The Little BANG Theory

The Little BANG Theory Tales and Truths about Tomorrow Contents Acknowledgements

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1975, 2005, 2035

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Staying the Course: Geopiracy – China Sundown

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What Happened to Tomorrow?

What is…

Who cares?

BANG: Technological convergence at the nano-scale GANG! The Convergence of governments and corporations GONE! Converging on climate – Geoengineering as geopiracy

Page 55 Page 59 Page 68 Page 72 Page 84 Page 110

Course Changes – What Options for Tomorrow?

Course 1: Politics - Watch at the Mountaintop Course 2: Peace - March out of Battle Course 3: People - Peripheral visions

Page 121 Page 123 Page 147 Page 168

Reviewing the Course: What’s Possible?

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Common Course: Community in the Old House

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On Changing Course and The Half-Full Hourglass

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Notes

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How Next Boxes: How Next #1: Are we winning or losing? [Course 1 – 144] How Next #2: Is there a place for compromise and dialogue? [Course 1 – 145] How Next #3: Are we ‘movers’ or merely ‘shakers’? [Course 1 – 145] How Next #4: Are we trapped in the “Stockholm Syndrome?” Is civil society changing structures or enabling them? [Course 1 – 146] How Next #5: What should be the relationship between NGOs and Social Movements? [Course 2 – 166]

How Next #6: Is there a place for collective long term (decade+) strategic organizing? [Course 2 – 167] How Next #7: Should our priority be on the “global” or the “local”? [Course 3 – 191] Word Views: Time to Change Our Word View #1: “poor” [Course 3 – 191] Time to Change Our Word View #2: “reality” [Course 3 – 191]

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Aaa Acknowledgments This work began in 2005 – 30 years (a full human generation) after the publication of a report that has influenced civil society thinking ever since. What Now?, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation’s brilliant 1975 report deserves high marks for its prescriptions even though it offered few predictions. That’s not surprising, since its authors were focused on “now” (the immediate steps ahead) rather than three decades hence. What Now? arrived at a critical moment – at the end of Portuguese colonialism and the Vietnam War – with the rise of OPEC and the UN Declaration of a New International Economic Order. The authors could look ahead and imagine a world more committed to peace and multilateralism than at any time since the end of World War II. As they gathered and debated and wrote, the authors could not have known that they were also at the end of a period of social progress and democratization that was about to be replaced by neoliberalism.

Thirty years later, the old Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation under the leadership of Olle Nordberg and Niclas Hällström, in collaboration with ETC Group and others from their extensive network launched a global dialogue within civil society (involving, not the least, several recipients of the Right Livelihood Award) to see if we could envision a new course – or many courses – that could get us to a better world. This book draws upon the debates in this second process but is, ultimately, one person's contribution to a much richer dialogue. The collaboration with the newly set up What Next Exchange is set to build on this spirit of the past, and help further the discussions and debates this book will hopefully generate.

Predicting the future is easy ... if you don't live too long! Despite the obvious uncertainties, there is little choice but to assume that the most likely course for the next generation flows, inelegantly and unimaginatively, from the logic that human society will "stay the course" – keep on tracking the downward trend line of economic and environmental degradation that dominates today's headlines. This doesn't mean that civil society can’t still construct alternative "courses" – processes that could bring humanity to, at least, a modestly better place over the next generation.

All of these courses have been the subject of civil society debate over a five-year ramble of What Next meetings and seminars from Mexico City to Dehradun to Porto Alegre and Miami to Ottawa, Nairobi, San Salvador and Montpellier. Throughout these years, there have been many surprises and huge disagreements among long and strong allies. In the end, these pages may well include ideas, about which, even old comrades might disagree.

While I am the author of this book and responsible for any mistakes, I must acknowledge the essential contribution of my colleagues in ETC Group. This book depends heavily on our shared work and research and everybody on staff has contributed substantially to the information and ideas, while managing to keep my computer alive and the office running. Perhaps no one has supported this work more than Niclas Hällström who, during the course of this writing, has left the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation where he was Associate Director and responsible for its What Next project in order to establish the What Next Forum where, with the blessings of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, he will continue to focus on this broad and futuristic agenda.

Niclas has participated in every draft of this convoluted tale over the past five years. Thanks

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must also go to all the wonderful people Niclas and colleagues have gathered around the What Next process.

The bits and pieces I've written over the years have always seemed such a collective effort that it never quite felt right to selfishly single out and thank my family for all their foresight, forgiveness, and forbearance. Now that I'm getting closer to my mid-60s than my early 60s I want to capture this right and express my love and gratitude to my wife and partner, Susie Walsh, and to my children, Robin, Kate, Sarah, Jeff, Nick and Kelsey and to my three (so far – two more are on the way) grandchildren, Stella, Finnegan and Edie. I wouldn't be writing about the next 30 years if it weren’t for them.

Warm thanks also go to my friends and partners in the Right Livelihood Award (RLA) and, especially, to my fellow Laureates - some of whom I have used as models for the course changes proposed in this report. Not only is the camaraderie of the RLA a constant inspiration to me and others, but the RLA also kindly gave me the opportunity to present an early draft of this book at the 30th anniversary of the founding of the RLA (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in Bonn Germany in September 2010.

Pat Mooney, ETC Group, Right Livelihood Award (1985) Ottawa, November, 2011

Aaa ETC Group [and logo] ETC Group is a non-profit civil society organization dedicated to the conservation and advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. Its strength is in the research and analysis of technological information (particularly but not exclusively agricultural biodiversity, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, genomics and geoengineering and in the development of strategic options related to the socioeconomic ramifications of new technologies.

ETC Group works in partnership with civil society organizations (CSOs) and social movements around the world. More information about ETC Group and downloads all of its publications in English and Spanish are available at: www.etcgroup.org.

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Aaa

1975, 2005, 2035

As a teenager in the 1960s, the cutting-edge technology was a tiny pill that let us have sex without having children. When my first daughter was born in 1978, the hot new technology let us have kids without having sex. As I was trying to finish this book and my toddler grandchildren played, scientists announced “Synthia”, the first-ever artificial, self-replicating life form.

When I was born in 1947, my parents had no way of knowing that they both carried a recessive gene that codes for Stargardt’s disease and that I would become technically blind in childhood.

When I was planning to have children of my own, geneticists could estimate the percentage possibility of me passing on my eyesight -- very low. As I finish this book, the first gene therapy for Stargardt’s is being proposed based upon successful mice experiments and – accustomed as I am to my condition – I can’t help feeling that medical research has more important things to do.

By the time my grandchildren, Stella, Finnigan and Edie, contemplate parenthood, they will carry maps of their personal genomes in a nanochip embedded in their shoulders.

There are other technologies… As I was walking home from the Ottawa peasants’ market recently, my not-yet-four granddaughter called me on her mother’s cell phone. They were in Mexico, her mom was napping on the sofa, and Stella had figured out how to press the green call button next to my photo. In her tiny hands she was holding not only a telephone but also a typewriter, telegraph, radio, TV set, camera and movie camera, a record player, dictation machine, alarm clock, photo album, address book, calendar, and probably lots of other things I still haven't figured out. When my grandkids’ moms were their age in the early 1980s, we were the first people around to have an IBM desktop computer. When I was a toddler, my parents had a telephone, a clunky IBM electric typewriter, giant upright radio, a record player, an alarm clock, and a Brownie starflex camera.

So what? Are these technological changes significant? Has the pace of change accelerated to the point where neither governments nor societies can comprehend their impact ... or, can we take iPads and eye genes in our stride and just carry on – "business as usual"?

Many of us will concede that technology has an important role in shaping our future – or ending it, but there is a debate about who’s in charge. Some of us believe that technology is only a tool for the exercise of wealth and power and not a determinant or an independent force. Others of us fear – that however subordinate technology has historically been to culture and class – technology’s transformative powers in today's accelerated world are underestimated. Although the point can be contested, popular opinion holds that there were more technological innovations in the final two decades of the 20th century than the previous 80 years, and still more dramatic innovations have come in the first decade of the 21st century than in the preceding 20 years. The explosive curve of technological transformation, some say, is difficult for us to see or understand. Technology might now be out of control – or at least out of the control of citizens.

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Still, our cultures continue to adapt technologies to changing circumstances. As some technologies are created, others are discarded or – more often – deliberately dismantled.

Intellectually isolating technology from the social structure of power and control is dangerous. It leads us to assume that technology is one-dimensional; treading forever along an upward path; a "force of nature" not to be denied by civilized people. This is absurd.

Aaa BANG? To expose the growing role of technology at least for debate, I have written the following stories to argue there is a scientific and political strategy in play —a kind of “Little BANG Theory”: that biology, physics, and chemistry are converging at the nano-scale, in a technological BANG. BANG is the term coined by ETC Group’s Jim Thomas and refers to Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes – what the US government prosaically calls NBIC, the convergence of Nanotech, Biotech, Information technologies and Cognitive sciences. Similarly, the European Union talks about CTEKS – Converging Technologies for the European Knowledge Society.

The presumption of scientific convergence is driving not only research budgets but also political agendas as super and lesser powers jockey for dominance in what could be a radically different economic and technological environment.

Aaa Gang? Technological convergence – BANG – is still just a theory but government and corporate elites are an industrial reality and, in response, are converging in a dangerous "corporatism" that will use science and technology to control societies. While neither the US nor the European Union acknowledge BANG’s concomitant convergence of government and industry, the policies they are promoting to support technological convergence inevitably lead to trade, technology and financial linkages between industry and government that make it impossible for governments to act independently of the major financial/corporate consortia – the BANG members in the stories ahead.

Aaa Gone? The two convergences – of technology and power – are developing as major failures in earth’s systems – the loss of biodiversity and the rapid emergence of climate chaos chief among them – threaten human civilization. The environmental crisis is leaving many people in shock; ready to try almost anything; afraid it is already too late. The BANG members are taking advantage of this crisis to insist that the only way out is through immediate technological transformations. For this reason, technology figures prominently in the stories ahead. But, I've tried to avoid a distracting (and disabling) fixation on techno-toys. After all, the dominant technology trend line is clear and the details need not be precise. The real issue is how governments, and powerful corporate consortia will use technology to manipulate society and whether civil society has the insight, foresight, and courage to make another world possible.

Looking three decades ahead seems quite far enough. But, The Little BANG Theory follows a trend line that, for me, begins most logically in 1975. When I began writing this book in 2005 I was trying to do so with the hindsight of 30 years while looking ahead another 30 years. But, of course, life happens while you’re doing other things and it’s taken me much longer to write this than I expected. During the writing, several things I theorized for the future actually took place.

So, now, the stories ahead are based on a trajectory that began more than three decades ago.

Aaa 1975? The first half of the 70s was a time of enormous change. The UN held its first of what became a series of global environmental conferences in 1972 and the first UN women’s

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conference was convened in 1975. Also in 1975, revolution seemed everywhere. The US was defeated in Vietnam, the dictatorships of Spain and Portugal collapsed and some of the last colonies were liberated and major powers were confronted by the Third World demand for a New International Economic Order.

The convergence of food and fuel crisis in the early 70s led to global negotiations that have influenced energy and agriculture policy ever since. The Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth warning us that the Earth is finite and vulnerable; Barnett and Mueller wrote Global Reach – introducing many of us, for the first time, to the power of multinational corporations; Susan George told us How the Other Half Dies and Frankie Lappe, Joe Collins and Cary Fowler finished Food First. As the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation issued What Next?, for the first time, civil society activists from nearly all of the industrial countries (and none from the Third World) came together to strategize on political support for the world’s marginalized at the UN. 1975 was not the beginning of my own international CSO career – that was a decade sooner – but this year marked an important transition in civil society activism that can be traced through the various stories in this book.

Aaa 2005? By any standards, the arbitrary beginning date of the stories that follow – 2005 was a traumatic year. It began in the aftermath – and the ‘shock and awe’ – of a vast natural disaster – the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. It was followed by the human-engineered tragedies of Sudan’s Darfur, famine in East Africa, and explosions of violence in London subways and Paris suburbs, and other (natural?) disasters such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita that pummeled the Gulf of Mexico and inundated New Orleans. In 2005, children and women – in numbers never before known – became suicide bombers in Palestine and Iraq – fighting the cannons of empire with the coffins of innocents. All of this in the warmest year (until then) in recorded history – as the world population touched 6.5 billion – and for the first time, more than half of humanity was moved off the land into towns and cities – and as people and politicians everywhere wondered if anything, anymore, was truly “natural.”

After all, we told one another, the tsunami wreaked greater havoc because of our overdevelopment of coastlines and destruction of mangrove swamps. New Orleans, too, was washed away partly because foolish engineers built where others feared to tread. Despite 2005’s new fears and phobias, by year-end, Parisian diners were back to eating Slow Food served by Algerian immigrants, globalization was pondering its delusional ‘progress’ in Hong Kong, Muddy Waters’ blues could be heard in the cafés of New Orleans once more, the G8 was pontificating in Russia, and half-naked Swedes were again sauntering arm-in-arm along Thai beaches, beside newly seeded lawns where fishing villages had bustled months before. Darfur (despite its so-called peace settlement during the year), the Congo, Afghanistan and Iraq, too, remained mostly unchanged – except, of course, for those who died there in 2005.

If 2005 was a shock, the writing of this book concluded in 2011, coinciding with yet another moment of shock and awe. During 2008 and 2009, skyrocketing fuel prices joined with soaring food prices to drive cars into collision with hungry people and to force an additional 160 million into malnutrition. Strangely, the alarm over climate change – alarm that mounted so dramatically after the latest independent scientific reports – receded into the background as panic over a financial meltdown took over the headlines. Suddenly, fears for the worst depression in a century

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supplanted the public's concern over the biggest environmental threat in human history. Once again, an inevitable new era of technological progress was presented as the solution to the fuel, food, and even the financial crisis – even in the wreckage of the absurdly-described "Copenhagen Accord" and – at year’s end – it’s sadsack sequel, the Cancun “Harmony.” Other natural disasters – this time an eerie sequence of enormous earthquakes – wreaked havoc on the peoples of Haiti and Chile and New Zealand and Japan – and as unnatural disasters – BP’s Gulf oil spill and Japan’s nuclear meltdown – again warns us against the technological hubris and the dangers involved when the revolving door (i.e. "corporatism") between industry and regulators spins so fast, so unnoticed and so out of control.

Aaa 2035? One of the great wisdoms of the 60s and 70s was “don’t trust anybody over 30.”

Now, in my mid-60s I could equally advise activists not to trust anybody under 30. As a species, most of us grow more conservative as we grow older. But, the reason for picking 2035 as an endpoint to the stories is only because it is 30 years after 2005, which in turn, is 30 years after 1975. In other words, the trajectory of this look into the future spans two generations. These stories are not – to be clear – a very far look into the future. They are simply a logical progression from the last 30 years. None of the stories are politically or technologically farfetched. If anything, the events I described could take place much sooner … if they ever happen … or, if they are not prevented.

Not surprisingly, our young millennium has spawned a rash of modernized utopic and dystopic scenarios for our future – the latter ranging from pessimistic to cataclysmic. If, soothsayers advise, terrorists, teenagers – or (more likely) over-achieving software providers – concoct some programmable bytes that turn into a techno-tsunami, the little electronic bug could sweep, today, like the overhyped Y2K at the turn of the millennium never did, and flood down the Internet swamping industrial civilization within hours. The effect would not be to send us spiraling back to the halcyon 70s when most commerce and communication went ‘unwebbed’ and ran smoothly enough without microchips. If the Internet were to collapse, according to one theory, the world’s military machines, losing sight of their adversaries and fearing loss of control over their nuclear arsenals, might well pull the trigger. Even if the generals forbear, the apparatus of production, transportation, and communication would wind down and food and energy supplies would slip from the cities like a sucking tide. Only the people on the metropolis’ periphery, those on distant farms and in villages well off the Internet ‘grid’ – those who don’t know they have been excluded from the Knowledge Economy – would hang on to a semblance of civilization.i The solution to war and climate chaos is much more likely to come from an end to poverty and injustice than from another technological toy. Indeed, the overwhelming focus on technological solutions is becoming a dominant feature in addressing every social issue. This is not an encouraging trend.

This book combines a series of fictional stories with non-fiction commentary that attempts to justify the events described in the fiction section. The first story, "China Sundown," describes the course we are already on – the current trend line. After "China Sundown," a non-fiction section outlines some major story themes providing more information. Then the book moves on to the alternative courses. All of the course change stories go back to the original story and offer specific situations where, in particular, civil society could play a more constructive role. There

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are three alternative (fiction) courses that converge in a fourth and final story. Each course arises from social actors already encountered in the first story. These different courses point toward constructive possibilities for civil society. This fictional approach is intended to allow a more nuanced exploration of social change and complexity in the interrelationship of issues and actors.

There is no intention to be prescriptive and no unjustified optimism. No miracles. Perhaps this underestimates the energy and ingenuity of civil society to make greater change in a shorter time.

Hopefully so!

While the characters are fictitious, the events described that take place before the end of 2011 are based on actual events. They have not been invented. Similarly, many – virtually all – of the events that occur after 2011 are also based on events that have already taken place in real life.

Sadly, neither policymakers nor the public seem to have factored in their significance.

Now, for the first take on the road to 2035...

Aaa Whither report: If you want to know where the world is going, follow the trend line.

It’s like betting on the weather – more often than not tomorrow will be like today – whatever the weather forecaster predicts. But, daily weather predictions can’t change the fact that three months from now you will be up to your waist in monsoon rains or a snowdrift.

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Aaaa Staying

the Course: Geopiracy

China Sundown In December 2035, Wu Suyuan didn’t look like she was in her early 60s – with hair still black and just wrinkled enough to disguise her kind, though sardonic, eyes. That particular winter eve, she not so much cycled as punched her sturdy old bike upstream against the flow of mostly student cyclists on their way to evening classes. Riders gestured warnings and bells jingled but the tough old journalist pressed on. Although her hearing was now much improved, she had been near deaf since childhood, she still felt safer having the traffic coming toward her not sneaking up behind. With her politically-incorrect Mao cap flipped backward over her forehead and her saddlebags bursting with old-fashioned books, the journalist was a funky, tiny teddy bear, plowing half a meter beneath the wave of younger cyclists, tunneling energetically to reach her flat before the broadcast of the Scandinavian awards. The unusually happy blogger was an affectionate, if sometimes alarming, sight in her Beijing neighbourhood and, in less hurried moments, was a favourite with local children who would squeeze contentedly into the voluminous folds of her blue woolen overcoat while Wu Suyuan expounded loudly to their parents on the issues of the day. Renowned for her ferocious cynicism and wit, her friends, somewhat uncertainly, attributed her newfound optimism to her restored hearing. Even the children sensed a change…

Election, November 2035: The election was a full-blown, cliff-hanging, Bollywood-caricature of an oriental dynastic intrigue. During the 28-day campaign, the Chinese media were beside themselves screaming that the outcome could spell economic (if not cosmic) ruin or, at least, split the country. The National Democratic Alliance – the political party in power – had tried to delay the vote insisting that the country would be better served if the outcome of an independent judicial inquiry were known first. The old-line opposition Communist Party demanded that the election be held on the constitutionally mandated day. After all, they argued, it was the government that had set the inquiry in motion and had given it a timetable that overshot the election date. For the most part, the media sided with the Communists.

Each week brought fresh revelations of political malfeasance, and public anger soared. By the week of the vote, the National Democratic Alliance, which should have swept back into power with ease, looked like it could tumble to a Communist-led coalition of centre-left and far-left parties. The country could end up with a minority government. For the first time in 16 years, China would be governed by “socialists.”

Jinan: The smartly-dressed woman brushed back the streaks of gray in her long brown hair and stepped out of the taxi. It was a quiet, residential neighbourhood and the small group of young men loitering on the nearby corner – plainclothes police, she knew – looked out of place. The two-storey building before her could have been a residence or, a doctor’s office. There was no indication that it was part of China’s cyberwarfare complex. As she stepped onto the curb, the suave young diplomat who had flown with her from Beijing came around the cab and made a belated attempt to hold her door open. She ignored him.

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“Just a word,” he murmured. “We are in full cooperation mode, any asynchronisms can be sorted out later.” Older than him by decades, the woman nodded and strode into the building.

“Understood,” she said.

There were two kids in the meeting room. But, as they rose to shake hands, she realized that despite jeans and T-shirts, one of them had as much gray hair as herself. Her EU diplomat minder only introduced him, a little awkwardly, as “Commander” and the younger man as “Lieutenant.”

“So,” she smiled at them pleasantly accepting a chair across from the commander, “we have a problem?”

“Perhaps also an opportunity,” the commanders English was an attractive mix of Californian and Cantonese accents.

She sat back and waited.

“We’re picking up a lot of traffic,” he went on, “lots of unhappiness, lots of anger.”

“No surprise there,” she smiled again, “anything that concerns the consortium?”

“I think everything concerns the consortium,” the commander smiled back, “but this also concerns the election. The tweets, the blogs and the Facebook postings – at least the underlying buzz – is about the sky – the sunsets and how everybody’s not feeling well. So far, it plays out as a general distrust of the consortium but it’s building and it could flip into something more dangerous.” The commander was looking to his lieutenant for confirmation. The other kid, really a kid she thought, straightened and nodded, “Our algorithms are getting more than a million hits an evening and it’s growing pretty fast.”

“The sunsets are a problem,” she agreed, “how are you responding?”

“We’re counter-tweeting,” he replied earnestly, “we started two days ago diffusing 100,000 tweets and postings and we’ll have it up over a million by the weekend. We’re mostly diffusing through campuses by day and from pubs and coffee shops by night. Roughly,” he looked at a pad in front of him, “two-thirds from students and the rest from young professionals.”

The commander joined in, “we could see the first results last night – some confusion but a lot of acceptance. We think it will work.”

The woman pushed back her hair again and placed her hands flat on the table. “So, the bad guy here won’t be the consortium but our pharmaceutical partner, GEnome Corp.” she asked?

The kids nodded.

“A lot of Tibet-bashing?” she went on, “and maybe a little whack at Africa as well?”

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The commander added. “It never hurts.”

She agreed. “Can we see the algorithms and your storyboard as you roll it out?”

Her elegant young minder from Brussels interjected, “Perhaps we can leave the algorithms to our colleagues,” he suggested, “but it might be helpful to share the storyboard. Might help us avoid unexpected glitches?” his voice trailed off invitingly.

“Certainly,” the commander agreed, “do you know this man?” He asked passing a photograph across the table to the businesswoman.

She looked down and nodded, “not well, I’ve met him a few times at conferences and meetings of the consortium. He’s a scientist, not on the business side.”

The commander went on, “he seems to be a friend of the blogger that stirred up all the buzz.”

“Interesting,” she said and pushed the photo back. “You could origin more of your countertweets from Chengdu – where he runs GEnome’s labs,” she suggested. Than a shadow crossed behind her eyes, “Any losses for GEnome mean losses for the consortium. We’ll expect the TTT Equilibrium Code to kick in.” It was a statement not a question. The commander and the diplomat nodded. “And,” she continued, “if GEnome takes a hit, you won’t be able to avoid contaminating both parties. Could make the election pretty messy.”

“Not a problem. They’re all taizidang anyway.” Catching her confusion, he explained, “Princelings – the children of the children of the Long March. Just in complementary political parties … not really any difference … although they probably wouldn’t agree. Nothing really changes. A few bruised egos and life carries on.”

“Let’s hope so,” she said standing up looking out the window at the silver sky.

Beijing: Only in the last days before the vote did the ruling party’s fortunes improve. A highly respected investigative journalist at CINA, the China Independent News Agency, Wu Suyuan, uncovered a sequence of e-mails that showed that the scandal had actually begun many years earlier when the communists had been in office and that three ministers in the ancien regime even oversaw the Tibet deal’s transfer to their successors after losing the election. In its effort to gain exclusive access to the Tibetan Biodiversity Database and cell line repository, Zhou Xī – a large domestic conglomerate that had initially partnered with – and then merged with --General Electric’s GEnome Corp – had bribed the leadership of both parties as well as numerous Tibetan officials.

With two days to go before the vote, the communists furiously denounced the e-mails as political sabotage inspired – or directed – by Indian government interests in Tibet. The party accused Wu Suyuan of being in collusion with the governing party. The people believed the reporter. In a ridiculous, internationally-embarrassing move, the Supreme Court called out the army on election day and Beijing’s half-million surveillance cameras provided home-viewers with non-

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stop footage of bored army squads in camouflage uniforms marching purposelessly through the near-empty streets to “safeguard democracy.”

Wu Suyuan found the exercise comedic. Writing on her blog, syndicated in several major newspapers, the day after, the journalist acidly observed that smartphone and computer balloting meant that the ”polls” opened and ended in one hour in the cities, and not much longer in the countryside, where a few voters may still have to go to their neighbours’ to cast their ballots.

(Voting was not compulsory, but voter registration was linked to what little remained of social services, making it de facto compulsory.) “Who were the troops protecting if no one was out on the streets?” Wu Suyuan asked her readers.

Jinan: In the quiet of Jinan’s airport lounge, the commander waved his hand screen at the lieutenant, “She’s right,” he snorted, “we didn’t need the extra showbiz.” The lieutenant looked up from his own screen, “The tweets are eating it up,” he advised, “we need them to focus on the election to keep other things below the radar. Slipping the story to her was genius. That consortium lady knows what she’s doing.” His boss frowned and went back to his screen.

As Wu Suyuan filed her story with CINA and editorialized on her blog, news reached the capital that a team of Chinese climatologists had been massacred on the Zimbabwe/Zambia border by famine-stricken villagers who mistook the scientists for “land grab” surveyors. Claiming fear of ethnic reprisals, which the government itself seemed to foment by its tolerance of racist diatribes on nationalist blogs, Beijing’s African diplomatic community was urged to stay off the streets – and the troops were again sent out on patrol. The Africans were as dismayed by the troops as by the rumored bands of youth seeking revenge.

Wu Suyuan was sarcastic about the latest election outcome: The last-minute decline of the Communists had resulted in a new centre-centre coalition of middle-sized parties gaining control of the Congress. “They’ll keep on tracking the trend line,” she announced. “No government – even over two or three terms – can untangle the contractual web that binds China to the global consortia. GEnome Corp will have control of the Tibetan Repository,” Wu Suyuan predicted.

“No other corporation – or, rather, consortium of genomic and data processing enterprises – can handle the project.”

The journalist was marginally more sympathetic to the new crew of politicians that would take over the reins of government. After four decades in journalism, she knew many of them personally. “They are reformers,” she conceded, “and many of them are good hearted, but,” she added, “once they’re in office, they’ll find the margins for making change so narrow that they will surrender to the status quo. A few will become corrupt. Most will be mesmerized by the illusion of influence and will content themselves with tinkering at the edges of reform.”

The journalist had earned her cynicism. Born in a farming village a couple of hundred kilometers south of Beijing in 1975, she had been a hopeful, politically-naïve teen, enthusiastically traveling with her parents and trying to join the pro-democracy manifestations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when news of the horrific suppression reached them in a city suburb. Broken-hearted, Wu Suyuan’s family retreated to their village.

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In the years that followed, the young girl, despite increasing deafness, worked on her English (her parents were English teachers), and flirted with pro-US sympathies until she witnessed, exactly a decade later, the protests against the globalizing policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in Seattle, in 1999. The image of America that came through, even on mainstream TV, yanked her back to reality.

At the turn of the millennium, she said goodbye to her parents, and worked her way to Shanghai’s Pudong financial district where she cut her teeth as a business reporter for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Never tagged as a dissident, she was able to cautiously document the creativity and corruption driving China’s booming economy. In time, News Corp. let the young journalist branch out to chronicle the pervasive rural unrest and growing suburban frustration among the Middle Kingdom’s middle-class.

Gleneagles, 2005: The sea-change year for Wu Suyuan had been 2005, not 1989 or 1999. It was when she moved from Shanghai to Beijing, to pursue her career with News Corp. Her first overseas assignment – to cover the G8 Summit that was held at Gleneagles, Scotland – came soon after. Most of her journalist colleagues from that era still remembered Gleneagles as the Summit where terrorists bombed London’s transport system. The series of explosions overshadowed the summit itself and dampened ardour for the “Make Poverty History” campaign, so hopefully staged by development organizations and assorted rock and film stars.

Gleneagles was where the US administration (led by the second President Bush) finally admitted that there was, after all, such a thing as human-induced global warming. It was also the summit where the G8 invented “pro-poor science” and pledged themselves to use new technologies to end poverty, hunger, and disease. Short weeks after Gleneagles, the US announced a coalition with Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea, to develop new technologies to sidestep global warming. And, a few days later, with Hurricane Katrina on the rampage and New Orleans and much of the Louisiana and Texas coastline evacuated and flooded, the demand for a climate techno-fix became shrill and relentless. As some activists said at the time, it seemed as though technological silver bullets were the solution to every social problem: “Make poverty Chemistry,” they chided.

Wu Suyuan remembered the G8 meeting as the first of a series of extraordinary events that included not just the New Orleans hurricane or the London bombings but also the moral betrayal at the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) review in September, and, finally, the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial debacle at the end of the year in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, 2005: The assignment to cover the Hong Kong WTO went to Wu Suyuan. Because she was squirreling away her per diem to buy a flat in Beijing, she got a room in the same cheap hotel that headquartered the anti-globalization activists. They were a peculiar species, she thought, one minute light-hearted and almost cavalier; the next minute, unbearably pretentious.

They were undeniably smart but she couldn’t decide whether they were actors or audience – masters of diplomacy, masters of minutiae, or merely masturbating. They did a great job sharing information but there was no obvious end game.

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In the bars in the evening – often very late – and with a wonderful self-deprecation, she heard some of them joke about the “Stockholm Syndrome” but she understood only that it was some kind of psychological protective dependency and couldn’t make the connection to Hong Kong or the WTO. Over time, the journalist became aware of a tension between the social movements – especially peasants and trade unionists – vis-à-vis NGO activists … friendly but distant, saying much the same things but rarely in unison, the NGO leaders acting like social movement wannabes. Something to consider another time, she mused.

During one of the many street confrontations led by South Korea’s audacious peasants, a young Brazilian farm organizer named João Sergio, scooped her up along with a Swedish couple and their teenage daughter, Inga, and got them safely in a doorway as the police stormed past. When the melee was over the little group found a tea stall and the farm organizer regaled them with the exploits of Brazilian and Korean peasant movements and the perilous antics of a peasants’ committee in northwest China that had mobilized national opposition to the government’s land takeovers by creating their own blog. Somehow the blog evaded Chinese surveillance and the peasants scored at least a short-term victory. The subversive use of blogs stuck with Wu Suyuan.

That evening, the peasant convinced the journalist and the Swedes to sit in on a Civil Society Organization (CSO) seminar on new technologies. The panel of speakers was trying – mostly unsuccessfully – to persuade their audience that the confrontation with capitalism was moving from trade to technology. “Technology trumps trade” was not only the seminar’s title, it was also the mantra of most of the speakers on the panel.

The speakers talked about the convergence of physics, chemistry, and biology at the nano-scale (one-billionth of a meter, the journalist learned) and warned that all of nature and, more importantly for the WTO negotiators, all of manufacturing and commodity supply were threatened by convergence at the scale of atoms and molecules. The lead panelist, a passionate, heavily accented Uruguayan, spoke about the “Little BANG Theory” – molecular self-assembly and the convergence of Bits, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes. The Uruguayan warned of the potential elimination of raw material trade, emphasized the importance of patents, and argued that patents were not a tool for innovation, but a corporate strategy to create technology oligopolies. Concerned with trade liberalization, the bread and butter of the WTO negotiations, the distracted audience gave the Panel a round of polite applause and drifted back to texting their colleagues and funders.

Wu Suyuan soon realized that hanging out with the activists was not a smart career move. Hong Kong was rife with spies and ubiquitous surveillance cameras, so she retreated to the anonymity of a still cheaper hotel some distance from both the World Trade Organization meeting and the activists. From there, she chronicled yet another cliff-hanging, ambiguous conclusion masking she wasn't sure what. Meeting the activists had been disconcerting, but also exhilarating.

It was while resting back in her parent’s home outside Beijing a few days later writing an overview of the year that the significance of technology in many of the events she had covered struck home. “Within hours of the G8 bombings,” she had written, “London’s surveillance apparatus had sorted through thousands of faces to identify the likely terrorists. Fourteen hours after the bombings, London’s Bobbies were studying 450 cell phone photographs of the blasts

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posted on Flickr.com. Before the week was out, the suicide bombers had been named, thanks to technology. The only reason George W. Bush accepted global warming – even after the disasters on the country’s Gulf of Mexico – was because industry had invented a technological narrative that convinced governments that their economies could grow while cleaning up greenhouse gas emissions. Technology could ‘manage’ poverty and hunger. Technology would win the ‘War on Terror.’ Technology would allow the rich to keep driving their SUVs.” News Corp. rejected the piece arbitrarily.

Over the next few weeks of traveling, Wu Suyuan began to make sense of what the technology panelists had been saying. There was something beyond BANG, the journalist realized. With converging technologies – the Bits, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes – there was also the convergence of governance linking business and bureaucracy – the BANG members, she thought. Faced with the “shock and awe” of climate chaos, Peak Oil, terrorism and hunger, the world’s alarmed middle classes were willingly surrendering their democratic rights to an industrial/government elite that promised to harness hazardous new technologies to save their living standards. In fact, the new technologies wouldn’t even have to work – all they had to do was promise techno-fixes that required centralized risk management. The “Little BANG Theory,” the journalist concluded in a new column, was really an “earth grab” using global paranoia to establish a new hegemony.

When News Corp rejected this piece as well, she decided to resign. Not so hard to do, she admitted to herself; her savings and frugal lifestyle guaranteed her enough money for at least a year in China. But, buying her own flat would have to be put on the backburner.

2007: Wu Suyuan didn't stay unemployed for long. Three months after she returned from Hong Kong, she picked up on the Brazilian peasant’s tea room tale and developed her own blog, and a year later the blog was syndicated by the fledgling China Independent News Agency through news services in Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Singapore. No mean feat – there were already well over 160,000 blogs in China and the numbers seemed poised to double annually without end.

2008: The events of 2008 reinforced Suyuan’s growing dread of a coming global ecophagy. As a business journalist she had tracked the commodity index – especially rice and soybeans – since they had begun to rise in 2005. By 2008, basic food prices had leapt to almost $3 trillion over their 2005 levels and food riots broke out in more than 30 countries. Accompanying the food crisis was the fuel crisis. But, as the cost of a barrel of Saudi crude neared $150 at mid-year, the global economy began to shudder. By September, not only banks but also whole countries were on the verge of collapse. At year's end, the G8 and China were committing trillions of dollars and euros to shore up their financial system. When the world’s leaders should have been focused on the climate and hunger, they were diverted to purely domestic electoral strategies.

There had been one bright sign on the horizon that year, she had to concede. During the US election in November, an African-American had been voted into the White House. The Chinese journalist traveled and blogged the election trail from the candidate’s nomination in Denver to his victory in Chicago. Cynic though she was, Suyuan was caught up in the enthusiasm.

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Chicago, 2009: It was at a cocktail party celebrating Barack Obama's inauguration thrown by GEnome Corp that she met Qi Qubìng. Wu Suyuan had decided right away that the youthfullooking scientist was quite a piece of work. Born in Vancouver, the son of Szechwanese immigrants who had fled China during the Cultural Revolution, he had a Ph.D. in medicine and a specialization in genomics. Because he spoke Southern Mandarin fluently and had family connections in the mountainous regions of Sichuan province, GEnome had snapped up the young post-graduate and sent him back in his parents’ homeland. The scientist had spent Christmas in Vancouver and had dropped in on the company’s Chicago head office before returning to his lab.

Zhou Xī (the large Chinese conglomerate partnered with General Electric’s GEnome Corp.) and GEnome had built a state-of-the-art genomics centre in Chengdu, where Qi Qubìng was posted.

Wu Suyuan learned that the scientist traveled to Beijing frequently to schmooze with officialdom. Towering over the little journalist – and dressed with casual but meticulous elegance – Qi Qubìng was funny, single, totally occidentalized and would have been much happier at the company’s headquarters near Chicago’s jazz scene than living in the repressive hinterlands of Southern China.

Suyuan found Qi politically detestable, clinically fascinating, and hopelessly entertaining. From their first encounter, the Chinese-Canadian scientist insisted on calling her “Wu” – a last name inversion only the Aussie reporters at News Corp. had dared. For some reason, she didn't mind.

They spent most of the cocktail party jousting and jesting at each other’s expense – and hugely entertaining the other partygoers.

From then on, back in China, she couldn't resist their frequent encounters as she tracked GEnome’s wheelings and dealings. While the journalist knew why she sought out the scientist, it was never clear why he always looked her up when he was in the Capital. Guilt, she wondered?

Affirmation of his ideological superiority? They often met and debated in Qi’s favourite Beijing pizza joints. Friends clamored to come along for the entertainment and total strangers occasionally burst into applause when one or the other struck a particularly eloquent blow. Truth be known, she privately admitted, the two laughed as much as they fought.

Their most acrimonious debates were saved for the journalist’s deafness. Qi took Wu’s lack of hearing as an affront to medical science. He brought her the latest audio enhancement implants as quickly as they came on the market. Accustomed to her near-deafness, Wu was offended by Qi’s presumption of her ‘defectiveness.’ Dinners with Qi were doomed to combat whenever the issue came up. Still, they somehow managed to end even these meals with sufficient cordiality to allow Qi to pick up the bill and for Wu to berate him for GEnome’s extravagant expense accounts – a contradiction lost on neither of them.

Cancun, 2010: "Are we having a serious conversation?" Qi Qubìng asked reaching for the hors d'oeuvre tray. The tall diplomat across from him was smiling back sipping her drink and enjoying her listener’s confusion. "Absolutely," she assured him, "the proof of principle is all around us," she waved one long bare arm gracefully toward the Mexican horizon, "volcanoes."

They were among several hundred guests on a large hotel terrace looking down on the climate change conference across the street. It was December but it was hot, and Qi was, to his horror,

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sweating mildly in his silk suit. He wasn't sure whether it was the perspiration or because the woman was taller than him or because he found the conversation so improbable, but the scientist wasn't enjoying himself. He should have skipped the cocktail party and caught the evening flight to Vancouver, he thought irritably. He could have been snowboarding down Whistler before noon.

"Volcanoes, " he repeated skeptically.

"Yes," the woman smiled again, "when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 the ash blew straight into the stratosphere, circled the globe, and lowered temperatures more than half a degree over a couple of years. And that wasn't even a major eruption." She went on happily, "over the last couple of hundred years we've had much bigger eruptions in Iceland and Indonesia that literally canceled out summers in Europe and North America, darkening skies and blocking sunlight for years at a time. Look at Iceland’s unpronounceable volcano just a few months ago. It didn’t lower temperatures because the ash didn’t blow high enough. But, we know the concept will work," she finished triumphantly.

"And, all it takes is 300 to 500 robot ships plowing back and forth across the ocean blowing sea spray into the sky?"

She was grinning. Her white teeth and dark eyes flashing against her dark Ethiopian skin, "And maybe a few thousand cannons and, don't forget, about $25-$50 billion a year. Cheap compared to rescuing banks and car companies. Expensive compared to feeding, vaccinating, or schooling children," there was only the faintest hint of rancor.

"Way cheaper than retooling industry to live without greenhouse gases," Qi added.

"Its not supposed to be a solution to global warming," she cautioned, "its supposed to buy time to get past Peak oil and find ways to cut emissions while still driving SUVs. It's a stopgap Plan B after the Copenhagen fiasco. It's nonsense, of course," she added.

Out of the corner of his eye, Qi caught the short frame of Wu Suyuan marching their way just, perilously, below a waiter’s serving tray. He sensed opportunity knocking. "Wu”, he called waving his arm at her theatrically, "have you heard of geoengineering? She's going to say bullshit," he said, turning to the Ethiopian diplomat conspiratorially.

"It's bullshit!" The Chinese journalist bellowed from beneath the canopies.

Qi made the introductions. “Alitash Teferra,” he announced, "with the African Union, based in Geneva, tracking trade and environment issues," he waved upward. And then sweeping his arm gracefully downward, "Wu Suyuan, CINA, China Independent News Agency, Beijing. In hot pursuit of evil multinationals and delinquent diplomats. And,” he concluded, “here we all are – watching our governments commit another climate calamity!”

As the shadows grew across the terrace the three scooped tidbits from passing trays and talked about geoengineering. Qi learned that the idea of resetting the planet's thermostat had been

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around for decades but that scientists and politicians were now dusting off and reevaluating the old theories. Geoengineering apparently encompassed a lot of what the women considered “crackpot” notions such as fertilizing the oceans with iron particles to absorb CO2. It was a scam, the Chinese journalist told him, to get carbon credits. Even stranger was Alitash’s account of ways to re-jig the atmosphere. The proposals ranged from blowing salt spray from the ocean high enough to whiten clouds and reflect sunlight to blasting dust particles still higher into the stratosphere to screen ultraviolet rays to building a vast space mirror or umbrella at some distant point between Earth and Sun to deflect solar rays.

Qi Qubìng was, first and foremost, a scientist and his initial shock turned quickly to fascination.

"So, this really could be a solution," he said failing to disguise his enthusiasm.

The two women stared at him. Wu Suyuan was direct, "no". Alitash Teferra was faintly more diplomatic, "are you suggesting that governments that have consistently failed to address climate change and are afraid to tell their citizens to take the bus are actually capable of managing the weather equitably?" she countered coolly.

Qi looked at the beautiful Ethiopian and could feel his evening slipping out from under him. Oh well, she's too tall anyway, he sighed inwardly. "It's Plan B. – as you say – if the politicians can't do their job maybe the scientists can," he ventured.

It was downhill from there. Cautiously, Qi maneuvered the conversation back to ridiculing the Cancun climate meeting and, before long, everyone was laughing sufficiently to attract other delegates. At some point, the scientist became aware that Wu and Tash, as they were calling one another, had slipped away and were deep in their own conversation leaning against the terrace railing. Sighing again, Qi excused himself and headed back to his hotel. His Vancouver flight was early and, with luck, he might still be on the slopes before the next sunset.

2012: For most of the world, the pivotal year in the young century came in 2012 – not the Chinese journalist’s apocryphal 2005. A surge of extremely hot weather crested in the heat wave of the temperate zone’s summer. In June and July, enormous glacial chunks were splitting off Greenland into the North Atlantic. One weekend, Cape Cod’s wealthy denizens took picnic baskets to the beach to watch rogue icebergs drifting passed.

A vast, squat iceberg, larger than Rhode Island, dubbed “Big Mac,” became a satellite television superstar as millions of viewers tracked its monstrous progress. The US Air Force was ready to bomb Big Mac into ice cubes if it got too close to shore when a sudden storm made the mission too risky. Residents on the eastern end of Long Island awoke the next morning to the crunching sound of Big Mac ripping up their coastline and rattling windows almost as far away as Manhattan.

The heat wave was relentless. Whether it was in steamy Karachi slums, swank New York highrises, or dismal Moscow flats, the sick and the elderly died by the tens of thousands. Blackouts and brownouts swept across the northern latitudes. The worst electricity failure struck the US Eastern seaboard just before the July 4th weekend, leaving thousands trapped in subways and elevators for three days, and combining with the heat wave to cause hundreds of deaths, and – no

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surprise given the stifling heat – not many births nine months later. Power systems also collapsed – though less frequently – throughout Europe and Asia. Tokyo, London and Paris preemptively closed their subways. British bankers bicycled to their offices. When the hurricane season struck the Caribbean that year, thirty million Americans were on a six-month, 24-hour alert to evacuate their homes. The freakish weather fired up the fundamentalists of every religion and spawned predictable prophecies of world doom.

Following the hidden failure of Cancun at the end of 2010, a quiet but distinct panic had set in among OECD bureaucrats – and some of their political masters – that a massive environmental catastrophe was unavoidable and – even in the myopically narrow time horizons of elected politicians – potentially imminent. For a time, after the failure, the rich world looked ahead to Christmas and the few hopeful signs that the financial crisis was coming to an end. Mandarins in Brussels, Berlin and Washington worked to focus citizens’ attention away from global warming to the scattered indicators of an economic upturn. Wherever they gathered to keep their own counsel, however, the mood was gloomy and growing desperate. But the events of 2012 made global warming impossible to ignore.

The anxious but cautious young US President, after refusing to commit himself to a second “Earth Summit” (Rio+20) in 2012, finally agreed that a high-profile global environmental conference was necessary to calm both the people and the economy. The Rio summit, he proposed, should overrule the moribund climate negotiations and consider extraordinary measures to mitigate global warming. Beginning a few months before the summit, the media was inundated with well-timed scientific reports offering new climate disaster scenarios. Many of the studies pressed for technological fixes. A panel of industry-linked scientists commissioned by the UK Royal Society and the UK government – tabled its report a month before the Rio meeting. The panel concluded that current initiatives to curb global warming – including the universally denigrated "cap and trade" market – would not even come close to lowering CO2 levels to the 450 ppm that most scientists considered fundamental. The industry experts recommended geoengineering --an emergency technological initiative reminiscent of the World War II Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb. Some big new technological "Plan B" was going to be needed, they argued, if the world was to avert unacceptable climate change. They also proposed the withdrawal of the de facto moratoria against ocean fertilization and geoengineering adopted by the UN Biodiversity Convention in 2010 and called for a global partnership to infuse vast stretches of the Pacific and Southern oceans with iron nanoparticles that, they surmised, might nurture phytoplankton blooms beneficial to fisheries, absorb CO 2, and cool temperatures. The panel further proposed the cancellation of the 1970s ENMOD (environmental modification) treaty that forbade geoengineering experiments – that is, intentional, large-scale interventions in the earth, seas, and skies to affect the climate. Reflective nanoparticle arrays, the experts opined, should also be spread in the stratosphere to lower the planet’s thermostat and shield humanity from ultraviolet rays, and prevent further atmospheric deterioration. The industry panel theorized that – in a manner reminiscent of a Venetian blind – “smart” (transistorized) nanoparticles could be manipulated from the ground to control when, and to what extent, the sun’s rays would be allowed to reach the earth. “BANG!” the Chinese blogger thought to herself.

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By the time the Rio Summit convened, the media and the public were whipped into a frenzy. The Venetian blind – or “solar umbrella” – became a cause célèbre. In a speech broadcast from his Wichita hotel on the campaign trail, Barack Obama told his fellow leaders in Rio that the United States would focus its resources to develop technologies to restore the environment. With an eye to his reelection, he further promised to work with industry to harness the best possible scientific know-how. In closing, the president specifically endorsed geoengineering as a viable option if other remedies failed. “Enter the BANG gang,” thought Wu. The President’s speech was met with restrained applause. Once almost impregnable behind a podium, Obama had looked grey-haired and battle-worn from the compounding environmental and financial crises that dominated his first term. Privately, some European and Southern delegates expressed skepticism about both the proposal and the President's ability to deliver it while trying to win a second term. Only Bolivia’s President used his turn at the rostrum to criticize geoengineering.

Some years later, it was learned that when Obama was still a budding politician, the Bush Jr. White House (in George W.’s first term) had convened a meeting of climatologists, to explore the possibilities for restructuring the Earth, ranging from a 600,000 sq. mile stratosphere screen (using 20 nm aluminum particles) to fleets of ocean-going turbines to throw up salt spray into clouds to improve their reflectivity.

"It's a trick," Wu thundered from her blog. "They're just trying to pump money and power into the corporate system, like they did during the financial crisis. This time they are pretending that the high-tech companies are going to solve the climate crisis. It’s geo-piracy. It’s a bid to control the planets thermostat – to get control of the open seas and skies – the parts of nature they don’t yet own. They can't get a consensus on cutting global emissions but a superpower – any technologically-advanced country – can do its own geoengineering on its own soil, even if it means those living in the rest of the world suffer. They don't even need an international agreement any more." No one seemed to be listening.

Hardly had the Rio+20 summit bumbled to a close when two consortia of presumably rival global companies announced that they were responding to the US President’s challenge.

Sonybishi, Rio-BHP Minerals, China’s Zhou Xī conglomerate, British-BASF Energy, and GEnome partnered to construct the Terra-Forma consortium. The second grouping, cobbled together by Exxon Siemens Corp., India’s giant Tata-Pharma, and MicrobeSoft – was called Atom-Sphere. Political observers worried that India and China – the world’s newest superpowers – were lined-up in opposing consortia. But, the two consortia pledged to pool their vast technological prowess on behalf of the world community if governments would modify their anti-trust legislation to allow the companies to share their patents and trade secrets exclusively between the groups.

After Rio, the companies also demanded that governments insulate Terra-Forma and AtomSphere’s activities from liability, or agree to underwrite their liability insurance. Because of the risks involved, the consortia also insisted on what they called an Equilibrium Code – governments must guarantee shareholders’ annual returns equal to the performance of each year’s top-tier NASDAQ listings. Finally, the consortia wanted guarantees that they would not

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be held responsible for any accidents under the terms of the mid-70s ENMOD Treaty against the hostile use of environmental modification – in the event that the Treaty was not rescinded. With remarkably little opposition or debate, summit leaders acquiesced.

“It’s not ‘terrorism’ the world needs to panic over,” Qi Qubìng smirked, twirling his wine glass after dinner in his favorite Beijing trattoria one evening. “It’s ‘Errorism’ and ‘Terraism’. Beware the weapons of Mass Construction!” Wu sensed something in his tense posture that others at the table missed in his disconcerting giggle. The journalist dismissed the tension to office politics – the Chinese multinational, Zhou Xī, was making a bid to take over its US partner, in a machismo move to become China’s first super-conglomerate. As a Chinese-Canadian working for GEnome, Qi was caught in the middle.

The public alarm over global warming and the rapid response from industry and the superpowers left the environmental movement in a state of ideological chaos. Many environmentalists welcomed the media spotlight on them and their issues. Those horrified by the notion of “geoengineering” nevertheless found it difficult to articulate credible alternatives. Post the failures in Copenhagen and Cancun, mainstream environmental organizations – with no particular critique of technology and power – saw geoengineering as the only, albeit deplorable, solution to a devastating loss in biodiversity on sea and land. Peculiarly, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown early in 2011 – while damaging the credibility of the nuclear power industry – caused many environmentalists to panic that they had lost another alternative.

Indeed, at the 2012 Rio summit – as unsettling weather conditions carried on and delegates looked out over the beaches searching for rogue hurricanes or another toxic oil spill from Brazil’s offshore wells – the environmental movement’s leading players began to split over an industry-supported resolution endorsing yet another “new” generation of nuclear power plants. In the years that followed – when a clear environmental voice was needed most – the fallout from Rio rendered the movement inarticulate and ineffective.

