Long Now

### Engineered organic Organic farming teacher Raoul began the joint presentation with a checklist for truly sustainable agriculture in a global context. It must: Provide abundant safe and nutritious food…. Reduce environmentally harmful inputs…. Reduce energy use and greenhouse gases…. Foster soil fertility…. Enhance crop genetic diversity…. Maintain the economic viability of farming communities…. Protect biodiversity…. and improve the lives of the poor and malnourished. (He pointed out that 24,000 a day die of malnutrition worldwide, and about 1 billion are undernourished.) Organic agriculture has made a good start on these goals, he said, with its focus on eliminating harmful pesticides, soluble synthetic fertilizers, and soil erosion. Every year in the world 300,000 deaths are caused by the pesticides of conventional agriculture, along with 3 million cases of harm. Organic farmers replace the pesticides with crop rotation, resilient varieties of plants, beneficial insects, and other techniques. But organic has limitations, he said. There are some pests, diseases, and stresses it can't handle. Its yield ranges from 45% to 97% of conventional ag yield. It is often too expensive for low-income customers. At present it is a niche player in US agriculture, representing only 3.5%, with a slow growth rate suggesting it will always be a niche player. Genetically engineered crops could carry organic farming much further toward fulfilling all the goals of sustainable agriculture, Raoul said, but it was prohibited as a technique for organic farmers in the standards and regulations set by the federal government in 2000. At this point plant geneticist Pam took up the argument. What distinguishes genetic engineering (GE) and precision breeding from conventional breeding, she said, is that GE and precision breeding work with just one or a few well-characterized genes, versus the uncertain clumps of genes involved in conventional breeding. And genes from any species can be employed. That transgenic capability is what makes some people nervous about GE causing unintended harm to human or ecological health. One billion acres have been planted so far with GE crops, with no adverse health effects, and numerous studies have showed that GE crops pose no greater risk of environmental damage than conventional crops. Genetic engineering is extremely helpful in solving some agricultural problems, though only some. Pam gave three examples, starting with cotton. About 25% of all pesticide use in the world is used to defeat the cotton bollworm. Bt cotton is engineered to express in the plant the same caterpillar-killing toxin as the common soil bacteria used by organic farmers,_Bacillus thuringiensis_. Bt cotton growers use half the pesticides of conventional growers. With Bt cotton in China, cases of pesticide poisoning went down by 75%. India's cotton yield increased by 80%. Pam pointed out that any too-successful technique used alone encourages pests to evolve around the technique, so the full panoply of "integrated pest management" needs always to be employed. Her second example was papayas in Hawaii, where the entire industry faced extinction from ringspot virus. A local genetic engineer devised way to put a segment of the virus genome into papayas, thereby effectively inoculating the fruit against the disease. The industry was saved, and most of the papayas we eat in California are GE. Rice is Pam's specialty at her lab in Davis. Half the world depends on rice. In flood-prone areas like Bangladesh, 4 million tons of rice a year are lost to flooding--enough to feed 30 million people. She helped engineer a flood-tolerant rice (it can be totally submerged for two weeks) called Sub1. At field trials in Asia farmers are getting three to five times higher yield over conventional rice. The cost of gene sequencing and engineering is dropping rapidly (toward $70 a genome), and our knowledge about how food crops function genetically is growing just as rapidly. That accelerating capability offers a path toward truly sustainable agriculture on a global scale. Returning to the stage, Raoul doubted that certified organic farmers would ever be allowed to use GE plants, and so he proposed a new certification program for "Sustainable Agriculture," that would include GE.

