scientificamerican | DNA sequencing and synthesis technologies might be used to create new
microorganisms with potentially far-reaching environmental effects,
thus contributing to the acceleration of the Anthropocene. But these
technologies might also be used to mitigate and deal with some of the
other consequences of anthropogenic climate change: by producing
materials more sustainably, creating new antibiotics, and performing other ecosystem services.
For their potential importance in both contributing to and dealing with
the Anthropocene, the authors propose that the start of the Great
Acceleration shouldn’t be 1945 or 1950, as most others have proposed, but 1953 — the year that Watson and Crick published the double helix structure of DNA.
This is a surprising proposal, because though they are increasingly
powerful, DNA technologies haven’t created the same scale of global
environmental impact as something like the steam engine. (At least not
the microbial genome-scale
synthetic biology that they mention in the article; genetic
technologies in agriculture have certainly made big changes in land use,
industrial farming practices, and other relevant Anthropocene
measures). The hype surrounding novel biotechnological tools, however,
frequently asserts that biology will enable technological solutions to
the global problems that other technologies have caused. From algae that
produce biofuels to bacteria that eat pollution to crops that can
tolerate drought, biotechnologies are frequently defined by their potential to someday solve the ecological crises of the Anthropocene.
Perhaps rather than backdating the relevance of this sort of biotech,
we might consider how this hype might lead us instead to a new phase of
the Anthropocene. Now that we are coming to terms with the term
“Anthropocene” and are proposing new technologies
specifically to combat the problems caused by other technologies, the
Great Acceleration might soon turn into a Great Technological Problem
Feedback Loop. We might be setting ourselves towards a
bio-techno-evolutionary arms race, where we design new technology that
has an unforeseen impact on living things, then we design other
problem-solving biotechnologies that have their own potential problems,
and on and on.
In Through the Looking Glass the Red Queen tells Alice that
“it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you
want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as
that!” As we run to outpace technological problems of the past, are we
creating the Red Queen’s
Anthropocene of the future? This doesn’t mean that we should stop
trying to solve the very real problems of the Anthropocene, but perhaps
we need to think more about what it might mean to technologically “run
twice as fast” to finally get somewhere else.