Writing from Rio, Wu titled her related blog entry – “The Stockholm Syndrome+40”. The Rio meeting, she told her readers, wasn’t just the 20th anniversary of the original 1992 Earth Summit it was really the 40th anniversary of the world’s first major environmental gathering – the Stockholm conference of 1972. And, she went on; perhaps the most important event in Stockholm in 1972 was actually a botched bank robbery when the would-be robbers were forced to take hostages. Over days of confinement, some of the hostages fell in love with their captors in a defensive strategy that psychiatrist later dubbed the “Stockholm syndrome.” In the same way, she went on; back in 1972 civil society organizations had fallen in love with their captors – the UN system. The second Rio Summit 40 years later was a reaffirmation of the captivity of civil society. “You’re getting as cynical as me,” Qi giggled looking up from his tablet as the journalist scanned the menu for something other than pizza.

2015: When the UN General Assembly met formally to conclude the Millennium Development Goals in September 2015, the blatant “development” failure was hardly newsworthy, so dominant was the alarm over climate change. From the Assembly’s podium, those Heads of Government who dared to attend stressed their financial commitment to rescuing industrial agriculture from the traumas of climate-induced drought and disease. Presidents and Prime

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Ministers argued that the importance of this work made progress on MDG targets less important.

Money for climate control, many argued, should be seen as a contribution toward Official Development Assistance.

“If the sky is falling you need something spectacular to get everybody on board. Climate change is the ultimate con,” Wu told her readership. “But, better than real, it’s a wonderful opportunity to do everything you ever wanted to do before but were afraid to ask. Climate change grants governments permission to control society. Political collusion makes it viable for corporations and governments to sidestep criticism for creating the problem in the first place. After all, it was unregulated, capitalism-created CO2 emissions that led to global warming. Governments allowed this to happen; they even enabled corporations to do this and now they demand more power to solve their problem.”

Outside the UN General Assembly, uninhibited by a somnambulant media, the Terra-Forma and Atom-Sphere consortia soaked up huge government grants and loans. Terra-Forma almost immediately began ocean fertilization experiments. The theory was that the spread of iron filings on the ocean surface would create an artificial phytoplankton bloom that would soak up carbon dioxide, sink to the bottom of the ocean, and lower global temperatures.

In one of the first experiments, Terra-forma seeded iron particles into the Humboldt Current near the famous Galapagos Islands. A second consortia experiment dumped tonnes of iron filings into the Southern Sea below New Zealand. Yet a third particle bloom blossomed - briefly but ineffectively – in the North Pacific. All in all, the consortium attempted more than a dozen experiments between Cape Town, the Galapagos, and the Gulf of Mexico. The public was told little about the experiments. Citing trade secrecy and the need for security in managing sensitive environmental factors, Terra-Forma only posted brief news releases after each experiment ended.

Environmentalists, worrying on the shoreline, could only roughly record the location and the size of tests. All the news releases were upbeat; all reported progress; but the evidence of success was elusive. The only certainty was that the surface area of ocean covered by iron nanoparticles enlarged with each experiment. From modest tests of 50 km², the experiments grew to several thousand square kilometers. The environmentalists fretted that further dumping could sterilize tropical seas or have other disastrous, unintended consequences. “Give me a half-tanker of iron,” one oceanographer bragged, “and I will give you an ice age.” The Chinese blogger feared that the scientist might be right Outside the Terra-Forma consortium, wildcat carbon-trading companies managed to get listed on the world’s stock exchanges and set up their own ocean fertilization initiatives. By promising to sequester CO2 on the oceans’ floor, the companies were hoping to sell carbon credits to European corporations and to attract voluntary offsetters in the US and Australia. One particularly vociferous hustler announced that it had struck a deal with the Vatican to offset the GHG emissions of the Pope’s air travel and Popemobile thanks to their cutting-edge ocean fertilization technologies. “The Pope’s carbon footprint will be so light he will be able to walk on water,” their Internet ads bubbled.

The environmentalists went ballistic and at first, supported by Terra-Forma (deeply unhappy with the competition and the hoopla) persuaded the 193 country members of the UN Convention

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on Biological Diversity to unanimously adopt a moratorium prohibiting both commercial and large-scale ocean fertilization.

For Terra-Forma, as their disgruntled vice president of research told reporters, the moratorium was walking on their water. But the consortium was caught off guard and it was too late. Terra Forma’s CEO hastily announced that her group would not be using crude iron in its experiments.

Instead, the group was constructing entirely synthetic microbes built from the bottom up – unique organisms incorporating nanoscale materials exhibiting quantum characteristics that guaranteed that the organisms would activate only under specific environmental conditions in highly-proscribed ocean ecosystems. There was no risk that their experiments could drift away.

The microbes’ photo-sensitivity would anchor them to their microclimate and make them more effective absorbing CO2. The moratorium-evading point was that the mighty microbes would not sequester carbon dioxide at all – the seabed would be unsullied, the CEO wrote in a widely published op-ed piece – the microbes would break up the CO2 into its component parts and send the desiccated gases up beyond the stratosphere, harming no one. Since the ocean would not be fertilized, strictly speaking, she argued, the moratorium was non-applicable.

Beijing, 2019: A few years after the ever-irascible Qi Qubìng had introduced Wu to Alitash Teferra in Cancun, the 30-something Ethiopian diplomat was cross-posted from Geneva to Beijing. By then, Qi was GEnome’s national Research Director. “Tash” was part of the African Union’s (AU) trade mission. Her job, beyond the futile attempt to increase exports of African manufactures to China, was to establish public/private partnerships between Africa and the growing ranks of China-based multinationals.

It was Qi who invited Wu Suyuan, who remembered Tash from Mexico, to join him for dinner with Africa's newest representative. Over dinner, the three discussed the use of converging BANG technologies to tweak single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs – the bits of DNA that indicate genetic diversity within species) harvested from human cell lines to develop new diagnostic kits and drugs. Tash’s parents were agronomists and she was familiar with genomics and synthetic biology. China – and Africa – wanted access to GEnome’s information and genomic technologies to reduce health care costs. Because GEnome had agribusiness subsidiaries, they also talked about trade in plant germplasm. Ethiopia and China had extensive crop genetic diversity and the company had the gene-mapping tools for commercial exploitation.

GEnome was interested in the Chinese - but not the African – market. It wanted Africa’s fragile scientific institutions to identify commercial crop genes and human gene sequences that might have commercial value. The Ethiopian highlands and Tibet – the Himalayas generally – seemed to be the focus of their conversation. The diversity of both regions was a matter of superpower interest. India and China, especially, were vying for access to Africa’s genetic diversity.

Wu was only half paying attention. She was falling hopelessly in love. The trade diplomat was brilliant and beautiful and, as it turned out, equally attracted to her. They had something else in common... Alitash, too, found Qi funny, unbearable, and addictive. Three months after that first dinner, the two women discreetly – Beijing was still a repressive society in those days – began looking for a condo to buy together in one of Beijing’s student neighborhoods.

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Ever the boastful matchmaker, Qi latched onto the couple as though they were family. He had done post-doctoral research in Addis Ababa and – much to Wu’s irritation – would sometimes chatter away in Amharic with her partner leaving the journalist to clean up the remains of the dreadful pizzas the GEnome scientist invariably forced on them. But Qi also brought old Mad Men DVDs – complete with closed captions – that she hated herself for loving. He became a fixture in their tiny apartment, whenever business gave the partying scientist a chance to visit the Chinese capital.

Along with his insufferable arrogance, Qi was one of those conservatives who imagined himself a world-wise liberal. He took every opportunity to criticize her blog for what he considered to be its political naiveté. When Qi tried to get Tash to take his side in persuading Wu to accept the latest hearing implants, it nearly ended their threesome.

For reasons “Wu” (she was getting used to Qi’s nickname for her) didn’t understand, she couldn’t admit to either of them that, some years earlier, she had tried implants under pressure from her Aussie friends. She had rejected them all. She read lips, and, as importantly, she read people’s postures and movements. The hearing devices created chaos. Rather than helping her understand better, they distracted her and dulled her other senses. Qi accused her of being a Luddite and the journalist, after a furtive foray into Wikipedia, happily agreed.

2021: Intergovernmental relations were shifting on many fronts. Wu’s blog had become a nearly untouchable national icon by the time the long-retired Barak Obama’s long-promised Technology Transfer Treaty (TTT) came into force. At one level, the treaty gave legitimacy to the technology-sharing consortia established by Atom-Sphere and Terra-Forma. Under the pretense of facilitating technology transfer, the treaty actually endorsed exclusionary technology cartels. Additionally, the treaty established industries much-sought universal patent regime – doing away with the patchwork of national and regional laws that had complicated international intellectual property deals in the past.

The treaty was sold to the group of 77 on the theory that it was “pro-poor” proposing regionallydefined radio frequency identification tags (communications microchips) that made it acceptable for industry to make its patented technologies available to selected developing countries or regions solely for domestic purposes. The RFID tags made it possible for corporations to block the re-export of the products to industrial markets.

More importantly, the Treaty acknowledged that technological convergence – BANG – was such a potent force let loose on the environment, the world economy, and in military surveillance and security that special international regulations were needed to safeguard society. Following ratification, patent infringement became a criminal offense capable of engaging national police forces and Interpol. Governments would bear the (formerly corporate) burden of patent protection and ensure “appropriate royalty revenues” even at a cost to their coffers. Far beyond the euphemism of “technology transfer,” the Treaty’s real purpose was to recognize that new economic forces had moved past the World Trade Organization – where trade was king – to the TTT, where (as the CSO panel back in Hong Kong in 2005 had argued) “technology trumps trade.”

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Prompting the South's acceptance of the Treaty were hugely-touted scientific advances that promised to revolutionize not only manufacturing but agriculture and energy as well. Feverish research from Beijing to Bangalore to Boston had, by the early 2020s, made industrial-scale molecular self-assembly a commercial reality. Governments and industry agreed that most international trade would quickly become unnecessary as those who possessed self-assembly patents could manipulate the periodic table so that “raw materials” or “commodities” would become inconsequential as a line item in production costs. Tash came back from her embassy one day with a copy of a Bangalore business magazine whose cover commanded, “Print me a Stradivarius”. Wu was apoplectic.

To prevent a technology-induced economic crash or a hot war over technologies, the USA, Europe, India and China needed the Treaty. TTT protected their own economies and maintained their dominance over other regions and markets. In addition, as Wu reported in her blog, the threat of converging technologies at the nano-scale forced down the valuation of Africa’s minerals and fossil fuels and those of southern South America’s vast Botucatu Aquifer. Even before it became a significant market factor, the specter of BANG gave the consortia greater global economic control than ever before.

2025: It was also the TTT that formalized Brazil’s status as a superpower alongside China, India, the EU and the USA. By then, however, the media-designation had lost much of its luster in a world where corporate consortia had more economic clout than governments.

Twenty-five years earlier, at the turn of the millennium, most economists thought that it would be China’s cheap labour – its ability to produce most of the world’s goods at incredibly low costs – that would let it overtake the US. The same economists, at the same time, had predicted that India would rise to superpower status on the basis of its service industry and Brazil would make the grade through its control of raw materials. Well before the quarter-century mark, China had skillfully eased over from manufacturing to services and India had pivoted off its service base into manufacturing. Freshwater and virgin soils made Brazil a less-certain powerhouse dominating in potentially irrelevant commodities. China and India were annually fielding more Ph.D.s than either Europe or the United States – and, no surprise – there were now more Englishspeakers in either China or India than in the USA and the UK’s old “white dominions.”

China and India’s intellectual dominance – much more than their manufacturing acumen – took the Western public off-guard. It was Qi who pointed out to the journalist that there were already more scientists working on nano-scale convergence in Beijing than in all of Western Europe – at 1/20th the cost of a European scientist. Recognizing their own vulnerability in raw materials – and their potential dependence on Africa – the two Asian giants embraced BANG with a passion and succeeded in competing with the EU and the USA in developing molecular self-assembly.

At the nano-scale, Qi pointed out, the physical characteristics of chemicals could change dramatically. Nanoscale particles of gold could be chemically reactive. The response of elements to temperature and pressure or electrical conductivity could change – and keep on changing – as they slid down the nanoscale from 100 nm to 25 or 10 nm. It meant that rare and expensive minerals – those controlled by Brazil’s mining industry – could, at least theoretically, be replaced by cheaper ones. Nanotechnology made it possible to replace Africa's platinum with much

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cheaper nickel and cobalt, or to use nanoparticles of silicon (literally "sand") in place of Chilean copper. None of this made Brazil’s huge mining and manufacturing sectors happy.

Their shared concern for raw materials and their drive for technology markets made India and China uncomfortable neighbors. At times they cooperated in UN meetings to assert their leadership over the Group of 77 in order to bully other Southern governments to counter their OECD competitors. At other times, their fierce competition for materials and markets split the Group of 77 and forced weaker countries to take sides. Often, Tibet, in particular, and the Himalayan region in general, threatened to turn into a battlefield over which the two giants fought for control of the region’s resources. Resources that remained important... just in case...

It was only after the Treaty came into force that rapidly under-developing regions in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and Latin America became fully aware that the TTT ensured that China, India, Europe and the USA retained control of molecular self-assembly for so-called environmental and military security reasons. The four leaders adroitly cautioned that the technology was just too powerful to be allowed in the hands of less-practiced economies or more volatile political regimes.

In the early 2020s, the Chinese media – with Wu a rare exception – had been pro TTT in keeping with the Chinese government policy. The same held true for most of the world’s media, including her old employer, News Corp. In her column, Wu caustically observed that all three media conglomerates were tied up in consortia with the companies controlling nanotechnology.

Nanotech, in fact, was leading to major cost-savings in telecommunications. Although parts of the Treaty were hotly-debated – even in national elections – voters were confused and all major parties ultimately sided with TTT and only promised (if elected) to fight for certain national exemptions. In the end, all countries ratified the Treaty without amendment.

Wu had a fight with her partner and Qi over the TTT during dinner in their Beijing flat. Qi had bounded into the apartment with a bottle under his arm and a pizza deliveryman in tow. Alitash met him at the door with a quick hug and a sharp admonition to “shut up.” Behind her in the hallway, looking defiant, Wu was on crutches. Qi arched his brow. “Didn’t hear the bicycle,” Tash muttered.

The bottle of Bordeaux and a green tea later, the scientist unfolded his theme for the evening.

“It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who has control of the technology,” he opined. “Remember General Electric’s founder, Thomas Edison? His first invention was a vote-counting machine.

The last thing politicians wanted was something that automated an election. Edison figured it out and went back to ripping off other inventors and making sure his patents were the ones used by industry,” Qi chuckled into his wine glass. “And GE learned the lesson well. It realized that controlling the data was the way to control life and it turned itself into GEnome Corp.”

Qi paused, “Who wrote that old ballad?” he asked, knowing full well that the two women had no idea what he was referring to. "Bobby McGee," he prompted, “‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!’ Democracy is offered only when those in power have sufficient control of the decision-making apparatus – political parties, media and campaign finances – so that they can determine the choices available to the voters. When voting becomes irrelevant, democracies

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flourish. As long as politicians are a choice between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dum-dum, the illusion is all that is necessary.” Despite his flamboyance, Qi looked less than self-satisfied.

"Look at what happened with multi-party democracy in China," he finished.

Wu thumped her crutch against the floor, thoroughly vexed. She didn’t need a Poli-Sci intro course from a corporate scientist. The 2019 toppling of the Chinese Communists had been more a generational change than an ideological transformation. A stodgy old guard was supplanted by a cosmopolitan nouveau regime (China’s ‘metro-sexual mandarins,’ Suyuan once dubbed them) no less accommodating than the Communists to foreign industry, but more sophisticated in addressing middle-class angst. Cynical though she was, the aging reporter continued to have faith in the people.

“Weren’t you the one who called them the BANG gang?” Qi asked Suyuan, “the government consortia oligopoly,” he prodded?

“And got hell for it!” Tash threw in from the kitchen. “Talk about political incorrectness!”

“They are a gang,” Suyuan insisted, thumping her crutches again. “There is no BANG without the gang. For all we know BANG is a myth, but the gang is real and doing very well. Democracy is a myth. People don’t have any real power. And industry, using BANG, entrenches the gang!”

"I hate that language," Tash shot back. "It's the demeaning language of the predator. It trivializes the violation of the victim." The two women stared at one another – angry and in agreement.

Beijing, 2026: "If it's just like a volcano," Tash frowned, "why not save yourself some money and blow a real volcano?"

The three men across from her straightened in their chairs. They were emissaries from AtomSphere – two management types and a scientist. All three were Indian and they were sitting in the Beijing conference room of the AU mission. About a dozen African representatives from various countries were also present and, until then, not especially interested.

"I'm sorry...?" the older of the two executives inquired hesitantly.

Tash felt herself blushing, "if blasting aerosols into the stratosphere is just like a volcanic eruption why not erupt a volcano?" she braved. "I'm not a scientist," she added apologetically, "I was just wondering..." the Nigerian Ambassador two seats down from her smirked unhelpfully.

The Indian scientist looked interested and cleared his throat to speak but remained silent when the older businessman leaned forward. "It's possible – theoretically – of course," he smiled magnanimously at the young woman across from him," but much too dangerous. Perhaps we could ignite a volcano but we couldn't be sure what would happen after that. Or when. The volcano might just burp a bit and then settle down – or suddenly set off a chain of other volcanic eruptions we couldn't control." He settled back in his chair assuring and benevolent.

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“Actually,” the scientist beside the executive couldn’t resist, “we are using volcanoes.” His seatmate started and tried to speak but the scientist was gathering momentum, “Volcanic eruptions are already lowering earth’s temperature by, maybe, a half a degree. There are many eruptions every year – mostly in remote locations – and climatologists expect the number will increase with ice melt and sea level rise.” Sensing the irritation of his colleagues, the man sat back, “The ice and water cause a pressure change around the volcano,” he mumbled.

"Oh," said Tash and the senior executive went back to his PowerPoint explaining Atom-Sphere's aerosol spray strategy and how it could benefit Africa.

A company in the Atom-Sphere consortium, Tata Pharma, wanted to build a soda ash plant near Tanzania's Lake Natron in the rift valley bordering Kenya. Masi pastoralists and local scientists opposed the project claiming that mining in the area could destabilize Ol Doinyo Lengai – one of Africa's biggest volcanoes towering almost 2900 m above the valley floor. The soda ash was to be exported to Siberia where it would be used by Atom-Sphere’s canons to deflect sunlight.

Tanzania was in line for a tidy profit. Unluckily, Kenyan scientists were warning that the region was already experiencing quakes and that further digging could set off the volcano. Tanzania suspected that the Kenyans wanted the plant – and the profit – on the Kenyan side of Lake Natron.

That night, the Ethiopian diplomat told Suyuan about the encounter. The PowerPoint was pretty persuasive, Tash admitted. "It’s not geoengineering," the old blogger retorted, "it's geopiracy!"

2027: By the late-2020s, everything was getting worse. Regardless of the Treaty’s provisions, nanoparticle proliferation – the ubiquitous presence of manufactured particles and “smart dust” nano networks – was already out of control. To be fair, as Suyuan conceded on her blog, the causes of the unraveling health and environmental crisis were never absolutely clear. The popular scapegoats were the two consortia and their nanoparticle arrays that were – also unpopularly – costing taxpayers vastly greater sums than anticipated. Although the first SRM field trials – conducted in Russia and on Scotland’s Orkney Islands - were shrouded in patentimposed secrecy, the public perception was that Atom-Sphere’s experiments with the “Venetian blind” was directly responsible for a scary increase in lung and skin cancers, autism, asthma, and allergies. Poets and commentators also noted that – though the skies were duller – the sunsets were spectacular and the rain was almost fluorescent at times. Terra-Forma, too, was under public suspicion for its huge ocean experiments with synthetic microbes.

In response, the consortia mounted a massive public relations blitz pointing their fingers at the ongoing fallout from the post WWII chemical industry – ignoring the fact that many of the consortia’s most prominent members were the same (name-changed, face-lifted) chemical companies. Many observers – Suyuan among them – suspected that both the older chemistry and the new synthetic biology and nanotechnology were at fault. Suyuan also wondered if AtomSphere’s other very well-funded and publicized initiative – the construction of new pressurizedwater (PWR) nuclear power reactors – also contributed to the sickness. The Japanese nuclear meltdown in 2011 following the earthquake and tsunami had dampened interest in nuclear power for several years but opposition had all but disappeared in the panic over climate change. There had been only 30 countries with fewer than 450 nuclear power plants in 2005, now an additional

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65 countries either had – or were building their own nuclear plants. Again, most environmental groups had been muted – preferring the risk of nuclear meltdown to the certainty of climate collapse. In 2027, WikiLeaks published a secret CIA memo estimating that at least 10,000 people around the world knew how to build a nuclear bomb.

Whatever the causes, the US Centers for Disease Control and the Geneva-based World Health Organization concurred: For the first time in almost 200 years, life expectancy in industrialized countries was on a discernible decline. Worse still, the World Health Organization reckoned that the number of “well-being” (illness-free) years had dropped since 2000.

“Digital surveillance,” Suyuan advised the blogosphere, "probably detected the widespread social consternation much earlier but the BANG members had trouble agreeing on a response.”

As the unrest became palpable, they opted for an old-fashioned video webcast. Looking grandfatherly, like he wanted to give the world audience a “warm-fuzzy,” the President of China, flanked by his US and Indian counterparts and the CEOs of the two consortia, assured everyone that the troubles were short-term – the consequences of past failures and not of current experiments. Viewers were urged to “stay the course” and trust in “sound science”. Focus groups and polls conducted immediately afterward gave the performance a thumbs down.

Brussels, 2028: Qi waved jauntily to the businesswoman taking her seat just down the aisle from his own. The trouble with business class, the scientist grumbled silently, was that you always met somebody you knew. Reluctantly, he dropped the iPod into his briefcase and went over to shake hands. The woman – a handsome middle-aged American with undisguised gray streaks in her long brown hair – had a word with the hostess and was soon settled into the seat beside Qi for the transatlantic crossing to Chicago.

Over Ireland – and over Irish whiskies – the woman – an executive with a liaison role between the two consortia – updated him on Atom-Sphere’s aerosol geoengineering program. From earlier meetings when the two consortia biannually compared notes, she knew that Qi had a particular interest in the genetic variations among indigenous communities living at highaltitudes. The media were reporting that stratospheric aerosols might damage lungs when they ultimately came back to earth. Qi, recalling his introduction to geoengineering years earlier in Cancun, came back to another point. "What if your blasting away into the stratosphere and suddenly a real volcano erupts?"

His neighbor stopped in mid-sip, "We’d stop spraying of course... that is, until everything blew over."

"But the nanoparticles Atom-Sphere is spraying are intended to stay aloft for at least a year or two, aren't they?"

"Yes," she looked at him closely, "You got to realize that we've been learning an awful lot about volcanoes lately. At any given time, for example, there are probably eight or 10 volcanoes erupting mildly somewhere in the world. But they contribute little or nothing to the stratosphere.

Our guys know pretty well what's likely to blow when and we can cut back on our artificial volcanoes to avoid overdosing the atmosphere."

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It was much later when, in the dimmed cabin light, his seatmate snoring softly beside him, that Qi replayed their conversation in his mind. To avoid a sudden and potentially disastrous overcooling of the planet, he thought, they need to know at least two years in advance of any volcanic blow. If they know that much – and they have to – why don't they just ignite remote volcanoes themselves and save time and money?

Beijing, 2028: The debates between Suyuan and Qi continued in full swing. As she sat sipping tea in Inga Thorvaldson’s hotel, Qi delicately dropped into the seat beside her, depositing a noisy kiss atop her Mao cap and brushing Inga’s cheek with another. “You must be the Swedish commie trade unionist,” he giggled happily, “here to scourge the temple.”

Inga Thorvaldson had grown up into a trade union organizer, a lawyer, and a member of the World Social Forum executive committee. She and Suyuan had stayed in touch ever since their first chance encounter in 2005, when they huddled together in a Hong Kong doorway. Less offended than intrigued, Inga recalled the stories she had been told and made Qi shake hands.

“I’m as interested in mad scientists and their even madder corporations,” she countered.

“Then we’ll have to have a long dinner – you and I.” Qi smiled pleasantly, “I’ve just spent a week on Test-tube Tony’s floating lab.”

“My god,” Suyuan lurched forward. “A week! You’re not having dinner without me! What’s he like? What’s his sailing junk like?”

"Junk?" Inge asked.

Suyuan explained, "Junks are the old-fashioned sailing ships used by Chinese mariners. There are hardly any authentic ones around today. They’re famous for their bamboo sails but Test-tube Tony has built himself a super junk complete with high-powered engines and all the latest navigational toys," she added.

The scientist grinned across at the trade unionist. “How do you feel about pizza? It’s the only way to shake her,” he added conspiratorially.

“I want something with a bowl and chopsticks,” Inga grinned back. “I don’t get here often.”

“Dr. Anthony Wong, that’s Tony, is not mad,” Qi told them over dinner. “He’s an arrogant son of a bitch, maybe. Thinks he’s smarter than he is, probably. But that's still more than smart enough.”

The journalist had positioned herself across the table from the scientist so that she could read every word. “But, what’s he doing out on that boat all day? Writing his memoirs? Does he really walk around the deck naked and bragging about his conquests?” she demanded.

“More than he should,” Qi sniffed. “The less clothing the less credibility.”

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Inga giggled. “They say he’s using the junk to scoop up surface-level photosynthetic genes to rescue agriculture and save us from Peak Oil.” Dr. Wong’s junk, a replica of a 15 th-century Chinese admiralty ship, had been fitted out with a state-of-the-art lab rumoured to be stuffed with more DNA synthesizers and sequencers than could be found in continental Europe.

“Junk DNA,” Qi smirked. “That’s a part of it, but Tony’s after much more.” The scientist looked around theatrically. “He’s after the three-quarters of the world’s biomass that people don’t use directly. It is – beyond a shadow of a doubt,” the scientist seemed suddenly serious, “the biggest monopoly takeover of nature the world could ever imagine.”

“This is the mythical Carbohydrate Economy my chemical unions periodically stew about,” Inga commented, relaxing back in her chair. “It has been on the horizon for over two decades and it always falls off the edge of the Earth.”

“The bioprocessing gambits in the ‘80s were pretty primitive,” Qi agreed. “But Test-tube Tony and his companies are using the photosynthetic material they find near the ocean surface to build their own DNA from the bottom up. He’s already made self-replicating microbes and now he's designing specific ones that can convert virtually any biological material into virtually anything else. And, he’s not alone. The Chinese and the Americans are bankrolling him together. Now the big consortia – just about every chemical and agribusiness company have joint ventures. Most of the start-up synthetic biology companies at the beginning of the century have been sucked into the new JVs. The activists call them the new Biomassters.

“The synthetic biology joint ventures are mushrooming out around the edges of the BANG consortia like side bets at a poker game. It can't help but weaken the consortia. Do you get this,” Qi demanded, “Do you understand that synbio brings together engineering and the life sciences to design and construct new biological parts and systems that don’t exist in the natural world, or to tweak the designs of existing biological systems?”

“She knows all right,” said Suyuan sourly, “Synbio, extreme genetic engineering, we get it Qi.” “It makes a perverse kind of sense,” mused Inga.

“The most interesting part of BANG convergence has always been the genes,” Suyuan continued. “DNA was born to build and it builds wonderfully at the nanoscale. Instead of selfreplicating mechanical robots, it always made more sense to make designer-microbes that could build everything else. Synthetic biology makes the means of production also the end product for consumption. It means that rather than digging deep in the earth or crawling around the ocean floor, industry can skim biomass off the top of the earth or ocean and make it into fuels, fibers, building materials, whatever the market wants. All the gang has to do is break down the biomass into its component parts and build anew.” The journalist’s voice was loud and wondering.

“Which means that the fields and forests, oceans and streams – everything that has yet to be fully-commodified – is now a raw material for BANG,” Inga filled in.

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“So, now that intrepid civil society knows, what’s it going to do about it?” Qi asked the two women with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Inga Thorvaldson was defensive. “It’s hard for the unions to look beyond immediate negotiations. There are cutbacks everywhere and the chemical unions, in particular, have lost ground to robotics. Synthetic biology just isn’t on anybody’s radar.”

“The activists need to rethink their priorities,” Qi looked suddenly angry. Sue stared at him.

“Tony had a little too much wine one evening,” Qi paused, and the old familiar metrosexual was back, “and began mouthing off about how he might not only build microbes that could gobble up GHGs and transform tree trunks into gas tanks but one that could gobble up the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and maybe make something useful out of the mess. He joked that if he succeeded Greenpeace would make him their leader for life.”

“Is he that crazy?” Inge asked, “I thought all his microbes were going to stay locked away in labs under level IV biosafety regulations. Would he really unleash an artificial self replicating microbe into the ocean?”

“I’m not sure if he’s crazy,” Qi responded, “but he has the hutzpa and the hubris and he wants to be everybody’s hero. If he can rescue the climate with one hand and take out the garbage with the other, he’ll get his wish.”

Inga set to distractedly sorting out the vegetables on her plate with her chopsticks. Suyuan was still trying to sort out Qi. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was the first discovered and biggest of several vast garbage dump’s found in the major ocean gyros since the closing of the last century. Aside from the Northeast Pacific Gyro there was another in the Indian Ocean and one in each of the North and South Atlantic. Scientists had discovered millions of tons of decaying plastic – usually only a few centimeters in size – floating at - or just below - the surface in each of the gyros. The plastic dumps weren’t just gross, scientists feared they could be toxic since the degrading plastics exuded hazardous chemicals and were a magnet to other chemicals in their neighborhood. The UN reported that at least 1 million birds and 100,000 sea mammals died every year consuming the plastic. The prevalence of the plastic toxins was such that some environmentalists were championing the case for farmed fish rather than wild fish arguing that there were more toxins in the wild creatures than their cultivated cousins. Suyuan had blogged on this, pointing out that farmed fish are fed wild fish from the same toxic pool.

Finally, she spoke, Greenpeace has been following Tony’s junk around,” Suyuan added. “And they had kind of a cute idea, issuing those junk bonds at Tony’s last annual meeting, but it’s hard to attack a guy who has convinced most of the world that he is their only salvation. Campaigning CSOs can’t get the foundations to pony up any money for synthetic biology activism. There are just too many battles on too many fronts.”

“Sugar shock,” the scientist nodded. “The Carbohydrate Economy that converts the planet’s biomass into energy, seems like everybody’s solution to fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse gases,” The three ate on in silence.

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Chennai, India, 2029: On the eve of the summer monsoon, a luxury yacht was towed out of the Indian Ocean into Chennai’s sprawling harbour with all on board – crew and passengers – dead.

The vessel was quarantined to an industrial section of the docks away from passers-by or curious journalists as a forensics SWAT team from the Indian Centers for Disease Control, wearing space suits, searched for the cause of death. Foul play was said to be unlikely. Rumours circulated that the passengers had asphyxiated from some unknown bacteria or virus. The Indian Ocean, after all, was famous for its vast floating garbage patch of plastic wastes. In time, with no hard news emerging, the media were distracted by a bizarre Bollywood sex/murder scandal and abandoned Chennai for Mumbai.

Less than a month later, sensitized by the Chennai story, Asian journalists posted additional articles on strange bacterial “clouds” forming above the mammoth Great Pacific Garbage Patch – an area twice the size of Texas – and other news of surface slime covering the South Atlantic’s garbage gyre. The Brazilian press accused Petrobras, the well-connected energy giant, and Petrobras and Brasilia joined forces to accuse BP drilling in the Orange Basin off the coast of Namibia.

About the same time, the European press, reported that sailors on Portuguese and Spanish trawlers crossing through the Sargasso Sea had stories of a slime that almost glued itself to the ocean’s surface but was, luckily, too shallow to threaten their underwater vents. There was a brief flurry of interest in Europe, at least, when eel reproduction in the Sargasso Sea slumped suddenly the same season. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) had already killed off Europe’s domestic eel population years before and the mid-Atlantic eels were the only hope for fine dining. As Parisians vainly searched their menus for eel florentine, trawlers searched the Sargasso for the eels’ unknown spawning ground.

At the end of the North Atlantic’s customary hurricane season, the White House cheerily announced that not a single US life had been lost. The presidential communiqué went on to somberly restate the USA’s condolences for the 80,000 people who had drowned or been buried in mudslides from Brazil’s Recife to Uruguay’s Montevideo. Peculiarly, the hurricane centre had shifted sharply into the South Atlantic.

In early December, the UN Secretary-General told the members of the Security Council that the number of extreme annual hydro-meteorological events had increased five-fold over the past 40 years. The room went still. It was as though, he wrote that evening in his diary, he had called for a minute’s silence for the victims. In a sense, he realized, he had.

Beijing, 2030: Suyuan had a new preoccupation now – the faintly downward curve in global human and environmental health over the decades, was dipping sharply. The pandemic sprang most unexpectedly – not from a new form of avian influenza, H1N1 or a yet more vicious HIV variant – or any other of the 30+ new diseases that had slipped out of the evaporating rainforests into the world’s farms and cities – but from a new strain of schistosomiasis – the ancient freshwater snail fever that causes severe fatigue and, if left untreated, death in its human victims.

Two different strains of schistosomiasis were common in China. But, until the Three Gorges dam closed its gates in 2003 and Poyang Lake began to fill, the strain in the Sichuan Province above

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the dam had not mingled with the strain in the lake below. The highland variant mainly afflicted humans and resulted from the use of human feces as fertilizer. The lake strain mostly affected water buffalo and was less harmful. Infection rates in the mountains ran as high as 60 percent.

Suddenly, in 2030, the two strains merged into a terrible new threat. The World Health Organization announced that the new species could lead to a global pandemic.

Then things got much worse: Hydatidosis, caused by a parasitic worm found in canine feces and native to the Tibetan Plateau and Western Sichuan, inexplicably contributed genes to the schistosomiasis strain and a full-blown pandemic became inevitable. By year’s end, the hybrid bug infected 600,000 people in Southwest China alone. Months later, the World Health Organization was reporting outbreaks as far away as Mumbai and Nairobi. After that, the superbug proved its super-flexibility by hopping from dogs and buffalo to birds and pigs. Around the world, government health officials were tight-lipped and guardedly-optimistic. Suyuan knew that the world had never encountered such a virulent multi-species epidemic.

The old blogger also knew that a team of undergraduate art students from a Sichuan University had won second prize at MIT’s IGEM - International Genetically Engineered Machine – competition in Boston three years earlier for using “biobricks” to design a hydatidosis cell line that, on their laptop, looked for all the world like it was wagging its tail. The journalist explained to her readership that the kids had pulled down the genome map of hydatidosis off the IBOL – International Bar Code of Life – and then used MIT's library of "biobricks" – fixed strands of human-built DNA designed like electrical circuits or – even more descriptively – lego blocks – to perform specific biological functions. Then they e-mailed the altered genome map to an Indian bio-foundry that built the gene sequence to specification and FedExed the reconstituted DNA back to the kids in Boston on a piece of plastic that looked, disquietingly, like a credit card. With the help of their professor, the kids used the new DNA to rejig their novel microbe. The whole exercise took less than three days – almost entirely for transport – and cost the kids less than the price of a movie ticket.

After posting her blog, Suyuan confessed to Tash that the cumulative combination of old and new environmental and health pressures made it hard for anyone – politicians and civil society activists included – to identify or respond to the causes of the deteriorating living standards around them.

Geneva 2031: Under pressure from Britain and the United States, and supported reluctantly by China and still more reluctantly by India – the World Health Organization formally established public health zones that attempted to quarantine the new diseases within their continent of origin.

The result was a drastic decline in South/North travel and trade. As waves of economic and health refugees washed about Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, a medical curtain came down across the frontiers leading to the industrialized world.

In her blog, Suyuan speculated that the health quarantines were at least partly economically motivated, because they allowed the North to impose impossible trade conditions on the South.

Nanotech manufacture was mostly a biological exercise. Almost all nanoscale self-assembly was the product of artificial bacteria especially brewed to construct anything from iPods to A-frames.

This biological component allowed the superpowers to contend that the exports could be

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contaminating – and mutating – wherever they showed up. The trade barriers, she told her readers, were really to protect industry’s struggling nano-assembly lines that were encountering unexpected costs in scaling-up.

Faced with new diseases, ongoing climate change, and the disappearance of export markets, “failed states” in the South went into a tailspin. While the North looked the other way, military dictatorships once again replaced paper democracies. The defense industry – also charter members of the two leading consortia – provided the dictatorships with the latest weapons (from neurotoxic to nano-nuclear) BANG could offer. Not only was the new generation of weapons vastly more powerful and efficient – nanotechnology (with its cheap, tiny, low-energy materials) made monitoring – and eliminating - dissidents inexpensive.

Only on rare occasions did armies from the North intervene in internal or regional conflicts.

Since the 1970s and the Vietnam War, extensive media coverage had made large troop commitments – and their attendant body bags – politically problematic. The experience of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—and NATO’s clumsy intervention in Libya, early in the 21st century, amplified the embarrassment and expense involved in ground wars. However, OECD citizens were ambiguous about the use of long-range high-tech weaponry that made urban guerrilla warfare suicidal.

According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, Suyuan recalled, 90% of those who died in conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America between 2005 and 2030 were civilians. “Consumed with their own problems, most of the ‘local’ wars went almost unnoticed in the industrial zones,” wrote Suyuan.

2032: Political instability in the South had spilled over into the North. Suyuan reported that because of new health risks and the destabilized societies, young people would almost certainly live shorter and more brutish lives than their parents. This is not what governments had promised. In the midst of despair and frustration, fundamentalist movements won new recruits and new ethnic and religious divisions began to eat away at the social fabric of even the most successful economies. People wanted explanations for everything that was going so wrong.

Collapsing health systems in the cities were more than matched by climate chaos in the countryside. Climate change was wreaking havoc on the world’s food supply. Without warning, in 2032, a wheat rust appeared in Uganda. Identified as UG32, the rust – the first to seriously threaten the world wheat crop in half a century– was not content to linger in the fields of its birth, but quickly swept into Kenya, arched north into Ethiopia, hopped across the Red Sea to Yemen, and then floated back into Sudan and Egypt, while branching across the Middle East to Pakistan and India. Although geneticists searched desperately through gene banks and genomic databases, and synthetic biologists soldered together prefab strands of DNA “biobricks” for potential resistance, nothing seemed to halt the constantly-mutating rust. No one doubted that the rust would inevitably reach the granaries of Australia, North America and Europe.

Shortly after the discovery of UG32, peasants in Zanzibar pulled up their cassava plants to find that the tubers had rotted. Although the plant above ground looked hale and hearty, the part below ground – the part people ate – was inedible. At first slowly – then rapidly – the new

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cassava disease worked its way through the poorest farms and villages of Africa creating death and destruction.

The crop epidemics blew into a Perfect Storm. As extreme weather events froze or blistered farm fields, grain reserves plummeted and commodity specialists speculated. While increased meat and dairy demand from India and China had a marginal effect but drew maximum blame, food security came under fire from a silent, unseen tsunami – the explosive demand for biofuels that drove cars into a competition with people for access to grains and arable land. The biofuels problem had reared its head almost a quarter-century earlier but the debate had receded as synthetic biologists promised that their second-generation biofuels would use only so-called marginal land and the competition with food crops would vanish. Out of sight – out of mind – the marginal lands – the "commons" that kept most of the rural world alive especially in the months and weeks before the next harvest – kept on producing fuels for European and Chinese cars. It was only when the food crisis exploded in the cities in the 2030s, that the world was forced to pay attention and recognize that synthetic biology had failed.

Hunger – as always – was followed by war. In response to the multiple food threats, public agricultural researchers launched an initiative with the two giant consortia to develop genetically modified strains of wheat and cassava that could overcome the crisis. CSO’s revealed that the two consortia together controlled 73% of global commercial seed sales, 90% of global pesticide sales and 77% of the identified “climate-ready” crop gene sequences.

2034: Alitash wanted a baby. Older than Tash, Suyuan favoured adoption, but Tash was not to be denied, and Suyuan conceded that artificial insemination was okay with her. As always, Qi was full of advice. GEnome had developed a series of human performance enhancement (“HyPE”) drugs and implants and the company was happy to make these available to a valued colleague “at cost.”

These ‘well-people’ drugs, Suyuan knew, were the company’s blockbuster profit-makers and its prime target in a deliberate strategy that had begun in the mid 2020s. She remembered her own interview with the CEO of one of the big Swiss pharmaceutical companies. The man had crowed that medical research only addressed about 150 known diseases but the human body was a hypochondriac's dream of 2 million potentially dysfunctional proteins.

Drugs and implants for well people had overwhelming advantages. Well people didn’t get sick and lose their jobs. Well people could afford to pay and they didn’t get sympathy from media or politicians forcing companies to drop their prices. Not only did well people not die but they also never got better. Once they were on a medical regime, they tended to stick with it for years.

From cosmetic surgery to life-style drugs, such as Viagra and the anti-depressants of four decades ago, the pharmaceutical industry had moved on to market enhancement products to improve memory, hearing, sight, and a list of cognitive functions designed to give parents and their children a head start in a world economy where full-time employment was far from guaranteed.

Wellness drugs were playing a big role in the new implants that upgraded hearing, seeing, what the drug pushers called “respiratory resilience” and physical endurance. Dismissed as old-

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fashioned by Qi, Suyuan opposed the company’s offer to enhance their baby. She fumed that the industry was accelerating a two-tiered society of those who wanted and could afford the implants – and those who couldn’t afford or didn’t want to be enhanced. In their increasingly abrasive encounters, she demanded to know why the drug companies weren’t solving the real health problems that plagued most of the human race. The antibiotics that had given the industry its early credibility and profits almost a century ago were collapsing under the onslaught of resistant, super-bacterial strains. The big poverty diseases – malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, dysentery, etc. – were still there, killing millions, and (except for a blip of ill-conceived philanthro-capitalism, like the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, at the beginning of the millennium) were mostly ignored.

Wu and Qi resumed their favorite topic – democracy – a few months later over yet another pizza dinner in the flat. Suyuan now had an arm in a cast.

“Runaway tricyclist,” Tash sighed.

“She’s devolving,” Qi opined.

Wu ignored him, tucking into the pizza she was resenting less and less.

“How can there be democracy,” Qi pontificated, “without privacy? Haven’t you noticed how little of it you have? Sure, all the so-called democracies have strong privacy laws that protect your medical and other personal information but, as quickly as the laws are passed, the people give up their rights by volunteering the information – even paying us to take it.” He was enjoying this. “When the pharmaceutical industry ran into trouble years ago with drug-recalls, we argued that if people paid for – and then surrendered – maps of their personal genomes, we would be able to determine whether or not the black-balled drugs were safe for them to use. We guaranteed that the pharmaceutical company would only use the information to help the individual – and for research within the company. But, given the technology consortia involved, that meant the information went all the way to the IT and consumer products and financial members of the gang. People couldn’t sign over their genome maps fast enough!”

Suyuan found herself agreeing. “Something similar happened with all the new communications technologies. At the beginning of the century,” she went on, “we all thought that the Internet and cell phones would democratize information and strengthen people’s activism. For a while, they did. But, ultimately, the Net and mobile phones made it easier for government not only to track what we were doing but to create instant communications maps of who we were doing it with.

All the so-called ‘public domain’ technology made it simple for them to monitor everything.”

Suyuan thought back ruefully to her visit to the UK in 2005. Some of the activists at Gleneagles had been promoting the idea of People’s maps. Around the UK, people with GPS cell phones constructed incredibly detailed maps of their communities including information about neighbours and happenings. Then, all the maps were stitched together and posted on the Internet.

The maps were supposed to be democratizing – way beyond the reach of satellites (whose capacities were always exaggerated, Suyuan had been sure) – but they provided government with access to a huge reservoir of socioeconomic and political information.

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Qi loved it. “We never learn. There was the same euphoria about the telegraph in the 19 th century and about the radio in the early 20 th century. Each time, the poets and activists announced a new era of transparent truth and democracy. They thought governments could never control the airwaves. Look at medicine and human genomics. The human rights activists and the bloody civil libertarians – even that Geneva group, WHO Watch, and your friend Anita Krishna – spent decades fighting for – and getting – strong health privacy laws about genomic testing and data management and then IBM came up with the Genographic Project inviting people to pay $100 each to buy a DNA test kit that surrendered their genetic information to IBM. Thousands happily bought the kits! The people were wrong,” his voice was caught between a laugh and a sigh. “The people united will always be defeated.”

“Some good things did come from the Internet and cell phones, even back then,” said Tash.

“Remember Obama’s first presidential campaign? And before that, in the mid-1990s, the Zapatistas in Mexico publicized their struggle through the Internet. Could there have been an Arab Spring without tweets?”

Suyuan had no more to say. She flip-flopped on media and privacy issues. True there was a lot of surveillance, but there were also cracks in the system, she hoped.

Her half-hearted response might have been as disconcerting to Qi as it was to her. She had no problem defending WHO Watch and her old ally, Anita Krishna, who had worked long and hard to convince civil society organizations to coordinate their UN strategies and to tackle the governance structures of the specialized agencies like the World Health Organization. In the end, the European funders didn’t understand WHO Watch’s global role and turned off the NGO’s funding. It may have been a strategic error for Krishna’s group to challenge the gang’s control of the human genome. It was complex and sophisticated work. Most of the members of WHO Watch – other NGOs around the world – wanted campaign activism that small progressive foundations could understand and fund. The journalist knew that Qi’s critique of civil society’s instant gratification activism was painfully accurate.

In keeping with most of their recent dinners, Tash – after bidding good night to Qi – went off to bed suppressing tears. Suyuan reached for her laptop and pounded out another blog entry. She put Tash’s mood swings down to her fixation on motherhood. There was little she could do.

Her latest blog post was about the failing water desalination technology that was creating clean water shortages and diseases from the South China Sea to the Mediterranean. Nanotech-based filtration systems were crumbling. The year before, filtration plants from Accra to Lisbon were forced into costly replacement of undersea intake pipes, nano-sensors, and filters were confounded by “something” in the sea that either clogged or ate through their systems depending on whether the city was in the North Atlantic or the South. This year, the problem had spread into the Indian Ocean confounding city systems from Kolkata to Colombo to Mumbai and Mombassa – and across the Atlantic to contaminate the water supply from Recife to Montevideo.

But it was the water crisis in Miami, Atlanta, and New York – and the skin diseases reported by Florida vacationers – that catalyzed international action. While Washington claimed that it was

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an unexpected side effect of another El Niño event complicated by climate change, Suyuan was convinced that it was the Terra-Forma consortium and its manufactured microbes that caused the problem. She couldn’t prove it, but she was sure that the synbio microbe’s unique quantum characteristics had catalyzed cross-breeding between sea-going micro-organisms.

As the calamity spread, international political attention was drawn to the almost-forgotten Botucatu Aquifer that lay under the pampas and savannas of southern South America. Scientists believed that the aquifer held enough freshwater to meet the entire planet’s needs for two centuries. In New York – at the United Nations and, more significantly, further down Manhattan on Wall Street – diplomats and investors demanded access to the aquifer. As water became an object of commodity speculation, Brazil proposed the creation of a “Water Protection and Export Cartel” that Suyuan immediately dubbed H2OPEC. The candidate countries, aside from Brazil, were Canada, China, and Russia. H2OPEC never got out of the tap. Wu reported on her blog that Canada’s water was already contracted to the United States; Russia’s water was toxic; water in China was either committed, or toxic, or both, and Brazil’s water was already hugely depleted from agrofuel production.

Brazil, 2034: Less than a month after her “water” post, Suyuan was standing atop Brazil’s aquifer in a farm settlement in Paraná. She had accepted an invitation to address the World Social Forum, being held after so many years again, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. She just couldn’t resist Inga Thorvaldson’s invitation. Decades ago, Suyuan had seen the global and polycentric fora as being among the few instruments of political organization available to civil society.

However, after the amazing beginnings and unbelievable growth in the early days of the millennium, the World Social Forum became the punching bag for political factions – each vying for control.

The first modest division came at the Mumbai forum of 2004, when a competing forum was held in the same city, at the same time, contesting turf with the “official” Social Forum. As much as Suyuan sympathized with some of the more progressive political elements around the WSF – especially those wanting a more activist posture on anti-globalization – she recognized that the ‘public space’ – or pluralistic environment – for social debate was essential if civil society was to have the numbers and coherence it needed to challenge the government/industry establishment.

It was not to be. By the Rio Summit in 2012, a lethal cocktail of ideology and ego had dissipated the movement into warring camps of lesser themed fora that could not regain the numbers or momentum of the original WSF. “The same world is likely,” Suyuan had thought then, a demoralized riff on the WSF motto of “another world is possible.” The Porto Alegre Forum of 2034 represented a desperate effort by Brazilian peasants and other Latin American social movements to regain the lost opportunity squandered almost a quarter of a century earlier.

While in Porto Alegre, she reconnected with some old friends. One of them was Anita Krishna, the former coordinator of one of Qi’s favourite enemies, the now defunct WHO Watch. At the Hong Kong World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting in 2005, Suyuan had made friends with a young farm organizer in Brazil’s landless movement – one of the most powerful social movements in Latin America. They’d kept in touch. Now, João Sergio was firmly established in

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the farm movement leadership and it was he who brought the journalist and Anita Krishna to one of their liberation settlements in Paraná.

Years before, the settlement had been a Syngenta experimental station with illegal field trials of GM soybeans. The peasants’ organization had occupied the land, and forced the Brazilian government to fine Syngenta a half-million dollars and to surrender the land to the peasants. A year later, however, Syngenta reoccupied the property and its hired militia killed one of the protesting peasants. Only after the departure of Lula da Silva as President of Brazil did the peasants again claim the land.

Over the years, João Sergio had grown grey and acquired a couple of suspicious scars, but his charm was intact. His eyes still sparkled as he guided them briskly along a tour of one community that seemed to have survived the chaos of climate change fairly well. “We're tapping into what’s left of the aquifer,” he told Suyuan and Anita. “The agrofuel majors haven’t found out, but they will eventually or, as likely, it will all just run dry.” The big push to the Carbohydrate Economy and bioenergy that began at the turn of the century had devastated food production in Brazil as much as it had in North America and Africa. With decades of experience turning sugarcane into fuel, Lula’s government had gone after the global biofuels market in a desperate bid to match India and China in becoming another superpower, just as previous governments had bet their future on coffee, cane, rubber, and ranching – all with the same result.

As the land sown to cane multiplied, the soybean and maize crops pushed into cattle country and the cattle and the food crops together ground down the Amazon forests. Even as Brazil told the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity that fuel crops wouldn’t touch the forests, sugarcane’s domino effect did exactly that. Since fuel crops demanded as much – or more – water as food crops, and the big agribusiness/fossil fuel conglomerates that demanded the fuel had more clout than Brazil’s peasants, the vast aquifer beneath Brazil came under attack. With hurricanes ravaging Brazil’s coastline and the mountain rains eroding the barren soils, yields declined.

