8 Decisions You’ll Make
toward the environment? Why do we dismiss the welfare of the mod-
ern food system’s workers? Why have such issues become secondary to
profit and personal preference? At what point does this mindless drive
for more turn against us?
Humans have appropriated up to 40 percent of the Earth’s biologi-
cal production potential. Through our efforts alone we have modified
an estimated 50 percent of the Earth’s surface. Taking into account
the size and number of all animal species, the “biomass” of mammals
that humans raise for food now exceeds the biomass of all mammalian
wildlife on the planet.
But instead of learning from our past, society pawns off the most
looming questions onto science and technology, and apathy allows us to
go about life while we await solutions. Cellular agriculture, for example,
with its “promise of solving enormous environmental, food-security,
and economic challenges posed by our growing global population,”
is developing meat cultured in a laboratory, outside of an animal.
Quantum dots, or nanoparticles (semiconducting materials several
thousand times smaller in diameter than a single strand of hair), which
biochemically react with bacteria when illuminated with light, are
touted as a way to rejuvenate ineffective antibiotics. Identifying genes
responsible for the evolution of biological processes, finding ways to
capture more of the Sun’s energy, and improving the efficiency of plants
to remove carbon from carbon dioxide and turn it into carbohydrates are
other moonshots that initially mesmerize our attention.
Indeed, coursing through America’s bloodstream is a ready eager-
ness to green-light novel and exciting technologies while asking few
if any questions as to their unforeseen consequences. But a brief look
backward illustrates how apathy, combined with naiveté, allowed us to
fall victim to cyberattacks, identity fraud, big data, and a decline in social
civility. When evaluating the latest proposed scientific marvel, it is worth
remembering Amara’s law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology
in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
Ironically, we are less likely to embrace viable technologies that are
closer at hand. They include perennial grasses and legumes to replace
annuals like wheat, corn, and rice. Drip irrigation to conserve water.