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Ask Stewart Brand About Protecting Resources and Reviving Extinct Species
samzenpus (5) writes "Stewart Brand trained as a biologist at Stanford, was associated with Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. His books include Whole Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecopragmatism, The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. He is the founder/editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the co-founder of The Long Now Foundation, The WELL, and the Global Business Network. His latest project, Revive & Restore, may be his most ambitious yet. Revive and Restore aims to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for endangered species that are spiraling down with inbreeding problems. Mr. Brand has agreed to answer any questions you may have but please limit yourself to one question per post."
My limited understanding of reviving extinct species is that it is important to spare no expense. Have you spared any expenses? I think Richard Kiley is also required; will he be the first to be revived?
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Will the long now of the whole earth keep the global business network from going down the well or will it revive and restore it?
You mean like the middle-class worker with a pension & health plan and a loyal employer? Can we revive that?
How have your experiences with LSD affected your later work? (For those unaware, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters went around turning people onto the substance, as documented in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ). Many participants in the counterculture speak of having new spiritual perspectives after taking LSD, but has it given you any special insights into working with new computer technology?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/05/05/morning-plum-the-gops-real-position-on-immigration-laid-bare/
"It's not a question of wanting more deportations or not. It's a question of enforcing the laws. Why are immigration and employment laws the only laws we're not supposed to enforce in this country?
Yes, deportations may result from properly enforcing our country's laws and that will have a regrettable impact on some families but that's true when any law is enforced. What you're basically arguing is that immigration laws are inherently unjust and the moral course of action is not to enforce them. I disagree with that notion. A nation has the right and the obligation to set the terms under which people are allowed to enter and to stay in it. Every country, Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, Japan, which ever one you name has border enforcement, immigration and work visa regimes. The United States is not any different from them, yet the case is being made that somehow this is an area of law than any enforcement is immoral. I reject that and I think an overwhelming number of American's agree with me on that.
No one is talking about sending police into neighborhoods with large immigrant populations to round people up and put them in buses to the border any more than anyone is suggesting that IRS agents swoop into neighborhoods to collect the hundreds of billions of dollars the government says it is owed. But no one is demanding that tax laws in general not be enforced.
Should there be enforcement checks at workplaces reasonably suspected of illegal employment practices? Absolutely. Once you force companies to play by the rules Americans and legal immigrants are able to get jobs they weren't before.
Now if you want to make the case that there should be no border controls or that once an illegal immigrant makes it 10 or 50 or 100 miles away from a border check point they are safe from any repercussions of our existing immigration laws and if you think people who came to this country by breaking our laws should have an advantage over the hard working, honest men and women who want to come to this country and are doing so via the rules we have set up you are free to do so. And I'd be happy to have that debate because I'm confident that the American people are on my side of that argument."
Shouldn't we first try to transplant elephants and rhinos to Texas, and Siberian tigers to Canada, and Rwandan gorillas to central America? It has been politically incorrect to risk "invasive species", and in the 1970s we thought this would backfire. But if we are going to revive extinct species, it seems we've given up on the habitat specialization anyway, and perhaps should save species while they still have genetic diversity by relocating them to stable and law enforced environments.
Gently reply
If particular species have gone extinct, then I would assume their environment could no longer support them. If we manage to bring back those species, and introduce them into environments that could support them, it seems that we have the potential to unbalance that ecosystem by introducing an invasive species which has no natural predator there. How would you manage this risk?
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
There are always issues of invasive species. Kudzu in the US's south is one. Will reviving extinct species contribute to another ecological disaster like "killer bees", "crazy ants", or fire ants?
How has your life in one of the most mid-western of mid-western towns (Rockford, IL) shaped how your view, perceive, and address the issues of today's world? How has it helped? Hindered?'
Full disclosure, a Rocfordite myself.
How can we increase the genetic diversity of a bottlenecked species? Do we tranplant genes from other species, engineer some from scratch, or what?
Question: What is the point in resurrecting extinct species if the environment these species lived in is not restored as well?
What can be done to reclaim lost habitat, as it is a large factor in loss of species?
My sausage tree didn't grow, does that make me a bad mommy?
-eom
This leads to a follow-on question: What criteria does one give when determining whether a species should be revived or not?
Personally, not every species should be revived, no matter how cute it may or may not be, or its perceived usefulness, or some misguided idea that all species must be saved no matter what (in spite of species having gone extinct since the dawn of time with no help from mankind whatsoever, and many of whom would have prevented mankind from rising up had they not gone extinct, etc...) Now if it's clearly mankind's fault that one dies off, sure - let's see if we can bring it back. Otherwise, well...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
How long is a revived creature going to last in an environment full of toxins and biological hazards against which it has dubious amounts of defense?
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
We are currently having problems preserving species with populations of only a few hundred members, (Ridley sea turtles, Right Whales, etc). What will happen when we develop a species with only 1 or 2 members? Will these deextincted species have priority over the existing near extinct species? It appears that the goal is to create more 'almost extinct' species.
My question is this: How "pure" are the species that are revived? From what I understand, the commonly accepted method for doing this involves cloning, which involves implanting an embryo into a different animal that can viably give birth to it. Wouldn't this mean that the creatures that are revived wouldn't be the same species as they were when they went extinct?