### New Cities with New Rules This talk was the first in a series of public discussions of an idea that Romer has been working on for two years. His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules. Technologies rearrange materials with ingenious recipes and formulas. More people create more technologies, which in turn generates more people. In recent decades technology has enabled the "demographic transition" which lowers birthrates and raises income per person even higher as population levels off. Rules structure the interactions between people. As population density increased, the idea of ownership became an important rule. A supporting rule for managing violations replaced the old idea of deadly vengeance with awarding damages instead: simply shifting value replaced destroying value. For the idea of open science, recognition replaced ownership as the main event, which means that whoever publishes first is most rewarded, and that accelerates science. Rules can amplify or stifle technological progress. China was the world leader in inventing new technologies until about a thousand years ago, when centralized dynastic rules slowed innovation almost to a stop. Romer notes that business keeps evolving as new companies introduce new rule sets. The good ideas are copied, and workers migrate from failing companies to the new and old ones where the new rules are working well. The same goes for countries. Starting about 1970, China took some of the effective rules of Hong Kong (which was managed from afar by England) and set up four special economic zones along the coast operating as imitation Hong Kongs. They worked so well that China rolled out the scheme for the whole country, and its Gross Domestic Product took off. "Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history." Romer suggests that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe create new systems of administrative control); rethink citizenship (allowing perhaps for voice without residency as well as residency without voice); and rethink scale (instead of focussing on nations, focus on new cities.) If nations are willing to experiment along these lines, they can create new places, places that can give more people access to the kind of rules that they would like to live and work under, and places that can sustain the historical process of entry and innovation in national systems of rules. The idea is getting some traction in the developing world. This summer Romer will launch an institute and website for further exploration and eventual application of the idea. One miracle of cities is that they sometimes renew themselves brilliantly. This could be a whole new form of that.

### Making farmers cool again Farming has become an occupation and cultural force of the past. Michael Pollan's talk promoted the premise - and hope - that farming can become an occupation and force of the future. In the past century American farmers were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did. They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle. "American farmers are incredibly inventive, innovative, and accomplished. They can do whatever we ask them, we just need to give them a new set of requirements." The benefit of a reformed food system, besides better food, better environment and less climate shock, is better health and the savings of trillions of dollars. Four out of five chronic diseases are diet-related. Three quarters of medical spending goes to preventable chronic disease. Pollan says we cannot have a healthy population, without a healthy diet. The news is that we are learning that we cannot have a healthy diet without a healthy agriculture. And right now, farming is sick. Pollan outlined what this recovery for American farmers and food producers should be. First a post-modern food system should be "resolarized." Right now it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to manufacture 1 calorie of food on average, and 55 calories to produce 1 calorie of beef. If any industry should be solar-based it should be food, which was the "original solar economy." Instead, right now "we are eating oil." Cheap oil and farm policies subsidize the 5 main crops (and only those crops), upon which the rest of our cheap food system is based. These main crops are planted as monocultures, which require cheap pesticides and fertilizers and produce wastes that are all problems in themselves. Pollan's solution is not to dismantle the food system but to redirect it. Because of the long-term planning and learning that stewarding land requires, he believes subsidies of some type are essential for agriculture. Agriculture, he stated, should not be a freemarket. By picking the proper incentives we can re-localize, re-solarize, and revive the healing power of balanced farms and wholesome gardens. Governments should reward farmers for diversifying away from monocultures. Pollan gave a few examples of where this has worked at scale. They should be rewarded for growing cover crops with the benefit of reducing erosion. Rewarded for returning animals to the mix. Rewarded for the amount of carbon they sequester in soil. Rewarded for halting urban sprawl by keeping farmland intact. In fact farmland should find a similar status as wetlands; developers and communities get "credit" for retaining farmland. Farmers should be rewarded for localize food provision. If only 2% of government contracts for food (as in school lunch programs, or government-run hospitals) required that the food be produced within 100 miles, it would transform the food system. How might such change happen? Only if consumers and citizens demand it. One thing that might help is if web cams and images of the actual feed lot, or slaughterhouse, were required to be available for food that flowed through it. Imagine getting a carton of milk that showed not a metaphorical alpine meadow, but the real cages of the real dirty cows that produced that liter of milk. Or put a second calories count on labels, this one showing how many calories of energy it takes to deliver the item to you. The major problem with his vision? He says there are simply not enough farmers. Only 1 million now feed the US and other people of the world. Many more people, many more college educated people, many more innovators and entrepreneurs, and many more backyard gardeners need to produce this new food system. Start in educational programs, such as one promoted by Alice Waters, where kids learn to grow food, cook, and eat smarter. "Make lunch an academic subject." Follow the lead of Michelle Obama and make turning lawns into organic gardens fashionable, respectable. Make farms and farmers cool again.

