In October, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released its biennial Living Planet Report, detailing the state of the planet and its implications for humans and wildlife. The report warned that two-thirds of global wildlife populations could be gone by 2020 if we don't change our environmentally damaging practices.
At the Singularity University New Zealand (SUNZ) Summit we met up with Dr Amy Fletcher, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canterbury, who spoke on the topic of public policy and exponential technology at the Summit. As part of our regular "One Big Question [OBQ]" series we asked her whether we should consider bioengineering animals that could live in the world we're creating, rather than die in the one we're destroying?
That sort of relates to the whole de-extinction debate, and again, I would pay money to see a woolly mammoth. But I do take the point that the world of the woolly mammoth is gone, whether we like it or not, same with the moa – I mean this comes up a lot in criticisms of the bring back the moa project. You've got to have huge swathes of undeveloped space - maybe we still have that, but we don't have as much as we did in the 16th century.
I guess it comes back to not making the perfect the enemy of the good. Working in conservation, extinction issues like I do, I meet a lot of people who are deeply opposed, actively opposed, say to zoos. I think in an imperfect world, I'd rather have animals in a well run and ethical zoo than not have them at all. But I do have colleagues in the animal rights movement who say, if we don't value them enough to let them live in their natural environment, then we should pay the price of having them go. It's sort of that same thing, I mean, if the alternative to living in a world of simply humans, rats, cockroaches and pigeons is bioengineering animals, I would have to say, alright yeah, we're going to have to do that.
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The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has warned that giraffe populations are declining:
A dramatic drop in giraffe populations over the past 30 years has seen the world's tallest land mammal classified as vulnerable to extinction. Numbers have gone from around 155,000 in 1985 to 97,000 in 2015 according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The iconic animal has declined because of habitat loss, poaching and civil unrest in many parts of Africa. Some populations are growing, mainly in southern parts of the continent. Until now, the conservation status of giraffes was considered of "least concern" by the IUCN. However in their latest global Red List of threatened species, the ungainly animal is now said to be "vulnerable", meaning that over three generations, the population has declined by more than 30%.
[...] While researchers believe that some local populations may not survive, there is optimism that that the long term future of these tall creatures can be secured. The success in keeping giraffe numbers high in Southern Africa has much to do with the management of game parks for tourists say experts, who believe that the extra attention that the IUCN listing will now attract will benefit the species. "South Africa is a good example of how you can manage wildlife, there is a lot of moving of animals between different conservation areas, it is a very different scenario than in most of the rest of Africa." said Chris Ransom from the Zoological Society of London.
Scientists led by George Church claim that they are about two years away from beginning a de-extinction of the woolly mammoth. They aim to produce a hybrid mammoth-elephant embryo with many spliced-in mammoth traits:
The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering.
Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the "de-extinction" effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant. "Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo," said Prof George Church. "Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We're not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years."
The creature, sometimes referred to as a "mammophant", would be partly elephant, but with features such as small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair and cold-adapted blood. The mammoth genes for these traits are spliced into the elephant DNA using the powerful gene-editing tool, Crispr. Until now, the team have stopped at the cell stage, but are now moving towards creating embryos – although, they said that it would be many years before any serious attempt at producing a living creature.
"We're working on ways to evaluate the impact of all these edits and basically trying to establish embryogenesis in the lab," said Church. Since starting the project in 2015 the researchers have increased the number of "edits" where mammoth DNA has been spliced into the elephant genome from 15 to 45. "We already know about ones to do with small ears, subcutaneous fat, hair and blood, but there are others that seem to be positively selected," he said.
Also at New Scientist and GenomeWeb.
Previously: Engineering the Perfect Baby
Woolly Mammoth Genome Sequenced
St. Paul Island Mammoths Died of Thirst 5,600 Years Ago
OBQ: [How Much] Should We Bioengineer Animals to Live in Our Damaged World?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:33AM
[How Much] Should We Bioengineer Animals to Live in Our Damaged World?