Huh. So this is the mirror of those efforts to introduce infertile or defective pest species to reduce their populations.
Is this project planning on stabilizing, strengthening, or renewal of the niches in which the extinct/endangered species inhabit, or trying to be more limiting and specific in simply restoring the species without affecting the surrounding ecosystem? As in, are you looking at it from being a species specific effort or an environmental one?
peter paul & dylan lyric typo about something in the wind billions of us unchosen uncarbonites are, heavy breathing, hand waving star gazing... the '(spiritual) 'cancer' is blowing in the wind is not an intended co-optioning... the so-called primitive hymenless monkeys tend to agree turd flinging is as creepy as it should get & banana sharing is always ok ..... stop the bleeding (ama)
Posting as AC because who knows what some politico might think of this:
What are your thoughts regarding captive breeding and has any work gone into determining population size to get a good spread of genetics so that in the future, if a reintroduction effort is raised, would help ensure the species' continued survival?
I, along with a few dozen people worldwide, work with endangered/threatened/extirpated fishes in our fishrooms. Some of the fish I work with, for example, were once found in a single location (a temporary/annual pool in Brazil), only to be found to be destroyed by human encroachment the following season (condos built on the site). No other locations have been found in the area, and as far as we can tell, the fish in our tanks are the last ones available. Others have been completely lost, and some of us are working hard to keep others that are precariously situated from meeting similar fates. We regularly swap eggs/fish to try and keep the gene pool varied, but I do wonder how we're effecting the genetic viability over many generations.
Similarly, on the one hand, the .gov organizations in these countries can be very heavy-handed in the 'trafficking" of these species. Rightfully so, I might add, as the environments are rather marginal (sometimes, in a pool less than a few meters across and less than a quarter meter in depth), and well-intentioned hobbyists could inadvertently destroy/fish out the habitat, but part of me thinks that instead of implementing a ban, organize it so a certain number of fish can be taken while monitoring conditions to be distributed into the captive programs. The Devil's Hole Pupfish, for example would definitely benefit from a few specialists working with it for captive breeding.
What are the methods to gestate young one when no parents are alive? What type of surrogates are available?
The show Dr. Who pulled a tongue-in-cheek gag about mankind's general fear of global change (from Luddites to species to climate) by showing Earth, 5 billion years from now, as current. The Doctor's comment on the natural shifting of continents was that "they moved them back".
Do you ever feel similar? As if the loss of a species is normal, but sad; and so you seek to move time back and halt the progress of the environment?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I've been a fan of your eclectic perspective and rational style since I bought the "Last Whole Earth Catalog". I know you were a early proponent and popularizer of space-based solar power and space colonies (at least in late 70's as I recall). Have you changed your views on those? Can I hope that my children will see an O'Neill Cylinder in space (or at least a Bernal Sphere)?
I know faster than light travel is impossible. I know personal jet packs are impractical. Do building those space colonies we dreamed about in the 70's fall in the impractical category -- or just unpopular?
A lot of science fiction postulates worlds full of designed creatures - Oryx and Crake, The Windup Girl, etc. Your efforts to revive extinct species could be seen as a stepping stone to that kind of technology. Are you intrigued by the possibilities? What kind of creature would you design?
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
What was Your favorite argument/discussion with JB or Paul? (Long time CEQ/WER reader)
When can we expect to order Mammoth burgers from Mc Donald's?
Don't these idiots believe in evolution?
Extinct species are extinct for a reason, and nearly extinct species are going extinct for the same reason: They are not able to adapt quickly enough to changes in their environments. This is how the process of evolution works; the species that are not equipped to survive ... do not. The specific reason for their impending demise is not relevent; the general reason (they're not fit to survive) is all that matters. It does not matter if human activity caused the changes that endangered these creatures, since humans are just evolved animals themselves and everything humans do is therefore just as natural as everything a kangaroo does (and WHEN did a kangaroo waste time worrying about its impact on the environment?). It does not matter if this leads to some "tipping point" where there are too few species and none of the ones remaining can produce viable offspring that survive the impending challenges... it just could be the case that life on Earth is an evolutionary dead-end. Nothing says that there must be life on Earth, or even that life on Earth is important or "good" ... life on Earth just might be a cosmic error that is destined to self-correct.
Think we did kill them
I accessed The Well when it was a dial-up BBS (at great expense!) and devoured the Whole Earth Catalog. You are one -- if not 'the' -- most notable environmentalist to 'break ranks' on the topic of nuclear energy. On this topic you are a great orator, for you do not merely have the gift of calmly and diplomatically dispelling myths, at the same time you clearly communicate a love for people and a love for the most awesome aspects of modern technology, the 'keepers' such as rural electrification. I am also an staunch advocate for LFTR and my heart is gladdened to hear you mention it.
My question is, has your position and persistence on the topic of nuclear energy brought you joy... or grief?
[ Check out the 2010 Brand/Jacobson debate on nuclear energy and the documentary Pandora's Promise [2013] ]
___
Bumps to a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8>Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
How can scientists, or even "spit kiddies" tinkering in the garage, be sure not to resurrect extinct proteins that do bad things in today's environment?
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What is the most surprising thing you have learned from working on the 10,000 Year Clock, and Revive & Restore? (Thanks for building the Clock, by the way. I can't wait to visit.)