### Sustainable Cities Mayor Newsom began with how moved he was by hosting the UN's World Environment Day in San Francisco in 2005. For that event, which was called "Green Cities - Plan for the Planet!", he invited 120 mayors from around the world. Days of intense discussion led to the publication of 21 policy principles for building permanently sustainable cities, in the areas of energy, waste, design, nature, transportation, health, and water. Cities, Newsom said, consume 75% of natural resources and are responsible for 75% of pollution. He became determined to help make San Francisco the Greenest city in the world. That can be accomplished only with a plethora of highly specific programs. The city's renewable energy portfolio, for example, includes highly demanding Green building standards (LEED); conversion to biodiesel and the recycling of "fats, oils, and grease;" generous rebates for solar; and plans for collecting energy from tidal-flow turbines below the Golden Gate and wave generators off of Ocean Beach. He wants San Francisco to be the world leader in electric vehicles, starting with plug-in hybrids and moving to fully electric. They have half the moving parts of gas vehicles and much higher efficiency. The batteries can charge in off-peak hours, and gas stations can convert to "switch stations," where you simply swap in charged batteries in less time than it takes to fill up with gas. The way cellphone time is sold in minutes, vehicle charging can be sold in miles. He would like to see parking meters used for charging, and San Francisco is developing congestion-price parking meters that cost more during peak congestion hours, and that sense and can broadcast when they're empty. To encourage urban density, which is inherently Green, the city is building more highrises, and California's coming high-speed rail system will leave from the heart of downtown. Newsom noted with glee that there is now intense competition between cities to out-Green each other. Portland, San Francisco, Manhattan, Amsterdam, Vancouver, Singapore and countless others vie in the quest for Green bragging rights. They borrow ideas and deploy comparative shame: "How can sunless Berlin have more solar power than any American city?"

### Language Revolution The Piraha tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 miles. An exceptionally cheerful people, they live with a focus on immediacy, empiricism, and physical rigor that has shaped their unique language, claims linguist Daniel Everett. The Piraha language has no numbers or concept of counting (only terms for "relatively small" and "relatively large"); no kinship terms beyond immediate children and parents; no "left" and "right" (only "upriver" and "downriver"); no named distinction of past and future (only near time and far time); no creation stories or myths; and---most important for linguists---no recursion. A recursive sentence like "The boy who was fishing owned the dog" does not occur in the Piraha language. They would say, "The boy was fishing" and "The boy owned the dog." The eminent linguist Noam Chomsky has declared that recursion is an essential part of human language and is innate. Chomsky's former student Everett says that the Piraha language proves otherwise. The resultant controversy is profound. The Piraha language is the simplest in the world. Speaking it and singing it are the same, and it can be hummed or even whistled, yet it can convey enormous richness. Among other things, the wide variety of verb forms are used to account for the directness of evidence for a statement. Everett originally went to the Piraha in 1977 as a Christian missionary. They challenged him to provide evidence for the existence of Jesus, and lost interest when he couldn't. Eventually so did he. The Piraha made him an atheist. And the through him the Piraha revolutionized how we think about language. Some 40 percent of the world's 6,912 known languages are endangered, says Everett, and that endangers science. When we lose a language, we lose a whole way of life, a whole set of solutions to problems, a whole classification system and body of knowledge about the natural world, a whole calendar system, a whole complex of myths, folktales, and songs. Everett spelled out what it takes to preserve a living language that is endangered. The land where the speakers live must be preserved, and their health should be protected. The language needs to be documented in detail. And you could do worse than make a donation to the [Foundation for Endangered Languages](http://www.ogmios.org/home.htm).