It's called a loaded question. My world is not damaged. It used to be much worse when smokestacks in every industrial country spewed soot out, as if trying to cause nuclear winter. We are doing just fine today, and will be even better tomorrow. Our cars will be electric in 10-20 years from now, our power will be coming from renewable sources, and we will be spending more and more time in the Matrix.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:37AM
Have you stopped beating your wife? [fallacyfiles.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:13PM
Not today! *cue Avengers theme*
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:52AM
Yes, because lithium mining is great for the environment.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:03AM
It's just too bad that we will never invent a battery better than Lithium ion. [/s] Note that I'm not claiming abundance of EVs today - I know that today's EVs are a joke; they work best only as single-purpose vehicles. Give them 10-20 years, perhaps some graphene ultracapacitors will become available, or hydrogen as energy storage, or powered roads... there are always possibilities.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:06PM
This year's report states that the number of vertebrates in the world fell by well over half between 1970 and 2012 and that, without intervention, the decline will continue, leading to up to 67 percent of all animals being gone by 2020.
...
The report states that, overall, the Global LPI shows a "persistent downward trend."
I guess that's a problem for future-Homer. Man I don't envy that guy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:44AM
Are you dense? Bringing back the woolly mammoth is perfect:
http://www.pleistocenepark.ru/en/background/ [pleistocenepark.ru]
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5723/796.1.full [sciencemag.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:55AM
Pure and simple.
The dinosaurs needed an asteroid to wipe them out.
We only need ourselves. Go ahead and tell me who is smarter.
But I bought a new sailboat to get me to my island.
Ostriches at least know when to bury their heads in the sand.
RIP the great apes by 2100. Or well, who will know that time frame by then.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:08AM
If we can get WW3 going this year, we can see a comeback of many of those species by 2020 as infrastructure collapse leads to subsistence rather than trophy hunting, and industrialized mining and agriculture collapse as the materials necessary to maintain their current levels of expansion become unavailable.
Being offshore with sufficient infrastructure to collapse is recommended for anyone forward thinking. Just make sure nobody knows where you are so they can't come pillage you like in the Mad Max movies, or more appropriately Waterworld.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:45AM
If we can get WW3 going this year, we can see a comeback of many of those species by 2020 as infrastructure collapse leads to subsistence rather than trophy hunting
My prediction is that we'll instead see the instant extinction of a bunch of large animals, if that were to happen. Subsistence hunting is far worse than trophy hunting because it won't stop just because a species is in danger of going extinct, but instead move on to the next available source of protein once a food-viable species goes extinct.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:20PM
Mmmm... baco... What? Not more wild bacon?
Mmmm... baked wild beeaans...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:35AM
So the world is off balance and you suggest we push it even further by monkeying with genes? Also, our current level of knowledge in the field amounts to blind guesswork and haphazard stabs in the dark. Not exactly a controlled process towards a known result.
Human survival is very much dependent on the survival of a large number of other species. (animal and plant etc) Maybe we deserve to go. I'd say even probably.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:21PM
Sometimes I jump awake with cold sweats thinking of the horror of what if you are wrong and it's not even probably... but odd probably ?.
See what you've done?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:39AM
The report states that, overall, the Global LPI shows a "persistent downward trend." Populations are most threatened by habitat loss and degradation, with other threats including the over-exploitation of certain species, pollution, invasive species, disease and climate change.
So how do you engineer species for habitat loss (which is first place on that list for a reason) or being over-exploited? I can see a fair number of lesser concerns that bioengineering could help with, but the big ones can't be helped.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:30PM
wI hear roasted cockroaches have a nutty flavor. Anyway, in 50 years time, who's gonna know what a nut tastes like?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:40AM
There's really no environmental problem killing the animals. Bio-engineering isn't the answer, because that's not really the question. The fundamental problem affecting wildlife is much simpler:
There are too many people.
If we want to ensure the survival of wildlife, we would designate large areas of the planet as "off limits" to people, except possible for short sightseeing visits. However, this does not work. Just to cite the most obvious example: the slash-and-burn agriculture that is encroaching on the Amazon [nasa.gov]. The people doing this are people without much choice - they're uneducated, subsistence-level farmers who don't have anywhere else to go.
