, deforestation, overpopulation—have been at work for over two centuries, and we’re just now seeing their effects at the global scale.

But how will societies accustomed to quick fixes and instant gratification cope with the time lag between today’s efforts to slow global climate and the visible results of those efforts decades from now? My fear is that, in the absence of quick improvements, some may lose interest and simply stop making the effort.

And let’s face it, our global environmental predicament is going to get worse before it gets better. That’s just the way causes and effects work at the global scale. We have only now begun to turn the ship and begin correcting the habits that have led to the current global condition. Even with the current popularity of all things green in the U.S. and Western Europe, we’re only talking about slowing the rate of increase in carbon emissions, deforestation, overpopulation, and other causes of global climate change. Nobody is talking about reducing them.

Until the effects of today’s efforts roll up into measurable improvements in the global ecosystem, who will have the heart to stay the course? Who will keep pushing to reduce carbon emissions as the effects of global climate change worsen over the next several decades? Politicians? Unfortunately, our political system, in the U.S. at least, seems to reward short-term thinking. Green politics may be a hot topic today, but how many politicians will continue to push for environmental reform when its popularity fades in favor of the next big thing?

Businesses can sometimes be equally short-sighted. We’ve all seen the placards in hotel rooms touting the management’s environmental awareness as they ask us to reuse our dirty towels and bedding. But their conscience too often stops at this one gimmick, which just happens to save them money. Will businesses push to find new ways to reduce global climate change if consumers stop demanding green products and services?

Will scientists search for new insights and evidence to fight global warming if it no longer means big grants and research contracts? Will even the non-governmental organizations often labeled environmentalists move on to other environmental challenges if donors lose interest in the issue of global climate change.

The answer is that it’s up to each one of us to stay focused even as our global environmental predicament seems to worsen over the coming decades. Fortunately, if we continue our efforts to slow global climate change, there will be smaller victories that may sustain us. Reduced rates of extinction, habitat loss, deforestation and soil erosion can all make a dramatic difference at the local scale. These local victories will eventually add up to global effects. And if you need inspiration as we set out on the long road to a greener world, I offer this story:

“One day during his tenure of office as Administrator of Morocco, at the turn of the century, Lyautey, the famous Marshal of France, was riding through a forest when he came to a spot where a storm had uprooted some giant cedars, leaving large empty spaces in the grove. Lyautey called to his side the Director of Forestry who, with other officials, was accompanying him on his tour of inspection. ‘Look here,’ said Lyautey, ‘you will have to plant new cedars here.’ The Director of Forestry smiled. ‘Plant new cedars, sir? But it takes two thousand years to grow one of these trees.’ For a brief minute Lyautey looked surprised. ‘Two thousand years?’ he exclaimed. ‘Two thousand years? Well, then–we must plant them at once.’”

The introduction of nanotechnology and biotechnology into our lives is one of the most challenging undertakings we will face in our lifetime. The benefits, both proven and potential, are great. Human testing is now underway on nanomedicines that have proven one hundred percent effective in fighting certain cancers in rats. Genetically modified goats produce milk containing drugs that can treat diseases as severe as anthrax. But with these modern miracles come grave concerns about the consequences of new technologies. What is life like for genetically modified animals? Should we modify living things to suit our own desires? How will nanoparticles affect our bodies?

Much of the fear that some people have of nanotechnology and biotechnology stems from the fact that there are no quick easy answers to these questions. These are some of the most complex technologies we have ever employed, and their outcomes and interactions are often impossible to predict. Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter at the molecular scale, a level of nature at which quantum phenomena take charge over the Newtonian phenomena we experience at the macro level. Our conventional thinking about materials and effects don’t even work at this level.

Biotechnology can be equally perplexing, as we design and construct living things using DNA, the most fundamental building block of life, as a sculptor uses clay. How can we predict the consequences of something as complex as a new life form?

But if our conventional thinking about new materials and their effects falters faced with the complexity of nanotechnology and biotechnology, what alternative do we have for guiding or even grasping their outcomes? First, regardless of complexity, the use of any technology should be guided by principles. What do we want and why do we want it? Who benefits as a result of its use? What is its effect on the environment? Defining what we want gives us a yardstick by which to measure the success or failure of specific applications of new technologies.

However, once we have defined the what, why, and for whom, we need to bring a new level of open-mindedness to the question of how. In other words, our thinking about how to apply nanotechnology and biotechnology should not follow the patterns of past technological applications. These complex new technologies behave in new ways and raise new questions. Nanoparticles behave differently in the body and the environment than their macroscale counterparts. Genetically modified organisms occupy a strange new territory between living and non-living things.