### Managing social collapse With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse he witnessed in Russia in the 1990s and spelled out its practical lessons for the American social collapse he sees as inevitable. The American economy in the 1990s described itself as "Goldilocks"--just the right size--when in fact is was "Tinkerbelle," and one day the clapping stops. As in Russia, the US made itself vulnerable to the decline of crude oil, a trade deficit, military over-reach, and financial over-reach. Russians were able to muddle through the collapse by finding ways to manage 1) food, 2) shelter, 3) transportation, and 4) security. Russian agriculture had long been ruined by collectivization, so people had developed personal kitchen gardens, accessible by public transit. The state felt a time-honored obligation to provide bread, and no one starved. (Orlov noted that women in Russia handled collapse pragmatically, putting on their garden gloves, whereas middle-aged men dissolved into lonely drunks.) Americans are good at gardening and could shift easily to raising their own food, perhaps adopting the Cuban practice of gardens in parking lots and on roofs and balconies. As for shelter, Russians live in apartments from which they cannot be evicted. The buildings are heat-efficient, and the communities are close enough to protect themselves from the increase in crime. Americans, Orlov said, have yet to realize there is no lower limit to real estate value, nor that suburban homes are expensive to maintain and get to. He predicts flight, not to remote log cabins, but to dense urban living. Office buildings, he suggests, can easily be converted to apartments, and college campuses could make instant communities, with all that grass turned into pasture or gardens. There are already plenty of empty buildings in America; the cheapest way to get one is to offer to caretake it. The rule with transportation, he said, is not to strand people in nonsurvivable places. Fuel will be expensive and hoarded. He noted that the most efficient of all vehicles is an old pickup fully loaded with people, driving slowly. He suggested that freight trains be required to provide a few empty boxcars for hoboes. Donkeys, he advised, provide reliable transport, and they dine as comfortably on the Wall Street Journal as they did on Pravda. Security has to take into account that prisons will be emptied (by stages, preferably), overseas troops will be repatriated and released, and cops will go corrupt. You will have a surplus of mentally unstable people skilled with weapons. There will be crime waves and mafias, but you can rent a policeman, hire a soldier. Security becomes a matter of local collaboration. When the formal legal structure breaks down, adaptive improvisation can be pretty efficient. By way of readiness, Orlov urges all to prepare for life without a job, with near-zero burn rate. It takes practice to learn how to be poor well. Those who are already poor have an advantage.

### The Terawatt World Engineer Griffith said he was going to make the connection between personal actions and global climate change. To do that he's been analyzing his own life in extreme detail to figure out exactly how much energy he uses and what changes might reduce the load. In 2007, when he started, he was consuming about 18,000 watts, like most Americans. The energy budget of the average person in the world is about 2,200 watts. Some 90 percent of the carbon dioxide overload in the atmosphere was put there by the US, USSR (of old), China, Germany, Japan, and Britain. The rich countries have the most work to do. What would it take to level off the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm)? That level supposedly would keep global warming just barely manageable at an increase of 2 degrees Celsius. There still would be massive loss of species, 100 million climate refugees, and other major stresses. The carbon dioxide level right now is 385 ppm, rising fast. Before industrialization it was 296 ppm. America's leading climatologist, James Hanson, says we must lower the carbon dioxide level to 350 ppm if we want to keep the world we evolved in. The world currently runs on about 16 terawatts (trillion watts) of energy, most of it burning fossil fuels. To level off at 450 ppm of carbon dioxide, we will have to reduce the fossil fuel burning to 3 terawatts and produce all the rest with renewable energy, and we have to do it in 25 years or it's too late. Currently about half a terawatt comes from clean hydropower