[zonbron]

Geoengineering alleen gaat niet ver genoeg volgens de ecoterroristen. Vandaar dat de nutty wetenschappers verder zoeken naar complementaire maatregelen.

Voor alle climate change fans, er bestaat nog een andere oplossing. Human engineering. Enjoy !


Brisbane Times - Hand-made humans may hold the key to saving the world
30 september 2012 - Climate change is a problem that requires thinking - sometimes uncomfortably - outside the accepted status quo.


Building earth-friendly people ... altering humans may be a safer option than trying to alter the planet.

<sub>Some scientists and policy makers are therefore proposing that we take seriously the idea of geoengineering - that is, large-scale manipulations of the earth, such as spraying sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to alter the reflectivity of the planet or fertilising the ocean with iron to spur blooms of carbon-sucking plankton. However, geoengineering seems too risky. Many of the technologies involved have never been employed on such a large scale, which means that we could be endangering ourselves or future generations. Indeed, spraying sulfate aerosols could destroy the ozone layer and iron fertilisation could promote toxic planktons and destroy all forms of marine life.

-One might be able to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select shorter children.

...

It involves the biomedical modification of humans to make us better at mitigating, and adapting to the effects of, climate change.

Before I explain the proposal, let me make clear that human engineering is intended to be a voluntary activity - possibly supported by incentives such as tax breaks or sponsored healthcare - rather than a coerced, mandatory activity. My colleagues and I are positively against any form of coercion of the sort that the Nazis perpetrated in the past (segregation, sterilisation and genocide).


Also, this proposal is intended for those who believe that climate change is a real problem, and who, as a result, are willing to take seriously geoengineering. Someone who doesn't believe that climate change is a real problem is likely to think that encouraging people to recycle more is an overreaction to climate change.

Finally, the main claim here is a modest one, namely, human engineering should be considered alongside other solutions such as geoengineering. The claim is not that human engineering ought to be adopted as a matter of public policy. This is an attempt to encourage ''outside the box'' thinking vis-a-vis a seemingly intractable problem.

-Pharmacological meat intolerance

Human engineering could help here. Just as some people have a natural intolerance to milk or crayfish, it is possible artificially to induce mild intolerance to red meat by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins. The immune system would then become primed to react to them, and henceforth eating ''eco-unfriendly'' food would induce unpleasant experiences.

Making humans smaller

Human ecological footprints are partly correlated with our size. We require a certain amount of food and nutrients to maintain each kilogram of body mass. The larger one is, the more food and energy one requires...

Finally, there is a strong correlation between birth size and adult height. Gene imprinting - where only one parent's copy of the genes is turned on and the other parent's copy is turned off - has been found to affect birth size. So drugs or nutrients that either reduce the expression of paternally imprinted genes or increase the expression of maternally imprinted genes could potentially regulate birth size.

The last two methods are controversial as they involve making irreversible choices for one's children. But parents are permitted to give hormone treatments to their children, who are otherwise perfectly healthy, so that, for example, a daughter predicted to be 195 centimetres tall could instead be 183 centimetres tall. On what grounds then should we forbid other parents who want to give hormone treatments to their children so that their children could be 152 centimetres tall instead of 165 centimetres tall? It might be thought that in the case of the former, the daughters would later appreciate and consent to the parents' decision. But if climate change would seriously affect the well-being of millions of people including one's children, then these children may also later appreciate and consent to the parents' decision.

Lowering birth rates through cognitive enhancement

Another obvious way to reduce ecological footprints is to lower birth rates. There are, of course, many available methods of curbing birth rates, such as the use of contraception.

Pharmacological induction of altruism and empathy

Many environmental problems are collective action problems, in which individuals do not co-operate for the common good. But if people were generally more willing to act as a group, we may be able to enjoy the sort of benefits that arise only when large numbers of people act together.

Pharmacological induction of altruism and empathy may help here. There is evidence that altruism and empathy have biological underpinnings. For example, test subjects given the prosocial hormone oxytocin were more willing to share money with strangers and to behave in a more trustworthy way. Also, a noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor increased social engagement and co-operation with a reduction in self-focus. Furthermore, oxytocin appears to improve the capacity to read other people's emotional state, which is a key capacity for empathy. This suggests that interventions affecting the sensitivity in these neural systems could increase the willingness to co-operate with social rules or goals.

Let me now explain why we should take human engineering seriously. It should be clear that human engineering is less risky than geoengineering. In addition to the fact that much of the technology involved in human engineering - such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis and oxytocin - is already safely available for other uses, human engineering applies at the level of individual humans. This means that we can better manage these risks than those imposed by something such as geoengineering, which takes place on a global, scale.

Human engineering could also be liberty enhancing. In response to climate change, some people have proposed we adopt something akin to China's one-child policy. For example, a group of doctors in Britain has advocated a two-child maximum. But suppose that the relevant issue is some kind of fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions for each family. If so, given fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human engineering could give families the choice between having one large child, two medium-sized children or three small children. Human engineering seems more liberty enhancing than a policy that says you can have only one or two children.

It may turn out that human engineering is not the best way of tackling climate change.

But to concede this now would be to ignore the widely acknowledged fact that we do not know which solutions to climate change will be the most effective.

To combat climate change, we can either change the environment or change ourselves. Given the enormous risks associated with changing the environment, we should take seriously the idea that we may need to change ourselves.

Matthew Liao is the director of the bioethics program and an associate professor in the Centre for Bioethics in the Department of Philosophy at New York University.</sub>



Alles voor moeder GAIA dus..., als U graag meer wilt lezen, klik dan op de bovenstaande link.