Addressing Climate Change – Bioengineering or Biomimicry

An article in the September 28th issue of the New Yorker entitled “A Life of Its Own” by Michael Specter got me thinking about how genetic research may play an important role in addressing the issue of human-induced climate change. Climate change is the consequence of a global industrial system that doesn’t behave in the same way the natural world does. Microbiology may provide clues to addressing this misalignment. But within the field two distinct camps are forming on how to do this - on the one hand you have the bioengineers and on the other the biomimics. The bioengineers say we need to learn from biological systems in order to adapt and align those systems to human aims. The biomimics say we need to learn from biological systems in order to adapt and align human aims to those systems. Two very different points of view, yet whose work often overlaps.

The fields of microbiology and genetics were built on shoulders of evolutionary theory. Darwin's theory changed the scientific view of the biosphere from one distinctly anthropocentric - man in the image of the creator having dominion over all living things – to one of an appreciation for a system - the biosphere as a complex, interdependent and evolving system of which mankind is a component. Darwin’s theory became a fundamental tool in bringing forth new knowledge about every aspect of the earth’s biosphere, from paleontology to botany to genetics. Darwin’s theory of evolution represented a great leap forward in systems thinking.

Over the last 50 years a new theory regarding the biosphere - perhaps as powerful as Darwin’s Theory of Evolution - has been emerging. It is the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Darwin’s theory showed that the biosphere was a system, and now climate change theory points to the central role of industrialization in dominating and changing that system.

Microbiology and genetics are being applied to address this problem. The bioengineers are looking to genetically engineer microbes that can absorb CO2 or excrete biofuels. The biomimics are looking for ways to recreate natural processes like photosynthesis but on a scale and with an efficiency that will transform current human activities.

The bioengineers believe, as reported in the New Yorker article, that synthetic biology can dispense with nature entirely by dismantling different organisms and using disparate genetic components to create custom-built packages of DNA. “We have gotten to the point in history where we simply do not have to accept what nature has given us,” Jay Keasling a professor of biochemical engineering at UC Berkeley is quoted as saying. Bioengineers believe humanity need no longer rely on the whims of nature to address the world’s pressing crises. “You need this drug: O.K. we pull this piece, this part, and this one off the shelf. You put them into a microbe, and two weeks later out comes your product.”

Proponents of biomimicry have a different view. As Janine Benyus writes in her book BIOMIMICRY, the field of biomimicry sees nature as the model, measure, and mentor for human development and advancement. This includes understanding the consequences of cooperative relationships, dense interconnectedness, and self-regulating feedback cycles. Wisdom resides in the whole, and organisms are adapted to place. There is more to discover in how nature works than we can possibly invent.

And the biomimicry advocates are wary of their bioengineering counterparts. Benyus writes in the introduction to her book “Now that we can synthesize what we need and rearrange the genetic alphabet to our liking, we have gained what we think is autonomy. Strapped to our juggernaut of technology, we fancy ourselves as gods, very far from home indeed. In reality, we haven’t escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form.”

Bioengineering holds the promise of great power to advance human civilization, but does that power threaten our very existence? Even bioengineers recognize that risks exist. Drew Endy, a professor of biological engineering at Stanford says “If the society that powered this technology collapses in some way, we would go extinct pretty quickly. You wouldn’t have a chance to revert back to the farm or to the pre-farm. We would just be gone.”

Humans have encountered tools of incredible power before – energy tools like fossil fuels and nuclear fission, and information and communications tools like computers, telephones and the internet. The extent to which these tools are out of alignment with the earth as a system (excess CO2, nuclear waste) the greater the long-term problems they have posed. The extent to which these tools have been in alignment with the earth as system (information intensity enabling resource efficiency) the more sustainable these tools make human industrialization.

As the world grapples with the increasingly urgent issue of human-induced climate change, what have we learned? Does climate change teach us that we need to align natural systems to human aims as bioengineering advocates, or align human aims to natural systems as biomimicry points to?

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