and one terawatt from clean nuclear. That leaves 11.5 terawatts to generate from new clean sources. That would mean the following. (Here I'm drawing on notes and extrapolations I've written up previously from discussion with Griffith): "Two terawatts of photovoltaic would require installing 100 square meters of 15-percent-efficient solar cells every second, second after second, for the next 25 years. (That's about 1,200 square miles of solar cells a year, times 25 equals 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic cells.) Two terawatts of solar thermal? If it's 30 percent efficient all told, we'll need 50 square meters of highly reflective mirrors every second. (Some 600 square miles a year, times 25.) Half a terawatt of biofuels? Something like one Olympic swimming pools of genetically engineered algae, installed every second. (About 15,250 square miles a year, times 25.) Two terawatts of wind? That's a 300-foot-diameter wind turbine every 5 minutes. (Install 105,000 turbines a year in good wind locations, times 25.) Two terawatts of geothermal? Build 3 100-megawatt steam turbines every day-1,095 a year, times 25. Three terawatts of new nuclear? That's a 3-reactor, 3-gigawatt plant every week-52 a year, times 25." In other words, the land area dedicated to renewable energy ("Renewistan") would occupy a space about the size of Australia to keep the carbon dioxide level at 450 ppm. To get to Hanson's goal of 350 ppm of carbon dioxide, fossil fuel burning would have to be cut to ZERO, which means another 3 terawatts would have to come from renewables, expanding the size of Renewistan further by 26 percent. Meanwhile for individuals, to stay at the world's energy budget at 16 terawatts, while many of the poorest in the world might raise their standard of living to 2,200 watts, everyone now above that level would have to drop down to it. Griffith determined that most of his energy use was coming from air travel, car travel, and the embodied energy of his stuff, along with his diet. Now he drives the speed limit (and he has passed no one in six months), seldom flies, eats meat only once a week, bikes a lot, and buys almost nothing. He's healthier, eats better, has more time with his family, and the stuff he has he cherishes. Can the world actually build Renewistan? Griffith said it's not like the Manhattan Project, it's like the whole of World War II, only with all the antagonists on the same side this time. It's damn near impossible, but it is necessary. And the world has to decide to do it. Griffith's audience was strangely exhilarated by the prospect.

### Four Dimensional Cities Cities are designed and built in three dimensions. Watching Prelinger's historic footage of San Francisco last night (to a more than overflowing crowd) reminds us however that one of the most compelling dimensions to a city is its fourth dimension - time. The crowd gasped at an incomplete 280 freeway, and watched in amazement as horse and buggies dodged in and out of cable car traffic on Market Street in 01905. We sat silent watching the homeless of the forties, and cheered to see _Playland by the Beach_ and [Laughing Sal](http://museemecaniquesf.com/). Rick reminded us, "The past is not passé, it is prologue." Most archives and libraries put up access barriers in response to copyright laws. In contrast Rick has attacked the vast amount of work that is either out of copyright, or left in the ambiguous gray zones, like home movies. We have always been told that there is no economic case for archives, the [Prelinger Archive](http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger) and [Library](http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger_library) not only upends that notion, but proves that access is the key, not protection. Rick started out in 01982 as an amateur collector of the un-collected. He began by collecting film out-takes, esoteric commercial films, and all the other ephemera that is usually discarded by archives and libraries. Today he is a professional archivist who funds his collections by selling commercial access, AND giving it away. Rick pointed out that his archival sales go up the more he provides free access. The film student who uses a clip in film school often becomes a professional who buys the content later. Most interesting in seeing this historic content was the contrast that it draws to our modern sense of place, and the dramatic increase in documentation now going on. Today's Google Maps Street View shot is tomorrow's "Lost Landscape".