Peasant farms couldn’t afford the fertilizers, the fuels, or the freshwater and, by the hundreds of thousands, peasants were driven into the cities. As the three strode through the comparatively lush fields, the farm organizer told them that Brazil was well on its way to becoming a net food importer – exporting bioethanol and biodiesel in return for Asian rice.

“Still,” Suyuan said, as they paused at a canteen to share a cup of mate, “things here look fairly good. Peasants must have adjusted to climate change well?” she asked. João Sergio shrugged, “Not so well. We believed our own propaganda too much. We kept telling ourselves that we had the traditional knowledge and crop genetic diversity that would let us manage climate change better than the big industrial farms.” He sighed. “But we hadn’t counted on bioenergy demands on water and land and we hadn’t expected either the drastic increase in temperatures or the erratic weather.” He looked toward the setting sun, sparkling strangely, but beautifully, over the Western hills. “We’re trying to grow maize and wheat and soybeans in temperatures these crops have never known before. The crop losses are incredible.”

João Sergio got up from the table and walked back out onto the road. “Some of the women peasants in the Andes – in Bolivia and Chile especially – did their best to warn us but the leadership wasn’t listening,” he said, scratching his gray head. “The women had begun a seed

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exchange up and down the mountain sides but they needed support to expand their network to share species between ecosystems. They didn't get it. We’ve just managed to hang on here,” he sighed again. “But, if the aquifer dries up...” his voice drifted off toward the silver clouds gathering along the horizon.

During their stay in the community, Suyuan and Anita also spent time with Marcolino di Gaspar, the brilliant public health worker, a doctor who had once been president of the WHO Watch Board of Directors and a failed CSO candidate for the Director-Generalship of the World Health Organization. Now he was working with João Sergio to strengthen the links between alternative health movements and peasants’ organizations. “Thank God he lost the WHO election!” Anita told Suyuan over a bottle of João Sergio’s homebrew. “It would have been a terrible waste."

The next morning Anita and Marcolino took a bus back to Porto Alegre to meet up with Inga for a post-mortem of the Social Forum. With the help of the peasants, Suyuan made it across the border to the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay and to the controversial U.S. military outpost at Mariscal Estigarribia, 250 km from the Bolivian frontier. The reason for the base’s reconstruction back in 2005 had never been clear. Some claimed from the outset that the base was there to assert US authority over the aquifer that lay below. Others interpreted it as pressure put on the centre-left governments that sprang up, parlaying with national opposition to globalization and regional trade deals at about the same time. When Bolivia had elected a genuinely progressive indigenous president in 2005 and Paraguay had followed with a relatively democratic new government in 2008, many argued that the US panicked and ordered its army to be ready to intervene.

Whatever the origins, the United States was now the largest military presence over the aquifer.

For five days, aided by a counterpart organization to the Brazilian peasants movement, Wu Suyuan talked to local peasants and villagers about the military base and their own water and economic conditions. Foreigners being rare, it was not long before her presence became known to the US forces and she had to beat a tactical retreat back across the border into the safe hands of Brazil’s peasants. Not that she was at risk, she knew, but she was jeopardizing the safety of the peasants she visited.

When the time came to say goodbye, João embraced her warmly. “Don’t worry, if the cities and great powers collapse, we will still be here farming our land. We’re used to fighting. How do you think I earned my scars?” She laughed sadly and gave him a hug.

From Brazil Suyuan flew to La Paz, Bolivia and then caught a succession of local buses, onward to Rosetta, high in the Altiplano to visit a curmudgeonly old peasant, Marta Flores, one of the women leaders João Sergio had told her about. Flores was still the ringleader of a network of peasant-breeders developing crops the companies were, as yet, not paying attention to. Working with other Andean peasants, the network had created a grass roots response to climate change.

When global warming cranked up its thermostat unexpectedly in the second decade of the century, many thought the world’s 525 million subsistence farms were doomed to extinction.

The home-bred crop varieties – as diverse as they were – struggled to adapt to not only new temperatures but also new pests and diseases. The world’s agricultural research institutes wrung

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their hands and UN agencies predicted mass urban migration. Where peasants were demoralized and disorganized, the UN predictions came true. Millions fled to the ghettos and barrios.

Where peasants were organized, it was sometimes – not often enough – a different story.

Peasants’ networks carefully adapted their crops to higher altitudes in mountain regions and desperately worked to exchange seeds and species between similar regions on other continents.

When the work caught the attention of multinational seed companies, however, corporate pressure forced governments to clamp down on the exchanges claiming that the networks were violating “phytosanitary” regulations, spreading crop diseases, and encouraging the use of poorquality, weed-infested seed. Most of the networks dried up. Marta Flores’s group was one of the survivors.

Later the US used its control over the aquifer and the region’s desperate need for water to break the Latin American regional bank established years earlier by a former Venezuelan President.

The bank was based on the region’s oil and natural gas reserves. Venezuela had dreamed of establishing a peso standard for the region linked to the euro. In its first years, the peso bank was successful in destabilizing the dollar and weakening US influence in the region. Political support for the peso bank declined over time, however, and US pressure forced central banks in Latin America to acquire dollars as well as euros. Then, under US pressure, Paraguay threatened to commandeer the water for natural gas fracking. US energy companies, went the sub-text, would get privileged access to “Hoover up” the aquifer from inside the US base. Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia furiously protested that the aquifer was a global commons and needed to be protected.

Their national gas companies wanted the water for fracking just as much as the Americans. After sufficient diplomatic sabre-rattling and decorous Brazilian and Bolivian troop movements along the Paraguayan border, the Paraguayans declared the aquifer a UNESCO World Heritage Site and their neighbours quietly returned to the dollar standard.

While Suyuan was in Latin America, Qi accompanied Tash on her duty travel back to Addis Ababa where she was to brief the African Union on its trade prospects with China. For Qi, it was an opportunity to visit old friends and get updated on some research he had been involved in years earlier. Tash’s real interest, of course, was to visit her family and to arrange for her insemination. She and Suyuan – despite the vociferous objections of Qi – wanted the sperm donor to be African. Qi was adamant that if Tash were to remain in China the child would be better off with Chinese features.

Addis was as dusty and turbulent as ever. The sporadic food riots that had terrorized much of the city for the past several years were at a temporary lull. Yet, the military “pill-boxes” at every important intersection were disconcerting. Despite their outward calm, people in the street seemed angry.

Following four days of intensive governmental meetings, Tash and Qi climbed into an aging Mercedes and Tash’s uncle drove them over half a day into the Rift Valley to Kombolcha, where Tash’s parents and sister lived. Her mother and father had retreated into the valley when they retired from their civil service jobs and when the rioting in Addis came too close. The family originally came from what – back then – had been a little village and they still had land and relatives in the countryside. Trained as agronomists, Tash’s father and mother, Teferra and

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Sophia, thrived on their return to farming. Although her parents had fled for their own safety, they had not expected to find their old village and neighbors so organized and in such good shape. Climate change had not served the Rift Valley well, but the community had shown itself to be resilient – even prospering.

While Qi, the irrepressible entertainer, regaled her father with stories of the absurdity of Mandarin-led democracy – and showed off his Amharic, also telling stories about his time as a young researcher in Ethiopia – Tash walked the farm fields with her mother and visited friends.

In the late 1980s, the Ethiopian gene bank in Addis had formed a relationship with a Canadian CSO making it possible for the gene bank scientists to reintroduce traditional teff and sorghum varieties into the local villages. The original intent had been for the conservation of plant genetic resources but, in the mid 1990s, Ethiopian peasants and scientists had gone well beyond conservation and were engaged in energetic plant breeding. Peasants wanted all the diversity they could lay their hands on in order to adapt their original seeds to meet the new challenges of global warming. Despite set-backs, including governmental pressure and corporate intervention, the peasants had persisted and extended their network of informal germplasm exchange across the valley and the highlands.

But, if seeds had been the base for the network, the traditional structure of rural communities and peasant organizations had expanded with necessity and opportunity to encompass livestock breeding and marketing strategies that didn’t rely on governments. While the bureaucrats in Addis grew weaker and shriller as the socioeconomic impact of globalization devastated the national economy, the peasants’ networks kept their people fed and relatively safe. When the multi-party democracy in the capital defaulted into an informal oligopoly, the customary decision-sharing democracy of the valley grew even stronger.

As an agronomist, the villagers had welcomed Tash’s mother. But, she had also been humbled.

“They know so much,” she told her daughter. “In school, and later in Addis, everyone kept telling us that peasants were too conservative and too uneducated to adapt to new ideas. But their ‘land literacy’ allows them to use the ecosystem more efficiently than we could ever hope. Far from being conservative, they are simply cautious – they’re judging the effects of innovations on the whole ecosystem. I’ve seen amazing innovation here.”

Her uncle’s old Mercedes wasn’t up to the journey back to Addis, but Tash’s mother arranged for a family friend, Abebe Jideani, with his own trucking business, to take them. Jideani got about with both legs withered at the knee – a genetic defect, Qi assumed. He stopped short of telling the young driver about the new leg prosthesis GEnome was developing after a sharp look from Tash. The scientist was impressed by the jerry-rigged controls the driver had built to compensate for his lack of feet. As they drove, Abebe told Qi that he had been briefly involved in the African-hosted Social Forum but, discouraged by the infighting, especially after the Zimbabwe debacle, had retreated to his lorry business. Qi – on his best behavior – tried not to show his relief at getting back to the restaurants and dance floors (he loved the Ethiopians’ shoulder-shaking dance style) that were still sprinkled through the capital’s international hotels.

Tash stared out the window for most of the ride. Two days later, they were back in Beijing waiting for Suyuan to return from Latin America.

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Alitash had been artificially inseminated and her pregnancy was confirmed within hours. The expectant mother was happy, but also worried. Though she was relieved that her family and their village was doing well, Tash was distraught by the plight of her continent and the world she was bringing her baby into. Could the resiliency in the Rift Valley spread? Were farming communities and other parts of Africa showing the same strength? Often, in the evenings, she thought of returning to her family to have the baby. Yet, she understood that she might not be allowed to return to Beijing and to Suyuan as the health quarantine was ever more rigidly enforced.

Trade between Africa and the Asian superpower was deteriorating. It was increasingly clear that China saw Africa as a back-up reservoir of fossil fuel, soil and mineral resources that could be tapped if nanotechnology failed or spawned unacceptable consequences. Every message from Tash’s colleagues in the African Union increased her anxiety.

Beijing, 2035: Suyuan, Tash and Qi had been walking in the eerily-sparkling, Beijing rain.

Despite the glitter, the sky was dimming. Atom-Sphere insisted this was a sign of success.

Suyuan believed it was a sign of nanoparticle pollution. Tash, now seven months along, and radiant in her pregnancy, was trying to keep healthy by walking every evening. Neither Qi nor Wu were convinced that the night air would help, but said nothing. The journalist was also limping.

“Sideswiped by a baby carriage?” Qi had asked. Tash had shrugged, “She won’t tell me. She’s a klutz.”

“Can anyone see a star?” Suyuan asked. The three stared blankly upward. “We are the first generation in history where the majority of us will live, and die without ever seeing the Milky Way. They say that even in Death Valley – hundreds of kilometers from any city in the western US – the fog of urban light is so dense that the stars can’t shine through.” In the Altiplano, they had talked of Cosmovision. According to the Cosmovision of the Andeans, everything, biotic and abiotic, was in balance. And there was no distinction between the living and non-living.

“Can you still have Cosmovision,” she wondered, “if you can’t even see the cosmos?”

She snapped out of her wonderings. Suyuan wanted Qi to tell her why GEnome and other drug companies weren’t on top of the schistosomiasis outbreak and the new skin and respiratory diseases. Didn’t they have an ethical obligation, she demanded? Especially now, since GEnome Corp. had been absorbed into Zhou Xī, although the Chinese company adroitly adopted the US name and – for the time being – maintained the pretense of a head office in Chicago.

“Our obligation is to our shareholders; we have to make them the most money possible,” Qi sounded pompous and defensive.

Suyuan caught his sidelong glance at Tash. Tash muttered something in Amharic, Suyuan thought. Were they keeping something from her?

Qi diverted, “The truth is, new technologies don’t have to be successful to be profitable. All we have to do is convince regulators and consumers that they need our technology. Remember biotech? Companies like Monsanto promised to feed the hungry if governments would allow

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them to introduce genetically-modified seeds. Look what happened. Genetic engineers routinely used antibiotic resistance markers because they were a cheap and easy way to find out if a new gene had been successfully transferred to a plant cell. That means GM plants carry antibiotic resistance genes! Think of it, antibiotic resistance in the soil – and then back into the food chain!

How dumb was that? The start-up biotech boutiques were so desperate to prove to Wall Street that they could get a product to market that they took shortcuts. The consequence was massive GM contamination around the world, destruction of some centres of crop diversity – remember maize in Mexico – and no decline in hunger?” He jabbed his finger at her triumphantly. “But, the companies turned a profit and, more importantly, took control of a highly-fragmented market.”

“I remember back then we thought the GM contamination was deliberate,” she yielded to his diversion. “a way for the companies to impose Terminator technology – the suicide seeds – to contain the contamination.”

“The big companies aren’t smart enough for that,” he retorted, “and, if they were, you’d have found them out! Besides, they had a win-win on their hands. If the technology worked – great! If it sucked – they had still monopolized the market!”

Qi was warming up. “Look back to the origins of the chemical industry in the last century,” he went on. “We now know that the chemicals created as many problems as they solved – asbestos, DDT, CFCs – got us to the mess we’re in today. And, just like today, all industry had to do was make sure that the regulators were sufficiently compromised so that the politicians were as keen on a cover-up as the companies.”

Later that night, Suyuan had a fight with Tash over GEnome’s cheap implants and therapies.

Tash felt that perhaps some of them were worth considering for the baby. Suyuan was still enraged over Qi’s – now silenced – offer to “orientalize” the fetus, and now this. Qi had insisted that an African child in China would face lifelong discrimination. Suyuan knew that he was right and resented him all the more for it. Tash meanwhile had been urging her not to take Qi so seriously.

Early in the 21st century, the drug industry had experimented with gene therapy with largely disastrous results. It turned out that gene and germline therapies rarely worked. While this was partly due to some major misunderstandings about the role of proteins and the nature of RNA and unused or so-called “junk DNA” in disease, the more profound problem was that climate change, the reconstruction of the earth’s environment through geoengineering – along with the old chemicals and new nanoparticles – were mounting new threats to human health. A handful of companies had learned the lessons of 30 years before and had opted to develop atomicallymodified organisms (AMOs), rather than genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

Exquisitely sensitive adjustments to the atomic structure of DNA looked to offer solutions to new environmental stresses and illnesses. GEnome was at the forefront of this work – including some amazing research developing six-letter DNA – and was rolling out a series of nanomechanical implants. Suyuan knew that Qi was also trying to domesticate a high-altitude caterpillar fungus, found only in Tibet and Bhutan, which strengthened the human respiratory system and made people more resistant to airborne diseases. The fungal remedy had a 2000-year

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history, but had become a fad in China after athletes, in the country’s national games in the early ‘90s, attributed their medals to its use.

By the 2030s, bionic retinas, eardrums, limbs and other organs, bones and tissues (from living and non-living material) were commonplace – even if they were not always successful. Suyuan chronicled each new scientific breakthrough with a mixture of awe and horror. Few of the inventions were covered by the rare remaining public health subsidies. Only the rich could afford them. Rich taxpayers resented providing social services to poor people who either could not afford – or who refused to accept – the HyPES, the Human Performance Enhancement Drugs.

Brussels, 2035: "If you wanted to cool down the planet," the brown haired woman with the gray streaks asked the old man across from her, where would you set off a volcano?"

He stroked his beard absently, "you’re back onto that again?"

"Yes," she said handing him his tea.

He spooned sugar into his cup, "I'm a physicist not a meteorologist," he cautioned. She nodded, waiting. "If you want to cool the whole planet you need a volcano somewhere near the equator.

Or," he looked at her thoughtfully, "if you don't want to make so much fuss, and eruption in the temperate zone will keep most of the cooling in the Northern Hemisphere."

"Where’s the advantage?" she asked.

"There are a hundred volcanoes along the Aleutian Islands and probably as many on the Kamchatka Peninsula. If the Russians or the Americans do it, it's on their own turf – and, remote at that! Unlike the tropical areas there's hardly anybody living there and it would be awfully hard to prove it was deliberate. Then, too, when the lava flow hits the shallow seas around the Aleutian Islands it would be like pouring cold water into a red-hot frying pan. You’d blast a helluva lot of sulfate a long way into orbit. That would really be getting bang for your buck!

And,” he went on, “a major eruption on the Kamchatka Peninsula or the Aleutian Islands or Iceland, for example, could deliver a triple whammy. Depending on the strength of the blast, you could get a couple of degrees of cooling for two or three years that would mostly stay in the north. At the same time, the acid rain would promote sulfate-reducing bacteria that would kill off the methane-generating microbes in bogs. You could slow down methane gas emissions from Arctic bogs for eight or 10 years. Finally, the cooling and ash would slightly inhibit sea level rise. Is all this in line with what your people have been telling you?" he asked.

"Pretty much," she hesitated, "so what's the downside?"

"Well, you could blow the Asian monsoon off course causing drought and famine across the top of the Indian subcontinent and maybe Northern Africa." The old man paused, "Did your people mention that?"

"It didn’t come up… Anything else?"

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"With a little luck you might create sandstorms in the Sahel that would blow dust over the Sargasso Sea, lower temperatures still further, and reduce the hurricane risk along the US Atlantic seaboard."

"Kind of hard to say no to that, isn't it?" she asked, taking her tea and standing up. The old man walked across the darkened room behind his desk, chuckling.

Post Election Day, 2035: By the time the baby boy was born – bearing almost no hint of his mother’s Ethiopian origins – Suyuan and Tash were no longer together. Tash’s acceptance of GEnome’s offer of two implants – one to enhance memory and the other to strengthen the baby’s tolerance to CO2 and ultra fine particulates – had led to the break-up. In June, the baby almost died when GEnome’s ‘respirocytes’ – the artificial blood cells that enhanced brain performance – overheated. It took particularly harsh chemotherapy to expunge the renegade cells and restore the little boy to health. The hospital blamed the competing implants. GEnome Corp. blamed the inadequate training of the public hospital’s surgical team.

Not long after, Suyuan had an early lunch with Qi – pizza at his favourite trattoria. His invitation was not unexpected and she assumed he wanted to talk about the baby and the fallout with Tash, and perhaps, to forestall any legal action. Possibly too, he wanted her to know that his company’s Tibetan bribery actions had been undertaken at a level well above him and that he had nothing to do with it. She knew that already.

After a brief and awkward meal, Qi, looking as elegant as ever, but strangely solemn, handed her a packet of papers and a flash drive. He said she would know what to do with them but asked that she wait a week before writing about the packet’s contents. He was returning to Vancouver, he said, and was going to resign from GEnome in a couple of days. She asked him what he planned to do next, but refrained from asking why he was resigning. The answer would be in the packet she knew.

Maybe go to Geneva for a while, perhaps to the World Health Organization, Qi mused aloud distractedly. He wanted to be out of China when she posted her blog entry. For some reason, when he awkwardly offered her his hand in the silvery sunlight outside the restaurant, she gave him a hug. Under his finery, Qi seemed thinner, she thought. She watched as he climbed into a taxi for the airport.

Suyuan hadn’t gotten far in reading the packet later that afternoon – heart pounding, feet up on the sofa and one hand wrapped around a cup of green tea – when she got a text message from Tash. Qi had been killed in a traffic accident just outside the Beijing airport. The taxi had been crushed by a large transport lorry. Qi and the two drivers were dead. The police had found Tash’s phone number in his pocket and had contacted her.

The journalist begged Alitash to leave immediately and go stay with mutual friends in the country. She would be in touch in a day or two, she said. Then Suyuan text-messaged the monorail station for a seat on the liner to Chengdu. She contacted a colleague at CINA and explained that she would be in Chengdu for a few days and to watch for messages.

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The papers and the documents on the flash drive took her almost the entire journey just to skim.

Then she went back and reread several sections.

GEnome had played a big role in Terra Forma’s development of nanoparticle arrays to absorb pollutants on ocean surfaces. It was also – despite its public insistence to the contrary – exploring the methods and locations for sequestering CO2 in deep-sea caverns. According to the company’s own papers, however, the scientific justification for these initiatives was hotly disputed.

Undisclosed technical reports argued that the project would never work. First, the artificial nanoscale microbes on the surface were slipping through the cells and DNA of the marine life around them. Confidential reports spoke of massive species extinctions and mutations.

Second, the cavern idea wouldn’t work. Under the intense pressure of the ocean above, the CO 2 in the caverns acted like helium in a carnival balloon. It was only a matter of time before the CO 2 escaped. One printed memo in the packet – stamped ‘confidential’ on every page and dated 2026– was a field report from Lake Nyos in Cameroon where a sequestration trial had gone horribly wrong. The night after the CO2 was sequestered, the gas seeped up from under the lakebed causing the lake water to flip and unleashing 100,000 to 300,000 tons of CO2. Heavier than air, the CO2 flowed down through two valleys, asphyxiating 1,700 villagers as well as thousands of livestock. The monitoring team couldn’t guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen below the oceans’ floor as well. The test had been secret and Suyuan found no indication that national officials had been contacted – before – or after.

But GEnome – and Terra-Forma – had a technology-sharing agreement with Atom-Sphere. And Atom-Sphere had a big problem disposing of the unexpectedly volatile wastes from its super nuclear power plants. If gases couldn’t be sucked into undersea caverns, encapsulated nuclear wastes might.

As she read on, Suyuan learned that Atom-Sphere’s Venetian blind project was also in difficulty.

The consortium couldn’t control the diffusion of nanoparticles in the stratosphere – the cause of increasing cancers and respiratory diseases on the ground. Worse, the stratospheric manipulations were exacerbating drought in Africa and causing erratic monsoons in Asia.

In the early 2020s, the American public had been close to a state of panic anticipating the upcoming hurricane season. Evangelists had stirred their elderly Florida congregations into a frenzy, preaching that the apocalypse would begin by wiping out their beachfront mortgages – and them along with it. Another “New Orleans” could kill hundreds of thousands, consume thousands of billions in reconstruction, and dash any hope that sitting politicians would get reelected. Under strong pressure from the US President, Terra-Forma reluctantly agreed to spray its experimental “carbon-catcher” microbes on the North Atlantic Gyro – the surface of the Sargasso Sea. At the urging of the other Superpowers, the consortium agreed to extend the experiment to all five ocean garbage patches. Qi’s papers drew the obvious link to the tragedy of the yacht found in the Indian garbage gyre. GEnome clearly knew that its consortium was at fault.

In 2021, Dr. Tony Wong’s expedition to commemorate the 600 th anniversary of Chinese explorers who had sailed to the southern tip of Africa and – although a matter of debate – on to

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circle the globe. Wong’s venture doubled as a bioprospecting expedition. As “Test-Tube Tony” sailed, the 15th-century styled Admiralty junk swept up vials of water to assay the species diversity. The scientists especially focused on the ocean gyres that corralled the world’s plastic flotsam and jetsam. Even in the Sargasso Sea, Wong had been astonished by the genetic diversity available in the first fathom beneath the surface. Using his bank of infamous genome sequencers, the scientist added a million novel genes (including new photoreceptor genes), and thousands of new species to the record books.

At the time, Suyuan had speculated that Wong – funded jointly by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Chinese Academy of Science – was looking for information about photosynthesis (hence collecting only close to the surface) and that the goal was to either farm the ocean as a food source if climate change rendered the world’s croplands barren – or to turn the new photosynthetic genes into land-loving organisms. Remembering her dinner in the restaurant with Qi and Inge, she searched for references to the plastic garbage patches. There were none. Yet, the decaying plastics also floated on - or just below - the ocean surface just like the photosynthetic genes test tube Tony was supposed to be looking for. Had Tony given up being the garbage takeout man or was he just watering his wine these days?

According to the papers, however, even then the DOE was distrustful of the risks of using iron filings to lower the earth’s temperature through iron fertilization. The Hong Kong scientist’s government backers wanted Tony to engineer new aquasystem-specific life-forms containing iron that could still nurture plankton and sequester CO2. Not only would the micro-organisms stick to their immediate habitat, the theory went, they could also be programmed to multiply only when sea level temperatures threatened to spawn hurricanes.

Much to the amazement of GEnome Corp and the broader Terra-Forma consortium, the trial had been a smashing success. But hurricane suppression in one place had only shifted the pressure either South or North. The Caribbean and Brazil had been devastated. Terra-Forma, in response, began experimentation with other microbes in Wong’s collection to construct similar life-forms better adapted to each ocean gyre.

It was an unending cycle. Passing on storms and exporting natural disasters to other regions made for indelicate politics. Terra-Forma’s manipulations on the ocean’s surface were also creating chaos for Atom-Sphere’s experiments in the stratosphere. As Suyuan read on, she discovered that the new genetic constructions – incorporating artificial nucleotides (not just A, C, G, T – but six-letter DNA combinations) – were leaking into the genomes of other species. One memo, which seemed to be a photocopy of a photocopy, from a consortia government relations specialist in the Brussels office, described the six letter life-forms as an “adventitious presence”.

The template for the hyped-up DNA was one of the most ubiquitous microbes in saltwater, Aerobic Anoxygenic Photoheterotrophic Bacteria (AAPB), an extraordinarily fast-growing little bug found in every ocean at almost every depth. The microbe had been virtually unknown until BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill when it was discovered to absorb and breakdown carbon in a way that prevented it from sneaking back to the surface as CO2. A second memo appended to the first admonished staff not to fall prey to the activist term “BPAAPB” - as in BSkyB. In a third memo, the Terra-Forma lobbyist summarized the likely environmental and political fallout... “Any

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mutation in BPAAPB,” she couldn't resist, “could transform the ecology of the seven seas in a matter of decades – and any leak of the ‘unfortunate incident’ would shut down Terra-Forma in days.”

Late that same year, alarmed by the cascading crisis and political pressures around them, the two consortia had held a meeting to try to resolve their mutual difficulties, Qi’s papers revealed. It was obvious from the papers that, despite a public appearance of cordial cooperation, tensions ran deep between the two consortia. Terra-Forma’s dominating partners were Chinese and USbased and had resolutely clung to the dollar despite Latin American and European pressures to at least balance the dollar with the euro.

Conversely, Atom-Sphere’s principles were European and Indian and that Consortium had sided with the euro. More important than the currency differences, the burgeoning power and resource concerns of India and China – including their interests in the Himalayan region’s resources – spilled over into the internal politics of the two industrial groups. On the eve of the meeting of the two consortia, a memo from a senior GEnome executive wondered if the Chinese and Indian companies would be able to overcome their “narrow cultural and nationalist histories to achieve the greater goal of inter-consortia profit.”

As Suyuan read on, it was clear that the companies had overcome their national biases. Climate change had always had an upside for somebody. At the very least, global warming would open the Northwest Passage to summer shipping. A warmer Arctic would make oil and gas exploration easier. That was important because the Arctic held a quarter of the planet’s remaining oil and gas reserves. Natural gas hydrates, ice-like crystal solids trapped below the permafrost, contain more energy than all conventional reserves of oil, natural gas and coal combined. Atom-Sphere’s research into nanoparticle arrays would allow Terra-Forma’s energy companies to gain access to the crystals economically, while the warm climate would make it possible for supertankers to transport the energy to market. New atomically-engineered forms of “BPAAPB” (despite BP’s legal threats, the term stuck) could facilitate the process. If the two consortia worked together, they would both profit and evade outside criticism.

From her reading, Suyuan was surprised that this arrangement didn’t seem to have been the consortia’s original strategy; it had been a risk-avoidance “Plan B” made up along the way. So much for the corporate conspiracy theories so beloved of civil society, she thought.

Although she searched, she couldn’t find an explicit acknowledgment anywhere that BANG was a failure. In fact, modest advances in solar cells and new materials were promising. But, the consortia had less interest in developing these areas. She did find consortium acknowledgment that the stratosphere would continue to deteriorate and that the new diseases – because of the direct impact on humans and on biological diversity – would be devastating.

Working on behalf of both consortia, GEnome was searching for novel repiratory and UVresistant human genes among high-altitude populations in the Andes and the Himalayas.

GEnome was also on the lookout for stress-tolerant crop and livestock genes that would allow industrialized countries to maintain their food security as the stratosphere degraded. There were exhortations from GEnome’s Chicago headquarters for its field scientists to “look to the

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peripheries,” especially to remote farming and pastoral zones where animals and plants were more “plastic.”

It was in reading about GEnome’s activities in the Himalayas that she came across Qi’s long history fighting schistosomiasis. Suyuan hadn’t realized that while Qi had worked in Ethiopia as a post-doc, he had championed the investigations of two Ethiopian scientists in using endod, a traditional herbal remedy, to kill the disease-causing snails. When the University of Toledo commandeered the Ethiopians’ work and patented the technology to protect Great Lake shipping from zebra mussel infestation, Qi had become disillusioned, and that’s when he joined the multinational life enterprise, GEnome Corp.

Because of his Chinese ancestry and his facility in Mandarin, Qi wound up not only in China but also in the Himalayas. When the two schistosomiasis strains merged below the Three Gorges Dam, the papers showed that Qi had warned his company and the Chinese government that a further cross with the Tibetan worm was possible and even probable. Heavily into HyPEs, GEnome had no interest in sick-people drugs – especially drugs for the poorest of the poor in Tibet and Ethiopia.

Concerned with their own political survival, the Chinese Communists were alarmed by the spread of the disease but seemed unable to focus on solutions. Nevertheless, the company tolerated Qi’s research on schistosomiasis because it could be appended to his high-altitude Tibetan research on the caterpillar fungus and on human genetic diversity. Qi had used his GEnome and Ethiopian connections to get Alitash posted to Beijing and, in the days before the quarantines, the Ethiopian diplomat had facilitated the transfer of endod germplasm between Ethiopia and Tibet. Suyuan saw a contract in which Qi committed GEnome and himself not to commercialize the endod material without Ethiopian approval. She wondered if GEnome ever knew about the agreement.

Two years ago, in 2033, Qi had succeeded in adapting Ethiopian endod to Chinese and Tibetan conditions and was able to extract a yet-more-potent toxin from the plant that destroyed the super schistosomiasis. Local villagers – who had worked closely with him in his research – could easily grow and process their own compound, applying it to the rivers and lakes around them with almost 100 percent effectiveness.

The packet contained a congratulatory letter from the same woman lobbyist in Brussels, telling the scientist that patent lawyers from the Chicago head office would be in touch shortly. There was another letter from Qi back to Chicago containing a copy of his contract not to patent the product. Suyuan had her answer. GEnome was furious. The company had no interest in producing the drug. In fact, GEnome was concerned that public pressure would be exerted to produce a low-cost royalty-free product. Qi was admonished not to discuss the matter with Chinese officials – or with the World Health Organization – but to leave follow-through to the company. From the correspondence, Suyuan could see that Qi kept up pressure on GEnome but his bosses put him off. Finally, GEnome had a ghost-writer prepare an article for an obscure, peer-reviewed journal. Qi had been irate because the journal was unlikely to be read by either the World Health Organization or Chinese researchers and because the title and abstract offered no

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indication of the utility of the research in preventing schistosomiasis. The article only gave the company “plausible denial” if it was ever accused of suppressing its discoveries.

Then, astonishingly, there was a memo from the head of GEnome’s synthetic biology unit suggesting that her scientists might be able to synthesize endod’s active ingredient and culture it in a highly-experimental fermentation process the company was already exploring. The process would allow the company to patent the process (side-stepping its commitment to Ethiopia), mass-produce the drug in a single facility in China, and – by adding any one of a number of standard “boosters” – GEnome could reduce the risk of the disease mutating around the active ingredient while potentially extending its patent monopoly into the next century. Most attractive of all, according to the Research Director, the company could easily persuade private US foundations to finance the whole enterprise as a “poor peoples’ drug.” The free money, the Research Director went on to explain, would bankroll GEnome’s basic research in several related – and more profitable – areas of synthetic biology. As long as the WHO could be convinced to endorse the “pure” synthesized drug over the uncertain efficacy and processing capabilities of the peasants’ whole plant endod, there was money to be made.

Qi had shot back a warning that the experimental fermentation process might fail and would only divert financial support from the assured and decentralized peasants’ process. Further, Qi argued that the mild impurities inevitable in field cultivation negated the need for synthetic “boosters” and had the huge advantage of eliminating distribution problems since most villages could grow their own medicinal plants or connect with a neighbour who could. Suyuan found no reply to Qi’s memo.

Sifting through the stack of e-mails, it was evident that Qi had been on the verge of resigning then, but was persuaded to stay on by his Chicago bosses with the offer of further research on the high-altitude fungal respiratory drug. Qi, as the journalist read, saw the drug as a rich man’s band-aid for a condition created by the company’s own participation in the geoengineering consortia. Despite this, the scientist had found the research fascinating and was keen to take it on.

There was a brief note from Qi to Wu; he had been the sperm donor for Tash’s baby. While they were together in Africa, he had convinced Tash that an African-looking child would face discrimination if the mother and baby were to remain in China. Although it was not illegal, regulations made it almost impossible for Africans to marry or receive artificial insemination from Chinese citizens. With his Canadian passport and GEnome connections, Qi was able to get around the bureaucracy. Qi apologized to Suyuan for the secrecy, writing that he and Tash were worried that she would resent his donation. His note also expressed remorse for pressuring Tash to accept the implants.

Suyuan realized that the pangs in her stomach weren’t from Qi’s involvement, but her fear for Tash and the baby.

Just after office hours and already dark, she got down from the monorail in Chengdu. Suyuan hastily addressed an envelope to Tash and dropped the packet of papers and flash drive into a mailbox and took a taxi directly to the GEnome research centre. The main gate was closed but

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there were several cars still in the driveway and she noted lights burning in the windows of the main building. A side gate had been left open.

Wu Suyuan walked through the small entrance and approached the offices. The surveillance cameras had no difficulty identifying her. The security guard pocketed his mobile and stepped purposefully from the shadows behind her. She didn’t hear his order to stop. Neither did she hear the warning shot from his Peiser stun gun. Nor the shot after that…

Postscript – December, 2035: The Nobel Peace Prize was unusually controversial that year.

Some members of the Norwegian Parliament refused to attend the ceremony. Terra-Forma, this year’s Nobel sponsor, had lobbied that the venerable honour be given to that great prophet of synthetic biology, Anthony Wong. Tony, still a force to be reckoned with in his mid-90s, was to receive the prize for his tireless efforts to end hunger by creating new photosynthetic organisms for both agriculture and aquaculture. Terra-Forma predicted that the age-old scourge of starvation would soon be vanquished.

Cynics noted that Tony Wong's award would mark the fourth time a Nobel Prize had gone to a scientist for vanquishing hunger. Given the precedents, the critics pronounced the Hong Kong scientist/entrepreneur a worthy recipient. Suyuan was less cynical about the whole thing and her blog on the event offered an uncharacteristic ray of hope for a brighter future. Having safely navigated Beijing’s bicycle paths, she was back in her flat - still painfully convalescing and unable to recall recent events clearly-- Suyuan watched – and listened – to the awards ceremony on her video screen. The ceremony was briefly interrupted by a news report that an earthquake along the Aleutian island chain was raising fears of volcanic eruptions. As a precaution, the US Navy was evacuating Inuit villagers in the vicinity of the larger volcanoes. Wu Suyuan marveled at how well her cochlear implants improved her hearing and wondered, once again, why she hadn’t agreed to GEnome’s magnanimous offer years ago.

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Aaaa

What Happened to Tomorrow?

Pageant, pendulum …or scythe? Our sense of ourselves tends to be chronological … marching in a pageant through history, climbing upward triumphantly, conquering nature and knowledge as we troop along… That humanity could falter, fall back, dally to sniff the daisies, or wander off the path, is not really in our calculations. Yet, most of us also attach our presumed forward momentum to a pendulum. Not only will humankind move ahead, but our socio-political compass swings us through manners, mores, memes, manifestos (political and poetic) and spiritual fashions arching between extremes – keeping us, we like to think, mostly “centred”.

There is no earthly reason – neither in history nor in sanity – why this should be so. The pendulum is also a scythe. Its outer arcs - witch burnings and holocausts, bank grabs and gang rapes -- cannot be dismissed as the norm’s unfortunate variations. The oft-heard triumphalist assertion that humanity has always found a solution so far – has no justification in reality. Bits and pieces of humanity – of us – have fallen off the map many times. Civilizations have crashed and burned. It has only been, literally, during my lifetime that we as a species have had the opportunity to achieve mass extinction. Looking back on the known calamities over our 7000 years or so of recorded history, why would we ever consider our last seven decades ducking bombs a sound actuarial basis for writing our collective insurance policy?

At the same time, some of my friends are too eager to believe that the end of the world is inevitable. In the first years of this millennia, we are immersed in dismal guessing games: stirred by earthquakes, tsunamis, Fukushima and BP oil spills, spurred by fresh warnings of civilizations’ economic or ecological collapse and stunned by An Inconvenient Truth about global warming, we’re reading the tea leaves from Mad Hatters’ Tea Party. Otherwise good people are left shaking their fists at Chemtrails in the sky believing they are being dumbed down or that, as absurd as it might seem, solar gamma ray bombardment or errant asteroids are about to flash us to Valhalla.

Strange, isn't it, how easily we can be convinced to look up when we should really be looking around? One under-employed judge took up the US taxpayers’ time to calculate that a large asteroid striking the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 25 miles per second would punch a column of superheated air (many times hotter than the sun) in front of it, which would incinerate everything in its orbital path before the asteroid crunched through the earth’s crust.ii The resulting explosion would blanket the entire earth in fiery debris, melting the ice caps, and shutting down photosynthesis, eliminating at least a quarter of humanity in the first 24 hours.

The rest of us would follow along smartly in a matter of days. Mantras and microchips would offer no defense – and the periphery would go as quickly as the metropolis.

Others tell us not to worry. Even in the case of asteroids, we have since been assured, technology can do something. Solar telescopes and nuclear warheads mounted on space stations might be able to see the asteroid far enough out to blast the celestial rock to smithereens before it could rain on our parade. Or perhaps nanotechnology could offer us a tiny alternative: “a small satellite that could deliver self-assembling nanobots to the surface of an asteroid” converting it

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“into harmless, and possibly profitable, raw materials for space-based colonies.”iii Like the ancient magi, asteroids could be bearing gold, we are advised. Earth’s original gold, platinum and palladium mostly dissolved in the molten iron of our planets earliest days, so most of our precious metals now are the gift of massive solar rocks.iv v So, at almost $2000 an ounce,vi bring on the asteroids!

Thankfully, most of us dismiss these paranoias but we should be less sanguine about nano and nuclear deterrents – even for stellar stones. Our political and practical capacity to manage the 23,000 nuclear missile stockpile, after all, is not exactly confidence-building. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – when Russia and the US threatened to pull the trigger (and the plug) on everybody – the US Defense Secretary judged the risk of annihilation to be about one in six. His boss, President Kennedy, put the odds closer to one in three or one in two.vii Undaunted, they still rattled their sabers over humanity’s head.

Modern times? Even after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 the USA and many other rich countries were prepared to end life on this planet before acquiescing to a political regime – the USSR – already on its deathbed. As recently as 1995, the world narrowly avoided catastrophe when Russian monitors mistook a Norwegian weather rocket for a US missile attack and it was left to Boris Yeltsin, Russia's unstable president, to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. viii Are we now too wise and well informed to make this mistake? Is there any risk that we might overreact to terrorism or climate change and imperil humanity once more? Is it possible that the same governments that filled the stratosphere – and plumed the oceans - with a thousand atomic tests a few decades ago have learned so little that they will consider spraying the oceans with iron filings and filling the sky with sulfate particles geoengineering the planet to avoid climate change rather than risk upsetting corporations and consumers today?

In any case, Internet-wrecking viruses and nuclear weapons are, reasonably, realities we have to deal with; but asteroids are undoubtedly more damaging to our slumber than to our stratosphere.

China Sundown is filled with what are, retrospectively, desperate technological fixes.

Throughout the story, the basis for humanity’s smug somnambulance in the face of social disasters is science. Science will solve the problem. Is this unfair? What of the many other lenses through which we can – and must - contemplate the future: class struggle, the clash of religions and cultures, patriarchy, ability/disability, the exigencies of geography and climate, the capricious diffusion of water, energy, soils, and minerals, the battlefields of sovereignty and ideology – or simply the manifestations of human virtues and vices? The exponential growth of human knowledge and the consequential explosion of new technologies may be just another – possibly distorting – view.

In China sundown, policy-makers and other so-called realists have given up on social justice solutions and organized social change and have decided to throw their weight behind the alchemy that pretends to turn the arsenic of oligopoly into the elixir of silver (techno) bullets.

Rather than confront today’s power elites and the immediate causes of injustice, people like Qi Qubìng opine profoundly (over pizza and after a day of pious plunder), it is more realistic to

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advance humanity via the incremental wealth that could be achieved through new technology transfers. There will also be “pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die!”

The “aid” community, too, turns to technology to achieve social justice in the South: We no longer need to “develop” – or even to plan – we only need to bankroll the trickle-down transfer of technology. The antidote to illness is genomics research; world hunger can be sated with more money for biotech research; the cure for global warming is geoengineering; Synthetic Biology is the answer to Peak Oil; the reply to the “democratic deficit” is Twitter; and the end of poverty will come through nanotechnology. And if there are failures, it is because we lost faith in our manifest technological destiny.

Hot tips: One of the maxims in China sundown is that we are in a time of exponential technological change: even as climatologists tell us that there could be a “tipping effect” that could render the collapse of an ecosystem irreversible and as much as medical researchers warn us that avian influenza or some other disease could wander out of a Laotian village and “tip” into the human bloodstream and start a global pandemic, other scientists are forecasting a technological “tipping” that could speed the pace of change beyond recognition. If that weren’t enough, the real concern is that these “tips” seem determined to “tip” – more or less – together.

Because these seemingly independent events come from disassociated places, sparked and recorded in unconnected ways – governments and societies have trouble detecting the pattern.

Back in 1969, Michael Crichton famously noted that an E. coli bacterial cell, under perfect (and, therefore, impossible) conditions, multiplies every 20 seconds. At this exponential rate, if the entire earth were its feedstock, E. coli would equal the size and weight of the planet in 24 hours.

However, E. coli’s growth wouldn’t really bother its last living consumables until a few minutes before midnight when a few people, on the undigested half, might notice the stars being crowded out along the night horizon. By then, it would be too late.ix iColi? More recently, the geeky guru, Ray Kurzweil (who proudly chugalugs 250 pills a day and thinks he just might live forever), pointed out that the technologies of human beings, over the past century, have begun resembling E. coli in their exponential growth.x Thus, in an analogous imagery, the imperceptible changes of three decades ago may have culminated into perceptible change only three years ago, were a cause for concern only two years ago, galvanized political debate only last year and overwhelms our society today. This, according to Kurzweil, represents the current state of technological transformation. It also pretty well sums up our century’s slow response to the Industrial Revolution and the pace at which governments are suddenly moving to contemplate geoengineering as a Plan B. response to the climate crisis.

The notion of societal control over technological change seems increasingly improbable -- even whimsical. Lord Martin Rees, the President of the UK’s Royal Society, in a 2003 book, bet his readers that sometime before 2020 at least one million people would die as the result of a technological mishap. Then, he went further to wager that the likelihood of humanity surviving the 21st century is only 50-50.xi Exponential technological growth is played down in the trend line scenario but its implications are discussed in greater detail within the context of technological convergence at the nano-scale

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– the "Little BANG Theory" debated by Wu and Qi in the trend lines story. Is it possible for society to control technological change in responsible and just ways? Before exploring civil society’s possibilities to really change the course in the alternative stories that unfold later in the book, let us first make an overview of the key trends in China sundown’s staying the course story – and then dig deeper into the most prominent technology (BANG), governance (GANG) and environment (GONE) issues.

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Aaa What

is…

Virtually everything in China Sundown has already happened with the exception that no one has contemplated blowing up a volcano and, while at least 13 ocean fertilization experiments have already taken place along with some modest stratospheric experiments, none of these has yet led to major restructuring in the sky or on the sea. (Well … beyond the industrial interventions that led to global warming and are, obviously, changing both the acidity of the oceans and the particulates in the stratosphere.) Everything else - scientific and technological - has already been commercialized or has been proven doable. All the projected social impacts in the story have also already happened. Except that there is no formal Terra-Forma or Atom-Sphere consortia at this time. Nevertheless, the levels of corporate concentration and government/corporate surveillance exist already. The corporate concentration figures given for 2035 are real in 2011.

The pests and diseases -- for people and crops -- are underway today. The great garbage patches of the five oceans are real. However, although there is considerable work underway to develop synthetic microbes and algae to produce food or energy or cleanup garbage and GHG emissions, I'm not aware of any intentional releases into the environment at this time. The only thing really new ‘under the sundown’ is that I've extended the existing politics and technologies along their natural trajectory to the year 2035 - without enhancing any of the real and current statistical information. Some readers, I know, are sufficiently well informed to realize this. Most readers -including policymakers, I regret, will be surprised to learn that what they thought was a theoretical look at the future is little more than a recitation of the improbable present.

BANG: China sundown suggests that biology, physics, and chemistry are coming together in a scientific singularity (BANG!) that reduces everything to atoms and molecules. The message for civil society is that government regulators and industry see nature as reducible to (and marketable at) its lowest elemental denominator. Corporate consortia like Atom-Sphere and Terra-Forma are the predictable result of this kind of thinking. We need to look at technologies in more detail, and do it in a framework that attempts to understand the science, corporate power and political landscapes in an integrated way – what the ETC Group has dubbed “the Little BANG Theory”xii. Let's look at two of the underlying technologies that permeate the trend line story.

Nanotechnology: This tiny – but very real – technology looms in the background from the moment Wu Suyuan attends a seminar, “Technology Trumps Trade” during the WTO ministerial in Hong Kong in 2005. Panelists at the seminar contend that nanotechnology will slash the demand for raw materials and substantially reduce international commodity trade as molecular manufacture takes over. This seminar was held, hosted by the South Centre, where Silvia Ribeiro and Jim Thomas of ETC Group presented a study on commodities and nanotechnology, just as described.xiii In China sundown, the Technology Transfer Treaty is pushed by the superpowers because of their progress in the molecular self-assembly of nanomaterials in manufacture. There's much more about the Technology Transfer Treaty in the alternative scenarios ahead. Is such a Treaty likely? One of the most contentious and important areas of debate in the Climate Change negotiations – through Copenhagen to Durban – is around technology transfer. Industrialized countries are offering the global South access to environmentally beneficial (they claim)

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technologies as long as proprietary technologies are protected. Unfortunately, but understandably – the South seems eager to take on any and all new technologies. We are, already, well on our way to the TTT. In the trend line story, nano formulations of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are sprayed into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. That’s not happening. But, these same chemical compounds – as nano sunscreens – are in the shops today. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, one nanotech start-up was offering to use its proprietary nanoparticle arrays to soak up ocean oil pollution (the particles, purportedly, absorb 40 times their weight in oil) – or, at least, to help detoxify wildlife.xiv At the end of March 2006, 77 people in Germany became suddenly ill – and six were hospitalized – with respiratory ailments traced to an aerosol spray for cleaning bathroom tiles and toilets. The cleaning agent, “Magic Nano” was said to be the nanoscale formulation of old chemicals previously approved by governments. “Magic Nano” was hastily taken off the shelves and the nanotech industry brilliantly insisted that the product wasn't really "nano" at all – just a macro-formulation taking advantage of nano’s presumed lustre. With no commonly agreed-upon definition - or even an accepted method of measuring – it was technically and legally impossible to know if the tiny particles in the product were a problem. The nanotech industry held its collective breath praying that none of its several hundred other nanoparticle products would flush their new little industry down the toilet.xv In 2009, seven women fell ill working in a sweatshop in China spraying an adhesive on polystyrene; two of the women died. While there are many uncertainties around the case, autopsies revealed that the two women had manufactured nanoparticles in their lungs. xvi At the time of this writing, only one nanotech product – a washing machine using silver nanoparticles as an antibacterial agent – has been subjected to government regulations anywhere in the world.

Synthetic biology (aka nanobiotechnology): In China sundown, a luxury yacht is towed into Chennai harbour after its passengers suffocate – ostensibly as a result of some unidentified microbial pollutant from the Indian Ocean garbage gyre. The story darkly hints that a deliberately released synbio organism has bled into some ubiquitous ocean microbe and is spreading out of control in all seven seas. This hasn’t happened – and may never happen– but the scientific interest in modifying the biological surface of the ocean is real. As the trend line story says, US scientists really have received funding from the US Department of Energy to collect photosynthetic genes from ocean microbes around the world, including, specifically, in the Atlantic’s Sargasso Sea.xvii And “red tides” of naturally occurring, aerosolized neurotoxin particles do sporadically invade the throats and lungs of Florida vacationers sometimes causing serious health problems.xviii One of the side effects of the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010was the discovery of AAPB (aerobic anoxygenic photoheterotrophic bacteria), a little creature that grows about five times faster than normal ocean bacteria and absorbs carbon, storing it in the form of refractory dissolved organic matter so that it can’t return to the atmosphere as CO2. About 95% of the ocean’s organic matter is refractory. AAPB is ubiquitous in every ocean at every depth and latitude and may amount to 7% of all ocean microbes. xix A great candidate for the synthetic biologists at Terra-Forma.

Synthetic biologists see life as a matter of designing the pieces and connecting them together.

Scientists in Florida and California, for example, have gone beyond the natural DNA genetic sequences found in all of Earths living organisms (the four nucleotide bases designated by the

60

letters A,C,G,T), by adding a fifth and sixth letter (bases) and possibly, as many as a dozen letters. Twelve-letter DNA could perhaps give scientists more unnatural biodiversity in a test tube than there is natural biodiversity in the Amazon.

But in synthetic biology, there's more than one way to make a cat... Or something else? Synbio scientists can build their own DNA but, they can also teach the cell’s machinery to read DNA differently. Scientists at Cambridge University, at the beginning of 2010, announced that they had persuaded cells to read DNA’s four-letter nucleotides in sets of four rather than the customary sets of three. Instead of having just 20 amino acids from which to build different proteins, this more literate DNA could theoretically have 276 amino acids to mix and match, with the potential to construct unbelievably different life forms.xx ETC Group calls this “extreme genetic engineering.”xxi More on this later.

Aside from new technologies, the trend line story also proposes a number of health and environmental threats. China sundown assumes a gradual decline in human health along with general environmental deterioration closely related to global warming. Here are some of the key trends…

Climate chaos: The threat to the Greenland glaciers, the risk that the warm Atlantic current will drift offshore turning Western Europe into another Siberia, and the likelihood of more ferocious hurricanes and sea-level rise are all well-documented and offer no surprises for readers. The story's assertion that the next decade will see a fivefold increase in extreme weather (hydrometeorological) events might seem overdone. The truth is that this has already happened.