Or take Africa. Once of the few things that Western aid has accomplished is a major reduction in infant mortality [worldbank.org]. Gee, that's great and all, but in the absence of other societal changes, it means that African populations are exploding. This well-meant aid will result in an unending series of further disasters - war, hunger, disease - and at the same time, destroy Africa's wildlife.
In order to find useful answers, we must ask the right questions. And the most important question of all is: how can we limit the human population?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bootsy on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:32PM
The only proven way to limit the birth rate is to increase female literacy. We need to educate the world's young girls so they don't put up with being brood mares and only have children if they want them and can afford them.
When the UN looked into this it was the only link they could find between lower birth rates and any other program that was in place.
If you remove immigration then Europe's population has been shrinking for a long time.
It would probably also help if the Roman Catholic church had a more pragmatic view on contraception.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:47PM
Yeap, spot on. With higher education, the chances of manifestations of feminism are higher. Eventually, the society will ethically, morally and politically (correct) de-nut the male population (if you don't believe me, ask runaway)
My only question is: why go with this convoluted way and not denut the males straight on? Not only that is frowned upon by the free market fairy (higher costs and, oh the horror of horrors, socialize them) but you are also making a significant segment of the population unhappy - after all, ignorance is a bliss - one may say education is an action worth to be called unconstitutional.
A Happy 2017 (I really doubt it, you elected Trump, but it's sorta traditional wish this time of the year).
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @02:50PM
(oh, shit, I forgot to check that box. Time to go to sleep... if only this dam' weather would cool a bit).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:03PM
And again, checking that box is mostly pointless since you are about the only poster who signs with "(grin)".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:27PM
Oh, but there is a reason behind the madness of checking that box: this way, the soylents which choose to browse at over 0 will be spared from my exquisite sense of humour on a hot and humid night that followed an atrocious hot and humid day, near the end of a so fine a year 2016 has been.
But... point taken, I shall try to make my signature more... mmmm... pointful?
(…g̣ṛịṇ…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:35PM
-- OriginalGrinner_ [tinyurl.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:06PM
But, but, but . . . what about cultures that state their ultimate goal is to overcome and eradicate the western-world and intolerable freedoms by out-breeding them? Those folks will never allow women to be literate or educated or anything more than chattel slaves, let alone have a say on whether or not to be the "brood mares" for generations of righteous warriors suitably indoctrinated to believe without question that the great Satan of the west and all its peoples must be murdered and the existence of free thought expunged from the face of the earth?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:56PM
Actually, TV has been shown to decrease the birthrate even in the absence of female literacy, so it's not the only way, but it one of the more effective ones.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:05PM
India comprises .6% of the earth, while housing 20% of its human population, and is one of the most successful countries at protecting its wildlife. There are few places with that much stable biodiversity.
Clearly population density has nothing to do with the matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:32PM
That is because India's population *is* the wildlife there. If only they would go extinct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:12PM
human population is currently not the problem. The Stupid is the problem.
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:14AM
Why do you think population is a problem? It seems we have more than enough water, land, food and energy for everyone if we shared it out.
Why target African and South American countries? They generally have low population densities and their environmental footprint per capita is also low. Surely Japan, the UK and Netherlands should be the first to be targeted.
If we really want to fix the problem, let's declare religion a mental illness and develop a vaccine against it. Within a generation, education will increase, wars decrease and world population will start falling.
(Score: 2) by Ayn Anonymous on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:54AM
Your are more worth than an animal, right ?
So what is your exchange rate ?
Is Homo sapiens worth 2 other species ?
Or 10 ?
Or 100 ?
Or does it not mater, you are more worth than all the other 7 mio. other species ?
You DESERVE the earth, do you ?
You have A RIGHT to dominate all other species.
GOD HAS GIVEN YOU THAT RIGHT ?
YOU, deserve to go extinct.