### Terms of Biocontainment "I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy began. The first purpose is better understanding fundamental biological mechanisms through "learning by building." The toolkit of Synthetic Biology starts with DNA construction and ascends through DNA parts, to devices, to standardized systems. An organism's DNA code, and therefore the organism, can be digitally uploaded, stored, distributed, and downloaded. Life forms are programmable. So far 3,500 standard "BioBrick" parts have been developed for free distribution, and the number is growing geometrically. The number of amateur and student bioengineers also is growing geometicallly. "There are 20,000 edible plant species," Endy noted. "At present we eat only 30." Synthetic biology can help diversify agriculture. Or how about engineering a gourd that can grow into a living house? Endy concluded with five questions… Should teenagers practice genetic engineering? (Yes.) Should military weapons involve biotechnology? (No.) Should BioBrick parts be patented or freely shared? (Free.) Will biohackers be good or bad? (Good, if we help.) Should genetic engineers sign their work and publish it? (Yes.) Jim Thomas asked Endy how he would defend against commercial interests locking up Synthetic Biology with patents? Endy said the best hope is building an open-source community that grows faster than businesses and out-innovates them. Thomas began his statement by pointing out that it usually takes a whole generation to understand a new technology, so he urges moving slowly and cautiously, but Synthetic Biology is advancing at breakneck speed, and the window of opportunity to have effective public discussion and control is closing. He cited the history of synthetic chemicals, which began in mid-19th century. The technology quickly became highly concentrated in an oligarchy of monopolistic companies, and then it was easily commandeered by government in wartime. I.G. Farben supplied the poison gas for the death camps. "Powerful technology in an unjust world is likely to exacerbate the injustice." Thomas said he worries when he hears comments like, "Anything that can be made by a plant can be made by a microbe." If that's played out, it means the death knell for everyone who works in agriculture, a vast economic restructuring. There's so much novelty coming so fast from Synthetic Biology, no predictive models or regulatory models can hold them. He recommends these new tools be strictly contained so there is no release of new life forms into the biosphere, and there should be no commercialization of the technology at all. Endy asked Thomas if it's okay to make anything in a bioreactor vat? Thomas said, "Yes, beer." For different reasons, both debaters wanted to see Synthetic Biology kept from domination by commercial patents. For Thomas, it would lead to unjust monopoly answering only to profit. For Endy, it would paralyze open-ended research.

### Green Plans Green Plans, said Johnson, are government-run environmental programs that rise to the scale and longevity of environmental problems. Instead of acting piecemeal, they are comprehensive, systemic, integrated, and accountable. Instead of pursuing an energy policy, an air policy, and a water policy separately, you have to have one policy that covers them all. He singled out three shining examples of how to make Green Plans work--Holland, New Zealand, and California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32). In 1988 Queen Beatrix used her Christmas speech to tell the people of the Netherlands that "the earth is slowly dying," and the nation would disappear back under the sea if it did not solve its own environmental problems and inspire the rest of the world to do the same. The business community led the response, asking the government to set standards. The NGOs (which receive a third of their revenue from government grants) were expected to keep everybody's feet to the fire. The Dutch comprehensive Green Plan basically rewrote the nation's social contract. It took on every problem simultaneously with a trans-generational, trans-border approach. Environmental taxes replaced labor taxes. No waste was allowed to leave the country. The National Environmental Policy Plan is evaluated formally every four years and adjusted. New Zealand in 1987 began research on what would become the biggest reform in its history, the Resource Management Act, which became law in 1991. Under the guiding principle of sustainability, the Act covers everything--air, water, soil, biodiversity, the coasts, and the full gamut of land use planning. The governance principle is "devolution," meaning that most of the action covered by the Act takes place in regional, district, and city councils. California's famous AB 32 is our most important legislation in a century, said Johnson. The goal of taking the state's greenhouse gas emissions back down to the 1990 level by 2020 requires radical action in every sector of the state's economy, including cars, mass transit, shipping, building materials, city design, and a cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gas emissions. The state is coordinating with six other western state and three provinces in Canada under what is called the Western Climate Initiative. In the Q&A Johnson was asked what single action would do the most to improve environmental responsibility from the federal government. "Campaign finance reform," he said. The corruption of elected officials by special interest campaign donations makes them beholden to the wrong people for the wrong goals. Johnson also has a low opinion of term limits. The great co-author of AB 32, Fran Pavley, was termed out after just six years in the State Assembly. If elected officials are always new in the capitol, they are easily manipulated by lobbyists and others who have been in town forever and have it wired.