Sublime

As Tizard points out, we’re constantly moving genes around the world, usually in the form of entire genomes. This is how chestnut blight arrived in North America in the first place; it was carried in on Asian chestnut trees, imported from Japan. If we can correct for our earlier tragic mistake by shifting just one more gene around, don’t we owe it

Humanity no longer looks at itself with quite as much unabashed admiration as it once did. Fewer people today believe that we are made in God’s image or have any natural rights to dominion over the earth. We are aware of our capacity for self-destruction,

The very success of economic growth in the Digital Age has laid several traps for an unwary world. The world economy is producing vast wealth, but failing in three other dimensions of sustainable development. Inequalities are soaring, in part because of the differential effects of digital technologies on high-skilled and low-skilled workers. Enviro

he first figuratively and then literally set out to “play God,” initially by making the claim that humans had the power of gods and then during the past decade by creating an organization to save and restore endangered species with modern biotechnology.

As it turned out, they didn’t need an emperor to strike the best balance between development and nature: the wisdom of the crowd worked well.

In making the planet brighter and louder, we have also fragmented it. While razing rainforests and bleaching coral reefs, we have also endangered sensory environments. That must now change. We have to save the quiet, and preserve the dark.

The years ahead will run beyond anything he can imagine. The die-offs and disasters will make Bronze Age plagues seem quaint. Prison may become a hideaway from the sentence outside.