From Public Radio/American Public Media's Marketplace,
Five ways a bioethicist wants to change our bodies to fight climate change
Dr. S. Matthew Liao, a bioethicist at New York University, believes that solving climate change starts with the individual. That’s why he suggests we turn humans into cat-eyed, meat-allergic, semi-genius, hobbit people.
His proposal is dead serious, not a kind of Jonathan Swift-ian exercise. And it has economic implications. It’s centered around the idea that we have passed a point of no return with man-made climate change.
There are lots of ideas on the table when it comes to fighting the environmental impact of humans and technology. As we move further and further into a world where there is vast scientific consensus, and a paradoxical public resistance to that idea, these ideas are getting weirder and weirder.
One idea floated by scientists is geoengineering; shooting aerosols into the atmosphere and cooling the surface temperature. Another, boosted again this week by a $1 billion dollar investment fund led by BIll Gates, is clean energy innovation.
Liao doesn’t discount these, but he believes in some ways that bioengineering our bodies is going to be part of the overall solution and be less dangerous than trying to change the entire planet’s atmosphere with geoengineering. On the are five ways he thinks humans could change ourselves to fight climate change:
1. Cat Eyes
Yes, engineering our eyes to be more like cat eyes and get rid of the need for lighting. “Cats can see just as well as we can during the day,” says Liao. “But they can see about seven times better than we can at night. This could totally affect our consumption of energy. I mean think of that. Who wouldn’t want to see better…and see just as well during the day?”
2. Pharmacological induction of empathy
Taking a pill that helps us feel more empathy for the rest of the world’s residents, so we think twice the next time we’re about to create waste.
3. Hobbit people
Screening embryos so that we have smaller babies. Why will that help us fight climate change? Liao says smaller people use less resources. “We need more fabric to clothe them, and it takes more energy to transport them,” he says. “Add all that up. This could impact our consumption of food, the production of the vehicles and buildings we use, and even the energy to heat those buildings. Liao says as a species we’re taller than we have ever been, and that we don’t actually need to be. So we should use our selective powers to stay short.....
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And short people? A repost from 2011:
"Climate Change Caused Angry Runts"
It's been a while since we had a solar minimum.*
Hostile short people with nuclear weapons, this could get interesting.
From DiscoveryNews:
Climate changes resulted in war and famine in preindustrial Europe. A century-long drop in temperature even led to shorter people in the 16th century.
Chinese researchers recently looked at every known major conflict and crisis in Europe and correlated them to 14 economic, social, agricultural, ecological and demographic variables.
“Our findings indicate that climate change was the ultimate cause, and climate-driven economic downturn was the direct cause, of large-scale human crises in preindustrial Europe and the Northern Hemisphere,” wrote the researchers, led by David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Between 1500 and 1800, every change in average temperatures correlated to a change in agricultural output and food supply. The climate changes did not result in immediate changes in population growth, so even in a cold year with poor harvests, the population kept going up. More mouths to feed with less grain meant a rise in food prices and starvation.
Hungry people then either revolted, migrated or starved. On a larger scale this meant war, plague or malnutrition. But the disastrous effects of climate changes weren't instantaneous.
“Peaks of social disturbance such as rebellions, revolutions, and political reforms followed every decline of temperature, with a 1- to 15-year time lag,” reported the researchers.
For example, cold temperatures between 1264 and 1359 led to the Great Famine of the late Middle Ages.
During the long cold spell between 1559 and 1652, average heights in Europe declined by 0.8 inches....MORE
Related:
Imagine That: Earliest Surviving Secular Song Is An English Guy Talking About The Weather
I grew up being told Sumer Is Icumen In was the earliest surviving but this one is a decade or two older, as the post points out.
Adios cuckoo, hello English guy griping* about the cold and wind.....
World's Oldest Weather Report Found in Egypt: It Was Raining, People Were Crabby