Often I’ve found it helpful when faced with complexity and uncertainty to focus on relationships rather than entities. For example, looking past the novelty of the gold nanospehers used to treat cancer to consider their interaction with human tissue. Or looking past the mammalian clone whose mother is also its sister to ask what effects their relationship has on their quality of life.

Focusing on qualities and relationships may help us find our way through the new territory opened by nanotechnology and biotechnology better than past frameworks focusing on quantities and entities could. But thinking in this way often clashes with conventional thinking, and with the methods and mindset of many scientists. It is important, however, not only in guiding the outcomes of new technologies, but also in guiding initial experimental work. One of the greatest differences between nano/bio and earlier technologies is that they are design disciplines. Nanotechnology is the design of materials at the molecular level and biotechnology is the design of living things. This makes designers out of nanoscientists and biotechnologists and demands a new way of thinking about these sciences.

Artists are trained and perhaps innately adept at focusing on qualities and relationships. They’re inclined to ask, “What effect am I trying to achieve and why is it important,” before asking “How can I achieve it?” Scientists have been trained more to work from the bottom up, examining materials and aspects of nature to find their applications in society. Artists have learned much from scientists to aid in their pursuit of qualities and relationships. Perhaps with the advent of nanotechnology and biotechnology it is time for all of us to adopt their focus on qualities and relationships and think in new ways about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

“Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have?” That’s the question posed by R. Buckminster Fuller in Critical Path. Like most people, I would answer with a hearty “yes”. But like most “haves”, I get a little nervous if it looks like providing for others is going to cost me some of my comforts. When that happens, I remind myself that more for today’s “have-nots” doesn’t have to mean less for me.

Rather than taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots, we can achieve equality by making more efficient use of the resources we already have. Our earth and sun provide us with all the resources we need for all of us to live well, if only we are willing and able to steward them properly.

As Fuller observed, “. . . humanity now—for the first time in history—has the realistic opportunity to help evolution do what it is inexorably intent on doing—converting all humanity into one harmonious world family and making that family sustainingly, economically successful.”

I often wonder if nanotechnology and biotechnology could be the keys that open a new world so rich in wisely utilized resources that we can all live well. And apparently, I’m not alone. The week of June 11, 2007, thirteen of the world’s leading scientists gathered in Ilulissat, Greenland for the Kavli Futures Symposium, “The Merging of Bio and Nano: Towards Cyborg Cells.” They felt so strongly that nano and bio will have such a profound effect on humanity that they issued a statement unanimously stating their position in The Ilulissat Statement, “Synthesizing the Future: a Vision for the Convergence of Synthetic Biology and Nanotechnology.” Among their conclusions:

“The construction of arbitrary genetic sequences comparable to the genome size of simple organisms is now possible. Turning these artificial genomes into functioning single-cell factories is probably only a matter of time. On the hardware side of synthetic biology, the train is leaving the station. All we need to do is stoke the engine (by supporting foundational research in synthetic biology technology) and tell the train where to go.”

So, all we need to do is tell the nano-bio train where to go! They make it sound so easy! But many people believe that the tracks these technologies must follow have already been laid, their direction already determined by political or corporate interests.

Bucky Fuller was not one of these people. He believed the critical path technology and humanity will follow will be determined, not by politicians or corporations, but by individuals working together to create a critical mass powerful enough to direct and, as necessary, redirect the train. The discipline required to steer it? Not political or financial clout, but “the design science revolution.”

In other words, technology itself isn’t enough. It must be guided by design principles. The Ilulissat Statement is very much in harmony with ecological design principles, as are Fuller’s principles. That’s the vision of Green Technology Forum as well, to encourage the use of ecological design principles in the application of nanotechnology and biotechnology. It’s a strategy that can benefit business and consumers, and can help us build the kind of world envisioned by luminaries like Fuller and the Ilulissat group.

As green living and green business gain popularity, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in attitudes toward technology. The subtle but, I believe, widely held perception that technology is fundamentally bad that held sway for the latter part of the 20^th century is now giving way to a belief that technology can help us overcome our past environmental transgressions and lead better lives.

We can trace the origins of negative attitudes toward technology at least as far back as the industrial revolution; early steam locomotives that seem quaint to us, for instance, were called Satan’s chariots. By the 1970s we had done so much damage to the planet with our technologies that virtually an entire generation grew up with a negative view of technology, and technology often played the villain in books and movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The 1970s backlash against technology led many people to seek back-to-the-land alternatives. Some, like Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, recognized that technology in itself was not the problem, but rather the shortsighted way in which we were using it. Lovins developed the idea of appropriate technology, but the concept was generally marginalized, often becoming entangled in images of hippie culture, communes and organic gardening.