Since the 1970s, the severity of extreme weather events has grown by a factor of five and anyone who thinks the pace will lessen in the decades ahead needs to get out more.xxii China sundown treats global warming as the central feature in everything else that’s happening.

While it would be hard to find challengers to the reality of global warming these days (other than the Lone Star State and Starship Enterprise), some of us would disagree with its centrality. We should be suspicious. It is increasingly in the interest of many in industry and government to focus society on climate change in order to take advantage of Naomi Klein's well-documented "shock doctrine", i.e. using the sense of crisis and panic to exercise the political authority needed to make massive socioeconomic and environmental renovations. As dangerous as climate change certainly is, the solution is not a technological “fix.” Even if there was no global warming, we would still be suffering from massive losses in biodiversity and cultures and a terrible decline in our soils, water and air. The need to reduce consumption and to share resources equitably cannot be set aside.

Geoengineering: The most visible technological concern facing Wu Suyuan, as she and Alitash make their way to 2035, genuinely comes from geoengineering. Less than a week after the first draft of China sundown was completed, New Orleans and an impressive stretch of the Mississippi Gulf coast were destroyed by hurricanes. By obvious accident, I had just written that exact scenario. (Niclas Hällström, my colleague at the What Next Exchange quickly sent me an e-mail suggesting I stop writing!)

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That I "lucked out" on one hurricane doesn't mean I'm right about – or even believe – that geoengineers might adopt an economical Plan B by starting earthquakes that, in turn, ignite volcanic eruptions. The darkest story in China sundown is that the BA NG members opt for the anonymity of so-called "natural" volcanic eruptions in order to blast sulfates into the stratosphere to lower temperatures, reduce methane emissions, and suppress sealevel rise. There is absolutely no evidence that anybody is thinking in these terms. It is pure fiction. But, it is not entirely nonsensical as scientists begin lining up (especially in the UK and USA) to request research grants to test out stratospheric geoengineering scenarios.

On August 31, 2011, John Vidal, the Guardian's environment reporter par excellence, warned that scientists at three UK universities (Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol) had £1.6 million in government funding to try out a 1 km high tube to see how it could pump saltwater into the air.

The tubing will be held aloft by one or more huge helium balloons. The UK government woon’ disclose the date or location of the trial other than to say it will be sometime before the end of 2011. The test doesn't break the UN moratorium against geoengineering and probably won't cause any damage unless the tubing comes down on somebody but the ultimate goal is to suspend a 20 km high tube held up by balloons the size of football fields that could blow sulfates into the stratosphere and do a serious job of blocking sunlight. It's hard to write science fiction these days.xxiii There is much to worry about. The year 2010 tried to match 2005 for disasters -- the tragic earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and China and the eruption in Iceland. The volcano/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan on March 11 doesn't bode well for 2011. Post Fukushima we found that 88 of the world's 442 operating nuclear power plants are built on seismic faults. xxiv Fiction is seldom stranger than truth. Cambridge University volcanists predict that a Yellowstone Park supereruption could drop global temperatures 1 °C or much more. That’s the good news. They also predict that North America would be blanketed in several centimetres of ash. World agriculture would collapse and oceans would acidify. In 2005, the Geological Society of London opined that a generic super-eruption could devastate an area the size of Europe.xxv What is certain is that warmer temperatures in arctic zones are shifting the pressure of glaciers on volcanoes and increasing the likelihood of eruptions.xxvi Is geoengineering real? Yes. Will cooler heads prevail? It's hard to know who is on whose side anymore. Climate techno-fixes are very attractive to polluting industries that can win both government grants and concessions developing the techno-fixes while still arguing that there is no need to retool the economy or dampen consumerism since a techno-fix is on the way. In other words, neoliberalism can have the planet and eat it too!

Pandemics: The multiple threats to health in China sundown are not exaggerated. The two strains of schistosomiasis have, in fact, converged below the Three Gorges Dam and the caterpillar fungus and the canine parasite do lurk in the Tibetan highlands above, but the parasite has not merged with schistosomiasis. Are such mergers fanciful? Our scientific understanding of what is possible is changing every day. The first known transfer of disease from poultry to people was in the 1970s but at least 30 swine, poultry, etc. diseases have crossed the divide from livestock to humans and more are inevitable. Until 2010, it was assumed that plant viruses can’t infect animals and vice versa and then French scientists in Marseille found RNA from the pepper

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mild mottle virus in the faeces of patients.xxvii It is also true, as the story reports, that Africa’s endod berries are a defence against schistosomiasis and have been used by Ethiopian women for generations. It is also true that two Ethiopian scientists, working with the women, advanced endod as a major step in disease prevention around the world but that the University of Toledo (Ohio, USA) took out two patents on endod that harshly curtailed Ethiopian research. When asked for license access to the patents, the University told the Ethiopians they would have to pay $25,000 for each patent. The Ethiopian scientists received the Right Livelihood Award in the Swedish Parliament but schistosomiasis remains a major disease threat.xxviii In China Sundown, GEnomics is keen to exploit rare DNA found in Tibetan populations. This is true. A study led by the Beijing Genomics Institute and published in Science in 2010 identified a particular genetic mutation as a key to Tibetans’ high-altitude adaptability. xxix Among other possibilities, the researchers hope to develop new drugs for heart disease.

The potential for a global pandemic is now - and almost perpetually - high according to the World Health Organization – but the threat may never come from schistosomiasis or from Southeast Asia. Whether it is schistosomiasis or mutating 6-letter DNA, genetically engineered SAR11 microbes or something else, is not the key issue. The world is faced with a cancer – and chemical – epidemic. Even though modest steps have been taken to curb the use of carcinogenic chemicals, the pace at which new chemicals enter the marketplace overwhelms the capacity of government regulators to track them. Then, too, many of the banned chemicals still show up in the South and many other chemicals continue to have an accelerating impact on our health and the environment and will do so for several more decades before their presence recedes. There is, in truth, a chemical war being waged.

Health erosion: As China sundown suggests, there is real evidence of health deterioration in both poor and industrialized countries. The stature of US women who matured in the 1970s is marginally lower than that of their counterparts in previous decades. Life expectancy in subSaharan Africa may have drop to 45 years in 2010 – the same age as in the 1950s.xxx In 38 countries around the world, life expectancy is decreasing.xxxi By 2005, there were more obese than hungry people on the planet. More than half of all Americans may have diabetes or prediabetes by 2020 according to a 2010 US government report.xxxii Despite growing obesity, newborn weights in the United States have shown a modest but steady and unexplainable decline since the 1990s.

Can the pharmaceutical industry help us? No, according to Thomas Lonngren, the just retired head of the European Medicines Agency in London. Of the $85 billion spent annually on research by global pharmaceutical companies, about $60 billion is wasted, says Lonngren. In a farewell seminar a few days before his departure, Lonngren said that only six to nine significant new drugs are developed every year. Almost all research goes into developing “me-too” drugs that attempt to replicate the profitability of another company’s pill. xxxiii Wu Suyuan recalls her interview with the CEO of a Swiss pharmaceutical company extolling the potential for drugs for "well-people". This interview was to have taken place in the 2020s but, in

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reality, the CEO of Roche pharmaceuticals made this proposition in an article in the Wall Street Journal in 1977. In another Wall Street Journal interview in 2011, a later Roche CEO happily pointed out that researchers targets only 150 diseases but there are potentially 2 million diseases to be exploited.xxxiv Corporate concentration: In China sundown, governments continue to represent power, but they act more like the agents of multinational industry. Wu Suyuan argues that the trade, technology and financial linkages between industry and government make it impossible for governments to operate independently. This is the "gang" in the story. The scenario may seem extreme, but it is not.

In fact, this description seems modest. Corporations are already treated as “persons” under law and are capable – and do – make “treaties” (contracts) with governments. Many bilateral treaties involving the United States, for example, guarantee rights for corporations that would have been unacceptable three decades ago. Many of these treaties oblige governments to defend corporate rights and do not preclude the exercise of force.

As the size of government shrinks, government dependence on corporate information – especially technical information – increases. Because technologies converging at the nano-scale can drastically reduce the demand for conventional raw materials, the importance of the sovereign state as the “owner” of natural resources declines and government dependence on industry rises. Much state power, after all, rides on its gatekeeper role – its ability to grant or withhold agricultural, mineral, fossil or forest resources.

Government influence has also depended on its control of transport corridors. In a world where manufacturing is dominated by molecular self-assembly and the use of quantum mechanics to alter the properties of the elements of the Periodic Table, government authority over transport – and matter – becomes moot. BANG and its attendant corporatism is already with us.

Planetary properties: Much is made in the trend line story of the link between Atom-Sphere and Terra-Forma with the superpowers. China sundown argues that the need to control powerful new technologies forces governments and corporations to work together more closely than ever.

This trend is already clear in the patents granted for nanotechnology. Decades ago, the United States government allowed patents on newly discovered elements in absolute violation of patent law. (Two chemical elements have, in fact, been patented in the US: Americium and Curium.)

More recently, patents have been granted in the US on the nano-scale use of literally dozens of elements used in any of a dozen industries. For the first time in history, exclusive monopoly patents are being permitted that could cut across the entire economy. Even in the “old” biotech field, sweeping patents are being granted that give corporations exclusive monopoly over DNA sequences that could be important to abiotic stress (e.g., climate change) resistance in plants.

Because the same DNA sequences appear in virtually every flowering species, the patents confer monopolies over all of agriculture. The world’s six largest seed and chemical companies together control almost all of the patented sequences. Politically, of course, these claims are indefensible and it is possible that the companies – Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow – could be forced to abandon the claims through legal challenges. But corporatism makes this

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unlikely. The number of annual patents granted in the world has more than doubled from 900,000 in 1985 to 1.9 million in 2008.xxxv SuperChina: That the United States will have to share its superpower status with China (and maybe India, Brazil and the European Union as well - does not, now, seem to be much of a revelation but when I started writing this book in 2005, China’s ascendant superpower status was far from popular wisdom. In 2004,China was the world’s fifth largest economy. It ranked number two in 2010 and Barak Obama was greeting President Hu Jintao at the White House – not like an emperor receiving tribute as did his predecessor the last time Hu came calling – but as an equal.xxxvi In just five years the Chinese economy had doubled. By the 2030s, even the cautious Economist thinks the size of China’s economy will surpass the USA. xxxvii Wallmarket: That the superpowers work together with industry consortia to draw a “medical curtain” between themselves and the world’s impoverished regions is also not surprising. A conference on state security held in Leeds, UK, in late 2009 offered a stunning description of the new walls being built to keep the South out of the North. We’ve all heard about the Israeli wall in, around and through Palestine but the scale and scope of some of the other projects is amazing.

The US Department of Homeland Security, for example, has partnered with a Boeing subsidiary; to set up the $8 billion Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) designed to keep back Mexican immigrants. SBInet is a 3,000 km triple-layered fence including 400 25-metre tall towers (like cell phone masts) and an array of remote-controlled optical and infrared cameras.

When completed, the towers will sport a powerful X-band ground surveillance radar along with acoustical and vibration sensors scattered down the line that can detect humans 10 km before they reach the “Land of the Free”. Additional magnetic sensors will pick up on both vehicles and weapons and SBInet will be able to call in predator drone air vehicles to track or attack as needed.xxxviii Across the pond, a Tel Aviv company, IAI, has been hired by the EU's TALOS project (Transportable Autonomous Patrol for Land Border Surveillance) to construct a frontier, which prefers tiny tank-like, bug-eyed robots, scattered arrays of sensors and aerial drones to static fences. (Anyway, these days in the EU, it’s hard to be sure where to place the border.) xxxix Not all the new walls are strictly north/south barricades. For example, India is cutting itself off from Bangladesh by building a 3,400 km 3-metre-high concrete and barbed-wire wall. In other cases, the walls are being built in the South to give the North a little breathing space (or, perhaps, “plausible denial” if there are problems later). Before the 2011 rebellion, everybody’s pal, Libya was spending €300 million (clearly not its own money) to keep sub-Saharan Africans – not so much out of Libya as out of Italy. The desert border will be awash in high-tech sensors, acoustical monitors and drone aircraft. xl Will NATO look the other way to allow the drone aircraft to keep the poor at bay?

See-through societies The trend that should raise the greatest alarm in China sundown, however, relates to the control of democracy and the death of dissent. Wu Suyuan makes her break from News Corp. after the 2005 London subway bombings when she recalls that people in the UK had posted just about everything about their lives on Flickr.com or one of the many digital map sites. Wu Suyuan may be alarmed that Flickr.com is doing the security forces’ work for them, but, a year after the London bombings, everybody’s home video was popping up on Youtube.comxli at 10 hours of uploaded new videos every minute and network TV was panicking

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that “real” Internet will blow “reality” TV out of the water. Today 48 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.xlii Progress is a wonderful thing.

BBM vs. BMW: When riots broke out in London in the summer of 2011 and then spread to Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere, the British media talked about the effectiveness of the sometimes-protesters, sometimes-looters using BBM ("Blackberry messenger") to coordinate their attacks and avoid police. As effective as BBM might have been, it was no match for the BMW crowd that could review half a million CCTV (closed circuit TV) surveillance cameras and several million cell phone cameras to identify culprits. And that was just the video. Social media is also security media. It's just depends on who's paying attention.

After less than five years on the Net, Skype – the voice-over-Internet “telephone” – boasted 276 million members, with as many as 12.5 million online at any given moment. Now, Skype has 663 million members with 25 million online the last time I looked.xliii Many think Skype is the most secure way to communicate. If they’re not wrong now, they will be shortly. In the first days after the fall of Tripoli, the new government stumbled upon Muammar Qaddafi’s security intelligence facility where, supported by the best Western technologies money could buy, Qaddafi loyalists tracked dissidents on Skype, Twitter and everything else. The old regime’s capacity to monitor the Internet was astonishing. xliv Predators, pundits and PR firms, we all know, can prowl the Internet and find out just about anything they want. Back in 2005, we hadn't invented the term "social networking". We were all surprised that MySpace (then with 220,000 new members a dayxlv) let people volunteer their most intimate factoids and quickly became the second most popular web site on the planet, after the indomitable Google. It was sold to Wu’s old boss, Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.xlvi By 2008, however, MySpace had to yield the top social networking spot to Facebook, a still more sophisticated website that, in mid-2011, claimed 750 million users.xlvii As the Economist points out, if Facebook were a nation, it would be the worlds third most populous.xlviii Whatever doesn’t make it into Facebook or MySpace can probably be found on one of the 900,000 blogs per day being posted on the Internet and, astonishingly, read by 346 million people regularly. xlix … Or by the140 million tweets tapped out daily by Twitter’s 200 million members.l We've already gone way beyond electronic surveillance. We can also be monitored biologically.

In the 90s, the media was bemused when Bill Clinton visited a UK pub and his handlers tactfully purloined the pint glass he had used as a precaution from someone taking a swab and capturing the US president’s DNA (better late than never!). Today, the UK Human Tissue Act of 2004 makes it illegal for anyone to steal another’s DNA. li But, as Qi Qubìng cynically claims in China sundown, as fast as privacy laws are erected, neuroses, narcissism or peer pressure will have us surrendering everything for a pittance – or however much we can afford to pay. By 2011, 400,000 people had paid $100 each for a kit that would let them send their DNA (via a cheek swab) for analysis to IBM’s Genographic Project.

Apparently, if Big Brother wants to know something about us, he need only ask – or offer to charge us for taking the information.

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Although Wu Suyuan stresses ubiquitous surveillance in the trend line story, little mention is made of the rise of “massively-destructive individuals.” Government’s response to this threat is described in the alternative courses ahead.

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Aaa Who

cares?

A case can easily be made that speculation about “what’s coming” is irrelevant. Its “what is” that counts – and getting from “what is” to “what we want” that is important: Crystal ball gazing is wasteful voyeurism. The range of human-made and naturally arising variables is too vast to analyze usefully. After all, do you really care if a silver bullet or a paper ballot kills you? Will Chinese hegemony change the outcome of the planet so differently from US or Indian hegemony? A nano-nuclear war could bomb us to barbarism, or some global ecophagy could devour the ecosystem, or we could all slowly smother in a cloud of toxic particles, tweeting one last warning to galactic hitchhikers before slumping over our smartphones.

It is undeniably true that any one (and more) of these catastrophes could easily befall humanity anytime in the next 30 years. In fact, it seems more conceivable everyday that some kind of “tipping” could send the ice caps tail-spinning into liquid H2O, or that an accident with a particle accelerator today, or a molecular assembler tomorrow could see our planet winking out of existence in a matter of hours. But, as the saying goes, we are more likely to exit with a whimper than a bang.

Is civilization really in danger? Would we know if it was? “Exiting” is not a standard feature in the Homo sapien repertoire. Civilizations don’t undergo cataclysmic collapse, we tell ourselves. Declining societies merge or morph into something else. Historians, after all, are still debating whether it was lead water pipes, despotism, nepotism, climate change on the Asian steppes, soil erosion, or the use of Hun mercenaries that felled the Roman Empire. The only thing they are sure about is that the Empire didn’t crumble quickly – and while a few at the time predicted its departure (and somebody was predicting its departure all of the time!), most of Rome’s subjects never knew it happened.

Neither historians nor environmentalists can state with surety how the Mayan Empire devolved in the Yucatan, or decipher all the factors that pushed Europe into dominance in the Indian Ocean five centuries ago. The American Revolution, historians tell us – that great struggle for democracy – took place with one-third of the citizenry supporting it, one-third against it and onethird not entirely aware it was happening. The chain of events that ultimately led to World War I will be debated long past its centenary.. The rise and decline of civilizations are complicated affairs.

Unless hit by an asteroid or some massive technological breakdown – the cause of humanity’s demise on the cosmic coroner’s death certificate is likely to be the gradual spin-off effects of exacerbated inequality and/or irresponsible consumption. In a historical context, humanity’s (and Earth’s) deterioration seems rapid and unrelenting but to those of us who suffer the slings and sorrows of daily living – busy and bemused – our devolution is unclear.

My friend Brian K. Murphy made a speech in April 2005, in which he told of a breakfast conversation with his son. The young man concluded that there wasn’t much reason to worry about the future because the world was coming to an end anyway. His dad allowed that the boy was probably right, but if he weren’t, it would be wise to have a Plan B. It is risky to draw cataclysmic conclusions: After all, Paul Ehrlich got The Population Bomb wrong, the Paddock

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Brothers were wrong about Famine‘75 and the Club of Rome may have got a little ahead of themselves with The Limits to Growth. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior didn’t see the point in conserving fossil fuels since the biblical “second coming” was imminent anyway.

On the other hand, techno-optimists confidently insist that projections of the demise of the human species are premature. Science, they believe, has always managed to find a solution.

Techno-optimism is, at least, a very dubious base upon which to build the future. Humanity has only had the capacity to utterly (and rapidly) destroy itself since the advent of atomic weapons.

That we have somehow managed to keep it together so far is hardly optimistic for the next generation, much less for the rest of this wobbly century. The likelihood (or not) of global ecophagy is not a good basis for planning.

Collapse vs. “slide-effects:” The world is probably not coming to an end – at least, not quickly.

But, it is very likely heading for a major collision from which some societies will not survive.

Plan B is a good idea. Our future is not necessarily – or even likely – black or white.

Half a world away from Brian Murphy in Canada, Simon Terry in New Zealand talks about the need for a Plan C – a contingency plan. If a Plan B soft-landing cannot be assured, a rational society would also develop a plan that provides for the world to go through a deep readjustment.

This may require a focus on conserving what we can out on the periphery of the metropolitan powers. Our choice is not between success (the triumphal continuation of the pageant) and failure (nuclear annihilation or environmental disintegration).

Rightly or wrongly, many historians continue to argue that European civilization bounced back after five centuries of stagnation or decline (roughly between the fifth and 10 th centuries CE).

Meso-American and Andean civilizations, historians also tell us, have also fared poorly over the last five centuries. Civilization in the Middle East has ebbed and flowed from the heights of Assyria BCE, declining thereafter only to rise again with Muslim civilization CE and then declining again, well before the formal demise of the Ottoman Empire. Does the "Arab Spring" signal a new beginning?

The notion that civilizations cycle through history – rising and falling – isn't especially appealing- especially if you live in one that's on the downward slope. Empires have come and gone, it could be argued, for all kinds of reasons but it may not be wise to equate the survival of empires with the success of civilizations. Just because the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, etc. hit a rough patch doesn't automatically mean that their subjugated populations didn't carry on. Well, maybe. But the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, et. al. all lost a huge part of their population when their empires collapsed. They also lost much of their topsoil and groundwater - making it extremely hard to sustain people or empire. Again, though, the failure of an empire to care for its natural resources probably says more about the nature of kleptocracy than about civilization. Peasants in Peru’s Colca valley have farmed on terraced hillsides successfully for 1500 years – perhaps, because others haven't interfered too much.lii What we know for sure is that when empires collapse, they leave a mess.

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Collapses can also have many causes – eroding topsoil, climate change, invasions, or pandemics.

The Black Death swept across Eurasia eliminating perhaps one-third of world population. The Spanish flu of 1919 was almost as destructive, killing 40-100 million people – vastly more than died in World War I. The death – through disease – of 90% of the Western Hemisphere’s indigenous people is real. It is not simply because of our planet’s wobbly axis or El Niño that forests have become deserts and seas have become barren. Whole societies, from the Aztecs to the Assyrians (to the Americans?) have veered close to extinction. If we were able to avoid the annihilation of the human species, it may be small comfort to the survivors, who still could well be wiped out by the next tsunami – be it natural, economic, environmental or military. In fact, if we look around ourselves and at our experience over the past couple of centuries, the prognosis for disaster is much more reasonable than the prophecy of Nirvana.

Mapping the future For optimists, pessimists, and realists...

• While many would predict a gradual increase in global life expectancy, food availability and literacy, the same people might also not be surprised – especially given the triple whammy of fuel, food, and financial crises that began in 2008 – by a widening gap between the world’s wealthiest and poorest. Many others could envision scenarios that would include an actual decline in life expectancy and food security in the decades ahead.

For the first time, after all, the United States (the architect of our global economy) seems to be experiencing a modest decline in height liii and a surprising, unexplainable downturn in birth weights.liv With an ever-growing portion of the population of rich and poor countries becoming obese, life expectancy is jeopardized.

• Most scientists agree that neither the Kyoto Protocol nor the absurd Copenhagen climate change accord of December 2009 will be successful in halting global warming and that it is unlikely that governments will act in the near future to prevent a real ecosystem crisis.

This is why geoengineering is (almost unbelievably) attracting serious attention from serious scientists and policy-makers today. In China sundown – and in our real world – geoengineering is a “win-win” for energy companies and their friends.

• Equally, most of us would probably predict that the pace of militarism and military expenditure will not decline anytime soon. The so-called War on Terror and the attendant waves of religious and market fundamentalism will not soon abate, most observers might agree. For Wu Suyuan and us, the “enemy” can be anyone anywhere meaning that defence must be everywhere – what the UN University’s Future Report for 2005 threateningly dubbed the “massively-destructive individual.”

• Perhaps the future of democracy – or multi-party electoral processes – is less certain. On one side, we see a heartening increase in citizen action and even popular rebellion against elitist governments. On the other hand, personality politics, media mysticism, and of course the BANG consortia, continue to encourage voter alienation and popular pacification. It is not hard to project the rise of more so-called liberal democracies and a parallel decline in participatory policy-making. In China sundown, newly elected politicians find themselves bound to timeless treaties and contracts that tie national economies to international corporations. Future generations already have their “democracy” circumscribed by corporate contracts. This is not future fiction. This is a reality today.

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Many of us believe that knowledge (at least scientific knowledge) will grow exponentially into the unforeseeable future, giving us ever more complex and powerful tools that will shape our lives. Although many believe that powerful new technologies represent a significant risk, most believe that science is our only solution short of a reconstruction of human nature that eradicates greed. But in China sundown, corporate oligopolies prevent some new technologies from coming forward while advancing those technologies that enhance their power. This has been going on for hundreds of years.

Meanwhile, few notice that the world is losing more indigenous ecological knowledge every year than it is gaining in laboratory learning.

Despite alarming negative trends around the world, most of us expect greater equality between the sexes and greater tolerance of sexual choice.

Regardless of the naïve flurry of optimism at the beginning of the financial crisis, no one now is predicting an early demise for capitalism – nor for a change in the relationship between governments and industry. Yet, some anticipate a geopolitical shift from the US to Asia and the ascendancy of China, India (and possibly, Brazil) to superpower status.

Some aren’t sure that this would make much of a difference.

Few, despite the financial crisis and rhetoric to the contrary, expect the world to turn away from globalization, although many dream of – and work hard for – alternative forms of world citizenship.

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Aaa BANG

Technological Convergence at the Nano-scale Toward the end of 2006, Leonel Alarcon, a Quechua leader from Cochabamba in the Bolivian highlands was talking to protectors of local seed varieties at a workshop in Kombolcha in the Rift Valley about a day’s drive from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The topic was “What Next?” and the organizers – from 16 countries including Nepal, India and East Timor in Asia, Mali, South Africa and Zambia in Africa and Cuba, Chile and Honduras in Latin America – had come together in an anniversary of their shared work conserving crop genetic diversity. Listening to the Quechua leader speak with Dr. Melaku Worede, the Ethiopian geneticist, was like hearing Marta Flores talk with Alitash Teferra’s parents. Over 12 days of seminars and farm visits, the discussions ranged from the breeding of quinoa and teff to the threat of climate change and the perils of nanotechnology. On this particular day, Leonel presented a Quechua perspective on science, based on Andean cosmovision. “Everything balances,” he told the group. “In our science, there is no distinction between biotic and abiotic – between living and nonliving matter, between the earth and sky, between woman and man. We are all guided by Pachamama.”

J. Craig Venter (the synthetic biologist) and his counterparts in nanotechnology would probably agree. Andean cosmovision and Silicon Valley technovision speak of singularity – of technological convergence at the nanoscale – and have (at least at some levels) a lot in common.

However, BANG technocrats think about the convergence not in steady, circular terms, but in revolutionizing, completely transformative ways that will change our societies profoundly.

In China sundown, Wu Suyuan, Alitash Teferra and Qi Qubìng can still get about on monorails and airplanes, text-message one another and write blogs. Wu is stunned with an electronic pulse fired from a Peiser shotgun, but that could happen today.

Government science policy analysts and industry marketers would probably consider China sundown’s 2035 to be woefully unimaginative. Where are the household robots and wearable computers? What of the miracle fibres that allow us to change our appearance as we rush through our business and social lives each day? Where is the leisure society, extended lifespan and cognitive implants that will make living more interesting? Where is the end of poverty?

The world will, inevitably, be much different than China sundown suggests. But, a focus on techno-toys only distract from the core political reality. The trend line makes no claim to be comprehensive. The key point is that the BANG members manipulate new scientific knowledge in order to maintain their privileges at the expense of society and the environment. Nothing new here.

Converging Technologies: BANG (or nanotechnology) is not a figment of our fictional future – it is here today. In 2005, nanotech’s spin-doctors claimed that the global market for products incorporating nanotechnology or nano materials (not the sole value of nanotechnology itself, please note) was around $400 billion. This, the spin-doctors say, will jump to $2.6 trillion by 2014. At this point (while not forgetting the industry’s enormous capacity for hype), nanotechnologies could account for as much as 15% of global manufacturing and have the combined market value of the telecommunications and informatics industries and 10 times the

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market clout of biotech – and still be in its infancy. lv Today, more money is going into research in nanotechnology than was spent on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s (to develop the atomic bomb) or on the Apollo project to get Neil Armstrong on the moon in the 1960s. Quite simply, it is the biggest research initiative in the history of science.

In the first decade of the 21st century, governments spent about $50 billion on nanotech research around the world.lvi Close to 50 countries now have national nanotechnology initiatives and the race is on to see which countries will – not win – but rather not be left behind. When the Royal Society in the UK conducted its analysis of nanotechnology in 2004, members of the Working Group assured me that there are more scientists in the vicinity of Beijing working on nanotechnology than there are in all of Western Europe – at one-twentieth the cost of Western European scientists. If you go back and look at who were the recipients of Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry or medicine over the past 15 years, you will realize that virtually every one of them has been working at the nano-scale even if their awards don’t explicitly speak of nano.

Little nano is big in industry for some very potent reasons. Nanotech, of course, is less a technology than a measurement. “Nano” refers to one-billionth of a meter – the length of about 10 side-by-side hydrogen atoms or 80 thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. In other words, nanotech is the industrial manipulation of atoms and molecules – the fundamental building blocks of everything. The suggestion (but, not yet the reality) is that industry will soon be able to build everything from the bottom up. Instead of gouging out rocks or cutting down trees and hacking them into buildings, books or burgers, nano holds out the promise that we will someday be able to eliminate most of that waste (and wasted energy) and transportation by constructing our furniture and food atom by atom. Perhaps, much or most of the 21 st century’s raw materials will come from the garbage dumps of the wasteful 20th century.

The atom-thin construction of chairs – not to say buildings – could seem a trifle flimsy at the best of times and downright suicidal in the face of an Asian tsunami or a Haitian earthquake. But the second feature of nanotechnology is that it takes advantage of “quantum effects.” Until now, virtually everything we manufacture has been at the micro or macro scale, which is comfortably within the realm of classical chemistry where the properties of elements and chemical compounds are well defined. Below somewhere around 200-300 nm in size, however, classical chemistry melts away and is replaced by quantum effects that absolutely transform the characteristics of every element of the periodic table.

The industrial implications are profound. Essentially, nanotechnology offers manufacturers a potpourri of periodic tables from which to choose raw materials. If nanoparticles of nickel, copper or carbon are produced at sizes down below 200 then 100 nm to 75, 50, 25 or 5 nm, their colour, elasticity, electrical conductivity, response to temperature and pressure – basically all their characteristics – continue to change. Gold, for example, prized for its beauty and because it doesn’t tarnish or corrode – is transformed at the nano-scale. Its colour goes from “gold” to almost red. Some of gold’s changes are very precise. Between seven and 24 atoms, gold becomes highly reactive and can be used as a catalyst. Six atoms of gold won’t do this. Neither will 25 atoms. In South Africa, lab assistants working with gold nanoparticles are advised to treat it with the respect accorded to an Ebola virus and cautioned to wear “spacesuits” when manipulating the metal at the nano-scale. This is a big change from the ring on your finger.

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Another example of the change that comes with quantum effects can be found in blackboard chalk. The white crumbly stuff that most teachers around the world still use everyday is transformed at the nano-scale, where it is 100 times stronger than steel and six times lighter. Or, consider aluminium oxide. Dentists use aluminium oxide for cavity repair. It’s safe, durable and benign. However, the US Air Force uses nano-scale aluminium oxide to ignite bombs. The next time you go to the dentist, check on the size of the aluminium oxide. The size could be the difference between nice teeth and no teeth.

So, nanotechnology not only promises to build from the bottom up, but the building materials can have unique properties of strength or flexibility that could prove incredibly valuable.

Thirdly, nanotech blurs the boundaries between living and nonliving matter. Seen from the perspective of atoms and molecules, DNA is hardly more than hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. Guanine and cytosine (two of the four key bases in DNA) after all, form in clay-rich solutions.lvii As I’ve already said, DNA can be atomically modified to construct novel amino acids and proteins, and to construct new types of DNA. Until now, the building blocks of everything on Earth that lives has been some combination of the nucleotide bases A, C, G, and T – the rungs in the ladder connecting DNA’s double helix. Until now. What if it is possible to atomically construct different or additional letters – and even patent them?lviii Six or 12-letter DNA? This is not fiction. Scientists have already constructed extended four-base DNA and five and six-base double helixes.lix The big problem that has haunted and daunted nanotechnology is that of building anything atom by atom that’s big enough to enjoy the attention of our opposable thumbs. It may be, for example, possible to build a hamburger atom by atom – but lunch will be late. It would take the lifetime of the universe to get food on the table. Although this could take the Slow Food Movement to a whole new level, at this pace, we might assume, that nanotechnology isn't exactly placed to solve the problem of world hunger. But, DNA operates at the nano-scale. If DNA can be tweaked and cajoled – or renumbered – to manipulate and code for the manufacturing of other molecules, then industry might solve the problem of atom-by-atom construction. DNA, after all, have things built all the time – and quickly – a bacterium in minutes, a baby in nine months – an elephant, a little longer. Nanobiotechnology proposes to manufacture not just our daily bread, but also our daily newspaper, tools and entertainment with the precision of modified DNA. BANG or nanotechnology not only takes us to a whole new scale of size, but also to a whole new level of complexity. There are four major issues: First, as always, is the issue of power and control. If the atom is the building block of everything – living and nonliving – then whoever controls the construction process controls everything.

Consider, for example, US patent 5,874,029 granted in 1999 covering methods for particle nanonization. The invention can be used in the pharmaceutical, food, chemical, electronics, catalyst, polymer, pesticidde, explosives and coating industries, all of which need small-diameter particles. In other words, just about every sector of the economy.

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Then there’s the Harvard University patent (US patent 5,897,945) on nano-scale metal oxide nanorods composed of any of 33 chemical elements including titanium, zirconium, hafnium, vanadium, niobium, tantalum, chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, manganese, technetium, rhenium, iron, osmium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, cadmium, scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, a lanthanide series element, boron, gallium, indium, thallium, germanium, tin, lead, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium. In a single patent, Harvard proposes to monopolize nearly onethird of the Periodic Table.lx Because atoms are so fundamental, patents in nanotech could bring about a massive change in corporate and economic structure with mergers and alliances unimaginable today. The kinds of conglomerates developed through Atom-Sphere and Terra-Forma in our trend lines story are no exaggeration of what might actually come about in the immediate decades ahead.

Secondly, there is an issue of health and environmental safety. Until now, government regulators around the world have totally ignored the material transformations that take place at the nanoscale. Regulators have assumed that a chemical compound is a chemical compound regardless of its size. Quantum effects have not been a consideration because it has not been possible – until now. So, if a cosmetics or food company applies to a government regulator to use an already approved chemical compound but this time at the nano-scale, the regulator isn’t interested. The chemical compound has already been approved for this purpose and need not be revisited simply because the size has changed.

Yet, zinc oxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles used in sunscreens or cosmetics can be profoundly different from their mega-molecule cousins. The sunscreens we normally use come out as a white paste and have to be rubbed in. At the nano-scale zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are invisible to light waves and transparent. That could be good for UV protection. However, a 70 nm particle might be able to slip into our lungs. At 50 nm, a particle might possibly slide deep into our cells. Below 30 nm, a particle is invisible to our immune system and might pass through the blood-brain barrier or the placenta totally undetected. The little research that has been done on the health effects of nano-particles indicate that many may indeed be dangerous once they reach inside the cells.

Thirdly, as bad as they are at size, regulators also handle quantities poorly. In many countries, manufacturers need not seek government approval if the quantity of chemicals being produced falls below 1 tonne per annum. Yet, a single gram of carbon nanotubes can cover 1 km² of ground and a tonne of carbon nanotubes could smother not just Bonn but Germany before regulators would wonder where the stars had gone.

Manufactured nanoparticles may not yet be coating Germany, but they are coating our chocolate bars, impregnating our beverages and being sprayed – as nano-toxins – on golf courses. We are also rubbing them into our skin as sunscreens and cosmetics and wearing them in our clothing to protect against stains and wrinkles. Nanoparticles are in our cars and airplanes, our computers and cell phones, and literally hundreds of other products in daily use.

So there could be a problem. Although nano-scale technologies are the biggest, fastest growing new technologies in the history of the world – although the applications are profound for our

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society and our economy – governments are still trying to figure out what to do about their safety.

Then there is the fourth issue – harking back to concerns about ownership and control: the New commodification of nature. In China sundown, the negotiations around the Technology Transfer Treaty (TTT) are a complex mix of efforts to guarantee the superpowers access to raw materials in case nanotechnology falters or fails, and the efforts of the super consortia to ensure permanent monopoly and liability protection for their experimental geoengineering schemes. On the one hand, China is forging ahead in the race to control nanotechnology, and on the other, it is working hard to secure priority access to Africa’s minerals and fossil fuels. Chinese investment in Africa has grown tenfold since 1995 and Chinese enterprises are claiming the continent to secure platinum and copper deposits in Central and Southern Africa as well as petroleum in Angola, Nigeria and Sudan.lxi Both the North and the South have good reason to be uneasy. Because the characteristics of elements in the periodic table change as we move down through the nanoscale, it is very likely that some raw materials – deemed critical today – could become irrelevant tomorrow. Other materials – hardly worth mining now – could be the key to power and riches tomorrow.

Chile, for example, has recently invested almost $12 billion in upgrading its copper mining and smelting industry, with seventy-four thousand Chilean families depending upon copper exports for their livelihood. Some nanotech start-up companies believe they will be able to replace copper wiring with nanoparticles of carbon. In other words, copper – whose commodity price is booming – could become unsalable in another decade or shortly afterward.

Similarly (and readers will hear more of this in the scenarios ahead), high-flying platinum now being mined in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa could be replaced by a nano-compound of nickel and cobalt from Canada – at a tiny fraction of platinum’s current value.lxii While the precious metal’s decorative market would remain, nickel sales (at about a buck a pound) could easily capture platinum’s huge catalytic converter market.

Then, there is rubber. Since World War II, synthetic competitors have battered rubber production and predictions of its imminent demise have dogged rubber. Still, nanotechnology proposes to continue using natural rubber, but with a surface coating of rubber nanoparticles so strong that tires will outlast not only the car but the driver as well. Sometime soon, the six million, rubbertapping families in Thailand may have to uproot their trees and plant something else, quickly.

Alarm over “synthetics” has been a constant demoralizing pressure for the South for a very long time. Still, somehow with rare exceptions, synthetics have failed to completely replace the natural product. This could continue to be true – even with nanotechnology. But the possibility that the technology could significantly change commodity demand is profoundly destabilizing to South economies and, of itself, could transform markets, prices and ownership beyond recognition – and well beyond the control of the supplier countries.

Cotton – a much attacked commodity whose production and processing engages almost one billion people (including their families) is an example.lxiii Cotton was battered by synthetics like

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nylon, rayon and polyesters in the 1960s and ‘70s but has still survived. Its natural attributes of breathability and comfort have kept it popular on High Street despite its many challengers. Now, however, the North’s textile industry is betting that atomically-modified nano fibres can surpass the comfort of cotton, while adding qualities of strength, durability, temperature management and colour-control that are unobtainable with cotton. Already, shirts and pants with nanocoatings to protect against wrinkles and stains are doing well in shopping malls from Bonn to Beijing. If the price can be brought down – and the fibres meet their expectations – carbon nanotubes, or something of the sort, could provide commercially viable cloth that far exceeds cotton.

Researchers at Stanford University have wrapped up most of nanotech’s major safety and economic problems in one seamless garment. They have succeeded in weaving carbon nanotubes into cotton and polyester fabrics so that the clothing can not only conduct, but also store, electricity. It may someday be possible for nattily dressed New Yorkers to charge through their day while powering iPods and iPhones. There is still a cost concern, according to the scientists, a kilogram of carbon nanotubes costs $100 although they expect the price to drop to around $20 a kilo before too long.lxiv Given that a kilo of carbon nanotubes at a thickness of 1 nm can cover 1000 km² of cloth, a hundred dollars could easily turn everyone in Manhattan into a trendy power-dresser. Not only trendy – but also toasty – if there's rain or lightning.

Tropical beverages could also be in trouble. Massive multinational food companies like Kraft, a few years ago, proposed to build a beverage that could morph into literally any taste the consumer desires at the time of drinking. The idea was that capsules containing nanoparticles of coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar or whatever could all be suspended in one liquid container. Once home from the store, the consumer would place the container in some upscale version of a microwave, setting its frequency to break open the capsule of choice. Encapsulated nano beverages would probably require less of the agricultural commodity than normal and the shelf life could be longer. If so, world demand for coffee, tea, cocoa and sugar – while not disappearing – could plummet. After trumpeting the potential for years, Kraft now seems to have quietly shelved the project. I suspect that Kraft – and the food industry in general – is gun shy about consumer safety concerns.

For old hands at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and other commodity negotiators, scary stories about imminent commodity collapses are a dime a dozen and hard to take seriously. That’s understandable – and they may be correct. But there is a difference here. First, nanotechnology is already in our foods and textiles. Second, this is a technology that could impact several agricultural and mineral exports almost simultaneously – possibly within a decade or so. The economic disruption could be hugely devastating. And, perhaps most importantly, even the threat of a beverage like Kraft proposed could collapse commodity prices – even temporarily – to the advantage of importers and retailers.

Synthetic biology (a.k.a. Nanobiotechnology): synthetic biology is the "wet" or biological part of nano-scale technologies. It comes with its own set of problems and potentialities. Scientists in the field are scornful of biotechnology (conventional genetic engineering). They see the shock transfer of a gene from one species into another as inherently clumsy and potentially dangerous.

Synthetic biologists say they recognize that life is complicated and that our understanding of

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genes – how they function in living organisms – is not well developed. One of their solutions is to build genes or DNA base pair by base pair (or atom by atom). Ground-up genomics may seem like a slow process – and it was – but the technology is moving quickly. In fact, synbio scientists are dismissive of conventional biotech because they are, as some say, moving one word of the Book of Life from one volume to the next while synthetic biology writes its own books.

How? Drew Endy (one of the best known and most admired scientists in this field) began his academic career as an engineer – not a biologist. He likes to build things. He recently moved from MIT to Stanford University to pursue his synbio research. On his desk, Drew has four large bottles, one for each of the A, C, G, T that build DNA. Drew speculates that the bottles on his desk represent enough potential DNA to replicate everybody on the planet. Most synbio researchers, Drew says, get their "letters" from a sugarcane farm in southern China. He's not quite sure why but it's no big deal since A, C, G and T are basically sugars. If you go on eBay, for about $400, you can buy a second-hand gene synthesizer – a boxy "photo-copier" looking gizmo that can Bluetooth to your laptop. One bottle for each of the "letters" fits into position on the gene-synthesizer.

Here's where it gets creative. Using downloadable software on your laptop, you can painstakingly command the synthesizer to construct base pairs of DNA as you want them. Unless you know a lot – and have an awful lot of time on your hands – this will get you nowhere fast and probably nowhere useful. Alternatively, you can download the genome of something (there are thousands of species on the Internet) ask your gene-synthesizer to copy it base pair by base pair and then tweak the results to your taste. Or, thirdly, you can just download the genome, make a few changes on your laptop, and then e-mail the sequences you've modified to a "gene foundry" (a bulk DNA supplier) anywhere between New England and New Delhi and the company will FedEx back your designer DNA within a few days on a credit card sized bit of plastic that a technician more expert than you probably are, can splice into the original genome.

Do-it-yourself DNA … and, you're one step closer to being God. Life is Lego. It is possible to build almost anything, they claim again, piece by piece as long as each piece of the Lego is designed and tested. Much of what we call “life,” synthetic biologists see as “wiring.” Many of the scientists talk about life as though they were talking about electrical circuits or computer software.

Remember, human beings share half their genes with an earthworm and half with a banana and a quarter with a fruit fly. Most of the world's successful DNA must be pretty standard stuff. In theory, it can be constructed and put on the shelf to be inserted here and there as needed. If synthetic biologists build their own DNA – the reasoning goes – then they can be confident that it will perform as intended. If they can go further and restructure the DNA building blocks and test these blocks in a lab, then they may be able to build totally novel life forms that can perform industrial functions reliably.

In vivo, in vitro, in Venter: For outsiders, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of synbio is this conviction that life can be built from the bottom up; that not only bacteria but also plant varieties, species, phyla and kingdoms can be man-made. Tony Wong, as suggested in China sundown, has no commission from the US Department of Energy to build a new life form – but J. Craig Venter

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does. Back in the 1990s, Venter led the US government’s research on human genomics mapping until he decided to break away and set up his own private company. When Bill Clinton and Tony Blair got together in 2000 to announce the first human genome map, Craig Venter was standing beside Bill Clinton representing the private sector input into the exercise. In 2008, Venter decided to go further and publish a genome map of himself. Venter also mapped the first canine genome – his dog, Shadow. He also mapped the first rodent (presumably his as well). In May 2010, Venter ventured into unmapped territory: his team built the first novel, self-replicating life form.

After a painstaking search, Venter’s team discovered that the simplest critter on the planet, Microplasma genitalium, lurks in human genitalia (women could probably challenge Venter’s “discovery” on the basis of indigenous knowledge or prior art!). Nevertheless, Venter’s team has taken the 517-gene parasite and whittled it down to 386 working genes.lxv Using the parasite as a template, Venter and his team (including Hamilton Smith, a Nobel laureate) committed to build an entirely unique life form within two years. In 2010, they did it. In ETC Group, Kathy Jo Wetter dubbed the new life form, "Synthia" and the name has stuck with the media.

Quantum plots: If creating new life still has a few kinks to work out, synthetic biologists are doing much better at re-creating old life. In 2002, for instance, scientists managed to reconstruct the poliovirus.lxvi Synthetic smallpox can, theoretically, be constructed in less than two weeks, for about the cost of a new car. Quite recently, researchers added an interleukin-4 (Il-4) gene to chickenpox and, unexpectedly, came up with a highly virulent variant for which there is no human defence.lxvii Using DNA fragments from the frozen remains of victims dug out of the Alaskan Arctic, other researchers have rebuilt the infamous Spanish flu virus that wiped out at least 40 million people in 1918-19 before it (happily, until now) disappeared.lxviii Indeed, the “life as Lego” or the Do-it-yourself DNA (off-the-shelf ) approach is becoming extremely efficient. Scientists can mail-order DNA from any of 32 gene synthesizing companies in the United States and receive their strands of life in the mail within a couple of weeks. While it is illegal in most countries to FedEx fever to anyone, it is perfectly legal to build and ship DNA fragments that can later be spliced into Marburg fever or smallpox. The risks are considerable.

However, in 2010, using the same techniques, scientists reconstructed about half the genome of a 27,000-year-old woolly mammoth, a 4,000-year-old man and one of our Neanderthal relatives.lxix Building life is already a viable commercial enterprise. Whereas it took hundreds of scientists a half-dozen years to construct a single gene three decades ago – at a cost of millions of dollars – synthetic biologists can now build DNA, as they say, at a “buck-a-base” – or actually, at a bargain base rate of 50 cents. Bacterial genomes can now be sequenced for a few hundred dollars within a few days and researchers insist they will be sequencing an individual’s genome in a matter of minutes in a couple of years. In the run-up to the Hong Kong synthetic biology conference in 2008, Harvard’s George Church announced that his start-up company could map your genome for $5,000. A year later, at the end of 2009, as most of us focused on the catastrophe unraveling in Copenhagen, other scientists announced that they would soon be

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mapping the human genome for a thousand dollars. Very soon, many of us in affluent countries may be walking around with a microchip embedded in our shoulder containing our own personal genome map in the event of a medical emergency. I'll come back to this later. iBol and Digital Diversity: Complacency that industry can do without most of the world’s biological diversity is terribly wrong – but that doesn’t change the threat to biodiversity.

Synthetic biologists – who insist they will be able to rebuild extinct species from scratch in their laboratories and build any new species commerce might desire – sometimes don’t see the need to conserve the ‘old stuff’ just in case. At the beginning of 2010, scientists at Cambridge University discovered a way to trick cells into reading DNA differently. The result is that instead of having only 20 amino acids from which to build virtually everything in nature, scientists now have 276 amino acids and claim they can construct almost any kind of living organism they can imagine.

In May 2010, J. Craig Venter and his company, Synthetic Genomics, managed to construct the first-ever self-replicating artificial microbe – a species that has never before lived on earth. 2010 was an eventful year for synthetic biologists. Before the year ended, NASA researchers claimed they fundamentally transformed the structure of DNA by replacing phosphorus, used in the scaffolding of the double helix with normally toxic arsenic.lxx If any one of these changes really works -- and that's a big if -- it would be a life changer. If all of them work (unlikely!) then everything is possible. Synthetic biologists believe they can construct microorganisms that can turn any biomass into food, fuels, furniture, pharmaceuticals or plastics.

New information technologies encourage their hubris. The International Barcode of Life project (IBoL) and the related Consortium for the Barcode of Life hosted by the Smithsonian Institution in the United States are mapping the genome of every known species and placing the electronic maps on the Internet. In addition, thousands of samples are being sent voluntarily to the Smithsonian (even though the US is not a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity and could claim ownership of these resources), and other institutions of the global North, such as the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario in Canada. Once mapped, it will be theoretically possible for corporations – armed, perhaps, with the self-replicating technology patented by Synthetic Genomics Inc.– to download a genetic blueprint, tweak it at will, and construct new life forms.

Life-science enterprises from pharmaceuticals to seeds might conclude that gene banks, zoos and botanical gardens – and conservation programs – are passé.

IBOL is not alone. One "competitor" initiative called the Genome 10K project (dedicated, to mapping the whole genome of 10,000 species) is expected to cost no more than $50 million ($5,000 a species). Again, it is expected the species map will be available to anyone with access to the Internet.lxxi Just like Carnegie’s LiDAR technology, the cost of DNA sequencing is becoming negligible - a hundred-thousandth of what it was a decade ago. For example, the first human genome sequence (with 3 billion base pairs to assay) took 13 years and $3 billion. Now, it can be read in 8 days for $10,000. Oxford Nanopore Technologies and rival, Pacific Biosciences, both claim that within three years they will be able to map the human genome in 15 minutes for $1000. Impressively, Pacific Biosciences says it will be able to assay a genome from a single DNA molecule.lxxii If (or is it when?) that time comes, it will be possible to store a molecule of all the world’s estimated 10 million species embedded on one side of a credit card-sized disc - with the digital map of each

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species ensconsed on the other side…. Eden take-out?

Again, once digitized, the industrial world will see no need for biological diversity. Rain forests – or, more accurately, the land on which the trees stand – can be put to more profitable use.

Half-right science – full-profit technology: Good scientists and realists will, of course, understand immediately that the atomic modification of nature is much more complicated than industry suggests. Playing God has never really worked. After all the noise and hype, industry and governments will discover that the crude manipulation of atoms and molecules to make living or even nonliving materials will be a sloppy affair, fraught with huge health and environmental safety concerns. For most of us, synbio looks like just another half-baked, getrich-quick scheme doomed to ultimate failure.

This is very likely true. Yet, our years fighting agricultural biotechnology should have taught civil society an important lesson: Bad science can still yield profits. At least the first generations of genetically engineered seeds were a scientific mess. Desperate biotech boutiques – frantic to prove their Wall Street worthiness – hustled bad products onto farms with little care for quality or safety. The result has been disastrous for many peasants; massive contamination in the centres of origin for crops like maize, terribly disrupted export markets and deeply disgruntled retailers and consumers. Nevertheless, the biotech companies have profited and GM contamination has even served their interests.

