Climate Change and Genetic Engineering
We’ve already spend some time looking over the science of climate change along with what some of our ethical stances on the topic might be. This week we’ll spend some time exploring some potential solutions to dealing with climate change, including genetic engineering!
Required Science Reading
This is quite timely! COP28 starts this week! [What the heck is COP28?] Climate change can and will touch on pretty much every aspect of modern life. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that we can identify touch points between tons of things that we do, that we consume, etc. that might influence our contribution to or responses to greenhouse gas emissions. From crypto and NFTs to AI, genetic engineering, and astrobiology, there are connections to be made.
I’d like each of you to do two things for me in preparation for Tuesday’s class:
Ask an AI what the likely increase in degrees C by 2100 is likely to be based on our current trajectory. How well does this align with the goals of current climate goals put forward by international agreements (feel free to pick one).
Read over the Wikipedia article on Climate Change Adaptation. As you go through this article, perhaps do a little more digging to think about the relationship between genetic engineering of ourselves, our crops and livestock, (and anything else you can think of) in the big picture context of adaptation to and response to climate change.
Fiction Reading
Here’s a delightful excerpt from Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake (taken from Chapter 8 - Wolvogs) on something called ChickieNobs. In this scene, a bioengineer, Crake, is showing his friend, Jimmy, around a research facility and some of the projects in there - square bracketed insertions are additions on my part.
"This is the latest," said Crake.
What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
"What the hell is it?" said Jimmy.
"Those are chickens," said Crake. "Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They've got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit."
"But there aren't any heads," said Jimmy. He grasped the concept-- he'd grown up with sus multiorganifer [genetically engineered pigs “pigoons” that grow human organs, like a half dozen human kidneys at a time], after all-- but this thing was going too far. At least the pigoons of his childhood hadn't lacked heads.
"That's the head in the middle," said the woman. "There's a mouth opening at the top, they dump nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don't need those."
"This is horrible," said Jimmy. The thing was a nightmare. It was like an animal-protein tuber.
"Picture a sea-anemone body plan," said Crake. "That helps."
"But what's it thinking?" said Jimmy.
The woman gave her jocular woodpecker yodel, and explained that they'd removed all the brain functions that had nothing to do with digestion, assimilation, and growth.
"It's sort of like a chicken hookworm," said Crake.
"No need for added growth hormones," said the woman, "the high growth rate's built in. You get chicken breasts in two weeks-- that's a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal-welfare freaks won't be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain."
"Those kids are going to clean up," said Crake after they'd left. The students at Watson-Crick got half the royalties from anything they invented there. Crake said it was a fierce incentive. "ChickieNobs, they're thinking of calling the stuff."
"Are they on the market yet?" asked Jimmy weakly. He couldn't see eating a ChickieNob. It would be like eating a large wart. But as with the tit implants-- the good ones-- maybe he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
"They've already got the takeout franchise operation in place," said Crake. "Investors are lining up around the block. They can undercut the price of everyone else."