The Reagan Era seemed to mark the end of many ideals of communal living and appropriate technology, which gave way to SUVs, three dollar coffee, and other material icons of the “Me generation.” But the high life of the 1980s took a toll on the environment; pollution, deforestation, resource depletion, and global climate change increased. Growing evidence of global climate change throughout the 1990s again vilified technology.

Today, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in our attitude toward technology. As green living and green business gain popularity, technology is now seen, not as the villain to be rejected, but as the hero. Solar, wind energy, and alternative fuel technologies are now routinely heralded as the answers to global climate change. Even some original back-to-the-land advocates like Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, now favor nuclear energy.

The paradigm shift from technology as villain to technology as hero has potential benefits and potential risks. Its primary benefit is that green technologies will not be thrown out with the anti-technology bathwater. Positive attitudes toward technology may encourage broader, faster acceptance of environmentally friendly products and processes. As we approach the second decade of the 21^st century, we are learning to evaluate technologies in terms of their environmental impacts and, finally, supporting their development through government funding and venture capital—something that never happened in the 1970s. Consumers are demanding to know the environmental impacts of the products and services they buy, snatching up hybrid vehicles and solar collectors faster than manufacturers can produce them.

But green technology poses concerns as well. Many consumers are looking to technology to help them heal the planet without having to make the sacrifices that the ‘70s back-to-the-land movement demanded. Conservation, while widely recognized as the key to sustainable living, is always a tough sell. We do not see hybrid car owners driving fewer miles, for instance, although they are emitting less carbon dioxide as they drive.

This may prove to be the primary predicament of the green movement: the desire for technology to help us heal the planet and live sustainably without sacrificing our material desires. That is the whole impetus behind sustainable development, recognizing the human desire for more while seeking to ensure that more for us does not mean less for others, whether they be people in today’s developing nations or tomorrow’s children.

The “more stuff, less impact” frame of mind is reflected in emerging technologies like nanotechnology which, for many, includes visions of molecular manufacturing that will one day enable us to produce virtually any object from the bottom up in desktop nanofactories. And while the technology for this may be a long way off, if it is ever achieved, the desire for it betrays a consumer mentality at odds with what the planet, and probably the species, really needs, which is to live well with less.

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Gregor Wolbring, research scientist at the University of Calgary. Dr. Wolbring, a founding member and distinguished fellow of the Center for Nanotechnology and Society, discusses the role of disabled and non disabled people in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, infotech, cognitive science and synthetic biology.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sir Richard Branson is putting up $25 million to fix global climate change. Bill Gates is pumping even more into biotechnology for Africa. That got me thinking, what’s my legacy? What would I want to be remembered for? So here’s what I’d hope someone would say about me on my 100th. It’s definitely an exercise in vanity, but what do you expect? You wouldn’t want people criticizing you on your 100th birthday, would you?

George Elvin has worked all his life to ensure that emerging technologies are used beneficially and responsibly. Fifty years ago, when nanotechnology and biotechnology were first emerging, he created Green Technology Forum to help businesses and individuals take charge of their futures and seize the unprecedented opportunity these technologies offered for living more sustainably on a strained planet.

The information and insights Green Technology Forum provided through advising, commentary, news, and research empowered people of vision to be proactive and define the goals and direction of nanotechnology and biotechnology development, rather than be passively shaped by them.

Time has shown that we can use technology wisely, and we’re grateful to George and the other green technology pioneers of the early 21st century for helping us shape a better life on a healthier planet.

What’s your legacy?

I refer to nanotechnology and biotechnology as super-technologies because they offer us unprecedented power to manipulate so many aspects of life so deeply. With nanotechnology we can alter the most basic elements of life—atoms and molecules. That gives us the power to transform virtually any material and create new ones. When applied to living things through biotechnology we gain the ability to transform plants, animals and people in ways we have not even imagined. It also empowers us to create new life forms.

The power to transform everything is not just theoretical, nor is it just speculation about future possibilities. The OncoMouse, a new life form developed by DuPont, was patented in 1988. Diamond is no longer the world’s hardest material, supplanted by synthetic molecular polyyne 40 times stronger. The power of nano and biotech make them virtually irresistible. Gold nanospheres have been used to cure cancer in rats with a 100% success rate. Unlike fossil fuels, biofuels created from living organisms are renewable and biodegradable.