So, too, might it be for Synbio. Companies don’t need to get it right to get rich. You just need to scare competitors out of the field and railroad regulators into political culpability en route to becoming co-conspirators. Good science isn’t really the issue.

Sugar shock: Synbio can easily lose us in the weirder bacteria so we fail to see the wider biomass. The real market for synthetic biology is not in reconstructing brontosauri but in commodifying biomass. Qi Qubìng touches on this over a Beijing dinner with Wu and Inga Thorvaldson. As Qi says (and this is the single most disturbing statistic I know), companies see that although 23.8% of the world's annual terrestrial biomass is already commodified, this means that 76.2% of the planet's biomass is still available to be owned and controlled.lxxiii That's the goal of companies like Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics and Amyris Biotechnologies and Biodesic, among others. These start-up synbio companies usually began with foundation and government grants but are now moving onto major investors - energy multinationals like BP, Exxon and Shell and chemical majors like DuPont and Monsanto.

The potential market for controlled biomass is obviously vast. The start-up companies hope to inherit the fuel and energy markets dominated by fossil fuels once Peak Oil gains momentum on its downward slope. And, they're not just talking about transportation fuels but also electricity.

Amyris, for example, has partnered with some of the world's biggest energy and sugar companies and is now developing a full-service synbio subsidiary outside Sao Paulo Brazil that will convert sugarcane (and perhaps much more) into fuel and electricity.

Beyond the multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel market, there lurks the $1.8 trillion bio plastics market and an estimated $1.2 trillion in other possible biomaterials – all to be harvested from the new

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Carbohydrate Economy. This new economy no longer thinks of end products like food, fiber, fodder, or fuel – it thinks only of biomass production that can be converted into whatever commodity commands the highest price at harvest time. The game is to convert the entire organism (maize stalks, switchgrass algae, trees, whatever), edible or not – cellulosic fiber especially – into commercial goods.

Don't act surprised. It's already true, for example in North America, that more than 70% of human caloric consumption comes from wheat, maize, soybeans and rice – of themselves and "bulking up" thousands of unsuspected processed foods. The same four crops also show up in thousands of industrial products. The Carbohydrate Economy has been creeping up on us for decades.

The new “biomassters” do have a problem, however. They have to convince people and policymakers that the Carbohydrate Economy won't compete with hungry people or the environment or add additional greenhouse gases. They have to claim that their biomass will grow on marginal or under-utilized lands – mostly in tropical or subtropical regions –; won't dry up aquifers; and deserve carbon credits for cleansing the atmosphere.

This, of course, is impossible. Neither people nor the planet have much land or biomass to spare.

So-called marginal ecosystems – someone's hunting, gathering, pasturing lands and medicine cabinet – are in fact often nurtured in balance with Gaia. Multinational biomass producers will steal the land, the water, and add to the pressures of climate change.

The ethical and environmental issues raised with atomically modified life are obviously massive.

We’ve kicked open the door on the seventh day of creation and extended the week into a fortnight. Not only can we make radically different life forms – brilliant or bizarre – we can build new diseases and vaccines, new biomaterials and biofuels, and we can rebuild ourselves. When are we human beings? When are we superhuman beings? When are we something less than a human being? Do the BANG members decide?

BANG – What next for technology?

• In 1975, the first Atari home computer kit went commercial and Bill Gates patented his first software. In 2005, home play stations had more computational power than NASA astronauts could access 30 years before.lxxiv In 2035, a $1000 laptop computer will exceed the computational (and cognitive) capacity of the human brain.

• In 1975, it took a year to sequence 11 DNA base pairs; it took six years to sequence the first gene, the first private biotech company (Genentech) was incorporated and microbiologists held the Asilomar conference in which they convinced governments to let them self-regulate genetic engineering. In 2005, biotech companies could sequence DNA for a “buck-a-base,” map a microbe in two weeks and synthetic biologists held a conference expressing concern that governments might be considering regulation. In 2035, it will be possible to map an individual’s genome in minutes for a few dollars and corporations will be urging governments to

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regulate counter-commercial behaviour.

• In 1975, no scientist had seen an atom. In 2005, scanning tunneling microscopes saw – and moved – atoms, and scientists strung together carbon nanotubes the length of two football fields. In 2035, desktop molecular self-assembly will be commercially practical although publicly prohibited and legally controlled by the BANG members.

Policy line: • Acceleration – Technology reaches the “hockey stick” joint – the sharp upward curve that propels transformation at a rate beyond the capacity of policy-makers or civil society to respond. Based on the precautionary principle, society must reaffirm its right to say “no” or “go slow.”

• Convergence – Biology, physics and chemistry move toward convergence at the nano-scale of atoms and molecules – the “little BANG theory.” Time for the development of an International Convention on the Evaluation of New Technologies?

• Simlife – Synthetic biology blurs the distinction between living and non-living materials and between human and other species. Time for a “No patents on Nature” movement?

What next?

Rights:lxxv Responsible scientists and civil society could join forces to form a Slow Growth Movement that, among other actions, could negotiate an International Convention on the Evaluation of New Technologies (ICENT).

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Aaa GANG!

The Convergence of Governments and Corporations “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time...” Abraham Lincoln However, you may be able to fool all of the people into monitoring themselves all of the time.

Power Convergence: In China sundown, five superpowers -- the USA, European Union, China, India and Brazil -share center stage with two giant consortia -- Terra-Forma and Atom-Sphere. Other corporate actors like Qi’s GEnome Corp., while members of a consortium, still have their own businesses to run. Clearly, the superpowers have more shared interests than rivalries and the two consortia and their members are tied together in patent and technology transfer agreements and in a mutual interest in extracting wealth from the superpowers. The extent of collusion between government and corporations and between corporate alliances is not an exaggeration.

There is no greater proof of capitalist power than in our experience in the financial crisis around us. The bankers and brokers that were humiliated in 2008 – 2009 were back and booming by 2010 and recording record profits. Moves to stiffen regulations against financial institutions and corporate robber barons flourished briefly but have once again gone soft. The Obama administration came into office talking tough – and was tougher during the first two years – but all was forgiven following the mid-term Congressional elections that caused the President to worry more about his job prospects.lxxvi The year before the reelection campaign began; the White House announced a major overhaul of so-called "dumb" regulations.lxxvii At the end of 2010, the new UK government announced that it might axe 192 independent government agencies and mash together another 118 – including the two regulatory bodies involved in overseeing corporate mergers –what the Wall Street Journal happily described as “the mother of all mergers”.lxxviii If that's the Mother, the Father must be the convergence of personal wealth into the hands of a few men who now exercise unbelievable influence over governments and corporations.

According to Susan George, the world has about 8.6million millionaires sharing nearly $33 trillion. Less than 1% of them, 78,000, collectively own $13 trillion - the equivalent of the GDP of the European Union. At the pinnacle of power are fewer than 1000 billionaires (946 in 2007) with a combined net worth of $3.5 trillion -- enough to bail out the United States.lxxix While the world's billionaires could all danced together in the ballroom of the Titanic (a good idea!), the top 1% of them -- the Carlos Slims, Bill Gates and Warren Buffets could be smoking cigars in the Titanic’s den creating the world’s problems for us.

This concentration in wealth is not new. Inequity is part of the pendulum. We just happen to be at its least attractive extreme now. There have been times in the history of the United States and Europe when the inequality was less -- and other times when it was possibly even greater. As Rome morphed from republic to empire and from a period where the gap between its richest and

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poorest citizens was modest, the elite (Crassus and Pompey, for example) were worth around 200 million sesterces. At the bottom end of the pyramid, Rome's vaunted legionaires were earning 500 sesterces a year. On his deathbed in 1642, Cardinal Richelieu had an estimated 22 million livres. The top 2% of French wealth was earning 1000 or less per year and the average workman was earning 100. The Cardinal’s successor, Mazarin, sopped up nearly 5 million livres per year— 50,000 times a labourer's annual wages. lxxx There’s nothing new to greed but there is something new to greed’s destructive capacity.

The convergence of personal wealth is even more alarming as we contemplate the convergence of multinational financial power. As Barak Obama move towards more deregulation in the United States, a group of Swiss academics released the most thorough study ever made of corporate/financial power in the world. The study compiled clouds of data covering the worlds 43,000 multinational corporations examining their ownership, markets and interconnections and concluded that 147 enterprises exercise control over 40% of their collective wealth and that 737 companies control 80% of multinational wealth. Most importanttly, the study revealed that control of the dominant 147 companies rests within and among the companies themselves. In other words, the 147 are a consortium bound by mutual self-interest. The academics described the structure of global corporate power as a "bowtie" with the dominant 147 in the center and with their influence fanning out to other economies and industries.lxxxi It is surprising how unsurprising this is. Ever since the publication of Global Reach in 1974, progressives have understood the domination of multinational enterprises. But, our sense of their power was either theoretical or anecdotal until the computational might of the 2011 report gave us the tables and organograms.

Cognitive Convergence: As a youngster, travelling with her parents to Tiananmen Square in 1989, Wu Suyuan had what she later concedes to be a pretty naïve understanding of democracy. Afterward, as a journalist tracking the convergence of the two climate consortia with the Super-powers, she recognizes the symbiotic relationship between the ruling elites of industry and government. In her pizza parlour banter with Qi Qubìng and Alitash Teferra, she becomes infuriated by Qi’s outrageous insistence that “the people, united, will always be defeated.” At the end, stunned by a Peiser gun, the journalist’s acceptance of a cochlear hearing implant not only changes what she hears, but how she understands what she hears. Too cynical? Too simplistic?

In 1975, Oxford ethologist, Dr. Richard Dawkins, took a sabbatical to write The Selfish Gene,lxxxii one of the most disturbing books in a time of many disturbing books. Dawkins espoused the theory that numerous forces – the gene or DNA being only one – nurture human evolution. Human beings, Dawkins speculated, could evolve cultural memes capable of Darwinian replication. It was an outlandish concept without “coat tails” – at least that chapter of his book didn’t attract many followers. The author himself wasn’t committed to the notion. In a 1989 edition of the book, he wrote: “Whether the milieu of human culture really does have what it takes to get a form of Darwinism going, I am not sure.”

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We could all give the idea of cultural memetics a pass were it not for a high-level meeting of US government officials, scientists and industry, held in Washington three months after 9/11, which made research into cultural memetics a priority. Then, two years later, the Royal Society’s Martin Rees brought us back to memetics with his concern that it may be possible to medicate social attitudes and manipulate human nature.lxxxiii But, the most compelling reason to track this potentiality is that it makes sense. If, as the UN University’s 2005 State of the Future Report suggests, we are entering the era of the MassivelyDestructive Individuallxxxiv – where anyone, anywhere could be devastatingly violent, using anything – then massive surveillance is, at best, a partial response. However, aggressive surveillance will elicit a massive social reaction. Better than surveillance is surrender. If society can be cajoled into surrendering its information then the likelihood of a successful defence increases. Better still, if society can be convinced to surrender control over not only its information but also its actions, then the BANG members can sleep at night. Civil society needs to dissect the logic and the feasibility of all this.

Massively-Destructive Individuals: As mentioned earlier, in 2003 Martin Rees made a bet that, by 2020, “bio-terror” or “bio-error” will kill one million people.lxxxv Rees stressed the importance of the individual as the new threat to our security. “We are entering an era,” the astronomer said, “when a single person can, by one clandestine act, cause millions of deaths or render a city uninhabitable for years.” lxxxvi Suicide bombings, for example – the “conventional” individual instrument of mass destruction – were almost unheard of in 1975, but there were 43 in 2000 and almost one a day by 2005. lxxxvii Rees and the United Nations University warn us to fear our neighbours: “…The nuclear threat will be overshadowed by others that could be as destructive and far less controllable,” the President of the Royal Society advises. “These may not come primarily from national governments, or even from ‘rogue states’, but rather from individuals or small groups with access to ever more advanced technologies. There are, alarmingly, many ways in which individuals will be able to trigger catastrophe.” lxxxviii Of course, Rees is right. But the political policy effect of the Massively-Destructive Individual (MDI) is for society to surrender its rights to government and accept universal surveillance. If anyone can do anything then government will demand the authority to do anything to anyone.

Anything anywhere: Unhappily, nanotech gives even more substance to the threat of MDIs. At a nanotech trade show in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 2005, a company selling bulk nanocarbon tubes – the poster child of the new technology – told Hope Shand of ETC Group that his company only shipped the nanotubes in minute quantities because they tended to explode when shipped in larger packets.lxxxix Aluminum oxide, used by dentists in implants, also tends to explode in nanoparticle form. So what? According to one of the most watched videos on the Internet, if you drop Mentos Mints into a 2L bottle of Diet Coke, it too will explode. xc But out of four potentially explosive materials – aluminium oxide, carbon nanotubes, Mentos Mints and Coke – only Coke can’t be carried through airport security. (You have to wait until you’re in the air – when a flight attendant will happily bring you all the Coke you want .) The point is that

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with nanotechnology it is not possible to rule out any conventional chemical compound as a potential weapon. This alone changes almost everything in defence strategic planning.

Anyone anytime: The corollary to ubiquitous explosives is that new communications technologies make it increasingly likely that almost anyone might be an individual of mass destruction. “Although modern technology allows instant worldwide communication,” Martin Rees warns, “it actually makes it easier to survive within an intellectual cocoon. “Beliefs [are] reinforced by selective electronic contact with other adherents…” xci Cass Sunstein, once a law professor at the University of Chicago and later the head of Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), talks about the “Daily Me”xcii – the ability to orchestrate Internet search engines to pull down only what an individual wants to see – reaffirming her/his current beliefs and prejudices. Unlike newspapers or standard radio and television – where, as poor as they may be – we are exposed to issues and ideas we might otherwise dispute or avoid, Internet chat rooms and search engines can encourage isolation and incubate extremism. As unhealthy as this might be for the individual – and dangerous to society (consider the horrific tragedy in Oslo on July 22, 2011) -- it provides the BANG members with an excuse for intrusive surveillance.

Massively-monitored societies (MMS): Civil society’s concern about surveillance is deep, historic and fetishistic. Although some of us – mostly in social movements in the global South – have legitimate reason to be wary (peasant and indigenous leaders, trade unionists and investigative journalists do get killed, after all) – many of us in the North would be more dismayed if we were not monitored (not sufficiently important, not so strategically engaged) as to warrant surveillance. The point here is not that surveillance is unimportant or that it is not threatening and debilitating to social justice, but that in the future, surveillance will be largely replaced by surrender.

This doesn't mean that surveillance isn't important. The same year that Richard Dawkins completed The Selfish Gene, the United States joined with Britain, Canada and Australia to establish Echelon, a global telephone surveillance system. Even at the time, most of us in civil society realized that there is a big difference between tape recording everything and being able to listen to – and make sense out of – anything. That time has passed. Echelon can now do both.

And that’s just the beginning.

Satellites and unmanned "drone" aircraft, equipped with remote-sensing devices, monitor national sovereignty, high-flying toxins, errant fishing trawlers, drug traffickers and economic refugees, as we are fond of saying, "24/7”. Today’s infrared cameras can register the “signature” of someone who has recently slept in a bed. Parabolic microphones eavesdrop on conversations at a distance of a football field. A three-dimensional paraboloid can track sound waves back to a single focus. New technology can suck up speech from longitudinal vibrations transmitted through two windowpanes.xciii If you say it, someone can hear it.

Japanese scientists have developed trace-chemical detectors 20 nanometres wide. So far, each device can track only one specific substance – but that will change and future devices with new

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materials are expected to track literally scores of potential toxins simultaneously. One material, made by the directed self-assembly of cobalt oxide and silicon dioxide, is honeycombed with passageways (dubbed “nanopores”) three nanometres wide.xciv And you can be followed. Across the Pacific, from Japan, DARPA (the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is researching a “digital insect” – a mobile, autonomous snoop that combines photo-rechargeable batteries with nanosensors for sound, infrared and visible light, plus molecular detectors. The tiny platform would “narrowcast” its findings in digital microbursts to an off-site receiver.xcv The military purposes are obvious, but such technologies also offer huge profits on High Street.

Imaging and recording technology has been nano-sized, cost-reduced, mass-produced, and society seduced. High-quality surveillance is now commercially viable and socially-accessible to us all.

Ploughshares into swords: We are accustomed to the concept of turning swords into ploughshares but the reverse is as likely. Charles I got the saltpetre needed for making gunpowder from the barnyards of English farms. After quietly nurturing Andean potatoes for almost 200 years as a defence against marauding armies, European peasants were forced to grow the same potatoes to feed Prussian and Austrian troops.xcvi Richard Gatling got the idea for the first machine gun after he had patented a seed drillxcvii and Eli Whitney translated his experience inventing a cotton gin into making guns with interchangeable parts.

It was (at least partly) the quest for an alternative to Chile’s guano as a fertilizer that led to the Haber-Bosch synthetic nitrogen process, which turned into the first battlefield use of chemical weapons in World War I. Likewise, it was the development of the first chemical pesticides in the years leading up to World War II – especially 2,4,D and DDT – that led to the infamous “Agent Orange” napalm of the Vietnam War Lyndon Johnson’s humanitarian “Project Gromet” experiment – geoengineering weather conditions over drought-stricken Bihar in the mid-1960sxcviii – morphed into the mmilitary’s “Operation Popeye,” the attempt to drown out Vietnamese soldiers along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

More to the point, ploughshares are swords. Throughout history, the control of food supplies has been a weapon of mass destruction. Since the 1950s, everyone – from US Senator Hubert Humphrey (later Lyndon Johnson's vice president) to Richard Nixon's secretary of agriculture Earl Butz – has described US agricultural technologies – and the country’s food surpluses – as one of the most valuable weapons in their foreign policy arsenal.

Spin-offs and spy-effects: This tradition is amplified today. It is now just as likely that the consumer electronics industry will catalyze a surveillance technology-shift within the military as it is likely that military exigencies will eventually trickle down into consumer products.

Automatic garage door openers set off roadside bombs in Kabul and are an equally effective drive-by tactic to blow up would-be bombers in their side street factories. From Kabul to Kansas City, cheap entertainment MP3 players can be used to hack into vehicles, opening locks, turning on lights, etcxcix and police traffic radar guns are being used to detect roadside bombs in Baghdad.c US marines go to Home Depot to jerry-rig power meters for their personal solar

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energy packs ci and DARPA is promoting the development of “cubesats” (shoebox sized satellites) from off-the-shelf consumer electronics. cii The consumer electronics market rings up $700 billion in sales every year – including a billion mobile phones per annum – and can invariably out-research the smaller, myopic military R&D.ciii For example, the sensors first used to detect faint emissions from distant stars also allow the US military to detect guerrilla fighters and are now found in consumer digital cameras. The probes that have given close-up pictures of Jupiter, ride on the coattails of a programme initially driven by superpower rivalry. The Hubble Space Telescope would have cost more had it not shared development costs with spy satellites.civ Yet, today, according to Martin Rees, the demand for technological innovation is coming more from General Electric than from army generals. cv This multi-purpose approach is called COTS – commercial off the shelf technology. Spy satellites use COTS to resolve images down to 10 centimetres – powerful enough to see the smirk on an admiral’s face.cvi Using a Canadian-made MX-15 imaging device originally intended for traffic police, fighter pilots can read a car license plate at full throttle 10 km ahead. cvii Nano soldiers: However, the military impetus is certainly substantial. Over a third of the budget of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative has been spent on defence and military uses since it was initiated in 2001.cviii The military also funds nanotech research in Britain, Sweden, Israel, China, Malaysia and India. Key military objectives for nanotech include fast biowarfare detection, stronger and lighter armour, more powerful explosives including triggers for mininukes, nano-technologically improved soldiers (or “war fighters,” as they are known in the US) and full “information dominance” through nano-surveillance technologies.

Nanotechnology, in the words of India’s former President, Abdul Kalam (himself a missile scientist), is expected to “revolutionize total concepts of warfare.” BANG comes at a time when low intensity warfare and the “war on terror” are high political priorities.

The 9/11 factor has broken down any vestigial barriers between military and commercial surveillance. Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags are tiny silicon chips that broadcast simple bits of digital data when a radio frequency is fired at a tag from up to 10 metres away. The smallest current RFID tags are the size of a grain of sandcix and supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and Tesco now require that cases and pallets containing products bear RFID tags, to track inventory and prevent theft. Some individual products on the shelves are being tagged, and it is expected that one day all will be. RFID chips are already implanted in some cars, tires, credit cards, medicines, pets and even prisoners and passports (US passports incorporated RFID tags in October 2006).

Meanwhile, a US based company, Verichip, has produced an FDA-approved tag that is implanted under the skin to provide access to medical records, VIP access to special locations or to track wandering seniors, kids or workers. Even smaller than RFID tags is a set of readable tags being developed by Nanoplex. Its nanobarcodes tags (striped nanoparticles) can be mixed into a material or sprayed onto it giving it a uniquely invisible code readable at several meters’ distance.

RFID tags are passive beacons of information so the big money is betting on tiny wireless sensors called “smart dust” that actively gather information about their environment and transmit it onward to a third party. University of California -Berkeley Robotics and Intelligent Machines

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Laboratory has pioneered Smart Dust with US Defence Department funding. The lab’s tiny autonomous wireless sensors (known as “motes”) can be dropped onto a battlefield to monitor troop movement, chemical toxins and temperature – relaying data to a command centre. While the original motes were penny-size, they have nano parts inside them and prices are dropping quickly as Intel, Motorola, Honeywell and others ratchet up production. The goal is to shrink the sensing components to the almost-invisible scale of a dust particle – allowing the military, the justice minister or your mom – access to all the dirt.

But, smart dust is also too passive since it doesn’t get about much – without the aid of a high wind – which is why the Berkeley Lab is also working on insect-sized flying robots that can carry wireless sensors. “Robofly” will ultimately be a centimetre-sized robot that flies and lands with the precision of a housefly.cx While Robofly doesn’t actually fly yet, slightly larger autonomous spy planes are already airborne. At the annual Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) competition, sponsored by defence aerospace companies, teams of engineers compete to create tiny flying drones capable of transmitting video. The smallest MAVs are now well below 4 inches.cxi A better approach to tiny mobile surveillance might be to do away with robots altogether and mount surveillance sensors directly onto insects. Back in September 1997, the bio-robot department at Tokyo University constructed “Roboroach,” an ordinary cockroach with sensors implanted on its shell that allowed researchers to remotely control the direction in which it moved. Within a few years, Japanese researchers say, electronically-controlled insects carrying mini-cameras or other sensory devices could be used for a variety of sensitive missions – for rescue work, crawling through earthquake rubble or for slipping under doors for plain, old industrial espionage.”cxii Since the military in many countries, including the United States, has the legal ability to suppress patent applications and information, it is not surprising that research into biological – including nanobiological – monitoring systems has dropped below the radar with the growth in public interest and concern.

Home-drone spies: Snooping bugs are still exotic but drone aircraft, for spying and fighting, are not. The Airrobot AR100B drone has flown 1200 missions over Afghanistancxiii, for example, and it is just one of more than 7000 drones deployed in the region. cxiv The US is in the lead but it is not alone. At the world's biggest robotics show in Washington DC in August 2011, a small Chinese startup unveiled an even smaller drone. The F50 looks like a flying pizza pan but comes with high-definition cameras and can hover over a crowd or a crash site sending back live video to someone's control room perhaps thousands of kilometers away. Drones aren't just tattletales, they can get in on the fight. Armed Predator drones were used to attack Libyan military installations recently and Turkey is developing its own attack drone, “Anka” which the government is more than willing to export.cxv Whether for reconnaissance or retribution, drones are not just for the massively-funded military.

As the US and China were strutting their robotics hardware in Washington, the University of Southampton, in the UK, spent just £5000 and only five days to build a 1.5 m wingspan drone.

What's special about “Sulsa”, the Southampton drone, is that it's hard nylon parts were compiled on a 3-D printer. The aircraft had been a nylon dust bunny until the 3-D printer with laser and electron beams fashioned each piece in very much the same way that laser printers print out our

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hard copies. Before the five days of printing, of course, there were two days of computer designing but future versions of Sulsa would take much less time and could be constructed from polyamide plastic, stainless steel or titanium powder. This means that it is financially and technically possible for anyone to send a homemade peeping pizza pan hovering over anybody's house -- and to launch new ones every week.cxvi

Surrender trumps surveillance: It is not what the government will do to us so much as it is what we are doing to ourselves that will be important in the long march to 2035. In a world where the massively-destructive individual is plausible, not even persistent surveillance is a guarantee of security. Our help is necessary. Wu Suyuan and Qi Qubìng make the point in China sundown that the people are surrendering vital information about themselves faster than governments can request it.

Remember: Following the London bombings in 2005, hundreds of relevant cell phone camera snapshots popped up on Flickr.com even as the story was breaking on the BBC. In Britain and elsewhere, Wu Suyuan reports, cell phone/cameras with GPS systems are providing annotated photographs of neighbours and neighbourhoods with incredible detail. This is not the future – this is now. We are tattle telling on ourselves.

CSOs have focused on surveillance and ignored social surrender. Using inexpensive, readily available COTS technology, a US journalist recently drove his van around an upscale suburb picking up “nanny-cam” (home video monitor) signals that volunteered audio and visual information about the houses he passed.cxvii Row upon row, suburbs and condos are providing real-time home movies of their owners’ daily idiosyncrasies. Link these videos, added to the millions of others volunteered on Youtube, the daily confessions poured out on Facebook and the 100 million explicitly networked social patterns surrendered through Internet telephony like Skype and there isn’t much you or your friends haven’t told. Add this to what we have already acquiesced to as citizens and consumers via the ubiquitous security cameras on subways, buses, street corners, and at checkout counters around the rich world, and most urbanites are just a step away from starring in someone else’s reality TV entertainment.

DIY Spy: Bargain hunters and incorrigible texters can accept apps that transmit news of their latest Trophies to social networks even as they swipe their card. Other apps tell shoppers when there’s a deal in the neighbourhood. At the beginning of 2011, Groupon claimed 50 million impassioned shoppers just in North America.cxviii Smartphone apps like TheFind and RedLaser let shoppers compare prices with online retailers while inside a store by scanning bar codes or verbally describing items. Consumer use of mobile shopping apps lept 50-fold to 5.6% of website sales in 2010 over a year earlier. Are consumers cornering the retailers? Maybe not just yet. TheFind is striking deals with retailers so they will know when a shopper is on the verge of buying something in another store. TheFind’s retailer can use the same app to bargain with the customer, add perks or suggest upgrade options. cxix While all this might make for a happy over-consumer, it makes for even happier Big Box stores who have license to track and trap just about every aspect of daily living.

As more and more of our lives become wi-fied – from washers and stoves to thermostats and bed lamps, the same sensors that save time and energy also telegraph habits and whereabouts to

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strangers. Even underachiever crooks can buy apps that will help them monitor a house, break into the garage, and broadcast when the owners are at grandma’s for the weekend.

Wal-Mart and car thieves can profit from an individual’s data but political parties and governments can go much further. They can aggregate and ‘algorithmate’ personal data with your gender or friends or neighbourhood or your age or income group or even your stock portfolio to predict how your demographic is feeling and how you and your pals will respond to different scenarios. Algorithms have already compile tweats and messages that allow monitors to project everything from tomorrow’s music and video hits to housing prices and stockmarket trends. Google and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have algorithms that can spot flu outbreaks by neighbourhoods as concerned people log onto Wikipedia to check their symptoms.

The data can be marshaled ZIP code by zip code to identify potential disease hotspots. Health authorities used Twitter to follow the 2009 swine flu outbreak and the Brazilian government is tracking tweats in the hopes of corrraling dengue fever before it spreads through urban neighborhoods.cxx Any algorithm that can bundle ailments is smart enough to detect moodswings and pick up on emerging social unrest - perhaps even before the politically discontent know they are not alone. And, if an algorithm reports that police harassment in a DC suburb or the immolation of a student protester in Tunis or the disappearance of a popular journalist in Moscow has sent some bellwether neighbourhoods a-twitter, those in power might counter-tweet quickly enough to diffuse or confuse the frustration. Or, just go and pick up the likely activists… literally, before they “activate”.

Malware apps downloaded inadvertently onto a computer can automatically record every keystroke and copy it back to its master on command. Better yet, a built-in computer camera and microphone can be externally commandeered to record everything in sight or sound as long as the computer is on. cxxi And, if not on, the malware can set timers to turn it on.

Anything a desktop can do a cell phone can do better. At the beginning of 2011, the Wall Street Journal worked through 101 popular cell phone apps and discovered that 56 of them were silently sending back personal information either to the app maker or to the app-maker’s Commercial clients. The information ranged from updates on the cell phone owner’s GPS habits to forwarding contact lists, e-mails, MSN messages, audio files and photographs. At least one app processed personal information through 150 filters analyzing not only gender but gender preference, ethnicity, political persuasion and other lifestyle factoids. Employers and credit agencies can use the apps to determine whom someone hangs out with and how they spend their money. If they don’t like the choices, their next advancement or purchase might be problematic.

Some of the new technologies could have us volunteering information to authorities unintentionally. Already, there are contact lenses that can warn others of your cholesterol (or alcohol) level or of hypertension.cxxii This may be a good thing but if lenses can reveal that much they may soon be able to tell the police when you’re afraid or lying.

Your mobile and your car computer can also be made to talk. In Boston, drivers can download an app called Street Bump that uses the cellphone's accelerometer and GPS to transmit pothole locations to the city traffic department.cxxiii Radar jamming devices are used to avoid traffic tickets but they can also dangerously disrupt an airplane’s radar. Many smartphones have sensors that can tell when GPS signals are being drowned out. Texas-based Navward GPS Consulting is

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developing an app that lets the phones automatically report jammers. With a density of about 1000 smartphones per square kilometer (reasonable around airports and cities) the police or security forces could pinpoint a jammer within 40 m in 10 seconds.cxxiv New high-end cars have wireless connectivity and video cameras (to help with parallel parking). Police forces already have MobEyes, a license plate recognition system that could easily be bundled into your car's system. MobEyes automatically photographs and timestamps every license plate with its GPS location allowing the police to use all the cars on the road to track a fugitive vehicle. In a 2.4km² grid, it took only 300 vehicles to volunteer every license plate in the test area. cxxv There is also a little app called Cell-All that can sniff out chemical spills or attacks and automatically call for help. cxxvi This could prove embarrassing if Cell-All also sniffs out illicit drugs. The RogueFinder app searches for unauthorized wireless Internet access points and ObjectFinder automatically scans nearby electronics to see if they’ve been reported stolen. cxxvii Knowingly or unknowingly, we could all l become undercover cops.

The sophistication is almost impossible to exaggerate. Google, for example, has a “bedspread protector” algorithm that can recognize common background patterns in crime photographs. The algorithm was first run in a child abduction case where a bedspread pattern found at one crime was run against other child abuse crime scenes. Matches were discovered and the perpetrator was arrested.cxxviii In a permanently just and honorable society, this would all be good news. In the real world, it threatens dissent.

Genome give-aways: Not only are we spying on ourselves for others, we’re footing the bill! In 2005, 150,000 people – mostly in the United States – agreed to pony up $100 each to buy a test kit that would let them send a sample of their DNA to IBM. Together with The National Geographic Society, IBM that year launched the Genographic Project to map human genetic diversity around the world. By 2011, more than 400,000 people had joined the project. People paying the hundred dollars want to know if they were distantly related to Bill Gates or Attila the Hun (and a few just want to know if there is a difference). Industry wants to know as much about human genetic characteristics as possible. This absurd social inversion is taking place throughout health care. Remember Dr. Tony Wong from the trend line story? In the real world, Dr. J. Craig Venter (who bears some similarities to the fictional Dr. Wong) is offering a Grand Challenge prize to the first scientist who can map a person’s genome for less than $1,000. Soon, as already noted above individuals will be able to go about with implanted microchips containing their own genome map. (Once you have a microchip on your shoulder, who will be looking over it?)

The pharmaceutical and the security industry are especially interested in human genetic diversity. Among Homo sapiens, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP's) not only help identify individuals and communities but also help researchers triangulate on DNA related to disease and possible diagnostic kits. Craig Venter famously mapped himself – he was one of the first fully mapped human genome – but European-ancestry males are a dime a dozen in the genomics biz.

Over the past two decades, medical anthropologists have been scouring the globe taking blood samples from the Yoruba of West Africa, the Hun of China and seeking remote populations from Papua New Guinea to Panama to the Kalahari Desert. Those involved in collecting usually claim historical, anthropological, or humanitarian justification. This is sometimes true. In mid-February 2010, Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, and a number of universities announced that they had mapped the genome of three, Kalahari bushman and, also, one of the world's most

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famous men of peace and justice, Desmond Tutu.cxxix The media headlines, of course, focused on the renowned archbishop and his enthusiastic support of genomics as a way to bring better medicines to southern Africa.cxxx Archbishop Tutu has always been one of my heroes and I very well remember doing a seminar with him and the All African Council of Churches almost 20 years ago where I had an opportunity to explain biotechnology to the theologians. But, to think that industrialized country scientists and governments – who can't get old-fashioned mosquito netting or condoms to Africa – are going to develop cutting-edge synthetic biology drugs for Kalahari pastoralists just doesn't make sense. The pastoralists’ unique SNP's, however, may well contribute to new diagnostic kits that will – if nothing else – boost the bottom lines of the drug companies.

People will surrender their genomes because it will allow doctors to prescribe a wider range of medicines with the assurance that there is no genetic reason why these medicines could be dangerous. Over the past few decades, virtually thousands of drugs have been dismissed in the research process – or withdrawn from market – because a small percentage of the population experiences dangerous adverse reactions. Individual genome maps will allow pharmaceutical companies to bring these shelved drugs back onto the market. The downside, of course, is that people will have to surrender their privacy to the pharmaceutical industry. We can describe this as either disease avoidance for the patient or risk avoidance for the insurance industry and employers. The strongest privacy laws in the world can’t prevent people from surrendering information about themselves – whether it is through “nanny-cams,” cell phone cameras, or a DNA DVD in your forearm. Nor will laws do much good preventing neighbours from intentionally (or otherwise) snooping on neighbours.

If we’re creating a “see-through society,” what’s the problem? Most of us have nothing to hide – and those who do, many of the rest of us would want them discovered. This is only an argument if we ignore history. Abuse of power was not a feature unique to 20th century fascists and dictators. There is a reason that an earlier generation fought so hard for the secret ballot and why the rich and powerful of their time fought so hard against it.

Open forests: Not all the impacts of the new surveillance technologies are played out in our boardrooms or bedrooms. The impact on biological diversity – its ownership and control and its very survival – are enormous. The pace of technology change – and governments’ failure to take it into account – was painfully obvious during the final negotiations over Biodiversity payments (so-called “access and benefit sharing”) in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010. After years of hard bargaining, indigenous peoples and governments of the global South accepted a deal which overlooked the current or looming ability of bio pirates to use surveillance tools to identify commercially-interesting germplasm, genomics to map the material, informatics to upload the data to a computer cloud, and synthetic biology to tweak the digital DNA into a patentable product … circumventing the benefit-sharing agreement. Yet, a month after Nagoya, at another UN conference on climate change in Cancun, governments were extolling the virtues of these same surveillance technologies to proportion carbon credits. No one, at least in government, made the connection between climate change’d REDD program and the threat to biodiversity benefit sharing..

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Infrared and Inforead: Satellites and fixed-wing aircraft can now combine to map and monitor (in three dimensions) tropical biomass in ways not imaginable when the UN’s Biodiversity Convention came into force in 1994. Cameras mounted on light aircraft or helicopters can use hyper-spectral imaging to analyse visible and infrared wavelengths that reveal variations in vegetation. Precise light measurements expose soil nutrients identifying not only the type of surface vegetation but what lurks beneath. The technology was originally developed to find burial sites but has branched out to service a multitude of interests from archaeology and geology to the CIA, and now to facilitate the privatization and commercialization of the "air" – the greenhouse gas emissions in sequestrations - of the forests.

The potential for biomapping (and biopiracy) is considerable. Plants are affected by the composition of the soil they grow on. Lightwaves in the range of 400 to 2350 nanometres can be monitored from the air to identify plant species and to detect changes in water or soil chemistry.

Airborne police can identify human skin and determine whether its owner is alive or dead.cxxxi The near-term possibilities include the aerial identification of proprietary crops or livestock with unique genetic traits or DNA markers and (importantly for indigenous and local communities) the opportunity to triangulate on soils, bugs or plants offering industrial uses. For indigenous people – and for Mother Nature – it is important to understand that after the commercially interesting stuff is pinpointed and pocketed, the biomass and its land can be used for other purposes.

In 2010, the Carnegie Institute at Stanford University announced that, with WWF and the Peruvian government, it had mapped over 16,600 square miles of Amazonian forest (about the area of Switzerland). While satellites mapped vegetation and record disturbances, the satellite images were complemented by a fixed-wing aircraft deploying Carnegie’s proprietary LiDAR technology (light detection and ranging) to produce three-dimensional representations of the area’s vegetation structure. On the ground, scientists converted the structural data into carbon density aided by a modest network of field plots. Carnegie’s novel system brings geology, land use, and emissions data together to advise Peru – and anyone else with access to the data – that the region’s total forest carbon storage weighs in at about 395 million tonnes with emissions of around 630,000 tonnes per year. The IPCCC estimate for carbon storage in the surveyed area was less - 587 million tonnes. However, under REDD-type programmes, Carnegie’s highresolution approach could yield more credible credit per tonne of carbon. cxxxii The system is also cheap. Peru’s map cost 8 cents per hectare and a similar map in Madagascar was only 6 cents.cxxxiii The cost could drop even further if governments allow the deployment of other technologies that let military and civilian aircraft automatically track everything below. New software converts standard two-dimensional 1950s airplane radar into 3-D images. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) takes repeated 2-D images as one or more aircraft follow a flightpath and builds these up into 3-D images that can peer through foliage and even map the interior of houses so long as the roof is not metal. The Airborne SAR is already loaded onto Predator drones at work over Libya and Afghanistan. The US military's term for this is "Exploitation of Geometric Diversity".cxxxiv In the world of carbon trading, the only issue is how much biomass can the land surrender annually? Biological diversity is irrelevant. It may be possible for industry or governments to

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cherry pick the biodiversity they currently regard as important while discounting and discarding the rest.

The same technologies that establish carbon credits also allow the tracking of the people who live in the forest. This could affect land rights negotiations. Is there archaeological evidence of ancient habitation? Is there proof of present-day habitation? Is that really a burial site? Who gets to interpret the hyperspectral printout?

The technologies will also affect politics. In January 2011, for example, the Carnegie folk surveyed sections of the Columbian forest controlled by FARC. The task of some delicacy requiring discretion. They flew at night accompanied by Blackhawk helicopters sporting missiles and machine guns. On one flight, the Colombian president joined the scientists and later conducted a news conference extolling the virtues of visual reconnaissance for biodiversity and national sovereignty. He may also have wanted to make sure that climate change didn't segue into regime change.

Mind games: On the other hand, there’s no need to monitor anything if it is possible to manipulate the minds of theoretical terrorists or social dissidents – or trade competitors.

Digital Democracies?

Is it not equally true that the new communications technologies can be used to advance democracy? In the early 1980s, while many environmentalists abhorred the rise of desktop computers, some activists embraced the technology and used the computational tool to analyze and out-organize both governments and industry. cxxxv More dramatically, it was the use of radio cassette tapes in Iran in 1979 that made the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolt against the Shah possible. Ham radio operators working from their cars brought down Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986. The fax machine organized global support for the protests in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989.cxxxvi And the popular ousting of Philippine President Joseph Estrada in 2001 is credited to cell phone text messaging. The Ghanaian elections of 2000 and 2004 were kept reasonably democratic by the same use of cell phones. cxxxvii In 2004, cell phone photographs sent by US military prison guards to friends back home found their way to the Washington Post and dealt a harsh public blow to the US government’s credibility in Iraq. In June 2009, the world as well as fellow Iranians learned about the opposition protests in Tehran from Twitter. Facebook and Twitter starred in the 2011 overthrow of dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and – as this book nears completion – perhaps other countries in the region.

These political events took place in the South – in countries with oppressive governments, managed media and poor conventional communications. In each case, civil society’s skilful use of new communications technologies leap-frogged over state controls. During the toppling of Estrada, for example, Filipinos were sending an estimated 45 million text messages a day, more than double the entire combined volume of the rest of the world at that time. The Philippines had barely 3 million fixed telephone lines but its 76 million citizens – even back then – commanded over 4 million mobile phones.cxxxviii Does Phone Power to the People mark a breakthrough point for democracy in the South?

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About 80% of the world’s people are now within reach of a mobile phone signal and 15% of the world is connected to the Internet. cxxxix The ratio of Internet users in industrial countries to those in developing countries is narrowing and penetration rates have improved from 41 to 1 in 1992 to 10 to 1 in 2004 And it must be half that by 2011. cxl Shouldn’t global revolution be at hand?

We’ve thought so before. The arrival of the telegraph – and, especially, the undersea cable – was at one time heralded as a profound democratic breakthrough, as is the Internet today. The truth would be found out, romantics proclaimed. Political and economic power would become transparent. In the end, of course, the telegraph wire served best to reinforce the political power of the countries that controlled the technology and the economic power of the corporations that came to dominate it. Within a few decades, Britain’s Eastern Telegraph and the US’s Western Union ruled the wires.cxli Britain’s Eastern Telegraph Company and Denmark’s Great Northern Company hid behind the telegraph’s humanitarian façade to brutally extend their telegraph lines from Shanghai to Hong Kong and outward to their colonial capitals.cxlii Mix-ups in telegraphic communications, combined with the technology’s demanding speed, nearly brought Chile and the United States to the brink of war around the same time.

Likewise, the radio: when the airwaves first became available to virtually everyone with any technical competence, some thought the revolution was at hand. After all, how could governments exercise control over the air? Many predicted an era of unrestricted free speech and free information that would finally make it possible for the people to exercise true democracy. But, from the beginning in Europe, governments took control of the technology and prohibited access to the airwaves to all but approved parties. By the mid 1920s in the United States, the crowded airwaves forced the US government to step in and organize bandwidth.cxliii By the beginning of the Great Depression – when social unrest was soaring to new heights – the freedom of the airwaves had ended. cxliv

Our early digital experience is no more encouraging. During wartime in Vichy France, a member of the underground created a computer punch card system cataloguing about 40,000 able-bodied resisters whose names and locations could be retrieved quickly.

Both he and his punch cards were discovered; unfortunately, his system worked; and the man died in Dachau in 1944. cxlv

There were also high hopes for cable television as, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, community organizations in North America and elsewhere organized to establish local channels designed to strengthen communities and democracy. Some of those cable channels continue – but nobody’s watching. The cable networks have been merged into the original television systems and then hyper-merged into cinemas, radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet.

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What can civil society honestly expect from the Internet when its basic structure is controlled by the US military? At any given moment there are more than 12 million people chatting on Skype but Skype lives on the Internet, which is controlled by the US military. Even if it's not directly the military, the BANG members are still omnipresent. In 2005, Skype was bought by eBay, which is now selling most of it to a consortium of investors – and Wu Suyuan’s old boss, Rupert Murdoch, bought Myspace. Google has taken over Youtube and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has rejected takeover bids that would have made him an instant billionaire and is, instead, trying to either buy – or replicate – Twitter (a company that has never turned a profit still valued at $3.7 billion cxlvi) to become the world's next Bill Gates.cxlvii iSpy: Social networking cuts both ways... everybody needs a friend... and the networks don't

necessarily have to be large to be intimate and effective. MySpace is accessible to everyone (with broadband) but A-Space, a social network for the global intelligence community, is only accessible to 14,000 practitioners who can freely communicate, coordinate, even commiserate with one another – and control the rest of us.cxlviii I bet they use open-source software!

Not-so soft spies: None of this is especially new. In 1982, a US military satellite recorded “the most monumental non-nuclear explosion ever witnessed from space”. When the Cold War was over, the CIA gloated that it had doctored the software for a Soviet gas pipeline causing the blast.

The errant software had been purloined by Soviet spies from a Canadian company.

Unbeknownst to the Soviets, the CIA had already programmed the computer chip to let the pipeline’s pumps and valves tolerate catastrophic pressure. cxlix An early example of digital hacking can be found during the first Gulf War, when Iraqi military photocopy machines were bugged to allow US spies to read the maps and orders as fast as they could be printed. cl More recently, Blaster, Aurora and Byzantine - all industrial attack “worms” (i.e. malware with a college education) presumably designed or promoted by China, have become the “mothers of all industrial espionage” wrecking havoc from Ottawa to Moscow. A very sophisticated worm called Stuxnet, probably Israeli by birth, and corrupted Iran’s nuclear power plans.cli The Israeli worm may have, in fact, been more successful than intended. Major facilities from hydroelectric power projects to petrochemical plants and metropolitan water systems were sent scrambling, in the aftermath of the Israeli attack, to shore up their leaky software systems from the loopholes exposed by Stuxnet. clii It took until 2010 for the Pentagon to admit that foreign spies breached its computer security in 2008 by someone simply inserting a flash drive into an unattended laptop in a parking lot.cliii six months after that revelation, the US was forced to confess that it had bought counterfeit computer chips for its military hardware. cliv By mid-2011, virtually every major defense company and about 100 million Internet users found that they had been "hacked" and their personal information compromised.

None of this should be a revelation. Even the Economist magazine brands governments “enthusiastic hackers” and claims that spies routinely haul away secret documents “by the warehouse load”. The magazine even argues for an international treaty to bring cyber-warfare under… well, surveillanceclv …sort of an ICENC? … an International Convention for the Evaluation of New Cybertechnologies?

In a competition called “Socialbot 2011”, three automated social rrobots were released into a Twitter group of 500 unsuspecting people and, over two weeks, infiltrated and influenced the

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discourse among at least 240 group members. Organized by a San Francisco-based company, Robot, Robot and Hwang (President, Tim Hwang) the competition offered proof of principle that it is possible for automated bots to monitor and distort Twitter networks. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) responsible for US military interests in the Middle East and Central Asia seems to agree and has contracted for an “online persona management service” that would run 50 fictitious Twitter accounts that CENTCOM hopes will monitor and influence potentially dangerous foreign language Tweaters in Afghanistan and Iraq. clvi Another “open-source” competition going underground?

But is it really possible for the military-industrial establishment to mess with millions of messages? A lone psychologist at Indiana University in the United States – without anything like the resources of the US military – managed to track over 102,000 Tweaters and more than 129 million tweats over six months and make a general assessment of their mental health. clvii Open sorcery?

Too cynical? There is another way of looking at the interconnectivity made possible by new technologies. For many, the "open-source" movement has created huge new areas of innovation and cooperation. People aren't just collaborating on software programs; they're designing houses and communities and solving problems. Sometimes they also compete but often the competition involves teamwork and the end product is for the common good. They can also be a wonderful way for people with good ideas to get financial support. Millions of dollars are being raised annually by artists and startup companies through Crowdfunding, a site where investors can throw in anything from five dollars or as much as they want. clviii Enthusiasts argue that these multiple new ways of communicating and collaborating could lead to the breakup of the multinational monopolies that now dominate industrial markets. Some predict Capitalism 2.0 or 3.0 – a kinder, gentler, wider form of barter and business.

Yes, but... Open source is not new under the sun. In Europe's Middle Ages, contrary to popular views of the guild system, Swiss watchmakers and Italian silk and glassmakers exchanged knowhow freely.clix Many of the inventive heroes of the Industrial Revolution such as Count Rumford, Joseph Priestley, and Humphry Davy shared their knowledge freely with industrialists and usually (not always) avoided patents. Economic historian, Joel Mokyr, describes this as Britain's "open source" movement.clx Sharing information was simply the polite thing to do.

This courtesy did not necessarily extend across national boundaries and not across classes but it was widespread. Neither was open source confined to an arcane aristocracy of gentlemenscientists. The free flow of information benefited everybody. The goodwill even applied to weapons of war. Henri-Joseph Paixhans invention of the exploding cannon ball in the 1820s gave the French navy a leg up on the British but he refused to apply for patents claiming the innovation resulted from a collective social effort over decades that another historian, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, calls "open technique."clxi Crowd-sourcing has also been around for some time. Between the 1860s and the 1920s, the US Department of Agriculture organized an amazing seed "giveaway" campaign sending out as many as 20 million packets of seed every year to farm families throughout the country. The government's goal was to encourage peasants to experiment with entirely new crops and to breed

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their own varieties as they pushed agriculture westward from the Mississippi to California. clxii This open-source experiment was phenomenally successful and only came to an end in 1929 – as seed companies realized that new technologies made it possible for them to capture the best of the open-source varieties, hybridize them, and force peasants to buy their proprietary seed.

Where there were thousands of small family seed companies a few decades ago; today, three multinationals control 53% of global commercial seed sales.

As went the corn, so followed the chickens. The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company hosted a "Chicken of Tomorrow" competition in 1948 and 1951 to see who could breed the best broiler.

Everybody got into the act and the result should have been flocks of feathery diversity.

Unfortunately, that's not how things worked out. By the early 1950s, the contest winners were bred into two thirds of all US chickens. The winners contributed to the homogenization of the global broiler industry - a massively toxic and inhumane regimentation of DNA - the likes of which the world has never before seen. clxiii Today, the world's largest poultry producer, Tyson is manufacturing 140 million pounds of almost genetically-identical chicken a week -- just in the United States; and Monsanto singlehandedly controls 27% of the world's commercial seed market in no small measure because of the wonderful cooperation of crowd sourcing.

Governments can also take advantage of open sourcing. The US National Institute of standards and technology, in 2007, launched an open competition to develop a foolproof cryptographic algorithm to protect computer information. Sort of an open source strategy to make a closed source.clxiv Given the amazing effectiveness of another part of the crowd sourcing movement, the hacktivists, they'd better hurry! Likewise, the FBI in the United States is crowd sourcing with the members of the American Cryptographic Association to decipher messages left, years ago, by murder victims.clxv Open sourcing their way to prison.

Crowd sorcery carries on. Since 1989, an organization called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a robotics competition, annually attracts over 200,000 entrants from schools in 56 countries. Working in supervised teams, kids construct and control robots in a competitive marathon that annually awards $12.2 million in scholarships. clxvi That's not all. About 120 teams – many of them students – are engaged in an open-source competition to build “cubesats” – shoebox size satellites that must be built from off-the-shelf consumer electronics that can be assembled in four hours or less. clxvii This could be a real boon to commercial satellites but the US military won’t mind either. The helpful kids building satellites today are continuing a tradition. In the early days of the Cold War, tens of thousands of their parents volunteered with Operation Moon Watch venturing out at night with their binoculars and telescopes scouting for a surprise Soviet missile attack.clxviii The most stunning open-source adventure today is IGEM - the MIT-sponsored initiative to teach high school and university students – with no experience in biology – how to build their own life forms. The kids, again in teams, avail themselves of a pile of off-the-shelf "biobricks" previous teams and scientists have built and road tested over the years. The bio-bricks – sometimes referred to as lego – are strands of DNA that are assumed to function a bit like computer circuitry

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in that they will reliably do what's expected of them. The kids can download genome maps off the Internet onto their laptops; tinker with the DNA onscreen; and e-mail their design to a gene foundry company who will build the sequence for, maybe, 50 cents a base and FedEx it back to the team before the competition is judged. clxix Crowd sourced or open sourced, the robot, shoebox spy or GM smallpox could soon be a Thanksgiving special at your neighbourhood Big Box. Well, the mail-order smallpox may have to come from craigslist.

There are a couple of points here. First, every major new technology began as open source (ask Bill Gates and Steve Jobs about the early days of the computer) – and the technologies remain open source until profits change someone’s mind. In mid-2011, Apple briefly became the largest company in the world – surpassing energy giant, Exxon Mobile.clxx The second point is that the bad guys can also use open source/crowd sourcing. Consider the collective innovations being made in 3-D printing. Just as synthetic biologists are buying secondhand gene synthesizers on eBay for $400 to make DIY DNA and stacking up ready to go biobricks for anyone who wants to get a life (or end one), thousands of hobbyists with $1300 3-D printers are constructing a warehouse full of tubes and wires and wing nut blueprints and building products that other hobbyists can put together to make toasters or AK-47s or drone spy planes.clxxi Enthusiasts can even go onto the Internet and download malware apps specifically designed to break into cars or houses or bank accounts. If the mafia or the neighbours can't find what they need right away, they can always log onto Mechanical Turk and pay someone somewhere to build the required app.clxxii It’s scary enough that there are an estimated 10,000 people on this planet who know how to build a nuclear weapon.clxxiii It's scarier still that everybody might be able to build their own botulism or plot their partner's progress through the day with an app linked to a personal satellite. I don't think our lives will improve if nuclear bombs or smallpox or spy satellites become open source. Those who think so don't know history.

To be clear, the ultimate point is not to be against open source or crowd sourcing but to recognize that even these creative techniques live within an entrenched and self-serving industrial environment that must be radically transformed if history is not to repeat itself. Opensource is no more a quick fix for our societal shortcomings than is nanotechnology or synthetic biology.

Atoms for Peace? – Social engineering for pacification?

Professor Jacob Hamblin of Clemson University makes it clear that social engineering is not a post-9/11 invention. Neither was it formed only in the mid-1970s. In 1930, Hamblin tells us, social scientists – concerned that the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and the predicted revolution in automation would destabilize industrial societies – argued for the need to manipulate the social conscience in order to maintain progress, as well as law and order. Among the major proponents of social engineering was the International Committee on Mental Hygiene. Prominent social scientists posited the theory that social problems were a matter of “psychological maladjustment.” The International Committee eventually morphed into the World Federation on Mental Health (WFMH) under the

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leadership of Canadian psychiatrist, G. Brock Chisholm, who also became the first Director-General of the World Health Organization.

When the newly elected US President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the UN General Assembly in December 1953 (with the newly-elected Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld at his side) he launched his “Atoms for Peace” initiative and, probably unintentionally, catalyzed a feeding frenzy within the UN “family” of agencies for leadership of the initiative. Ultimately, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) lost out to the US-inspired International Atomic Energy Agency. Nevertheless, UNESCO joined forces with Chisholm’s organization to examine ways to guide and control scientific debate over the risks of nuclear energy and to allay widespread public concerns.

According to UNESCO and the WFMH, setting aside public alarm was all a matter of reorganizing education and media management. The social scientists talked in terms of “behavioural modification” for whole societies and “psychiatric therapy” for the world in order to help humanity adjust to new technologies. Those fearful of nuclear power were presented as socially inadequate human beings paranoid about almost everything.

Nuclear power, itself, was understood both by UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO) as inherently beneficial to society and contextualized as a subset of the wider technological trend toward automation. The idea that scientists could work with the education system and the mass media to reshape society and social attitudes was pervasive well into the 1960s when the social movement against racism, disaffection with the Vietnam war and distrust over environmental deterioration swept it, temporarily, aside.clxxiv

Memes and democratic dissent: Is it really possible to externally direct the evolution of a human culture? Hopefully not. Is it possible that governments will attempt this kind of manipulation? Yes, it is. And, like it or not, successful or not, the very attempt will prove hugely disruptive. If the notion itself is incredible, the attempt is credible and civil society should be vigilant.

Even back in the mid-1970s, Dr. Richard Dawkins would have argued that government manipulation leading to such a societal surrender is already a “meme.” Cultural memes are already developed and directed through the mass media and public education. Sit-coms and school curricula have been enormously successful in creating new social norms. Some of these – such as an aversion to smoking, acceptance of sexual orientation or antipathy to drunk driving – have been obviously beneficial. Others – such as the demeaning of indigenous knowledge, the denial of global warming or the dismissal of responsible consumerisms – have been obviously destructive. All of these represent “soft” memes.

If there is any truth to the notion of a massively-destructive individual, or if the BANG members believe it to be possible, or if it is in their interest to convince society that MDIs are a threat, then

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the logical “first response” is to establish a ubiquitous surveillance system. But, this has to mean self-surveillance – the creation of a culture of surveillance in which we all participate.

Medicating memes: Martin Rees warns: “…human character may be changed by new techniques far more targeted and effective than the nostrums and drugs familiar today… clxxv By mid-century…[people may] have different attitudes from those of the present (maybe modified by medication, chip implants and so forth)…clxxvi Non-genetic changes could be even more sudden, transforming humanity’s mental character in less than a generation, as quickly as new drugs can be developed and marketed. The fundamentals of humanity, essentially unaltered throughout recorded history, could start to be transformed….”clxxvii Rees is not alone. In Our Posthuman Future, political historian Dr. Francis Fukuyama argues that habitual and universal use of mood-altering medications would cause us to degenerate into pallid acquiescent zombies…clxxviii What better way to keep society’s dissidents from becoming massively-destructive individuals?

That government and industry might contemplate the use of drugs or cochlear implants to advance their social control should not be surprising. All forms of social unrest are already interpreted as a personal medical problem. In 1979, for example, in the UK’s “winter of discontent” angry trade unionists struck (and lost pay) for 29.5 million days. But, in 2002, with the trade union movement in retreat, UK workers lost 33 million days due to “stress”. clxxix Government and industry would rather people buy pills than blockade roads. It is not that citizens are unemployed or underemployed that is wrong, it is that they are depressed about it.

There is a pill for that. It is not that there is too much stress, too much social upheaval, too much pollution that is the problem; it is that these things bother us. There is a pill for that. It is not that our bosses demand too much of us, it is that we need too much sleep or can’t quite meet the rising bar of employer expectations. There are pills that can reduce our sleep requirement or enhance our memory or help us think faster. It is not that the BANG members need to adjust, the people need to be adjusted.

According to author Ethan Watters, social control is one of the great success stories of globalization. In his book, Crazy Like Us, he describes the spread of Western cultural psychology and the pharmaceutical industry's mood-management drugs around the world. Where Western-trained psychiatrist and psychologists see problems as individual (for example, depression, after the 2004 tsunami), the people themselves may see their situation as a breakdown in community or kinship relationships – not personal at all. Treating individual depression offers the profitable opportunity to hand out pills. Treating destroyed communities is pricier.clxxx If Tash’s baby gets a cochlear implant for memory enhancement – or Wu accepts an implant to end her deafness, who will have access to the send/receive toggle? iBrains? Closely related to the concept of cultural memes is the potential for neuroscientists to understand – and adjust – memory and other brain functions. Dr. Eric Kandel received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2000 for just such work. Kandel traced memory in the simple Aplysia marine snail – following the neurological pathway from the initial sensation to the storage of the

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sensation’s memory in a pattern of electrical and chemical connections that could be pinpointed and, theoretically at least, manipulated. Other researchers have discovered that the ultrasound -that wonderful old invention that was intended to protect the health of babies and was transformed into a monstrous instrument for female infanticide can also be used on the brain to manipulate memories. clxxxi Scientists now believe they may be able to help patients overcome psychic trauma by dulling or eliminating the memory of terrible events. There are, of course, other, potentially less sympathetic uses.clxxxii Those ordered to commit atrocities, for example, could be made to forget - or not regret.

Digging around in other parts of the brain, two researchers at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego (CA, USA) engineered a 30-fold increase in the aggressiveness of the famous fruit fly by boosting the presence of an enzyme – CYP6a20 – coded by a single gene. It’s unusual for a characteristic like aggressiveness to be traced to one gene, but it is still more interesting because fruit flies share a quarter of their DNA with us humans.clxxxiii Could the same aggressiveness be triggered – or disabled – in soldiers?

Epic inheritances? It is, of course, much more interesting if the brain can be re-wired so that cultural memes are passed on from one generation to the next. If it is possible to manipulate how – or what – we think, could these altered neural patterns be inherited? Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden think it’s do-able. Together with colleagues in the UK, they have discovered that epigenetic changes –genetic changes that are not associated with a change in DNA sequence– brought about among pre-pubescent youngsters through nicotine or alcohol are passed onto their children and grandchildren. A long-term survey of British men revealed that early smokers passed on epigenetic changes to their sons and grandsons that led to obesity and other health problems. Another survey in northern Sweden showed that grandparents who were frequently hungry between ages nine and twelve passed on extended life expectancy to their children. Scientists now worry that epigenetic changes could lead to inherited diseases such as Huntington’s.clxxxiv It may not just be diseases that can trickle down the generations. Other research has discovered that emotional factors like stress from bullying can cause epigenetic changes in later generations of mice. It’s too soon to assess whether or not human grandparents pass on stress to their descendents.clxxxv However, if new cultural memes can be entrenched in subjects through several generations the opportunity/costs could look attractive. Already, scientists are proposing a Human Epigenome Map to complement the Human Genome Map in order to search out inherited epigenetic traits or diseases.clxxxvi Parasitic memes: Thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins wasn’t just talking about these soft or mechanical memes. Dawkins speculated on – but neither promised nor prophesied – the development of viral or parasitic memes that could literally control some facets of human cultural evolution. In early December 2001 –less than three months after 9/11 – the US Department of Commerce (DOC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) convened a meeting of scientific experts, industry and senior US government officials under the auspices of the White House, on the theme: “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance.”

The NSF’s Dr. William Bainbridge talked about “cultural memetics,” positing that it may be possible to map – and predict – the neurological behaviour of a culture or community (or

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individual) and then either adapt or, at least, anticipate responses to stimuli. Those attending the meeting were keenly aware that the greatest area of scientific progress has not been in nanoparticles or genome mapping but in neurosciences.

Researchers are learning to follow the neurological pathways from senses to one (or several) responding parts of the brain. They are also learning how to grow neurological connections and redirect impulses. Publicly, the purpose of this research is to help those in chronic pain, to suppress anxiety or to vanquish addictions. But, the same research could wipe away fear in soldiers or induce apathy among anti-globalization protesters.

The record of that December Washington meeting, pretty much says it all. Here, Bainbridge and Gary Strong of the National Science Foundation told their audience: “…the classic problem of social science has been to understand how and why some people and groups deviate from the standards of society, sometimes even resorting to crime and terrorism. Deep scientific understanding of the memetic processes that generate radical opposition movements may help government policymakers combat them effectively.” clxxxvii Not all the discussion focused on suppressing violence. In the aftermath of the Seattle WTO debacle, the NSF and Department of Commerce were also concerned about economics... “A science of memetics, created through the convergence of many existing disciplines, would likely give a basis for understanding the relationship between social groups and globalization — a topic of enormous recent interest. Fundamentalist groups are no longer ‘fringe’,” Bainbridge and Strong asserted. “As they practice tactics to deal with variety and change, and they have become a topic not only for cultural anthropologists but also for law enforcement and governments in general. Certain ‘ideas’ may have the force of a social virus…” they went onto warn that some “ideas” can spread “…as quickly and can have as deleterious effects on a population as do biological viruses.” clxxxviii What to do? According to the assembled scientists and bureaucrats in the Washington meeting, “If we had a better map of culture, analogous to the Linnaean system that classifies biological organisms into species and genera, we could help people find the culture they want and we could locate ‘uninhabited’ cultural territories that could profitably be colonized by growing industries.

Memetic science,” the policy advisers opined, “could help us deal with challenges to American cultural supremacy.” clxxxix The meeting was particularly concerned with one specific culture and Strong and Bainbridge suggested that the US government should “…create a distributed digital library devoted to all aspects of Islamic culture, with special attention to understanding how it evolves and divides.”cxc Although Bainbridge and Strong were not claiming to express the views of the US government, the executive summary of the NSF/DOC report stresses that “highest priority” was given by the attending government and industry officials to their proposal for a Human Cognome Project – a plan to map the neurons and memes of the human brain just as the Human Genome Project mapped our DNA.cxci Gondii not Gandhi: Is it really possible for neuroscientists to change the way people think or behave? Can a culture be changed? It was the idea of creating parasites or neural viruses –

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today’s counterparts to computer viruses – that originally attracted Richard Dawkins to the plausibility of cultural memetics. There is considerable evidence in the natural world that the brains of everything from insects to mammals are routinely “turned around” so that creatures are manipulated to do the bidding of another species – even if it means committing suicide. Oxford researchers (not Richard Dawkins) have discovered a tiny parasite, Toxoplasma gondii that makes mice fatally attracted to cats. The parasite manipulates rats to carry it to its preferred host, cats. It is dormant in rodents but reactivated when gobbled up by the cat.cxcii Researchers in Montpellier, France report that hairworms that grow inside grasshoppers take over their brains secreting proteins that drive the grasshoppers to drown themselves in water when the hairworms need to mate.cxciii New Zealand researchers have found that cockles infected by Curtuteria australis are used to return the parasite to birds. The parasite stops the cockles from burrowing in mudflats, forcing them to remain on the surface as prey for the birds.cxciv Then consider the remarkable case of the lancet liver fluke (Dicrocoelium dendriticum) that lays its eggs in the liver of cows and sheep. The eggs are excreted and consumed by snails where they reproduce in the snail’s digestive gland and are excreted again. Ants eat the excreted snail slime and become controlled by the parasite. When the sun sets and temperatures drop, the ants are compelled to leave the colony and climb blades of grass to wait to be eaten. This process is repeated nightly until the ants are consumed. Safely inside the cow or sheep, the parasite returns to the liver to lay its eggs once more.cxcv The ability of parasites to manipulate the minds of grasshoppers and mice may not seem like a “proof of principle” that the cultural or political attitudes of humans could as easily be “reeducated.” Yet, Toxiplasma gondii has already infected human beings and some researchers controversially claim that it is the cause of some abnormal behaviour patterns such as promiscuity in women and violence in men.

I’m not suggesting that governments are about to nano-engineer new bacteria or viruses that will be slipped into our water pipes or grain silos to make sure we all vote “right” in the next election.

I am suggesting only that the exigency of the BANG members to modulate the will of the people to their own ends is not only a political constant but may have more powerful tools to achieve this goal. As worrisome as surveillance may be, societal surrender and the various forms of cultural memes demand civil society’s attention. Unless the people seek a social policy solution to social justice issues, the threat of massively-destructive individuals may coerce “all of the people” into placing themselves under the control of others “all of the time.”

Opiates of the people? The Romans offered bread and circuses; European feudalism offered religion; the British offered factory workers gin and then went on to opium. Today, we have Facebook, reality TV, the evening “fire-‘n-fight” news and a much wider range of addictive substances to choose from. Do governments and industry really need anything more?

Brain gain$: In mid-2008, more than 500 neuro-tech companies had at least 600 cognitive enhancement medicines or instruments in the pipeline, aimed at the one billion people that the

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WHO estimates are in need of mental help. For the last year of reliable data (2006), industry analysts place the commercial neuro-tech market at $120 billion, with $101 billion of that in the form of medicines. The potential global market is hard to calculate. The rule of thumb is that mental illness (whatever that means) costs society $2 trillion a year. Yet, even this figure doesn’t define the market. After all, how much would you pay not to grow stupid?

We already do pretty strange things to our bodies. In 2005, at least 10.2 million US citizens had some form of cosmetic surgery ranging from botox injections and buttock lifts to pectoral and breast implants, liposuction and vaginal “rejuvenation.”cxcvi Since the first successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) birth in 1978, well over 3 million children have begun life in a Petri dish. In 1989, barely 30,000 IVF babies were born, but that number soared to 200,000 in 2002. Today, 4% of all births in countries like Denmark and the Netherlands are IVF. cxcvii An estimated one in 16 children is born with a commercially-defined mental or physical disability attributable to genetic inheritance, but one in 10 people are commonly said to have some mental or physical abnormality that someone else thinks needs fixing. Add to this the one in six couples that experience difficulty conceiving and then add to that those parents wanting to select the sex of their next child. The market for designer babies is almost limitless. Leading private clinics now claim they can test embryos for 150 different genetic disorders.cxcviii We just can't seem to do anything about poverty or patriarchy.

The new technologies will be available to those who can afford them to enhance their performance. Not only will nano-scale technologies claim to protect people from their deteriorating environment, they will offer additional powers of cognitive capacity and physical strength. Intellectual property conditions will require that people with enhanced qualities renew their “licenses” with each generation, and/or only conceive with other licensed people with enhanced qualities.cxcix How can this be done? If suing the parents for their patently “illegitimate” offspring seems a PR no-no, the cognitive or genetic implant could be installed with a Terminator (“suicide”) switch that keeps a trait from being passed to the next generation or, better still, amounts to an “Einstein app” or “rent-a-brain” that gives the licensee the option of upgrading or being switched stupid every decade or so. Those who refuse – or can’t afford – to be enhanced will gradually be reduced to the level of subhumans or outcasts. In less sophisticated times, this was called slavery.

“Near the entrance stands an unnerving human ‘presence’ – a trompe l’oeil assemblage featuring 23 prostheses housed in a cut-out figure. As one proceeds from booth to booth, this shadowy projection acquires a corresponding prosthesis: spectacles first, followed by hearing aids, dentures, artificial organs and artificial limbs. Significantly, though, this man sheds all of these devices at the entrance to the tissue-engineering unit, suggesting that this burgeoning field may one day render biomechanical prostheses obsolete. Oddly enough, despite its gaudy, static, and asymmetrical qualities, the first of these two ‘presences’ somehow feels more real, more alive than the second, moving character... Surely, then, the underlying museological concept must lie in the question of what it is that makes the symbiosis between organic life and technology at once so familiar and yet so disturbing.”cc

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In 2005, tourists in Munich could visit the Leben mit Ersatzteilen (Living with spare parts), display housed at the Deutsches Museum. The exhibit took people through the history of humanity’s effort to reconstruct itself and urged them to consider the implications of a transhumanist future. We only touch the edges of this scenario in our trend line story as Tash’s baby and then Wu Suyuan have enhancement implants thrust upon them.cci

What Next for Governance?

The 60-year trend line (1975 – 2005 – 2035): • Mayhem: Newsweek called 1975, "The Year of Terror"ccii because of the unprecedented number of threats to the US nuclear power industry, including fears that terrorists would bomb New York's World Trade Center. US government agencies warned that protecting nuclear power plants would require the curtailment of civil liberties.cciii In 2005, US Homeland Security provisions allowed the government to spy on everyone all the time. By 2035, nanotech’s "peaceful use of the atom" will demand a unique level of government – industry collusion – the BANG consortia.

• Mergers: The value of global annual corporate mergers in 1975 was approximately $20 billion. In 2005, it was $2.7 trillion. In 2007, before the market crash of 2008, global mergers soared to almost $4.5 trillion. In 2035, mergers will be negligible because corporations will be working through global consortia.

• Muggers: In 1975, US regulators forced Xerox to surrender its exclusive photocopy patents as anti-competitive, almost half of all US patents being contested because they did not meet the legal requirement of “non-obvious” were overturned and Exxon was attempting to overturn the historic prohibition against life patents by claiming a genetically-engineered microbe (granted in 1980). In 2005, fewer than 5% of patents challenged on grounds of “obviousness” were overturned and multi-genome patent claims are commonplace. In 2035, lifetime patents (plus 70 years) will be available on all natural or unnatural discoveries and will be protected by criminal law.

• Makers: In 1975, the most challenging answer to What Next? was from the Group of 77 and intertwined with the New International Economic Order. In 2005, the world was most interested in Bill Gates’s answer. What Next? in 2035, will be a question for the Chief Executive Officers of companies involved in Atom-Sphere and Terra-Forma.

• Meddlers: In 1975, governments began negotiating the UN Environmental Modification Treaty prohibiting hostile climate modification. In 2005, the US Congress tried to fast-track a Weather Modification Act. In 2035, the four superpowers and the two geoengineering consortia will supervise global climate management.

• Medicators: The World Health Assembly of 1975 adopted a list of Essential Medicines to be inexpensively available to all. At the Peoples’ Health Assembly in 2005, 30% of the world population still didn’t have access to the medicines on the WHO List. The WHO Assembly in 2035 will agree to scrap the

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List because it doesn’t include essential human performance enhancement drugs.

• Markers: At the UN General Assembly in 1975, OECD states reaffirmed their commitment to the 0.7% of GNP foreign aid target. At the Millennium Development Goals’ assessment in 2005, most OECD states reaffirmed their commitment to the Millennium Development Goal target. At the UN General Assembly in 2035, no mention will be made of either the MDGs or 0.7%.

Policy line: • Gov.com: Accepting that the purpose of the law is to achieve maximum market efficiency, by 2035, governments will protect industry’s development of new environmental and health technologies and secure raw materials in case nanotechnology fails. CSOs must defend civil rights and encourage technological diversity.

• Defence: The focus on terrorism leads to the Massively-Destructive Individual… the threat can come from anyone, anywhere – allowing governments to monitor everyone, everywhere. CSOs must move the battlefield from terrorism to justice.

• Dissent: While governments enact privacy legislation to protect against ubiquitous surveillance, industry and governments support technologies that encourage citizens to volunteer everything about themselves. Neurosciences (especially cultural memetics) will become the ultimate anti-terror defence.

CSOs must reaffirm the right to dissent.

What next?

• Resilience: Create a local-to-global Commons Front among progressive food, health, educational, cultural and environment communities.

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Aaa GONE!

Converging on Climate -Geoengineering as Geopiracy “Let’s quit the debate about whether greenhouse gases are caused by mankind or by natural causes; let’s just focus on technologies that deal with the issue.”

– US President George W. Bush, May 25, 2006cciv In 1975, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Newsweek joined forces to warn us all of Global Cooling – the same year that British scientists confirmed a hole over the ozone layer above Antarctica and, coincidentally, the Soviet Union and the United States submitted identical draft treaties to the UN General Assembly prohibiting climate modification as a military weapon. ccv

Thirty years later, in 2005, everybody – even the US president – was talking about Global Warming: Scientists were warning that the temperature rise on the Arctic ice cap and on Siberian permafrost could “tip” Planet Earth into an environmental tailspin and the US Senate agreed to study a bill that would confer upon itself the right to modify the US climate.

Thirty years further on – in 2035 – in China sundown, climate change is a devastating fact of life and OECD governments and industry are actively colluding to geoengineer their shareholders out of harm’s way. Not surprisingly, in the trend line story, the big environmental battle is over climate change brought about by the Industrial Revolution much exacerbated by the first chemical revolution (1940s – 1970s). The story describes desperate attempts to forestall global warming with a second chemical revolution derived from today’s new technological convergence at the nanoscale. Global warming dominates the media, almost all of the environmental discourse and much of the political agenda.

Nevertheless, the assumption in China sundown is that governments and industry will try to do exactly what George W. Bush proposed – rescue themselves via a technological silver bullet.

Atom-Sphere will patch up the ozone layer, cleanup greenhouse gases and shield us from the sun’s rays by blasting nanoparticle sulfates into the stratosphere. Terra-Forma will atomicallymodify marine microorganisms to better suck up CO2 and cool the waters that whip up hurricanes. Industry and government may choose to call it geoengineering; many others would call it Geopiracy or global ecophagy.ccvi There are, of course, many environmental threats. We are by no means finished with the fallout from our first chemical adventure. Despite the rekindled public concern that arose with the sudden shut down of a reactor at Sweden’s Forsmark nuclear power plant in July 2006 (with two of four safety back-up systems failing to work)ccvii and then, more shocking, Japan’s Fukushima meltdown in 2011,ccviii nuclear power is making a comeback and – as China sundown warns – at least some in the environmental movement are likely to accept nuclear energy as the only “politically-realistic” alternative to fossil fuels.

Geoengineering is a reality, not a potential threat. Since the Copenhagen debacle, big governments and billionaires have accelerated their efforts to actively study – and design

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experiments for – a variety of technological scenarios. Beginning in 2009, the onslaught of media stories about geoengineering as "Plan B” has been relentless. A succession of scientific institutes and Nobel laureates have come forward with reports and proposals urging governments to fund serious experimentation. The UK Parliament and the U.S. Congress have begun holding hearings.

Early in 2010, investigative journalists reported that Bill Gates was privately investing in geoengineering research and was actually named as a co-inventor on a number of geoengineering patents related to ocean temperature modification and hurricane control. At the same time, another billionaire, Richard Branson (he of Virgin Air fame) – who has already offered $25 million for any technology that can help clean up the stratosphere – announced that he has established a "climate war room" ready and willing to consider any and all climate options.

Proof of principle: The prospect of global warming is disturbing enough, but the spectre of human geoengineering as its solution seems ludicrous. Is geoengineering realistic?

Unfortunately, humanity has already proven Earth restructuring to be wonderfully operational.

We've already done it with the Industrial Revolution. Fill enough marshes and monoculture enough fields and the ecosystem changes. Cut down enough forests and the climate changes.

Build up sufficient industrial pollution and the ozone disappears and the smog roles in.

Geoengineering’s “proof of principle” is manifest!

Geoengineering – a brief history: Clouds with silver linings: It has taken us some time to realize the influence we can wield over the planet. Back in 1930, Robert A. Millikan – a physicist and Nobel laureate – insisted there was no danger that human activity could do lasting harm to anything as gigantic as Earth. Even as he was speaking, chemists were inventing CFCs – chlorofluorocarbons: the cocktail responsible for thinning stratospheric ozone and the cause of alarmed intergovernmental action – the Vienna and Montréal protocols – of the mid-1980s.

Likewise, the notion that global warming could have a technological fix is not new. In the 1940s, Bernard Vonnegut (brother of novelist Kurt Vonnegut) – a well-respected meteorologist – discovered that silver iodide smoke could cause clouds to give up their rain. His discovery kickstarted serious government efforts to manipulate the environment. Until then, cloud-seeding had been the preserve of crackpots and con artists.ccix Governments and industry have a sometimes-ignoble history of tampering with the weather harking back to US President Lyndon Johnson’s efforts in the mid-1960s to conjure up rain over Bihar, India and put a damper on the region’s worst famine in decades. The experiment failed.

But the failure didn’t stop the top-secret US Air Force’s “Project Popeye” rainmaking campaign that began in 1966 and ran for seven years, with 2,300 cloud seeding missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War.ccx The goal was to make the trail impassable and, as a bonus, to drown out North Vietnam’s rice crop. While rains increased, the Air Force couldn’t make a clear link to its covert campaign.

Making rain has always been a tricky proposition. In 1952, flash flooding in Lynmouth in

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southwest Britain killed 34 people and was attributed (perhaps mistakenly) to clandestine Royal Air Force experiments. As the UN Conference on the Human Environment was playing out in Stockholm in 1972, a cloudburst drowned 238 people in Rapid City, South Dakota, US on a day when seeding experiments were going on nearby. Over time, the public has built up a healthy distrust of both public and private efforts to put a silver lining around our clouds.

In 2005, more convincing experiments in “hygroscopic cloud seeding” took place in countries like the US, Thailand, China, India, Australia, Israel, South Africa, Russia, United Arab Emirates and Mexico.ccxi According to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, at least 26 governments are routinely conducting weather-altering experiments.ccxii Despite the Vietnam embarrassment, many of the world’s military powers remain fascinated with weather control. A US Air Force report entitled Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the weather in 2025 concluded, “… the weather will be our most powerful weapon.”ccxiii As mentioned in China sundown, in 2004, two Chinese cities in Henan province, Pingdingshan and Zhoukou, really did come close to fighting when they both tried to alter local weather patterns by blasting tiny silver nitrate particles into the troposphere.ccxiv The city that was downwind accused the city upwind of stealing its weather. This didn’t deter the Chinese government from promising the International Olympic Committee that China would use weather modification to guarantee sunny weather for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Unfortunately, they didn’t check with the King of Thailand, who – in 2006 – was granted two patents covering rainmaking processes.ccxv There was lots of rain during the Olympics and it could be that China’s failure to pay the Thai King royalties led to a Royal reign on their parade!

Geoengineers without Borders Lessons learned? The history of weather/climate modification – both for economic and military purposes – is unquestionably spotty. Could governments do better in responding to climate change? Governments did act responsibly (though some would argue, belatedly) on ozone depletion and did eventually ban CFCs.ccxvi There was no real alternative, of course. The hole in the ozone layer was directly traced to CFCs and the impact led directly to skin cancer on the beaches where rich people holiday. Confronted with the ozone hole, neither industry nor government could come up quickly enough with an alternative strategy to banning CFCs. The causes and implications of climate change are much more complex and there are still many politicians and pundits seeking an upside. In the years since the 1975 discovery of the ozone hole, voters in OECD countries at least, have been “dumbed-down” and de-trained by corporations and politicians to believe that all change can be achieved painlessly. Today, the industry-government elite will not just confuse the issue, but point to a technological fix, which they hope will safeguard the status-quo of the wealthy.

Clyde Prestowitz, for example, is a much-published corporate cheerleader who enthuses that US motorists now get twice as much out of a barrel of oil than they did in 1975. Using the latest technologies, Prestowitz asserts, the US could double oil efficiency once more. ccxvii It takes 33% less energy to produce a unit of GDP in wealthy economies today than it did in the mid-

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1970s.ccxviii The world wastes 2.3 billion gallons of gas annually just in traffic jams.ccxix We don’t need to change our lifestyle – just improve our efficiency. Bring on the SUVs! Not to worry that humanity may have consumed more natural resources since World War II than in all of history.ccxx Nor that world energy-demand – despite much-publicized potential improvements in efficiency – is forecasted to jump 60%, from 2002 to 2030 and to require about $568 billion in new investments every year. ccxxi So, if governments aren’t prepared to ask their citizens to change their lifestyles, is geoengineering a real option? In his recent, popular book, climatologist Tim Flannery enthusiastically refers to geoengineering as “the great game of climate modification.” ccxxii Flannery writes happily about the growing number of respected scientists who are now siding with geoengineering. In 2009, both the US National Academies and the UK’s Royal Society recommended their respective governments do likewise.

Proof of principle – Geoengineering past & present Ten old ways to geoengineer the planet: ✓ Cut down most of the world’s forests; ✓ Convert savannas & marginal land into monoculture cropland; ✓ Dam watersheds, divert rivers, dry up marshes and drain aquifers; ✓ Pump billions of tonnes of toxic chemicals into the stratosphere every year; ✓ Wipe out species and genetic diversity in livestock & crops; ✓ Overuse marginal lands leading to soil erosion and desertification; ✓ Erode the world’s major ecosystems; ✓ Deplete – possibly beyond recall – most commercial marine species; ✓ Condemn half of the world’s coral reefs to extinction; ✓ Pollute almost all of the world’s fresh water reserve.

Ten new ways to geoengineer the planet: • Create vast monoculture tree plantations for biofuels & CO2 sequestration; • Proliferate nuclear power plants; • Contaminate Centres of Genetic Diversity with “climate-ready” crops; • Spread iron nanoparticles over huge ocean areas to (hopefully) absorb CO2; • Build a 600 km² nano-thin solar mirror in the stratosphere; • Launch 500 ships with turbines to propel salt particles to whiten clouds and reflect sunlight; • Store compressed CO2 in abandoned mines and active oil wells; • Burn biomass to create biochar to be worked into the soil over vast land areas; • Paint rooftops and roads white; • Cover deserts with reflective plastic to repel sunlight;

Geoengineering – in real time: The current debate over the possibility of engineering the stratosphere can be traced to a 1997

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speech by Dr. Edward Teller – the Nobel laureate responsible for the hydrogen bomb and one of the most politically influential US scientists in the latter half of the 20 th century. Dr. Teller lent his support to geoengineering in a paper he and two colleagues presented at the 22 nd International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies in Erice, Sicily. Teller delivered his speech on a personal basis but under the logo of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. ccxxiii Back in the 1950s, Teller had attacked what he regarded as the unfounded public paranoia that prevented him from using nuclear devices on hydroelectric projects and mining schemes in the United States.

Nevertheless, the scientist’s willingness to take on Earth restructuring sent a shockwave through the climate change community.

Teller might have been dismissed as a scientist past his prime except that another Nobel laureate, Paul J. Crutzen – who won his Nobel (and environmental) spurs for pioneering work on the ozone layer – amplified the scientific shockwave in a 2002 interview in Nature in which the Dutch scientist offered grudging support for geoengineering. “Our future,” he told the science journal, “may well involve internationally accepted, large-scale geoengineering projects.”

Then, the following year, Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon insider who dreamed up the Star Wars insanity, commissioned a former Royal Dutch Shell futurologist and an Emeryville scenario designer to devise strategic government responses to a shift in the Gulf Stream running alongside the Sargasso Sea. Among their seven recommendations: geoengineering to suppress climate change and to prevent the current’s shift further offshore.ccxxiv That same year, the US National Academy of Sciences released a report calling on Washington to launch a coordinated national research programme in weather modification.ccxxv Paul Crutzen returned to the debate, stirring up a real tempest in a teapot, in August 2006, when he wrote a guest editorial in the journal Climatic Change calling for active research into the use of “sub-micron-sized” sulphate-based aerosols to reflect sunlight in the stratosphere to cool the Earth. Crutzen, now a professor at the Max Planck Institute, opines that high-altitude balloons and artillery cannon could be used to blast sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. The sulphur dioxide would convert to sulphate particles. The cost, he reckons, would run between $25 and $50 billion per year – a figure he argues is well below the (in 2009 $1.5 trillionccxxvi) money spent annually by the world’s governments on defence. Such tiny reflective particles could be resident for two years at a time. Crutzen willingly acknowledges that this is a risky proposition and insists that it should be undertaken only if all else fails. He goes on to add that the political will to do anything else seems to have failed already.

Crutzen has also acknowledged the downside health risks. What goes up, still (usually) comes down – even particles at the nanoscale. Be it silver iodide, sulphur or sodium chloride (salt), the tonnes of particles that would need to be regularly blasted into the stratosphere will find their way back to Earth again. All the issues related to the environmental health and safety of manufactured nanoparticles remain unresolved. According to the World Health Organization, almost 2 and a half million people die every year due to airborne pollutants. ccxxviiGeoengineering the stratosphere makes it easier for industry to continue atmospheric pollution but compounds the potential problem by intentionally contributing massively to particle pollution.

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Crutzen’s interviews and articles initially made him extremely controversial even among his fellow scientists. However, he quickly won the support of the President of the US National Academy of Sciences. “We should treat these ideas like any other research and get into the mindset of taking them seriously,” Ralph J. Cicerone, told The New York Times in mid-2006. ccxxviii Earlier in the year, Cicerone – himself an atmospheric chemist – invited Roger P. Angel, a wellestablished astronomer at the University of Arizona, to speak to the academy’s annual meeting.

Dr. Angel has a plan to put trillions of lenses – each about 2 feet wide but nano-thin – into orbit to deflect sunlight.ccxxix Between Cicerone’s backing and the Academy President’s own article, and of course Paul Crutzen’s editorial, it suddenly became politically correct to talk about geoengineering as a legitimate response to climate change. A credibility shift that The New York Times called a “major reversal.”ccxxx By the beginning of 2009, geoengineering was out of the closet and on its way to the popular media. Very early in the new presidency, Barak Obama's science adviser and energy secretary began to make noises and accept interviews where they coyly refused to discount geoengineering as a viable "Plan B" if climate change talks were to fail. Then, on September 1, 2009 – three months before the ill-fated (and ill-anticipated) Copenhagen conference, Britain's Royal Society released its own special report cautiously endorsing funding for geoengineering experimentation.

None other than Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society – and the man betting that technology will kill a million people by 2020 – introduced his Society’s study (and put the "fix" in on his own bet?). Adding a fine historical touch, leading scientific advocates of geoengineering announced that they would hold a conference to establish voluntary guidelines on the conduct of geoengineering experiments at the end of March 2010. The geoengineers picked, for the location of the meeting, the same place chosen by genetic engineers to establish their biotech voluntary guidelines 35 years earlier – Asilomar in California.

Sea-change – from sulphur curtains to iron carpets China sundown is accurate. Not only are there serious proposals on the table to restructure the stratosphere, governments and industry are also contemplating major modifications to the ocean surface. Since 1993, there have been at least a dozen documented government and/or private initiatives to “seed” sections of the ocean’s surface to counter global warming. Several additional experiments are on the drawing board.

Seasoning the seas – why iron fertilization?

Some regions of the ocean (especially near the Arctic and Antarctic circles) are nutrientrich but lack sufficient iron to stimulate plankton growth. According to two US government agencies, NASA and NOAA, plankton production in the Pacific has declined 20% since the early 1980s and between 6- 9% worldwide. The plankton problem became a reality TV show in 2005 when a massive die-off along the west coast of North America led to the death by starvation of tens of thousands of marine creatures that washed up on local beaches. Supporters of iron fertilization schemes argue that even the restoration of plankton to the levels of 1980 would sequester two to three

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billion extra tons of carbon dioxide every year – roughly one-third to one-half of global industry and automobile emissions. ccxxxi With the addition of iron in high-nutrient, lowchlorophyll (HNCL) zones, scientists hope to increase the plankton absorption of CO 2.

Ultimately, some scientists theorize that the CO 2 is dragged down to the ocean floor, thus reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Nanotechnology might (theoretically) make ocean (and atmospheric) seeding considerably easier. Remember, one gram of carbon at the nanometer scale can equal the surface area of one square kilometre. 500 to 600 tonnes of nanoparticles at that thickness could coat the Earth. When fully loaded, one of the world’s largest vessels – the Jahre Viking – has enough cargo space, for example, to cover the Earth beyond nano up into the micro-scale.ccxxxii At this point, the mass distribution of nanoparticles in the ocean or the stratosphere would be prohibitively expensive but this is going to change. Some of the most recent scientific proposals for geoengineering assume the use of nanoparticles.

There is no indication that OECD governments’ enthusiasm for ocean experiments is declining.

At the start of 2009, a joint German-Indian expedition on board the RV Polarstern, code-named LOHAFEX, left Cape Town, South Africa for the Scotia Sea loaded with iron sulphate particles.

This was despite a de facto moratorium on ocean fertilization (introduced and heavily-lobbied by civil society) agreed by 191 countries at the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity in May 2008. Under intense national and international pressure the adventurers produced an environmental impact assessment on-the-fly and ended up dumping fewer particles than they had intended on a patch of ocean far from the area assessed. Afterward, the scientist admitted that there was no evidence the experiment had succeeded. The scandal around the violation of the moratorium and the failure of the experiment combined to reinforce the moratorium.

Carbon traitors? Governments are not the only ones interested in sequestering CO 2 beneath the ocean. If iron filings can be used to suck up carbon dioxide on a massive scale, there will be money in it for carbon traders. In January 1998 and again in May, a consortium self-described as Ocean Farming Inc./GreenSea Ventures Inc. waded into the Gulf of Mexico on a mission to prove that carbon dioxide could be commercially sequestered in Davy Jones’s locker. ccxxxiii The consortium hasn’t made public the results of either voyage. ccxxxiv Then there was Planktos, a company created to sell carbon credits to CO2 polluters by sequestering the greenhouse gas in the Pacific somewhere south of Hawaii. The company said it would conduct experiments covering 11,000 km² of the mid-Pacific between 2007 and 2009, but announced in February 2008 it was indefinitely postponing its plans because of a “highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-[carbon] offset crusaders.” (For the record, the “campaigners” were ETC’s Jim Thomas).

In April 2008, Planktos announced bankruptcy, sold its vessel and dismissed all employees; it “decided to abandon any future ocean fertilization efforts” due to “serious difficulty” raising capital as a result of “widespread opposition.”ccxxxv As The Corner House’s Larry Lohmann describes in Carbon Trading,ccxxxvi CO2 sequestering can be a profitable game of soot and mirrors. Those involved in iron fertilization, for example, optimistically predict annual returns of €75 billion, assuming a sequestration cost of about five euros a tonne and a carbon trading price of perhaps €25 per tonne.ccxxxvii All that the corporate

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traders will have to do is sink CO2 out of sight long enough to cash their cheques. If the carbon dioxide pops back up to the surface in a year or five, proving its source could be extremely difficult.

Hurricane season – future techno-fixes: When Hope Shand of ETC Group approached Ari Patrinos, then-head of the US Department of Energy's Biological and Environmental Research (including the US Department of Environment's (DOE) climate change science program), during a Craig Venter-hosted conference in October 2005, Patrinos assured Shand that ocean iron fertilization experimentation was dead in the water. The public, he advised, was not prepared to take the risks involved. (A few months later, Patrinos quit his job to become President of Craig Venter’s newly formed Synthetic Genomics company.) Washington's "revolving door" syndrome between government and industry has become infamous around the world. In mid-2009, KathyJo Wetter of ETC Group met up again with Patrinos at a geoengineering conference in Washington where the new President of Synthetic Genomics was exploring the risks and virtues of synthetic algae and other alternatives to ocean iron fertilization.

Sargasso Sea change: This kind of geoengineering is not as “sci-fi” as we would wish. Many of the Western Hemisphere’s most devastating hurricanes originate when temperatures rise in the mid-Atlantic – in the Sargasso Sea – the vast oval doldrums encased by the northward flow of a warm tropical current on its west and a chilly south-bound current from the Arctic on its east.

Although the Sargasso Sea is named for the profusion of seaweed on its surface, biologists have always regarded the sea as relatively barren. Yet, its importance to hurricane control and its significance in global warming can’t be underestimated.

In 1995, for example, researchers tracked three major hurricanes that originated in the Sargasso Sea and noted that following the hurricanes, sea surface temperatures declined by 4° Celsius and the absorption of carbon dioxide into the stratosphere was again 50 % more than normal.

With grants from the US Department of Energy, in 2004, Craig Venter – the man who would build Synthia – steered his 90-foot yacht, the Sorcerer II, into the Sargasso in search of microorganisms on the sea’s surface, which could provide novel genes to improve photosynthesis. Months later, Venter told a Washington news conference that he had found 1,800 new microbial species and at least 1.2 million novel genes, including photosynthesis genes that could have a major impact on climate change.ccxxxviii In China sundown a research junk, mining microbes in the Indian Ocean’s garbage gyre contributed to the creation – through synthetic biology – of a novel marine organism that could sequester carbon dioxide and cool ocean temperatures. The story also hints that the modified AAPB microbe escapes its ecological niche and then escapes to contaminate waters everywhere.

Variations of the AAPB microbe do exist – but none of them are synthetically modified and AAPB is everywhere. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the little bug has caught the eye of synthetic biologists as a super CO2 “slurper.” Such an experiment would be extraordinarily dangerous. Yet, given the dubious experience with iron filings and the risk that the algae blooms created could spread uncontrollably, it could be tempting, in the context of the China sundown story, for desperate governments to replace the iron filings with a living

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organism that would not normally venture beyond certain temperature and/or daylight ranges.

There are other – possibly related – developments. In January 2006, a “Weather-Modification” bill (S517) that was intended to establish a research and policy coordination office was “fasttracked” by the US Senate and House of Representatives. Sponsored by Republican Senator Kay Hutchison of George W. Bush’s home state, Texas, the bill was originally expected to become law before the 2006 hurricane season.ccxxxix Despite the assumed support of the President, however, the bill ran into opposition from the White House Science Adviser concerned that any technologies that might be introduced to modify the US climate would, inevitably, modify everybody else’s climate.ccxl This could prove embarrassing!

In April 2006, the US National Science Foundation held its third Hurricane Science and Engineering Task Force Workshop in Pensacola, Florida. Among the options under consideration according to the meeting’s co-chair, Professor Kelvin Droegemeier – a meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma – was the creation of a biological film over the ocean’s surface to divert hurricanes.ccxli At the end of 2006, Associated Press reported that NASA was holding a closed-door meeting on the US West Coast to review a number of geoengineering possibilities – including stratospheric global hazing. ccxlii Suddenly China Sundown doesn’t seem so far off the mark anymore.

Solomonic summers: It goes without saying that the political and ethical dimensions of climate modification are huge. In a 2005 interview in The Boston Globe, Harvard’s Director of the Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography, Daniel Schrag asked: “Suppose we could control hurricanes, but stopping one requires an incredibly hot day in Africa that would burn up all the crops.” Schrag goes on: “Let’s say you have a mirror in space… think of two summers ago when we were having this awful cold summer and Europe was having this awful heat wave. Who gets to adjust the mirror?”ccxliii The Copenhagen opportunity: One of the last public events at the end of the Copenhagen climate change conference was a meeting of geoengineers gathered to offer the depressed media their own unique perspective on the way forward. Silvia Ribeiro and Diana Bronson attended the session for ETC group and were shocked at the openly upbeat mood of the scientists. They had, after all, got what they wanted. The collapse of the negotiations was proof positive (in their opinion) that a multilateral – especially UN – initiative to derail climate change was simply not possible. South and North could never agree. Plan B was becoming the only credible alternative.

If you come from a rich industrialized country – or Corporation – geoengineering is just about perfect. It's possible. It's (relatively) cheap. As much as serious scientists insist otherwise, it allows industry to persuade finance ministers that a major restructuring of the economy or of manufacture is unnecessary. For scientists and science-based enterprises, it means they can receive government grants, loans, and regulatory services. For politicians, at the very least, it buys time – maybe even elections.

Most important – by far – geoengineering doesn't require intergovernmental consensus.

Countries, companies or even billionaire Geopirates can go it alone. At most, a modest "coalition of the willing" involving a handful of actors can choose to geo-engineer the planet themselves.

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Lest we forget, during the Cold War, the United States, Russia, Britain and France and, later, China – undertook thousands of nuclear tests above and below ground despite the global health and environmental implications. They didn't ask anybody's permission. As we move toward climates tipping points, will they really hesitate to act unilaterally? Ships and cannons blasting sulfates high in the temperate zone could not only lower northern temperatures but significantly reduce methane emissions from Arctic bogs. The unfortunate downside, however, might be to delay or divert the Asian monsoon leading to drought and famine across the Indian subcontinent and, perhaps, in Sahelian Africa. Even this cloud might have a silver lining, though, if the African drought blows more dust into the Sargasso sea (as it normally does) lowering surface temperatures and reducing the risk of Florida hurricanes. It's kind of a "win-win" for everybody... who counts.

Too cynical? Are there historical examples where governments have performed better in crisis?

Does it make any sense for the global South to allow the governments and companies – the BANG members – who caused global warming in the first place to take control of the thermostat and rejig the planet in any way that is remotely safe or equitable? The risk weighs heaviest in the South.

BANG! What next for the environment?

The 60-year trend line (1975 – 2005 – 2035): • In 1975, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) was adopted to halt “biopiracy.” In 2005, at the UN Convention on Biodiversity, two-thirds of all critical ecosystems were deemed imperiled and species loss has been accelerating. In 2035, we will be told biodiversity is no longer necessary as it can be built on demand.

• In 1975, the CIA warned of “global cooling” and British scientists first discovered an ozone hole over Antarctica.ccxliv ccxlv In 2005, the reality of human-caused global warming was accepted by the G8 and entrenched in the public psyche. In 2035, 75% of the world’s population – those living near seacoasts – will live in fear of storms and sea level rise.

• In 1975, plant geneticists called for support for crop gene banks to conserve vanishing genetic diversity. In 2005, synthetic biologists proposed a digital DNA bank for the electronic storage of all living organisms in case they are ever needed. In 2035, that need turns to desperation levels.

• In 1975 the Earth was inhaling CO2 in concentrations of 320 parts per million.

In 2005 CO2 concentration was up to 380 parts per million. By 2035, the Earth will be trying to suck down CO2 at 450 parts per million.

Policy line: • Climate – The failure to address the real causes of climate change gives industry/governments the opportunity to impose carbon trade/sequestration and geoengineering. Civil society organizations could challenge government acceptance of nuclear power and geoengineering with consumption reduction and re-contextualizing this as a social justice issue.

• Chemicals – The cumulative impact of the 20th-century chemicals revolution

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and the new nanoparticles revolution accelerates environmental destruction and devastates health. CSOs must take on the full implications of both.

• Curtains – International travel and climate change combine to alter ecosystems and incubate/mutate novel pathogens. CSOs should challenge governments’ acceptance of a global medical curtain and public funding for human performance enhancement as ways to adjust to climate change.

• Crash – Carbon offsets, biofuel plantations and geoengineering devastate biodiversity and erode the food security and traditional medicines of marginalized peoples. The tendency shared by governments and CSOs to view all global issues through the climate change lens must be challenged.

What next?

Resistance: Convene a community-to-global technology monitoring strategy.

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Course Changes: What Options for Tomorrow?

Aaaa

Despite the gloomy trendlines in the China Sundown “staying the course” story, none of this should leave us without hope. To the contrary, people have always taken action when they see fundamental values and their very existence threatened. People have changed course, made counterpoints re-directed the mainstream, and redefined societal norms. Social movements have been the backbone for all the major social achievements during the last centuries. The power and potential of progressive and organized civil society should not be underestimated –– but people need the full picture to have a chance to respond in time. This is homework for us all.

The alternative stories ahead send us to Switzerland, Zimbabwe, Bolivia and Sweden and the possibility – purported and supported by the rising creativity of the Social Fora – that from such places (someone’s homeland, someone else’s periphery) decent human beings can work together to make a better world.

But, there are no silver bullet solutions: We don’t all suddenly get religion; we don’t all suddenly realize that we have to love one another and work together; no great leader unites us into an indomitable force for good and our enemies don’t self-destruct wallowing in their avarice. It is probably a major weakness in this report that it identifies only three general trends and strategies.

That's not because there aren't more; rather, it is an invitation to add more stories and make them better and more creative. For what it's worth, here are my three "Rs" for future change that guided my thinking in the weaving of the three stories: • Rights – We forget that we have the right to say “no.” Civil society must reclaim its authority to reject powers, processes or technologies that undermine civilization.

• Resistance – By working through our communities in highly decentralized but networked activities – and by adopting long-term and complex strategies – we can use our modest resources effectively to resist and overcome huge obstacles.

• Resilience – History shows that big changes come from the periphery, not from the centre. We must focus our work on strengthening the resiliency of those physical and cultural communities that “live on the edge” – far from the centres of power.

All of the “ifs” and “buts” you’ve been reading above should not, however, disguise my personal and very blunt conviction that the next 30 years are highly likely to see a deteriorating trend line in virtually every aspect of life in virtually every part of the planet. We should plan ahead, assuming this trend line. To do otherwise is to set ourselves up for strategic organizational errors.

We are all going to want to hope for better – plan for better – and to fool ourselves. We are all going to want to continue our own version of “business as usual” believing that what we are doing is the best way out of the mess we are in. At least some of us are wrong about that. If we are going to bend the trend line upward – even gradually – or if we are to survive the next 30 years building toward a better world ever so gradually, we are going to have to make tough choices, discard some things, reorganize, get a little less romantic and a little more realistic, and not believe everything we tell our funders, followers or families. There are some “what ifs” out

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there that can give us hope, but not if civil society organizations continue to follow our own same-old mediocre trend line.

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Aaaaa Course

1: Politics

Watch at the Mountaintop In December 2035, Anita Krishna walked discontentedly through Arlanda airport’s aging Terminal 5. Her stomach wasn't quite right. To her consternation, she was a little giddy. It was, she thought maybe, the good feeling of weightlessness you might get just after you jumped off a cliff and before you landed. Were things going too well? Was she making too much of little victories and missing the bigger picture? After 30 years – and only rare moments of celebration – she shouldn't be surprised if her tummy was unaccustomed to optimism but it made her nervous. Do these little successes add up? Was the sum of the parts greater than the whole? She spotted her board chair – dressed in his Yoruba garb and already looking cold – at the end of the corridor. Anita gave him a warm hug, and they headed arm in arm down the escalator for their bags. If she could make it through the Stockholm winter and ceremony without her stomach – or her Chair’s skin – shattering, there'd be time to analyze all of this with old friends.

2005: The genesis of WHO Watch, Anita Krishna always maintained, was the 2005 Peoples’ Health Assembly in Ecuador. But, as it was Anita’s first travel beyond the borders of India, the shock and thrill of being in Latin America perhaps crowded her memory with too many firsts.

She was among the few in the Asian contingent who deliberately spent social time with the huge Latino crowd and tried out the Spanish that she learned from listening to instructional podcasts on the long flight from New Delhi to Frankfurt to Caracas and finally Quito.

There is, in fact, nothing in the annals of the Health Assembly to back up Anita’s contention. But the tiny, enthusiastic, Indian nurse, who grew into an international activist, has a point. It was at the Health Assembly that she first met Marta Flores from Bolivia and Pancho Tomas with the Chilean community NGO. Though both Marta and Pancho came from farming communities, Pancho worked with peri-urban Mapuche in the hills above Temuco and had some kind of degree in public health administration. Marta, apparently, had attended courses given by Pancho and his colleagues in Temuco and was trying to marry her agricultural and health interests in her work on the Altiplano.

The Peoples’ Health Assembly was also where Anita met Marcolino di Gaspar. Marcolino was a shy – almost invisible – man until you put him up on stage and gave him a microphone. There, he blossomed. Anita could see why he was such an inspiration to the Brazilian health movement and why the communities he worked with in northeast Brazil had become a model for public health in the Americas. He regularly challenged – routinely embarrassed – and often defeated the pharmaceutical industry and the conservative faction in the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).

One of the People's Health Assembly’s sessions was meant to be a sort of primer on the international institutional structure of the global health system. New to it all, Anita listened avidly. She knew that the World Health Organization stood at the intergovernmental apex on health issues. Strangely, the organization seemed very little respected by the NGOs and social movements in the Assembly, and many dismissed it as irrelevant. Indeed, the session spent more time discussing the structure of the pharmaceutical industry oligopoly than it did the WHO. In

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their social time together, with Pancho translating for Marta and Anita, the Indian nurse began to understand that the big drug companies dominated the medical profession, and that the companies used the medical establishment to dominate national health policies and the work of the WHO. Neither Pancho nor Marta, to Anita’s chagrin, had much interest in the goings-on of the remote Geneva agency.

The Brazilian health movement, Anita discovered, had a different take on the WHO. With a more flexible government, the Brazilian movement had become big enough and influential enough to wield some power, especially in the towns and smaller cities. Their broad approach to public health and their emphasis on low-cost health services were attractive to municipalities always starving for resources. Occasionally, Brasilia invited members of the movement to join the national delegation to the WHO. For the most part, those chosen came home with horrorstories about the unreality of the meetings – but they also often returned with important information and ideas for further domestic work.

2007: A little over a year later, Anita was invited to be one of the Peoples’ Health Assembly observers at the WHO’s annual meeting. Impressed by her spunky personality, the Brazilian People’s Health Assembly coordinator had recommended her participation. Anita would have been eager to attend, regardless of her Ecuadorian experience. After all, her only other visit to Europe had been seven hours in the Frankfurt airport harassed by security agents. Coming from the plains of New Delhi, almost all she knew of Switzerland came from the issues of National Geographic donated to her school library. It took some considerable work for her to arrange for others to take over her tasks in the public health clinic where she worked, but in the end, she was on the plane to Geneva.

At the meeting, she tracked the proceedings, both official and informal, with gusto. She was the daughter of a local politician in a country with a famously convoluted political culture and in a family where backroom deals, and populist grandstanding were part and parcel of daily life.

Once you understood the procedural rules and the UN's love of pomp and ceremony, it wasn't really so different, she concluded.

The anger her civil society colleagues expressed toward the WHO process, during their evening gatherings in the bar, took her by surprise but left her thinking them naïve. She would never expect the powerful to be fair or compassionate. Despite herself, she enjoyed playing the game.

On her flight home to Delhi, as she refought the battles and rethought the alliances and undercurrents, she inwardly confessed that she had never had so much fun.

Anita became a regular at the WHO Health Assembly. She had a strong grasp of how the WHO worked and a growing sense of how the wider multilateral system functioned (or failed to, as her colleagues were always pointing out). Equally quickly, she absorbed how international civil society organizations played the field.

If for Wu Suyuan, the peak year was 2005, for Anita Krishna the sea change came in 2010, when the food crisis proved it was around to stay and the fuel crisis morphed into a land grab for Africa's best soils. On top of this, of course, the global financial crisis that began in 2007 erupted into full-blown recession late in 2008 and deepened into depression in 2009, continuing with

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only mild – and selective – respite in 2010. The world's almost frantic concern over global warming – that so overwhelmed the politics from 2005 to early 2008 – receded from the spotlight under the burden of the economic crisis. The brief euphoria around the election of Barack Obama at the end of 2008 faded slowly throughout his first years in office. The multicrises conundrum that should have turned neo-liberalism into a laughingstock, instead, swept aside climate change and the food price squeeze as inconvenient truths that could be dealt with another day. By the beginning of 2010, the bankers who seemed so humble two years earlier were back in the driver's seat. It was the best of times for nothing and perhaps the worst of times to create an advocacy umbrella like WHO Watch. Anita made it happen.

2011: It was at another WHO Assembly that the idea of WHO Watch began to feel possible. She had always admired Indian investigative journalists who exposed government corruption, the rare bureaucrats who had blown the whistle and activists who amassed the information to humble politicians.

Why not start a “watchdog” organization?, she thought. Of course, “watching” the WHO would also mean tracking the byzantine entanglements of Big Pharma, governments and the public sector. Gregarious as she was, Anita shared her idea and the structure she had in mind for WHO Watch, over e-mail and Skype, with some trusted friends – foreign and Indian. Her friends wanted to help.

Rio, 2012: Anita was part of the huge delegation of Indian activists who attended the Rio+20 summit in Brazil. Demanding that the environmental gathering endorse a “healthy environment” she and her allies won backing for their proposals from most of the global South. But, the moral victory – absent cash or commitment – meant little and Anita quietly pursued her real reason for coming to Brazil – to get financial support for WHO Watch from the legions of private foundations monitoring the summit.

Before the end of the year, Anita was back in Europe – this time in Germany – meeting with foundations and church agencies and talking-up the notion of WHO Watch. She had taken advantage of her honorarium from a speech in Stuttgart, to buy a Eurail pass, giving her 15 days to barnstorm around Germany, Switzerland and Holland. To her satisfaction – less than surprise – Anita turned out to be an engaging spokesperson for the WHO Watch idea. She also had a facility with languages and had turned her basic Spanish into a workable tool and was on her way to doing the same with French.

Not long after, Anita moved to Geneva. Her tiny apartment doubled as the office for WHO Watch, as the heat wave scalded the pavements of Europe and North America, causing blackouts and brownouts in major cities. Even Geneva, usually cooler in the Alps with winds blowing off the lake, was close to unbearable. Having grown up in New Delhi, Anita weathered the brutal summer better than most.

It was busy. As WHO Watch’s sole staffer, Anita’s first task was to build bridges to other networks. Part of her strategy was to move beyond the circles she already knew. She flew to Mexico City to attend the CSO strategy session for the post-Rio climate change conference expected later in the year. She knew little about environmental organizations, but she did know

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that the conference was – among other topics – debating the merits of new nuclear power plants as a “clean energy” defence against climate change. She was against nuclear energy, which had had strong proponents in India, and she wanted to know more. Back in the 1990s she knew, WHO actually challenged the major nuclear powers by taking the issue of nuclear safety to the World Court. To Anita, it seemed like a "no-brainer" that nuclear testing risks human health but the nuclear powers argued otherwise. In a landmark political decision, the Court sided with the WHO much to the embarrassment of the big powers. A modest media victory, perhaps, but one that gave strength to the peace movement worldwide. Anita was looking for more ammunition to fight the demand for more nuclear plants. She also knew that climate change was a mantra needed to be worked into her messaging if WHO Watch was to prosper and find allies. So she was eager to update her knowledge of the impact of nuclear power plants on human health.

The young health worker found the Mexico City meeting disappointing. The CSO delegates not only couldn’t affirm their opposition to nuclear power– meaning that they effectively acquiesced – but they even entertained a proposition to geoengineer the planet as the only real hope for surviving global warming. From then on, WHO Watch maintained an active file on geoengineering and its potential risks to human health.

Still, Anita made good contacts. The connections she cherished most were those with activists from the peace movement. She especially valued the friendship she struck with a young, Swedish trade unionist and workplace health and safety expert, Inga Thorvaldson, who was seconded to the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO was just along the hill from the WHO in Geneva. The two women flew back from Mexico City together. Anita told Inga about an idea she had to democratize WHO and, simultaneously, to overthrow its autocratic Director-General.

From her experience inside a sister UN agency, Inga had advice.

Geneva: The first time the World Health Organization’s Director-General, Anil Patel, realized he might have a problem was that late Friday afternoon in February when he was taking the new Nepalese Health Minister on a “walk-about” from the meeting at the Palais des Nations up the hill to the WHO’s headquarters. As they neared the building, the Director-General saw university-aged youths, wearing blue T-shirts and carrying blue boxes, taking sheets of paper from WHO employees as they left for the weekend. The scene had a furtive quality, he thought.

The staff darted past, depositing the sheets without looking up or talking to one another. When they spotted him with the Minister, they scattered.

Patel’s attention was forced back to his guest who – visiting Geneva for the first time – wanted to know if it was true that the grand old Palais, now below them, was nicknamed the horizontal Tower of Babel. Stretching well over half a kilometre from end to end, the elegant old League of Nations edifice made the WHO’s 1960s building boring. His guest’s preference was obvious.

Irritably, Patel pointed out how much more efficient the WHO building was and ushered the Minister into the organization’s restaurant for a glass of wine. “Bloody Marxist,” he thought, making a mental note to find out more about the kids and the kerfuffle on the sidewalk outside.

When Monday morning rolled in, Patel realized what he had witnessed Friday. The International Herald Tribune had posted a front-page story, bannering with unconstrained gusto: “WHO Staff Reject Incumbent DG.” The article reported that 94 percent of WHO employees who responded

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to a survey would vote against the Director-General being granted a third term. Patel ranked last among the five candidates rumoured to be seeking the top job. Out in front by a narrow margin was the Australian former Assistant Director-General who had left her position to challenge her boss. Running second was the former Jordanian Minister of Health who had moved on to represent the Arab League in New York. The real shock – other than the revelation of the Director-General’s own unpopularity – was that a Brazilian public health worker, with almost no international experience, was neck-and-neck with the Jordanian.

An anonymous diplomat was quoted as having said that the informal staff poll meant little since the real voting decision would be a “horse-trade” made by presidents and prime ministers in the South and, at least, by cabinet ministers in the North – not anybody in Geneva. The final choice of Director-General, after all, would be technically up to the WHO’s Executive Board and not determined by the UN’s usual one nation-one vote formula. Others predicted that African support for their Indo-Kenyan “favourite son” would split with some votes going to the Jordanian, but the Lusophone (i.e., Portuguese-speaking) and Francophone votes in Africa were going to the Brazilian.

Anil Patel convened his “war cabinet.” Phone calls were made. There was damage. Beyond personal embarrassment, the informal staff poll was ammunition for the Legion of UN or WHO critics to argue that the UN agency was out of control. The staff poll couldn’t have come at a worse time. It was just weeks after the WHO had been forced through an excruciating Independent External Evaluation – one of only a handful that had ever been conducted on UN agencies – that showed the organization was miserably managed, programmatically incompetent and generally distrusted both by governments and other agencies. The Director-General had managed to keep most of the evaluation’s findings out of the media and, by pretending to embrace many of the report’s recommendations as his own, created sufficient confusion among the members of his intergovernmental executive committee to weather the storm. Government missions in Geneva were overworked, suffered from short attention spans and often had selfinterested reasons to look the other way when scandals threatened the existing order. However, if Patel’s supporters became concerned that the incumbent threatened the future finances of the organization – especially prized national health projects – they would jump ship and vote for another candidate.

The damage could be contained, the Director-General’s war cabinet persuaded itself, but the Great Man’s travel schedule was reviewed and it was decided that Patel should visit the more easy-to-influence member states in the Pacific and the West Indies. They also examined the backlog of unfilled posts that had been left open for just such emergencies. Among them were some trophy positions that countries would be eager to negotiate for. Not a lot could be done; they agreed, about WHO Watch – the CSO consortium that had orchestrated the poll. A discrete call was made to the appropriate authorities in the canton of Geneva asking them to look into a possible breach of the WHO security and seeking their assistance to ensure that, in the future, unauthorized personnel were kept off the property. However, this would probably have little effect. WHO Watch was not a legal entity and its consortium members were all headquartered outside of Switzerland.

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It was while the Director-General was in Trinidad that the other shoe dropped. In early March, WHO Watch issued a news release announcing that the agency had paid an excess of a quartermillion euros to advertise posts in The Economist and other international journals that had either already been promised to specific candidates or were “hereditarily” ceded to certain countries.

The news release listed recent posts with the names and nationalities of the outgoing and incoming officials. The Geneva diplomatic community was quoted (anonymously) as being outraged by the waste and corruption. “Bastards,” the Director-General thought, the practice of nationally inherited posts was almost a venerable tradition.

However, by then he was mortally wounded and he knew it. When WHO Watch hosted the first of its series of candidate debates in late March, the Director-General was nowhere to be found.

Pressing affairs of state, his war cabinet said, sprucing up their résumés.

In that first debate – well-attended by diplomats and the international press following the scandals – the Jordanian shot himself in the foot by pandering too much to the United States and showing an abysmal lack of knowledge of both the WHO and African health priorities.

The Aussie front-runner did well. She was female and a scientist. She knew the organization and its work, and she would be the first Director-General from an OECD country since the "jolly fat Dutchman" lost the job so long back that only the agency’s most ancient employees could laugh about him.

The Brazilian community health worker also did well. Nattily dressed in an obviously new suit, his poise and bearing assured the diplomats. Although he was rumoured to speak adequate English, he chose to address his audience in that peculiar Latin hybrid of Spanish and Portuguese called Portuñol, forcing even the Latin Americans to retreat to their headsets. This sufficiently stifled his message and left him trailing the Australian by the end of the evening. There were also disconcerting rumours that – while Brazil officially championed their candidate – the government wasn’t exactly pulling out all the stops to get him elected.

Not revealed until much later, the story of how the backcountry health worker became Brazil’s candidate for Director-General is an intrigue of its own. Brazil’s President back then was the heir of a much more popular head of a coalition of centre and left-wing parties. While she had swept to power on a wave of support for her predecessor, her government bore all the neo-liberal trappings and corruption of every other G8 wannabe. In the years since the last election, her coalition had been faced with growing opposition from trade unions and peasants’ organizations.

With new elections imminent and the president constitutionally prevented from running again, her party was looking to restore its progressive image. Thus, when the Brazilian members of WHO Watch came to the president one evening after a party rally in Rio Grande do Sul, she was disposed to listen.

A Latin American had never held the top job at the WHO. Back in the 1990s, the Japanese candidate outmanoeuvred a potentially successful Latino delegate. The current incumbent, WHO Watch insisted, was vulnerable and the post could go to a Latin American this time. If the President could offer up a progressive left-wing candidate, WHO Watch could throw its support behind her or him. Other Latin American countries would support a clear Brazilian proposal.

WHO Watch would do the rest. The Brazilian civil society groups came with a short list of

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possible candidates. Three were especially interesting. Over the next few weeks the President’s staff and the CSOs met to discuss the list and make inquiries. Finally, they reached agreement.

The candidate should be an organizer from Brazil’s increasingly militant public health movement. The President loved the idea. The chosen candidate was less enthused. Precious days were spent convincing the health worker, Marcolino di Gaspar, that not only was the job obtainable, but also that it was worth fighting for. The President announced her candidate at a meeting of the Organization of American States and the race was on.

The second debate – just weeks before the May election – was very different. WHO Watch reported what the media should have already suspected: The Australian candidate had not only been Assistant Deputy Director-General during the scandals, but several posts in her division had auctioned off in return for programme contributions where she had authorized the useless job advertisements. She spent most of the debate defending herself and trying to explain that major organizational and program decisions were always made by the Director-General’s office. She had had little influence. Not the best defence for someone claiming the experience necessary to take command of the organization.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian blathered on alienating more countries. When questioned about his lack of knowledge of the WHO, the Brazilian organizer responded – this time in charmingly accented English – that the real problem was that the WHO didn’t know anything about community health. He knew how to organize, he said, and he knew how to support healthy, resilient communities and maintain strong public health systems. There was genuine applause.

The Executive Board meeting was, to the surprise of most of the United Nations, one of the UN’s best-covered elections. Not that the outcome was much in doubt. The members of the European Union abandoned the Aussie candidate en masse and divided their votes clumsily between the Brazilian and the Jordanian. Latin America and Africa went overwhelmingly into the Brazilian camp. Although many of the Asian countries stuck with the Jordanian, there were a few deserters in favour of the community health organizer. When it was over, many Northern governments were horrified at what they had done. Not only were they about to lose their best avenue for sidelining redundant civil servants into the WHO, but they had also lost their best chance in decades at capturing the Director-General post. Worse still, they had surrendered the organization to an almost complete political unknown backed by a government of unreliable political persuasions.

It was sometime later – in the sober reflection afforded by the summer break – that governments and the WHO bureaucrats identified the biggest change of all: The new éminence grise at the WHO was not a Director-General confidante, nor a country – but WHO Watch. And, behind WHO Watch, working quietly was Anita Krishna.

2013: For a few hundred people in Geneva, the surprise election of the new DG at WHO concentrated the minds of most of the town’s CSOs. WHO Watch’s political acumen won the tiny new organization great credibility among international NGOs monitoring UN agencies.

Anita Krishna found herself in demand and was spending half her time ricocheting between Geneva and New York with side-trips to Paris, Vienna, Rome and Nairobi. Success also translated into more financial support from enthusiastic European NGOs and US foundations.

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The organization took over a three-bedroom apartment a short walk from the front gates of the Palais. Before long, there were other UN agency “watches” in New York, Paris, Rome, Vienna and Nairobi. WHO Watch itself morphed into a de facto “Geneva Watch,” looking beyond the WHO to the entire gaggle of Geneva-based UN agencies and commissions.

The strategy that allowed Who Watch’s early success was modified, honed and exported: develop close connections with friendly, like-minded people in the Secretariat, share information with the local unions, keep in close touch with government delegations and avoid any potentially-compromising financial or program connection with the UN agency itself. WHO Watch never had observer status in a UN agency and never took the microphone during UN meetings. Others – social movements and NGOs – took on that task as they thought useful.

WHO Watch played the vital role of digesting the great heaps of UN documentation, interpreting political information, and disgorging succinct and timely analyses for CSO's and South governments. WHO Watch was the “tough love” side of civil society – keeping UN agencies honest, and relatively transparent.

2016: "I was wondering if you might have time for coffee later today," the suave French voice at the other end of the telephone inquired.

Anita Krishna squinted again at the call display on her desk phone. She didn't recognize the number but the voice was faintly familiar. "I'm sorry, I don't recognize the voice...”

"Pardon," her caller apologized, "I'm not calling from my office line. It's Abdul Haquim," he added, "we've crossed swords once or twice in ECOSOC here in Geneva."

She remembered: short, elegant, middle-aged, growing slightly pudgy in the fleshpots of the UN's bureaucracy. Not as arrogant as some. West Africa, she knew, Mali?

Her caller continued, "there are one or two matters I thought your little group might find interesting. Is there any chance you have time around six this evening? Perhaps the bar of the Hotel Mon Repos? That's one of your CSO haunts, isn't it?" His voice faded tinged with a hint of uncertainty.

Anita looked at the clock on her computer. It was already five and the light was fading on the Jura Mountains. "Yes, of course," she agreed, clicking on Google, "I'll see you then."

Dr. Abdul El Haquim, Google dutifully reported, was a senior manager – a D2, apparently – in the World Meteorological Organization headquartered in Geneva. He was 61 – obviously stalled at the D2 level for at least a decade – and destined, by UN rules, to retire shortly.

When she got to the hotel bar, the UN official was already seated warming his hands over his coffee cup, at a corner table. He stood graciously to shake her hand. He was even shorter than she was, Anita thought.

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After Anita ordered tea and the rather pleasant banalities of French protocol were properly dispatched, Dr. Haquim came to the purpose of their rendezvous. "I'm a Volcanist," he confessed, looking, at once, conspiratorial and amused.

Anita stared blankly, "Star Trek," she hesitated, "you're a Trekkie?"

He smiled, "volcanoes. I study the effects of volcanoes on climate change. One of the WMO’s lesser-known mandates," he conceded.

As the sky outside turned to darkness and the drinks inside turned from coffee and tea to wine, the little official took her through a brief history of the impact of volcanoes on weather patterns.

Volcanic eruptions, she learned, could blast tens or even hundreds of cubic kilometres of dust and gas into the stratosphere. Powerful eruptions could darken the sky for two or three years. Not blacken the sky; he hastened to assure her, most people might only notice because of the dazzling colours at sunrise and sunset. But the implications, he said, could be tremendous. The dust in the stratosphere could deflect sunlight, cool temperatures, reduce crop yields, and even lower wetland methane emissions. At any given moment, she was startled to hear, there were as many as eight or 10 volcanoes somewhere in the world bubbling inconsequentially. Once every couple of decades a volcano blew up enough to get everybody's attention.

"I thought you might want to know about the health implications," Dr. Haquim settled back in his chair. "What goes up must come down. All that volcanic dust – as acid rain – much of it nanoparticle sized – gets into our eyes and lungs and everything else. A big volcanic blow like Krakatoa can cause respiratory illnesses and literally tens of thousands of deaths in the years following an eruption."

Anita Krishna put her wine glass down, "you’re talking about geoengineering, aren't you? This is the kind of thing Atom-Sphere is proposing to do," she added, "building fleets of robotic ships to blow salt spray and using military cannons to blast sulphates into the stratosphere."

"That's right," her tablemate looked pleased.

"And," Anita went on, "these artificial volcanoes come with the same health risks?"

"It would seem so. Except," the scientist continued uncomfortably, "we're not talking about a temporary condition. Artificial volcanoes would have to run year after year – perhaps even for decades – until some long-term solution to global warming is found."

"This is ridiculous," the Who Watch activist felt the anger colouring her face.

The man opposite her waited quietly. "According to the news reports," Anita continued, "these artificial volcanoes are going to cost us somewhere between 25 and $50 billion a year. Has anyone calculated the medical costs?"

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She could barely make out his answer, "25 to 50,000 additional deaths a year. Perhaps many more," he said softly. As he spoke, he slipped a package from his briefcase across the table to her. "You'll find the technical information inside."

The bar’s after-work crowd was being replaced by the evening partiers. Anita recognized some of the patrons. She slipped the package into her backpack and suggested they go for a walk.

A cold winter wind was blowing along the Quey Wilson. Anita and Dr. Haquim hunched their shoulders and turned up toward the railway station. There was a McDonald's. "Jose Bové is about the only one who might interrupt us here," the activist laughed, as Haquim opened the door for her.

The WMO volcanist had come to WHO Watch because his own organization was unwilling to act. Many in the WMO, in fact, were strong supporters of geoengineering. More significantly, the WMO had been sidelined by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and was given little to say or do about global warming. Hesitantly, the scientist told her about ENMOD – the 1970s UN treaty that prohibited environmental modification for military purposes. The treaty, she learned, was a result of the Vietnam War where the United States had tried to manipulate weather conditions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to block movements from north to south. Haquim thought the treaty might be used to prevent the Atom-Sphere consortium from operationalizing its artificial volcanoes. Whatever else it might do, Haquim insisted, the volcanoes would undoubtedly cause damage in some regions of the world. He wanted WHO Watch to put pressure on the World Health Assembly so that the issue could be brought to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. WHO, he knew, had done this before with nuclear testing.

When they eventually separated outside of the McDonald's, Anita promised to take the matter up with her organization and other CSO partners. It went unsaid that Dr. Haquim would be kept out of any publicity. "I'm going to retire soon," he said unnecessarily, "but if my children are going to get through school they will still need me to take on a few short-term UN contracts..." his voice slipped away.

"Why spend money on artificial volcanoes if the real ones blow up fairly often anyway?" She asked, "in fact, why not just explode a real volcano? Is that possible?"

It was beginning to snow. The scientist looked startled, "most volcanoes are in chains running along major faults in the tectonic plates. Charles Darwin taught us that earthquakes could destabilize volcanoes enough to cause a blow. It doesn't happen right away. It can take months or even a year between an earthquake and an eruption – but it is reasonably predictable."

“Isn’t that what happened in Chile?” She couldn’t help herself, the 2010 earthquake was followed by the 2011 volcano?” The scientist stood quietly. “So,” she went on, “you can either explode a volcano directly or you can set off tremors along a fault line and wait for nature to take its course?" Anita stared at him. As he turned away, in the streetlight, she saw the shock on his face. "Stupid of me," she muttered tugging her collar closely around her neck, "Now he thinks I'm the Trekkie!"

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A few days later she had a Skype call with her executive committee and, under "other business" summarized her conversation with the WMO volcanist without using his name. They agreed she should explore a strategy of getting the WHO Assembly to ask the World Court to rule on AtomSphere’s artificial volcanoes and implications for the ENMOD treaty.

2018: The consortium and the industrialized countries were caught off guard. At the close of the World Health Assembly, a resolution proposed by Mali on behalf of Africa and supported by Bolivia and Philippines, slipped through as an administrative issue. The text simply asked the WHO Director-General to seek the opinion of the International Court of Justice as to whether or not geoengineering might be a contravention of ENMOD. The delegation from the European Union scrambled to defer the resolution by a day but most other countries weren’t paying attention. Dr. Abdul El Haquim, Anita had arranged, was on a family holiday in Bamako where he made himself available to give informal advice to the country's health ministry.

CSO’s with observer status in the Assembly were in full force with a “one-on-one” offence in motion to make sure the resolution passed. The EU raised objections and the US joined them but they seemed poorly briefed. A handsome middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her long brown hair was seen moving swiftly through the aisles of delegates buttonholing diplomats.

Later, Anita was told that the woman was a lobbyist for the consortium based in Brussels. AtomSphere was too slow off the mark, however. The Chair gavelled the resolution and it was passed within an hour.

There was a celebration that evening in the bar of the Mon Repos hotel but Anita Krishna broke away long enough to place a call to Bamako. Many CSO's still didn't quite get what the fuss was all about themselves. They took WHO Watch’s word that the resolution was significant and they wondered what the Court in the Hague would do about it.

The Hague, 2020: The jurists of the International Court of Justice pride themselves in being able to dispose of administrative issues brought to them by UN agencies in a matter of months – usually not more than a year. Belated protests from all the major powers – not just the EU and USA but China and Russia as well – threatened to damage their track record as they took on the WHO-ENMOD case. The effect was to encourage the Court to exercise their prerogative to take any question handed to them and turn it into anything they wished. Although procedural moves did slow things down a few months, the Court finally ruled by a comfortable majority that any human-made geoengineering initiative that had any likelihood of affecting the climate of neighbouring countries could be considered a military provocation and would be in violation of the environmental modification treaty.

Atom-Sphere and Terra-Forma convened a news conference in Brussels hours after the decision and assured reporters that the terms of their agreements with national governments made it abundantly clear that nothing they would do could be considered a military action. Not wishing to draw further attention to what they hoped would be an embarrassing irrelevancy, Brussels, Washington, Moscow and Beijing simply noted, in separate news releases, that the World Court's decision was nothing more than administrative advice to the WHO and was in no way binding on national governments. On a global conference call with CSO allies and friendly journalists, Anita Krishna assured those on the line that even when they lost, major governments

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rarely contravened decisions from the Court and could only do so now by drawing further attention to geoengineering. The issue was far from dead, she warned them, but the consortia were wounded and would have to proceed more cautiously.

2021: Anita Krishna, now in her early 40s, was tired of the UN bureaucrats and longing for India when she received a text message from a Chinese journalist she had met at the World Social Forum in Belém more than a decade earlier. Wu Suyuan had someone flying to Geneva she wanted Anita to meet.

Beijing: “The people, united,” drawled Qi Qubìng, stretching languorously, “will always be defeated!” Had it not been for her arm cast, Wu could not have constrained herself from reaching across the table and smacking him. They were, once again, in Qi’s favourite pizza place just down the road from the main Beijing monorail station. The conversation had drifted from Chinese politics to corporate criminality and the latest health and environmental scandals.

Alitash Teferra, who loved the debate but detested the tension, retreated further into her wine glass.

Their fights were not quite what they used to be. Something had gone out of them. Qi, to be sure, was as arrogant and cynical as ever – but his defence of GEnome Corp, of the pharmaceutical industry and even of capitalism, lacked its old ardour. Now, where Wu and Qi fought most ferociously was over the significance of civil society. Although she would hardly describe herself as an optimist, the journalist maintained a conviction that not only a better world but rather world survival itself was only possible if civil society became a coherent force in local and global politics.

Qi just didn’t get it. As a scientist and a corporate executive, social movements and NGOs were entertainment. Their glibly simplistic answers were funny. Their passion was precious. Getting through the occasional blockades they threw up in front of his research centre or at conferences made entertaining anecdotes. Yes, perhaps they had served a purpose in correcting some of the worst abuses of the UN system but, he assured himself, filling his wine glass, governments would have gotten around to that eventually. CSOs were a “back-drop” – bit-players and scenesetters – on a stage they couldn’t see clearly.

Fearing that the dinner would dissolve into irretrievable acrimony, Tash forced herself to intervene. “Tell her about endod,” she instructed the scientist.

"ENMOD?" Wu asked, not sure she had read Tash’s lips correctly.

“No, endod, a medicinal plant," Qi looked irritated. “That’s confidential to GEnome,” he sniffed.

Tash ignored the rebuke. Leaning forward in her chair, she grabbed the journalist’s hand to get her attention, which until then had been fixed angrily on Qi. “He’s trying to cure the new strain of schistosomiasis,” she told Wu. “He’s working with the peasants in Ethiopia and in the Himalayas to test out strains of endod that could be grown to purify water sources.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “the Ethiopian government is helping but the Chinese government knows

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nothing about it. GEnome is trying to stop the research.” Qi sulked into the corner of the booth, pretending to admire the two young women in the booth behind Tash.

“Why?” asked Wu. “Why is GEnome trying to stop him?” Tash asked.

“No,” Qi interjected from his corner, “why am I doing it?”

“I know why GEnome would want to stop you. There’s no money in environmental cures for schistosomiasis. The company would invent an obligation the world would expect them to finance at a break-even price. Otherwise, countries would claim ordre publique, confiscate the patents and set a dangerous precedent for more profitable medicines,” Wu said as she hefted a fresh piece of pizza, considering it disdainfully. “But why is our ‘merchant of medicine’ here suddenly championing lost causes?”

Qi came out of his corner, “I don’t suppose you would believe that the iron hand of capitalism occasionally dons a velvet glove?”

Tash giggled. Wu snorted. As both women knew, before Qi joined GEnome he had done a postdoc in Ethiopia. It was there that he had encountered the endod plant and learned how local women used it as a soap and shampoo to protect their children from the river snail that carried schistosomiasis. When an American university purloined the relevant patents, Qi pulled up stakes and accepted a long-standing offer from GEnome. When the two strains of the disease merged below the Three Gorges Damn, the scientist reconnected with his Ethiopian colleagues and local peasants to try to find a solution.

“So, now what?” the journalist asked.

“I’m not sure,” Qi answered with uncharacteristic humility. “All this relates to climate change.

GEnome has asked me to participate in a scientific subcommittee of the Terra-Forma consortium. It’s pretty interesting work, but if I take it on I may have to abandon my research in the Himalayas.” Then, casually, he led their conversation to Wi’s favourite topic - the latest Sino-Indo-Brazilian corporate mergers and conflicts. Later, when the three got to their feet, Qi took the bill. It was their ritual. Wu and Tash protested weakily; Qi waved dismissively - all privately acknowledging pleasure in GEnome paying.

A week later, Qi was back in town. GEnome was sending him to observe a climate change conference in Geneva. He met Wu for tea across the street from where he could catch an express to the airport. With impish excitement, Qi handed her a brown manila envelope stuffed with papers and a flash drive. “I'll be quitting GEnome in a few days," he told her happily, "You can do what you want with this,” he added, “but wait until I am out of Geneva and on my way to Vancouver.” Almost as an afterthought, he asked, “I’m going to drop in on the WHO. Do you know anyone in Geneva I should talk to about schistosomiasis?”

Wu did.

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Geneva: Reluctantly, Anita met Qi Qubìng at the airport. He wasn’t hard to pick out. Tall, Chinese, dressed impeccably as though he had just stepped out of the shower rather than having spent the better part of a day on an airplane, the man pranced to the luggage carousel, pulled his leather bags (first off, of course) from the tumbling heap and swept through customs into the main hall. He bestowed a kiss and a packet of papers on the startled activist. Wu Suyuan’s description was dead on.

Qi had come early to Geneva to spend the weekend. Colleagues at GEnome assumed he either had a girlfriend or was hoping for some late-spring skiing. Instead, the scientist and the activist spent the weekend wandering the streets of the old town sipping coffee in the mornings and wine in the evenings as they talked. At first, Qi – genetically programmed to be ever charming and “on the make” – blended his charm with passive belligerence. Anita was, after all, one of those civil society dreamers. But, as Saturday evening’s stroll along the Quai Wilson turned into a Sunday morning breakfast in Anita’s flat, his distrust turned to admiration.

The CSO campaigner was at least as cynical as he was, but she combined the cynicism with a passion for justice and energy for life that he found irresistible. WHO Watch’s record, Anita’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the WHO – and pharmaceutical industry politics convinced him that they could work together.

Qi attended the climate change conference at the Palais. Initially, his mind was on other things and he could hardly wait for the meeting to end each day so he could catch up with Anita. Qi was part of the GEnome contingent within the Terra-Forma consortium delegation, observing at the intergovernmental meeting. OECD country delegations constantly consulted the consortium for technical advice. The advice the consortium offered, Qi knew, was either partial-truths, obfuscation or, occasionally, outright prevarication.

Over one lunch, the consortium’s Vice-President for intergovernmental affairs, a bright and charming middle-aged Belgian woman with gray brown hair, filled him in on the conference politics. Qi already knew that geoengineering was turning into a debacle. Panicked by the massive hurricanes earlier in the century, the US Department of Energy had joined with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to send the notorious scientist/entrepreneur, Dr. Anthony Wong out in his research junk to collect microbial biodiversity on the oceans’ surface. The theory was that the most efficient microorganisms might be genetically engineered to improve their photosynthesis, thus making them a better food source. In the cyclical nature of ocean life, enhanced blooms of plankton would sequester CO2 more efficiently and lower ocean surface temperatures. Lower temperatures meant fewer – or weaker – hurricanes.

“Test-tube” Tony and the other public and private sector scientists, who had gotten into the Department of Energy’s purse early, quickly concluded that genetic engineering was not subtle enough. They began working with atomically engineered microorganisms constructed from the bottom-up, atom-by-atom. Such finely tuned, newly created life forms might be both more efficient and less likely to meander beyond their set environmental limits. Synthetic biologists could put a hammerlock on an artificial microbe’s need for temperature stability or hours of sunlight making it – again theoretically – impossible for the creatures to set sail. Still, the notion

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of marine organisms with unique traits accidentally drifting from sea to shining sea posed an enormous public relations and planetary concern.

The Belgian executive, who proudly showed off photographs of her two teenage boys, chattily told her colleague that the consortium's scientists believed it only a matter of time before the synthesized bug -- the atomically-modified “BPAAPB” bacteria - infected other ocean-going species. Acknowledging the inevitable, Terra-Forma’s task was to protect its shareholders, restructure its geoengineering work to spin-off companies and then carefully disinvest from these companies and re-invest in conventional fossil fuel enterprises already exploiting the warming polar seas. She delighted in the irony that BP’s little Gulf bug might lead to the downfall of the consortium and simultaneously open up drilling in the Arctic. "The bottom line has always been energy," she told him, "that's where the money is."

"So, that makes the World Court's ENMOD decision against geoengineering irrelevant?" Qi asked her, "it doesn't seem to have made much difference to the consortia so far?"

His colleague frowned. "It has," she sighed, "frankly it's been a major pain in the butt. We're going to need at least a couple of years to transition out of the consortium. Until then, it's business as usual with a cheery smile. The G-20 don't want to appear autocratic and they're scared as hell geoengineering will be seen for what it really is – rich guys controlling the world's thermostat. We've had to proceed discreetly. Everything is described as a small scientific experiment. Nothing big. Everything has dual research purposes. Officially, were just studying wind currents or air currents or biodiversity." She sighed again, "the Court's decision is one of the reasons we're trying to extricate ourselves from what looks to be coming–a political and a scientific mess."

That evening, cautiously, Qi related parts of his discussion with the vice president to Anita.

"You're World Court gambit paid off," he concluded.

"Do you think so," Anita wondered, "or might they just go underground? What if the world had one or more big volcanic eruptions that appeared to be natural? We might have, inadvertently, pushed them down an even more dangerous path if the superpowers are really afraid that global warming is out of control." She stopped. Qi's look was unmistakable... crazy CSO's!

Qi and Anita spent the weekend in the French Alps before the scientist flew off to Vancouver to visit his parents. The President of GEnome-China Corp. received Qi’s faxed resignation, even as their Brussels office forwarded the headline story of engineered life forms in the oceans, from The International Herald Tribune. Wu Suyuan had released the story through her own blog with the Chinese Independent News Agency and then provided the incriminating data and paper transcripts to the conventional media to back up the amazing tale.

GEnome Corporation’s attempt to suppress endod research only rated a sidebar in major newspapers and on television newscasts.

The secretive violation of the Court decision, the scandal of Terra-Forma’s roving artificial microbes, the threat they posed for the environment, and the complicity of the Chinese, Indian

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and US governments, dominated headlines for several days. The smell of blood galvanized the normally somnambulant news agencies to extend the investigation to include both consortia and more stories of scientific adventurism and failure entertained the public well into the temperate zone’s autumn.

The way the scandal broke caused a rift between Qi and Anita. WHO Watch had not wanted it to break until they were ready with a follow-through plan. Anita hadn’t realized that Wu already had information and directions from Qi to make everything public once he reached Vancouver.

Qi had boasted about what he knew and Anita had assumed WHO Watch would break the story and build a campaign around it. For his part, Qi revelled in the media attention as the heroic “whistleblower” who brought down the two consortia – TerraForma and Atom-Sphere. WHO Watch and its partners in New York and elsewhere scrambled to turn the scandals into a political strategy.

2022: WHO Watch and its namesakes covering other agencies in other cities had been following the massive effort by peasants and trade activists fighting BANG and the Technology Transfer Treaty. As best she could, Anita fed information on the Geneva negotiations to peasants’ organizations and health networks. For weeks on end, her living room and spare room were filled with peasants who had come to Geneva to track and trash the negotiations. The health movement had allied itself to the food sovereignty movement, as well as at the community and municipal levels. Among those who slept on her floor and raided her refrigerator were friends of her old friend, Marta Flores. She got to know João Sergio this way. With the latest scandals, the TTT was in real trouble. Anita knew that a coordinated push by the social movements and CSOs could lead to victory.

Soon after Qi Qubìng’s resignation, Marcolino di Gaspar offered the Canadian renegade scientist a newly created position as director of the schistosomiasis campaign at WHO. Qi accepted with caution. He would have preferred an academic career in Vancouver but, then again, Anita was in Geneva…

Shortly after Qi took up his WHO post, the two flew to London for a weekend. It was at the beginning of the Reality Me Internet explosion and Anita came out of the shower on their second evening to find Qi transfixed by his laptop screen replaying the day they had just spent wandering about the city. Qi looked over his shoulder at her with a worried frown, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” he asked.

Reality Me was the biggest thing since Facebook. In cities like London, festooned with stationary street-corner cameras - and mobile cameras in the headlights of new model vehicles, anyone who downloaded the software could tape and replay their own movements as the cameras tracked them through city streets. Depending on their face recognition software, people could allow friends limited access to their sunglass cameras so they could download and see themselves from the other's perspective. Each evening, the videos could be chronologically synched with an audio disk from a microphone, usually hidden in an earring or on glasses.

People could replay their day, watching themselves sashay through streets and conversations and zap clips to YouTube and Facebook. Millions had become fixated with reliving their experience nightly. The under-30 set would rush home to check out their daily performance. Anita, her

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friends and about half of humanity found the narcissism disgusting. Three hundred million people – including apparently Qi Qubìng – felt otherwise. Their relationship took a second hit.

There was good news on other fronts…within 18 months of Qi’s arrival at the WHO, the endod varieties bred by peasants in Ethiopia and Tibet were being widely grown and distributed in Africa and Asia and were rapidly pushing back the disease threat.

Geneva, 2023: Having grown up in Vancouver, Qi considered himself an expert snowboarder and accomplished in all things winter. So, it was with psychic, as well as physical, discomfort that he eased his wheelchair into the little Geneva restaurant for dinner with Wu Suyuan and Alitash Teferra. "Slip on a pineapple pizza slice?" Wu inquired solicitously.

"Bipedalism is so-o overblown," he smiled back brightly.

"When they invited him to close the Disabled Olympics, they hadn't expected him to take out the Indian ski team " Anita explained, dropping into the chair beside him. Alitash laughed and gave them both affectionate hugs. The Ethiopian diplomat had coordinated a trade mission meeting in Geneva with a meeting of Anita's advisory board and Wu had decided to come along to check up on Qi. Over appetizers, Qi diverted their discussion to an OECD report on neural monitoring that he'd just read. They can now guess with 70% accuracy what you’re thinking when you pass through security at an airport," he told them, “They say they'll get it up to 90%.”

"Not bad," Anita grinned. "I can guess what you're thinking with 90% accuracy now."

"Her too," Alitash elbowed Wu. The journalist ignored her. "Developments in neurosciences are moving fast but I think we need to be paying more attention to what's happening with old-fashioned computers and telecommunications." She leaned forward, "Have you heard of ‘cloud control’?”

‘Cloud control’, Wu explained, was the capacity of the new super-computers to aggregate realtime as well as archived Internet traffic (phone, e-mail, and text messaging) to identify potentially disruptive social issues. Cloud control could spot the earliest phases of a new trend, track its origins, trace its geographic "hotspots," and construct deviating or diversionary counter stories to dissipate the movement before it actually knew it existed. Between the text messaging and the social networking, the super-computers could cypher the opinion-makers and even monitor their gatherings. The ‘Quants’ (qualitative analysts) who had ruled Wall Street with their elaborate algorithms now paid their dues by applying the same systems logic to communications.

The journalist heaved back from her dessert plate, "The gang doesn't need to invade our brains or drug our water. We're paying money to hand over everything on the Internet and all they have to do is put the pieces together. It's cheap, effective, and politically-undetectable," she announced miserably.

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Qi was skeptical. "So, you're saying that with neural monitoring – brain-reading and manipulation – isn't necessary?"

"It's too risky," Wu replied. "The potential for error and detection are enormous and the repercussions would bring down any government. Why go through all that risk if all you really have to do is aggregate the angst and immunize the Internet with a social antidote?”

“I think I'll stay in my wheelchair," Qi said.

Anita looked at him, “That would make your butt bigger," she pointed out.

2024: Anita and her colleagues had sorted out how to turn the Technology Transfer Treaty negotiations into an entirely different creature. Working with the peasants and environmentalists, they cobbled together the International Convention on the Evaluation of New Technologies (ICENT) and won support for the treaty from the majority of African, Asian, and Latin American states. The corporate side of the gang was apoplectic but their political brethren had to be more careful. China and India were noncommittal; Europe was divided and North America was sullenly opposed.

Politically, ICENT was posed an adjunct to the TTT – but this adjunct included a completely new approach. As a show of propriety, some clauses in the treaty did indeed talk about technology transfer but the overwhelming thrust of the amendment was to create a mechanism for the international community to monitor the development of new technologies; to prohibit those that threatened public goods and to fast-track those that supported constructive social goals.

Alitash Teferra summarized the treaty for her colleagues in the African Union: “At its worst,” she told them, “this treaty will reinstate the old UN Centre for Science and Technology for Development that was set up in the late 1970s and killed off in the early 1990s. Some clauses in the treaty will also allow us to monitor corporations, but this is nothing more than what we used to have when there was a UN Centre for Transnational Corporations. It too was killed off in the early 1990s. At best,” she went on, “its provisions will guarantee our access to a diversity of technological choices while allowing us to accept, or more importantly, reject powerful technologies on the basis of careful social and scientific evaluation.”

The treaty caused a division among civil society organizations. Some just wanted a policing mechanism that could monitor and prevent geoengineering and other potentially catastrophic experimentation. Others wanted to turn the treaty into a kind of environmental and anti-corporate Interpol with the ability to haul offenders before the International Criminal Court. Yet another faction, the one with whom Anita most sympathized, argued that any treaty that would get the approval of governments would be a treaty not worth signing.

Where WHO Watch and these critics differed, however, was that Anita thought the UN debate would encourage stronger national laws. At one angry session in the dining room of Geneva’s Hotel Mon Repos, the tiny Indian activist told the other campaigners that she didn’t really care

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about the outcome of the UN debate as long as it forced national governments to take action themselves.

An old Filippino activist – with a long history of technology battles – still disagreed. “That’s what we thought when we pushed for a biosafety protocol three decades ago,” she told Anita.

“We got a terrible protocol and all it did was allow the gang to stuff biotech down the throats of national governments. Aid programs were turned into ‘capacity-building’ exercises to train the South’s best scientists to become regulators so that governments could convince their citizens that it was safe to introduce genetically modified crops. The protocol was a Trojan Horse and biotech blossomed.”

Others disagreed. “But, now,” a young Somali organizer interjected, “no one is monitoring anything nationally or internationally and there’s nothing to stop companies from introducing new technologies any which way they want. How could things get worse?”

In the end, the ICENT Campaign group stayed together and agreed to push for ICENT while leaving open the possibility that the group might abandon the initiative if the negotiations went sour.

Late one evening, Anita was on the Internet searching Wikipedia – the still popular, user-edited, online encyclopaedia – when an alternative strategy struck her – reverse "cloud control." The Internet Encyclopaedia was the result of the collaboration of tens of thousands of users who edited, initiated and elaborated millions of entries. Users establish their own moderators and mediators in a constant effort to improve the quality of the Encyclopaedia. Begun in 2001 – the same year as the World Social Forum – Wikipedia quickly grew to match (some said exceed) the quality of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Why not make technology monitoring and assessment an interactive Internet process open to everyone everywhere, she wondered?

Within four months, an exploratory grant from a small US funding consortium paved the way to a substantial three-year grant from a geeky Bangalore billionaire. Once established, maintaining the interactive website would not be expensive but the real big cost was the time and energy needed to draw in an initial set of credible contributors prepared to work in the background to give “TechReckoner” enough content to attract large numbers of visitors and other contributors.

That process took the better part of three years and five dedicated workers. The TTT Campaign Committee, following the defeat of the Technology Transfer Treaty, had morphed into the ICENT Campaign Committee and it was this consortium that took on TechReckoner.

The trick was to finesse the intergovernmental machinations of treaty negotiations by establishing a much-higher civil society standard for technology monitoring and evaluation. The campaign team was counting on anonymous government regulators and industry and science institution insiders to contribute to the work of CSO activists in making the website accurate and influential. After all, if a transparent multilingual technology tracking system could be on the web, updated instantly, soaking up contributions about the social, economic, health and environmental implications of a new technique, it would be politically difficult for government regulators to operate much below this public bar. Even if ICENT devolved into a non-binding code of conduct, political reality would force a high level of compliance to the CSO standard.

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2027: It worked. TechReckoner was unveiled on the opening day of the third meeting of the intergovernmental TTT/ICENT negotiating committee with a news conference at the Church Centre for the United Nations across UN Plaza from the General Assembly and made the front page of the business section of the New York Times – and just about every other major business and financial media outlet.

The unveiling, unfortunately, was not civil society’s best-kept secret. Rumours had been circulating for months that it was about to be launched. The BANG members countered immediately with a hyperbolic critique of TechReckoner’s creators and the Campaign Committee that bankrolled the exercise. Despite this, a well-orchestrated procession of former regulators and Nobel science laureates pronounced TechReckoner to be credible and commendable.

As they developed TechReckoner, the CSO team was handed, and uncovered, a half-dozen wonderful examples of technical failures, regulatory faux pas and consortia corruption.

Shrewdly, Anita counselled the team to keep the scandals to itself until the website’s launch.

Then, the stories were released on TechReckoner’s website – two per week – for the full three weeks of intergovernmental negotiations. TechReckoner became the web’s brightest star with the highest number of hits for a non-chat, non-entertainment site since WikiLeaks.

New York, 2030: For all of the initial media hype and governmental enthusiasm, Anita had almost given up on ever seeing the ICENT Treaty for which she had fought for so long come into force. When that day finally came – seven years after negotiations got underway – she had to pinch herself as she stood in the audience section of the General Assembly, applauding with everyone else, as the Secretary-General proclaimed the treaty. Why she was standing, she couldn’t decide. She sat down as quickly as she could without being too obvious. It was, after all, the lousy text she had anticipated. Yes, there would be an intergovernmental working group that would monitor new technologies and provide public reports based upon public hearings and yes, the working group did have some money and modest staffing to do its work. Yes too, there was a commitment to insure technological diversity – to make sure that the world did not place all its eggs in one technological basket – and funds to safely archive retiring technologies that might sometime in the future be shown to be useful again. But – surprise, surprise – the treaty had no teeth. It could monitor, it could advise, it could even suggest that certain technologies not be withdrawn… but there was no legal authority to back any of this up.

Still, the treaty carried considerable moral authority and TechReckoner was hard at work 24/7 keeping the public alert and the regulators honest. The gang would defy ICENT’s advice at some risk. Along the way, the old, 1978 treaty prohibiting the use of environmental modification as a weapon was formally expanded to prohibit environmental modification by any state without the express approval of a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly. That, Anita acknowledged, was worthwhile. WHO Watch was happiest with the number of national laws – 37 and counting – that had been adopted and that actually had the power to lay criminal charges.

Back in Geneva: Marcolino di Gaspar had taken over the post of Director-General in January 2013, was re-elected in 2019 and retired from office in 2025. During his tenure, many things

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changed. Most apparent to staff in the Geneva headquarters was that the dais that raised his desk a foot above everyone else in his fourth floor office was removed. On his second day in office, di Gaspar lined up for lunch in the first floor of the WHO cafeteria. In his 12 years in office, di Gaspar – an intensely shy man – was able to modestly claim that he had eaten more meals in the cafeteria than anywhere else in Geneva. The US delegation was incensed, however, when the new Director-General spent a small fortune renovating his headquarters one August while much of the staff were on holiday. The buildings were literally gutted so that the long impersonal corridors disappeared and were replaced by a more open and collegial office environment that encouraged people to talk to one another. The US indignation was finally squashed when their own citizens on staff demonstrated their support for the change by hosting a birthday breakfast for the Director-General in their new lounge.

Progressive historians rightfully criticized di Gaspar for having promised more on the policy and programme front than he could deliver. More sympathetic folks say that while he did not swing the WHO’s programmes and policies as far to the left as some might have wished, he at least swung the doors open. Indigenous peoples and their organizations, urban and rural health coalitions, CSOs monitoring the pharmaceutical industry, women, and especially the Disability Rights Movement, were encouraged to take an active role in the WHO intergovernmental debates and programme formation. The WHO began to take an aggressively pro-active role in encouraging new policy debates. The organization also became an active defender of the connection between health and food, and consequently, surprised governments by endorsing Food Sovereignty, the Peoples’ Health Movement, Community Shared Agriculture and others. In international trade negotiations and on Human Rights committees, the WHO staff became encouraging – though sometimes pompous – allies of movements that espoused community resilience and fought corporate globalization. Di Gaspar himself was unhesitating in pointing the finger at governments that failed to meet the needs of their people or to respect international health covenants.

But the Director-General’s reign was not a Cinderella story. After the first year of honeymooning, the North had gotten tough on the WHO budget and began reining in its boss.

They had some success. Between budget threats and constant sniping from the various intergovernmental committees, the Director-General sometimes lost his sense of balance and occasionally gave in too easily. Just before his retirement, however, di Gaspar managed to push through a UN agency first – a “Freedom of Information” policy that gave accredited civil society observer organizations the right to monitor internal documents and to challenge bureaucratic decision-making to an extent never seen before.

WHO’s critics of course liked to point out that ILO and FAO adopted CSO-friendly policies without the pain and pressure that befell WHO. By the late-20s, the entire UN system had adopted a more open style. A style, cynics pointed out, that had brought the UN not so far ahead of the less-than-halcyon 1970s, than into the 21st century.

When the old UN Secretary-General had to resign due to a stroke, it was unquestioned that the UN General Assembly and Security Council would adhere to a transparent electoral process, complete with CSO scrutiny. Although many criticized the UN system for having adjusted its

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style and not its substance, many others found it to be an important forum for introducing new issues.

From the outside, WHO Watch continued to be a constructive critic. Di Gaspar and Anita Krishna often locked horns. There were periods – lasting nearly a year sometimes – when they didn’t speak. When Di Gaspar retired, however, Anita led the CSOs in a standing ovation from the balcony. It was only the third time Anita had ever been in the chamber, di Gaspar knew.

When the next election rolled around, WHO Watch actively sought – and found – five credible candidates – three from the South’s major regions and two from the North. The candidates were grilled in public meetings and on the Internet and the election was as open and fair as these things can ever be. Some (including many in Who Watch) were looking for good governance – an honest and decent manager. Others were looking for visionary leadership, and still others (while accepting the need for adequate standards) put their priority on a continued cycling of the post from region to region. In the end, the members of Who Watch were not entirely displeased with the outcome.

To his dying day, the WHO’s long forgotten former Director-General, Anil Patel, defended his record. In an autobiography privately published after his death, he maintained that his election strategy and hiring policies were customary in the UN – the carbon copy of practices at the FAO and other agencies, for example. He was, he lamented, an innocent victim of the world’s alternative superpower – civil society activists.

Postscript, Geneva, 2035: Qi Qubìng hit the remote and the scene of the Stockholm ceremony faded from the flat screen across the office. He felt good. He looked down at the piles of redtagged folders covering his desk and swept them into a drawer. Qi had promised to fly to Sweden for the weekend to visit with old friends. He was looking forward to it. The peace activist, Inga Thorvaldson, was having a party for the Right Livelihood Award recipients in Uppsala.

Established more than half a century earlier, this premier global CSO acknowledgment of good works had become popularly- known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. Each December, before the Nobel Peace Prize was presented, RLA recipients were honoured in the Swedish Parliament in a ceremony presided over by the national monarch. The chair of the board of WHO Watch was receiving one of the three RLAs that year on behalf of the organization. Diplomatically, as WHO’s DG, it would be insulting for him not to be present and, anyway, Anita would be there.

Qi swivelled in his chair and gazed out the window across the lake as the city lights sparkled in the clear December air. After a few moments, he bounced to his feet and strode to the doorway.

There was still time before his flight. He was hungry and the cafeteria was open. Given his nature, Qi didn’t eat in the cafeteria as often as the previous Director-General, but they served pizza on Fridays.

Aaa How Next #1: Are we winning or losing?

It’s the worst of times

It’s the strangest of times

It’s the best of times

The combined threat

The current instability cuts

Never before has civil society

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of ecological, global ecophagy and political instability (“terrorism”) in a world of new bio and nanotech weaponry, where the very definition of humanity is uncertain, affords the ruling elite every opportunity to impose their will upon a disoriented and demoralized public.

We must anticipate the worst and build resilience and resistance throughout a decentralized CSO network.

both ways. A sudden unanticipated environmental, economic or political event could result in a rapid change in popular opinion and political direction. While it is wise to strengthen community resilience, we should be prepared to capture opportunities if they arise. History is full of surprises.

acted globally, risen so rapidly or shown such strength. For the first time, we have the communications, the solidarity and the fora to bring about massive democratic change.

This is a time for at least cautious optimism and organization – from the community to the world.

Aaa How Next #2: Is there a place for compromise and dialogue?

Death through a thousand conferences

Just “open sourcing”

Fifth Column

Multi-stakeholder dialogues are inherently elitist and divisive, creating distrust within the CSO community, draining resources, diverting attention, and confusing our goals.

Don’t do it.

Transparent, high-visibility multi-stakeholder negotiations can attract media attention and donor support – and create opportunities for diverse national CSOs and social movements to come together and organize.

Allies might also be discovered in government or intergovernmental sectors.

As long as the “inside/outsider” alignment is clear, multistakeholder meetings can be an excellent opportunity to obtain useful information and develop sophisticated engagement and/or campaigning strategies. The decision to participate depends on the state of the issue and the needs of CSOs at that specific point. A dialogue is a tactic – one to be used sparingly.

Aaa How Next #3: Are we ‘movers’ or merely ‘shakers’?

Shaken – not stirred

Sometimes a great motion

Moving time

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We seem to have capacity to shake things up but not to stir society to action. Perhaps the problem is our weak linkage to social movements.

Perhaps the best civil society organizations can do is to draw attention to issues and hope that the political opportunity will allow others to adopt our positions.

Sometimes we expect too much from our little groups.

We have had successes. The peace and anti-nuclear campaigns, progress on debt and landmines, breastfeeding, pesticide protocols, seed treaties, GMO/Terminator and ocean fertilization moratoria and effective intervention in military conflict.

We can get a lot done. We use resources very effectively and we have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and networks that should make it possible for us to design long-term political strategies that can really make a difference. We’ve grossly underestimated the ability of the Third System – the people – to create change.

Aaa How Next #4: Are We Trapped in the “Stockholm Syndrome?” Is civil society changing structures or enabling them?

Forget the UN

For other ends

For tough love

It makes no sense to agree that even so-called liberal democratic governments are in collusion with industry and then urge CSOs to see intergovernmental organizations as somehow representative of the people.

Whatever progressive tendencies still remain within UN agency secretariats are quickly disappearing. CSO work at the UN level encourages elitism and drains resources and attention from the real work of grassroots mobilization.

UN fora, including the General Assembly and Human Rights Council – but also specific agencies for specific purposes – sometimes allow national CSOs and international issues the rare opportunity to attract global media and political attention that can have useful repercussions at the local and/or global level. Indigenous rights campaigns, the infant formula work, pesticides campaigns and seeds campaigns have all gained popular support using UN instruments and fora.

As much as we would fight to overthrow bad governments we should be prepared to fight to overthrow bad intergovernmental bodies. UN organizations are the “soft underbelly” of government/industry collusion. A focused effort by civil society for UN reform would greatly improve the governance structure of any UN agency and render it more useful in drawing attention and action on issues.

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Aaaa Course

2: Peace

March Out of Battle In December 2035, Abebe Jideani was rolled out onto the tarmac of Heathrow’s terminal 2 with no protection from the pouring rain or biting chill. The worried attendant, a Pakistani lady of senior years – much too old, Abebe thought, to be lugging wheelchair passengers around – covered him haphazardly in her own raincoat despite his protests and insisted on pushing the healthy 30-something up the ramp onto the waiting vehicle. He did his best to smile pleasantly at his fellow passengers – the usual collection of strapped-in, chair-bound "disabled" that airlines differently defined as "special need" passengers. He could as easily have wheeled himself down the jet way but the airline would hear nothing of it. His attendant politely retrieved her raincoat and waved goodbye only to watch in horror on the tarmac as the vehicle leapt forward, back door banging open in the wind, in search of its aircraft. Jideani sighed resignedly and prepared himself for the flight to Stockholm. There was no avoiding it, the young Ethiopian knew, and December in Europe was a pain. Thoroughly soaked from a lashing rain in the open vehicle, he was cranked up to the level of the forward cabin and then crawled down the aisle anyway to his seat. "Decide to take in some air before the flight?" The dark-haired woman beside him inquired.

"Shut up," he replied, "or I will rain on you."

Inga Thorvaldson laughed and changed topic, "what is it do you think," she asked, "is this their year for truck driving peaceniks... or has the Disability Writes Movement finally gotten the attention it deserves?"

"They wanted to give it to the World Social Forum but, since they’ve done that already years ago, I’m the stand-in."

"About time," she said, patting his arm.

"We should be getting this together," he smiled over at her.

Inga flicked on the video screen, "Come to the party."

2005: The good times were rolling and commodity markets were booming. Peasants could not remember when prices had been so good. Market analysts predicted that retail food prices would climb well above the $3 trillion of 2005 to more than $5 trillion by 2008 and keep on climbing. It was with this optimism that Dow Chemical and Rohm & Haas entered into their delicate mating ritual that was supposed to turn skeptical investment managers into happy creditors. Then, life stepped in.

2008: At mid-year, the weaknesses unfolding in US mortgage markets became viral and flooded uncontrollably into the rest of the economy. By the end of the year, Dow’s iron-clad commitment to buy Rohm & Haas had become a profit "hotspot" for litigation lawyers. Confronted with a collapsing economy and evaporating chemical and pesticide sales, Dow wanted out of the merger

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at almost any cost. Girding themselves for a protracted battle, both companies stripped away non-essential people and plants to bolster their war chests. Caught up in the gargantuan struggle for cash, a longtime contractee to one of the combatants -- a pesticide reformulation plant and warehouse in Kombolcha, Ethiopia first lost its budget for new safety equipment and then saw its safety supervisor let go. Simultaneously, the parent company’s East African unit overseeing safety standards was cut and its duties were transferred to an already overworked chemical engineer tucked away in a corner of the Lagos regional office. A few months later the plant was sold off for a fraction of its value to an Italian entrepreneur in Addis Ababa.

Kombolcha, Ethiopia, 2012: Even as a young child, Abebe Jideani loved being special. His mother and father took extra time with him, more than they did with his two older sisters; they carried him about and played with him until his siblings drew close to jealousy. Of course the girls understood. The boy knew that strangers considered him “crippled” because his legs ended at his knee joints and he had no feet. He also knew that his mother blamed this on the leaky pesticide warehouse that had butted up against their old house, when the family had lived on the main road. As a teacher, she had a book from a pesticides action group that explained the toxic risks of pesticides. Not long after he was born, they moved as far away as they could manage – and not long after that, the warehouse burnt to the ground.

Abebe’s father owned a truck and drove it everywhere in Ethiopia, carrying agricultural equipment one way, food the other way, and people whenever he couldn’t find produce.

Sometimes he was gone for weeks.

At home in Kombolcha, Abebe’s mother taught her children to read and write in both Amharic and English. By his eighth birthday, Abebe’s special family duty was to read out loud to his sisters and mother as they went about preparing food, cleaning and sewing. Though they realized he could have done more, they kept Abebe stacked atop a side table where the afternoon light was best for him to read to them while they went about their work. He read and commented on whatever book or newspaper their mother had brought home.

In 2012, Abebe was consumed with the distant machinations of the re-election campaign of Barack Obama. He forced his family to listen to every step along the campaign trail from the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary to the toughly contested nomination convention in August. The boy would turn his tabletop vantage point into a “bully pulpit” to harangue his sisters on the nuances of American racial politics.

Abebe also loved to tinker. When his father was at home, Abebe could be found lying alongside his father, under the lorry, staring up into the bowels of the engine. When his father was on the road, he would head down to his uncle’s garage to help out the mechanics by fetching parts and tools.

2018: On his 13th birthday, the mechanics made him a wheelchair welded together from old bicycle parts. One evening not long after, his father hoisted him up on his shoulders and the two headed off into the hills above the town. These evening rambles – when it was cooler and work was done for the day – were Abebe’s favourite time.

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“School’s no use to you,” his father announced, as they admired the view from the hilltop. “Your mother has taught you how to read and write and you can learn everything else you need from books on your own. Why don’t you become a lorry driver like me?” He adjusted the boy on his shoulders, “In fact, why don’t you become my co-driver? I’ll teach you the trade as we work.”

Abebe was ecstatic, but how would he drive? For the answer, he and his father visited his uncle’s garage where Abebe’s friends, the mechanics – as well as his uncle – were already solving the problem. The vehicle modifications, through trial and error, took the better part of a month, but in the end, the family truck was transformed into a machine that his unconventional limbs could master.

2020: Father and son traveled the highways and byways of eastern Africa. Their reliability and skill became known among lorry-drivers and contractors. First, Oxfam and later, World Vision and CARE hired them for emergency relief convoys. Before each trip, Abebe’s mother stocked the lorry cabin with books. Whoever wasn’t driving was charged with reading whatever the driver wanted.

As the miles and years rolled by, the two worked their way through the fiction and non-fiction sections of most of the libraries and bookstores from Nairobi to Djibouti.

2022: Abebe Jideani’s father was killed during a relief convoy run to Darfur that had become a regular route for them. Because of his father’s experience, their lorry was leading the convoy when it struck a landmine. Abebe owed his life to the metal plate on the floor of the driver’s side that allowed him to drive. Not so for his father who was dozing in the passenger seat. The older man had his legs blown off and was flung through the open roof onto the roadside. The rapid blood loss was impossible to stem and he died, shivering in his son’s embrace. The boy, hardly 17, had the presence of mind to extricate his driving contraption from the wreck before the UN peacekeepers carted him off to a mobile medical station 100 kilometres down the road.

He was released later that same day, but spent another two weeks negotiating with the relief committee for a replacement truck. Good luck and a particularly kindly Ghanaian quartermaster got him a new truck, just off the train from Djibouti. It took another week for local mechanics to adjust his jerry-rigged system to the new vehicle. Then, promising his friends that he would keep safe, Abebe made the long journey back to his mother and sisters in Kombolcha. The memorial ceremony for his father was held at the local Coptic Church.

Two days later, Abebe drove into the market square to load up for the trip to Addis where the local peasant’s cooperative hired lorries every week for the journey. His father – though not always able to make it – was a preferred driver. The manager of the co-op had been at the memorial ceremony, but he was surprised to see the boy. His hesitation was only momentary.

“Load him up,” he told the peasants, and an hour later, Abebe Jideani was on the road.

2023: A year after his father’s death, Abebe was back in South Sudan leading convoys for the UN emergency relief programme. Each UN team leader, in turn, had to adjust to the sight of the “gimpy” lead convoy driver who had to crawl into his truck. But, as one team leader replaced

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another in the rotating cycle of UN organization, each new boss was advised to follow Abebe Jideani’s lead.

Geoff Tolbert of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) claims credit for having been the first to “discover” Abebe Jideani. Even Tolbert, however, admits that Abebe was discovered more than once by different media outlets. While filming in one of South Sudan’s relief camps, one of his camera crewmembers caught Abebe clambering into his truck and signaling for the convoy to follow. The cameraman didn’t notice him until he was reviewing the film that night.

He immediately brought it to Tolbert’s attention. The next afternoon, following an interview with the local UN agency quartermaster, Tolbert mentioned the driver and asked if the officer knew anything about him. Indeed, the Ghanaian did.

A couple of days later, Tolbert caught up with Abebe when he returned to the relief camp with more supplies. The crew clambered into the back of his truck and Geoff took the passenger seat.

By the time they arrived at the base station, Tolbert knew he had a good story and his crew was desperate for beer. They spent hours editing out Abebe’s most picturesque English expletives that punctuated every second sentence as the young driver shouted commands to the convoy through his radiophone. Behind the wheel, Abebe was a fist-thumping, fast-talking road warrior.

Away from his truck, he was charming and humorous, with an infectious smile.

The film footage, not unexpectedly, was picked up in several countries and Abebe had his 15 minutes of fame.

One of those who watched the human interest footage, beer in hand, on her television set at home in Sweden, was Inga Thorvaldson. National Vice-President of the Chemical Workers’ Union, Thorvaldson was in charge of her union’s international relations, including their development fund. Each union member contributed 0.7% of their wages to the fund. Thorvaldson was also an Executive Member of the Coordinating Committee of social movements and NGOs that facilitated the World Social Forum (WSF).

2024: The television image was long forgotten, however, by the time Inga Thorvaldson attended the WSF planning meeting in Addis Ababa a year later. The African Union was pressuring the WSF to hold its next global forum in Zimbabwe. The last forum, in Bangkok, drew 200,000 participants and the organizers were eager to maintain the momentum. Many felt that an African venue would severely dampen attendance because of the high costs of travel.

In the best carrot-and-stick tradition, the AU officials promised subsidized air travel (financially supported by the EU) and an impressive electrified tent city arrangement close to the airport.

Only two other global WSF had been held in sub-Saharan Africa and the AU negotiators hinted that a rejection of their offer would be viewed as racism. In the end, with many misgivings, the WSF Executive Committee agreed that the next forum could be in Harare, Zimbabwe. As a cautious proponent of the Harare venue, Inga felt obliged to join the organizing committee and committed half her working time to that task in the year leading up to the gathering.

It could be debated whether the 21st century was becoming India’s or China’s, but nobody was suggesting that it belonged to Africa. The vicissitudes of climate change for both the Saharan and

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sub-Saharan parts of the continent had been brutal and unpredictable. At the same time, international demand (or at least international prices) for Africa’s abundant mineral resources and extensive plantation crops, were on a sharp decline. The combination, for many states, meant near-collapse, massive unemployment, hunger and disease.

According to the tallies of US-based Freedom House, the first few years of the 21st century described a gradual, though often disrupted, trend toward multi-party democracies and (relatively) free elections. Yet, somehow, democracy on paper seldom translated into social policies or planning that benefited the almost 500 million rural peasants and urban unemployed that made up the majority of the continent’s population.

In the 21st century’s third decade, even the facade of democracy fell away. Most pundits and historians concurred that the collapse of African governments was primarily due to geopolitical and geo-environmental trends. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) attracted blame like a multinational magnet. Wu agreed with the criticism.

Wu Suyuan’s blogs also identified the inelegant surrender of OECD bilateral aid programmes to philanthro-capitalist foundations like Gates and Google. She berated the mega-foundations for parlaying their fame (or notoriety) – and a pittance of their fortunes – to dominate bigger and more experienced multilateral and bilateral aid programmes. The arrogant nouveau riche, she claimed, tied their untested theories to global corporate partnerships in the whimsical assumption that well-meaning, world-wise capitalists could spark corporate compassion. This “let’s make a deal” model, she warned, was being distorted by Hollywood, the White House and Wall Street into a political parlor game. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa belatedly learned that their health and well-being was nothing more than a polemical pawn in the 21st century’s Great Game of global do-gooders.

With the deterioration of domestic affairs came increased violence. An ever-larger share of socalled “foreign aid” came to Africa in credits to purchase police and military hardware. The same nano-scale technologies, adopted by Northern nations, that were wrecking havoc on Africa’s raw material exports became one of Africa’s leading imports as governments sought surveillance equipment including cameras, sensors and monitoring networks for border security, and – increasingly – to keep tabs on opposition politicians and social movements.

On one of her infrequent visits back to the African Union’s capital, made ever more problematic because of the health "curtain", Alitash Teferra noted the paradox. “In general,” she told them, “these new systems are too sensitive and too sophisticated for use in rugged environments. The ‘smart dust’ sensors that guard the border between the United States and Mexico react to everything from dust storms to bird droppings. Three years ago, unusually strong north winds forced migrating Monarch butterflies on their way into the United States to fly so close to the ground they were picked up by the sensors. The Texas National Guard was called out and the whole southwestern Air Force command was scrambled, before someone thought to fly along the border in a Piper Cub proving that a million Mexicans were not actually charging the frontier.

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The nano-cameras,” she added, “that were experimentally placed at intersections in downtown Lagos were designed to be ultra-sensitive to infrared light. They spent the entire time focused on their own infrared lights; in effect, spying on themselves, while the citizens and crooks went about their business totally undetected down below. It cost the Nigerians a fortune.”

Tash saved her deepest scorn for the Chinese army’s experiments with Piezers. “The ultra-light, ultra-thin electric rifles turned out to react erratically to temperature swings. In colder climates – or even after the sun goes down – the electrical charge seems to boost itself. Soldiers who set their guns to “stun” in battle simulations wound up killing one another. When they adjusted for temperature, they found that even the heat and sweat on the hands of infantrymen was enough to sometimes drop the electrical charge to the level of uselessness.” Wu had told her of one riot in a rural market town not far from Beijing, where the police had given up shooting with the Piezers and had grabbed the barrels and used the super-strong nano material as an old-fashioned bludgeon. Months later, the same rifles could be found in Congolese markets at premium prices.

“In sum,” the diplomat told the Committee, “Africa is again being subjected to China’s and Europe’s first-generation technological experiments. Our research shows that these weapons will, at best, work adequately half the time. Buying them is wasteful, and it would make more sense to spend foreign aid money on agriculture and health,” she concluded unpopularly.

Tash’s partner, Wu Suyuan, had done a wonderful job disassembling the new military technologies in her blog. The dramatic difference between lab and battlefield conditions – the socalled “fog of war” – almost always meant that adventurous new technologies would take a decade or more to be practically useful. In the first Gulf War in 1990, for example, the US Air Force had bragged about its smart bombs that could be fired from an aircraft at 40,000 feet down the smokestack of a munitions plant. Only when the war was over did the statistics show that the new smart bombs were hardly more accurate than Vietnam-era bombs. The later wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were also far from technological triumphs.

The arbitrariness of the distinction between offense and defence, the role of new technologies, and the dismaying tendency of ploughshares to be turned into swords, had become a regular topic when Tash and Wu got together with Qi Qubìng.

A few days after Tash’s AU Committee appearance, the three met up in a restaurant near the Beijing train station. In keeping with Tash’s report, the conversation drifted to new military technologies – much to Qi Qubìng’s grumpy displeasure – in a Chinese restaurant serving Chinese food.

Poking awkwardly at his plate with his chopsticks, Qi rose to the defence of the new technologies. “So, you’re saying we can just laugh at nuclear weapons?” he asked. “We haven’t had them for so long and they are almost untried under battlefield conditions! A hundred years ago, armies in the Spanish Civil War used horses and bayonets until Germany got into the act experimenting with tanks and aircraft. It may take time, but technologies have made a major change to how we conduct our wars. Look at the impact of night vision goggles,” he said stabbing at his food. “US troops and airplanes had a ball picking off targets in Iraq and Afghanistan when they were the only ones who could see. What about those daisy-cutter bombs

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that can kill everything living within a 1000-meter-radius?” he demanded. “Or, the bunker-buster bombs?” he grinned triumphantly.

Against her own will, Wu contributed to his argument. “It’s true that the new technologies – especially nanotechnology – have made the notion of tactical field nuclear weapons more acceptable. Whether they actually work or not, having them on the battlefield changes everyone's game plan.”

Maybe it’s a matter of perception,” Tash contributed, “In any case, we never see change closeup. We’re like the frog on the lily pad in a pot of water as it begins to boil. When it notices, it’s too late.” They ate on in silence for some time, Tash, looking in a restaurant mirror at the three of them, thinking maybe they were friends after all.

2025: Alitash and Wu managed to arrange their schedules so that Tash’s briefing to the AU meeting in Johannesburg coincided with the journalist’s participation in the Harare World Social Forum. After years of being ignored by the world media, the huge Forum was finally gaining the attention it deserved. Wu Suyuan attended both as a reporter and as a speaker. In fact, she had become one of the Forum’s “stars.” The journalist frankly acknowledged, that she met more interesting people and learned more at the WSF than in any other place or time.

For Inga, the organization of the Social Forum had been a 12-month nightmare of internal petty CSO politics mixed with the deteriorating geopolitics of Africa, in general, and Southern Africa, in particular. Since the AU had arm-twisted and guilt-tripped them into holding the event in Harare, the Zimbabwean government had gotten itself entangled in border clashes with Zambia over control of the water flow in the Zambezi River. Both countries were sabre-rattling and buying arms.

Tensions between them had run high for a decade, when mining company geologists first discovered seams of copper and platinum running deep under the Zambezi River border line.

Each country had expelled tribal populations feared to be disloyal and refugee camps had blossomed on either side of the bridge crossing at Chirundu, the village that straddled either side of the bridge. Weeks before the Forum was to begin, organizers feared they were flying a couple of hundred thousand people into the jaws of war. The United States was advising its citizens to stay clear of the region. (Everyone else was hoping the United States would stay clear.) Britain, Australia and New Zealand followed the US advice.

Ever since 2003 and the mass demonstrations around the Iraq war, the WSF saw itself as the embodiment of the “other superpower,” as the mass mobilization had been dubbed by The New York Times. Peace demonstrations were always a major part of national, regional, and global social forums. The largest demonstrations involved Israel and Palestine, but the crumbling economies of most of the South gave the peace-activists ample opportunities for expression. By 2025, the whole psyche of the WSF phenomenon was ready to do something more…

The mood suited Inga Thorvaldson. As a teenager in Hong Kong in 2005, she had marched with her parents and the amazing South Korean peasants carrying a huge family-designed banner calling for George W. Bush to get out of the Middle East, on one side, and for the WTO to get

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out of agriculture on the other. Beside them had marched a loud Chinese journalist - Wu Suyuan - arm-in-arm with a Brazilian farm organizer.

Her “hippies from the ‘60s” parents had been, more than anything else, peace-niks. She had it in her genes. Although she did not consider herself a Christian, Inga had left University in her second year to take a turn with a Christian peace witness brigade in Baghdad. She came home six months later with what the doctors described as a mild form of post-traumatic stress syndrome, after two of her Christian colleagues were killed.

Her experience only hardened her commitment to peace and her passion for resistance.

In the early 20s, Inga was a labour lawyer interning with the International Labour Organization in Geneva. The excitement of working for a United Nations agency quickly wore thin, as she found the ILO too staid and bureaucratic, and before long, Inga moved down the hill to the headquarters of the International Red Cross. Tiny for a Swede, with unconventional dark-brown hair and eyes (her passport insisted on describing as “dark blonde”), her energy and toughness were recognized by her superiors and she became one of the Red Cross’s top trouble-shooters when negotiations with warring factions got rough.

Although the work was real and relevant, she found the rule-bound neutrality of the Red Cross too restrictive. On a visit home to her parents in Stockholm one Christmas, she stayed on to talk with old friends in the trade union movement. By spring, she was National Vice-President of the Chemical Workers’ Union and part of the Swedish government’s observer team for the continuing conflict in South Sudan.

This is where she first met Abebe Jideani. The Swedish mission in Khartoum had hired him, sight unseen, on the advice of a UN military officer, to take the observers on an inspection tour of the Darfur region. Once they got over the initial shock of Abebe’s wheelchair, they found their guide and coordinator to be all his Ghanaian mentor said he would be.

Sitting beside Abebe in the lead lorry, Inga had loved his storytelling, and found herself laughing through the boiling sun, sweat and dust storms, as the five-vehicle convoy lurched from one refugee camp to the next.

On the third day out, Abebe – with the aid of his GPS device – brought the convoy to a halt in the middle of nowhere. Responding to Inga’s look of inquiry, the young man said, “Smart dust.

There’s a strip of land ahead of us, maybe 10 meters deep, covered in nanomonitors.” Inga knew about smart dust – invisible nano sensors that were networked to send back real-time information to whoever had distributed them. “Do they belong to Khartoum or Juba?” she asked. Abebe answered Khartoum and that convoyes were expected to send a wireless message to the Sudanese capitol before passing through the network in order not to trigger an attack.

“But,” Abebe told Inga, “this field was deployed at least a year ago. Juba knows about it and will have compromised the network so that it also serves as a border patrol for them. The thing about smart dust,” he chuckled, “is that each individual nano module is not so smart. Telling Khartoum what we’re going through also tells the other side that we are coming.”

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“What do we do?” she asked.

With a helpful boost from Inga, Abebe scampered into the back of his lorry returning with what looked like a pesticide spray backpack. It was. Minutes later, following Abebe’s instructions issued in the shadow of his truck, Inga was hiking along an imaginary border spraying a live microbial pesticide into the stone and dirt beyond. She did this for about a hundred meters before the tank emptied and she returned to the truck.

“How can you be sure I didn’t cross into the sensors and set off alarms?” she asked Abebe, dropping down beside him in the shade. “There’s not enough of you,” he grinned, “you have about the same footprint as a hyena. The sensors may report you but their watchers will ignore you. Meanwhile,” he added, “that microbe spray is creating chaos. All of the sensors are screaming at one another. Both sides will risk the energy-loss of calling up real-time photographs sent from the sensors so that they can figure out what’s going on. When they examine the photos, they will see nothing and conclude that there is some sort of insect swarm causing the problem.

We’ll wait an hour or so and then cross. The sensors will still be going crazy but the watchers won’t pay any attention.”

A week later, they were back in Khartoum and Inga had persuaded the Geneva-based Anti-War Mobilization Committee to hire Abebe Jideani on contract as their Operations Manager in the Horn of Africa. Abebe had another few minutes of fame on Swedish television when the observer team returned to Stockholm.

Inga was delighted to meet Abebe again during the peace negotiations. The young man’s charm and facility with languages had made him an excellent go-between. By the time another fragile cease-fire was brokered and announced in the media, Abebe had flown back to Juba to drive his lorry home to Kombolcha to care for his aging mother. His two sisters, by this time, were married and living in Addis, and – with young children of their own – couldn’t always tend to their mother who was too stubborn to leave her hometown.

The very day the WSF executive resigned itself to holding its next forum in Zimbabwe; Inga contacted Abebe and asked him to be the lead member of the Swedish trade union’s contribution to WSF preparations. It would mean moving to Harare and turning over his lorry business to his uncle and cousins for the year. Abebe was hesitant, but over a dinner with Inga –who drove to Kombolcha to persuade him – he agreed.

Looking back, neither Inga nor Abebe can quite remember where the idea came from. It could be argued, of course, that there weren’t many options. The AU was making noises that – because of the border tensions with Zambia – maybe the Forum should be postponed. Scouts for Fox, CNN and BBC were already in the capital hiring trucks, helicopters and booking hotel rooms in the event that the border skirmishes blew up into real entertainment.

After returning from an early dinner with Abebe one evening, Inga logged onto Skype and began calling anti-war colleagues from New York to Stockholm, Bangkok and Cairo. Abebe, meanwhile, got into his truck and drove the short distance to the cathedral.

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The next morning, Abebe was at the corner of the market where lorries were hired, negotiating with drivers. Inga visited the emergency relief NGOs to talk about their trucks (CARE and World Vision later maintained that their drivers hadn't taken the vehicles without their permission but had only driven them before they had written clearances.)

Despite the tensions and apprehensions, the opening march of the World Social Forum was estimated – by both police and media – as numbering at least 100,000. Although far short of the record, the organizers were nervously enthusiastic and the vast tent camp on the outskirts of Harare overflowed with the young and old from every corner of the world. At the opening rally, Inga Thorvaldson and Abebe Jideani took the microphone and told the sea of activists that the Zimbabwe and Zambian governments were at the point of war and that the battlefront where both armies were massing – on opposite sides of a bridge crossing the Zambezi River – left two of the largest refugee camps in southern Africa smack in the middle. Trucks, she told them, would be waiting at the tent camp at four o’clock the next morning for those willing to take the Social Forum to the refugee camps as a human shield to protect the camps and keep the two armies apart.

Even as she spoke, Inga couldn’t be certain that they would have the vehicles for the 366 kilometre trek that they needed.

The uproar was immediate and international. Fox and CNN – who usually did their best to ignore the WSF – had a story they couldn’t resist. The Zimbabwe government went ballistic. During the night, soldiers and plainclothes agents searched through the tent camp looking for Inga and Abebe without success. At four o’clock in the morning, the trucks – which had been dribbling through the bush to the camp throughout the night – were surrounded by police and soldiers, who in turn, attempted to keep the Forum’s activists from the vehicles.

They couldn’t. With no other option short of tear-gassing the entire Social Forum live on BBC World Service, a nervous Major told his troops to stand down and let everyone crowd onto the vehicles.

Seen from the air, in the early morning haze, the ragged procession was not so impressive. More impressive were the number of lorries that dropped out along the roadside – also picked up by the television cameras – as engines broke down or ran out of petrol. At most, BBC estimated, 20,000 to 30,000 activists had found places on the trucks. While another band of perhaps 10,000 were threatening to walk the several hundred kilometres to the refugee camps, no one took them seriously. Talking by satellite phone with friends back in the tent city, Inga and Abebe wondered if their “Children’s Crusade” – as Fox had begun to call it – was destined to failure and humiliation.

“Why doesn’t the Air Force just swat us?” she demanded of Abebe as she involuntarily slouched in her seat when a military helicopter buzzed overhead. “They won’t,” the young man responded, “not without the tacit permission of the North governments that arm them. As long as the media are around we have to be protected. Africa is on the North’s periphery; we’re not really important to them, we can only cause problems if we attract too much attention.” Then he added

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softly, “Interesting isn’t it? This is their periphery but it’s my heartland.” They drove on in silence heading north through the arid Zambesi Valley of western Mashonaland.

Back in Harare, the WSF was in turmoil with everyone gathered in whatever shade they could find to listen to their radios and hear the gossip from people with mobiles. At mid-morning, a man in clerical robes drove up to the main stage in the ubiquitous old Mercedes and asked one of the organizers if he could address the crowd. Who was he, they asked? The bishop of a local Christian church, he told them.

He first spoke in excellent English and then repeated his statement in French. He was going to join the activists at the refugee camps. On behalf of his church, he was asking all bus drivers in Harare to fill up with petrol and come to the Social Forum to take whoever wished to go with the bishop to the camps.

Before the government could shut down the media coverage, the news spread throughout the city. The crowd in the Forum whooped and cheered. By late afternoon, at least another 40,000 were on buses, private cars and delivery trucks, starting the eight-hour drive to the border and the world media had the camera images they needed to make a major story.

Some say it was the young Dalai Lama who contacted the cleric. Others say it was the other way around. The Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches got into the act on her own and it was she who telephoned a number of influential Mullahs and the Pope. As the first African prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Gregory was an archconservative. Nevertheless, he was also African and this was a peace movement on his continent. The day after the buses joined the trucks in the refugee camps, the leadership of seven major religions – working hard to look like leaders rather than followers – were on their way to be with the peacemakers.

The war was averted. The two armies pulled back from little Chirundu. Before the Social Forum was scheduled to end, the armies were recalled to their barracks. The government in Harare fell peacefully and a coalition government was formed to prepare for elections. A few days later, the Zambian government also resigned and elections were called. The provisional governments in both countries announced that they would take their dispute to the World Court.

Following the last meeting of the WSF organizing committee in Harare, a news conference was held where the chair of the organizing committee, the farm organizer from Brazil, João Sergio, who had befriended Inga’s family in Hong Kong so many years before, announced the committee’s decision: “The World Social Forum,” he announced, “will continue to be an open place for discussion and dialogue for the progressive forces of civil society. But, above all else, we as a Forum stand for peace and against poverty” (these last words had been negotiated over many hours). “From now on, as we join hands with the anti-war movement, we will take our marches and our Forum not just into the streets of friendly cities and not simply to protest power, we will use the power of civil society to take direct action in the midst of war zones, as we have here in Africa, and we will block the manufacture and transport of munitions among the countries and corporations that fuel war and oppression.”

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The WSF’s admittedly modest victory on the Zambian border nevertheless imbued the peace movement with a confidence and an energy it had not felt in a long time. Civil society – from climate change activists, to the Community Shared Agriculture network and public health coalitions – rallied in common cause with the peace movement at every opportunity. The WSF model, which had been growing steadily since its beginnings in 2001, exploded into municipal, national, continental and world meetings.

As its power grew, the “other superpower” also had its weaknesses. Hardly had the WSF organizers boarded their flights out of Harare, when the political maneuvering began – between the social movements and the super egos – to get to the top of the public pyramid. “Where there is power, there is fighting,” Abebe told Inga over dinner one evening in Geneva. The internal politicking and public bickering almost sank the Forum, as the peace movement’s warring factions fought for control of the agenda. It was out of the near-debacle and the fear it could all collapse that wiser heads and broader interests prevailed and order was restored. “Well, if not order,” Wu commented to Tash, “it’s at least the constructive chaos we have grown used to.”

Back in Zimbabwe – in the farms near Chirundu – things did not exactly return to normal. What was to have been a battlefield – the lands around the two refugee camps – became farmland once again and gradually, as farm families grew confident that the soldiers would not return soon, crops were planted. The radios were full of warnings of land mines, but the choice was between certain starvation and the possible loss of a limb. Every day brought new stories of death or dismemberment somewhere in the former battle zone. There was nothing to be done but go on with the business of farming.

By chance, a South African crew was filming “the war that people stopped” when a young girl threw a stone that detonated a landmine short steps away from her mother. What didn’t make the news was what the child found after the explosion. Although all of the village children had been told to stay out of the field, the search for mementos was irresistible. The day after, the girl retrieved a metal shard bearing a serial number and, almost at the same time, her eye fell on a scrap of paper probably left behind by the decamping soldiers. The paper was a map of the region and it bore the logo of a giant mining company. Proudly, she brought her trophies home intending to place the shell fragment prominently on the doorpost of their home. She gave the paper to her father, who, she was sure, knew people who could read it for her.

To her dismay, her father took both the fragment and the paper to a peasant’s meeting a few days later and gave them to one of the organizers. Some days after that, the organizer went to Harare for another meeting. It was at least a month before someone in the Harare farm office pointed out the paper and the shell to Abebe. The trucker had returned to Harare to repair and retrieve his lorry, which was in bad shape after the Forum. Abebe had dropped in for tea and a visit with the President of the farm organization before taking the long journey home to Kombolcha.

Abebe knew that the manufacturing of land mines violated an international treaty established three decades earlier. Thinking that the serial number might be traceable, he took both items to an acquaintance at the Swedish Embassy.

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The map turned out to be even more interesting. Clearly a high-quality, computer-generated geological map, it encompassed the two refugee camps and surrounding territory. Although they couldn’t make sense of the map’s symbols, it was evident that there was something important in the terrain around the camps. What Abebe was sure of was that the mining company was the Chinese subsidiary of Sonybishi, part of the Terra-Forma consortium. In Africa, Sonybishi was “son-of-a-bitchy,” the most vilified corporation on the continent.

Lacking the time and resources to investigate, Abebe asked the friendly diplomat to send both items to Inga.

The packet was waiting for her when Inga came back from a union convention in Uppsala. If it had been anyone other than Abebe, she would have relegated the package to the heaps of paper on her desk never to be seen again. Instead, she enlisted the help of one of the chemical technicians on the union’s staff.

The serial number was useless but beneath it was a detectable nanoscale RFID transmitter the technician easily decoded. The transmitter had been incapacitated by the mine’s explosion but it was still possible to read its signal instructions. The tag networked to a family of satellites built

by Terra-Forma, presumably, to monitor ocean currents.

A quick search on the Internet confirmed that the map had been constructed by the same Chinese subsidiary of Sonybishi. The map’s symbols – so inscrutable to Abebe – were the Chinese character for platinum.

Geneva, 2026: “Coincidence?” Inga asked Alitash Teferra. It was about a month later and the two women were sitting in the lounge of the John Knox Centre in Geneva having a glass of wine before heading downtown to dinner. In the weeks since her union had identified the little girl’s treasures, Inga had hardly had time to think about their implications. She had confided in Alitash mostly for the sheer fun of airing a “conspiracy theory,” than because she believed it had any significance.

Tash was interested. “If that fragment was part of a land mine, then the company is in violation of the UN treaty,” the Ethiopian diplomat said thoughtfully. “But, maybe it’s just something a survey crew uses to blast into rock to make tests. It might have had nothing to do with the military at all.”

“My technician says it’s a land mine,” Inga interrupted, “He saw a lot of them in Afghanistan, but I suppose we can’t be sure.”

Inga and Tash were attending a strategy meeting convened by the World Council of Churches to consider the South and civil society’s response to the OECD’s proposed Technology Transfer Treaty (TTT).

Officially, the TTT (first introduced for negotiation in the early 2020s) was the inspiration of the US government supported by China. Unofficially, everyone knew that the real pressure to establish the Treaty was coming from the Terra-Forma and Atom-Sphere consortia. Ostensibly,

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the Treaty was to facilitate the transfer of critical technologies from OECD states to the global South. But, the draft TTT negotiating text had embedded clusters of provisions that not only legitimated multi-industry cartels, but also sanctioned technology monopolies that totally denied access to countries deemed to lack the competence to ensure safe use.

Other text clusters gave countries the authority to close their borders on a national or regional basis to the people or products of countries or regions that might compromise their technological security. Some of the provisions would have been thought extraordinary a decade or two earlier, but were now accepted almost without question. For example, the TTT established a global intellectual property regime at US acceptance standards – and backdated patent protection for two decades in countries where such protection had not previously existed. In one stroke, the TTT would make patent infringement a matter of criminal law rather than civil dispute and Interpol and the International Criminal Court could be brought in to defend corporate interests.

As advertised, of course, the TTT did promise to make useful technologies available to developing countries and to waive patent licensing fees where the technologies could be considered vital to the health and well-being of citizens. In return for this, however, recipient states would be obliged to use RFID (radio frequency) tags on all products using donated technologies so that they could not bounce back to the North, through the back door, and bite the patent-holder in its home market. In effect, the provisions consigned the poorest countries to local markets and virtually prohibited exports.

“The thing is,” Inga said, as she and Tash walked down the hill into town, “the map found next to the mine shard shows that there are significant platinum deposits in the border zone between Zimbabwe and Zambia – right where the refugee camps are located. The mining company could have wanted to remove the refugee camps and make sure that one of the two countries had clear sovereignty over the region before they negotiated access.”

“Would they want platinum?” Tash asked. “It still has ornamental value, I know, but its industrial properties are becoming irrelevant. Platinum used to be irreplaceable in batteries and catalytic converters but now, nanoparticles of nickel and cobalt can do the same job at a fraction of the price. Platinum costs almost $2,000 an ounce – nickel costs about the same per ton.”

“Well, you don’t have mining companies searching for something they don’t want in war zones,” Inga said thoughtfully. “The mine shard and the map didn’t just blow in on some accidental trade wind.”

Before she turned in that night, Inga sent off an email to the union’s technical expert in Stockholm asking for more information about the use of nickel in replacing platinum in batteries and catalytic converters. Nickel and platinum were hardly burning issues for the chemical union but the whole intrigue was just too delicious not to pursue.

She caught up with Tash as the CSO crowd was leaving the Geneva Ecumenical Centre two days later. The strategy session was over and the results were inconclusive. There was universal agreement that the TTT was to be challenged country by country and at the United Nations. A coordinating committee had been identified and tasked to finance a war chest at least for the UN

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lobby exercise. Yet, the activists were having trouble pinpointing the media focal point in the complex treaty that could give them the best political leverage. At the closing session, the sense of frustration and defeat was palpable.

“You’ll probably think this is silly,” Inga told Tash, “but my union has been digging into the nickel versus platinum nanotech thing.”

“I love mysteries,” Tash grinned.

“Nanotech companies have been predicting for decades that cheap nickel could replace expensive platinum in virtually every industrial market including batteries. We’ve found corporate hype about this going back almost to the beginning of this century. In 2010 or 2011, in fact, a couple of companies actually introduced batteries that used a combination of nickel and cobalt nanoparticles. They were pulled off the market two or three years later when it became obvious the batteries couldn’t perform as advertised,” Inga was almost whispering. “In the meantime, of course, the platinum market had collapsed – prices were at an all-time low. But,” she folded her arms, “that didn’t stop the biggest mining companies from gobbling up smaller platinum companies at bargain-basement prices and taking over their mineral stockpiles.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Tash told her. “Nanoparticle formulations of nickel are back in batteries today and the industrial market for platinum is down again. You’re right, generation one of the nickel particles was a failure but they seem to have solved the technical problems now. All you’re telling me is that the mining conglomerate’s made a bad investment.”

That evening, a group of the TTT activists sat outside on the lawns of the John Knox Centre drinking wine and chatting. Most had early flights the next day. Tash asked Inga to tell the group about her union’s investigations. A second glass of wine helped the lawyer to overcome her natural caution.

When she had finished, a Filipino – who worked with a CSO training centre for union organizers – added to the conspiracy. “The problem with nickel/cobalt nanoparticles a couple of decades ago,” he told them, “wasn’t that they didn’t work in batteries, it was that the batteries – when thrown away – allowed the particles to seep into the water table. Batteries are bad enough by themselves but nickel and cobalt nanoparticles were so durable and persistent that they killed off important soil microorganisms and filtered into the nervous systems of every vertebrate they encountered. The companies pulled the batteries off the market citing technical problems rather than face charges from regulators and consumers that they were poisoning the water supply.” He added, “a 70 nm particle can enter your cells and stir up free radicals; at 20 nm, nickel cannot be seen by the immune system and particles can pass through the blood-brain barrier and even the placenta.”

From her position lying on the grass a short distance away, an Indonesian human rights worker chimed in, “We hear rumours about problems at the nickel mines in Sulawesi, and Halmahara” she told the group. “The mine workers are okay, but the people working in the manufacturing facilities think they are being poisoned. The conglomerate says they’re hallucinating. After all, the manufacturing facility is almost 100% automated, people are only needed for quality control

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and labelling shipping containers. We’ve tried to look into it – but not very hard. It didn’t seem like such a big issue. Maybe we should look again,” she said as she squinted into the darkness at her colleagues.

By the time they had all wandered to their rooms, an informal working group of the TTT campaign had come into being. Inga was to exploit the technical resources of her union further to gather more information on nanotechnology and nanoparticle substitutes for raw materials. Tash was to survey African governments for recent developments in mining company activities and mineral markets. The human rights activist from Indonesia committed to going back to the workers for more information and the young Filipino organizer offered to dredge through the archives on nanotechnology products and processes.

An emergency meeting of the TTT resistance campaign was hurriedly put together a few months later. Now, it was winter, and the John Knox Centre was delightfully blanketed in crystalline fluff. Because the World Council offices were crowded with other meetings, the Centre’s breakfast room was converted into their meeting space.

The Filipino chaired. Inga had persuaded Greenpeace – trying hard these days to cosy up to social movements – to cough up the travel money for Abebe. Missing only was Tash who couldn’t arrange her AU permits and Frankfurt transit documents in time. The WHO Watch in the form of Anita Krishna joined them at Inga’s urging.

The young Filipino ran through the basics: yes, the metal fragment and map uncovered in Zimbabwe were both the property of Terra-Forma’s mining partner. Any doubts that the metal shard belonged to a land mine were gone. It was an illegal product of a Chinese subsidiary of the mining conglomerate. About a half-year before the border dispute developed between Zambia and Zimbabwe, Atom-Sphere had had a crew in the region of the refugee camps investigating what they described to the government as “seismic abnormalities “ that could affect sensitive monitoring devices cued to their stratosphere nanoparticle arrays. Preliminary reports from the investigating team indicated the need for further research. Even as the TTT campaign group was meeting in Geneva, the mining conglomerate was doing follow-up analysis of the anomalies suggested in their first study.

Here alone were grounds for Human Rights or Criminal Court proceedings, the Indonesian lawyer interjected.

The Indonesians, the lawyer went on, had other news. Union workers in the nickel mines there had contacted their counterparts in Canada and found that each group was dealing with unexpectedly high frequencies of lung inflammation and cancer. Most – but not all – of the cases reported were after the mining conglomerate had introduced its semi-automated nickel nanoparticle processing facilities. There was also evidence of major health problems among workers in battery-cell factories using nickel particles. Meanwhile, unionists in the Canadian industry were picking up rumours from middle management that some mines and facilities might be shut down due to “market irregularities.”

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As each member of the working group reported, the picture that unfolded was one of a collapsing technology being shored up by government subsidies and industry propaganda. Rather than reducing energy demand, the cost of manufacturing nanoparticles – although lower – continued to be exorbitant. Just as the nuclear power industry had once promised to make electricity “too cheap to meter,” nanotechnology – “the peaceful use of the atom once more with feeling,” the Filipino kid joked – was too expensive to meet the world’s needs. And, like the nuclear industry, the health and environmental risks were proving much harder to handle than anticipated. It was not clear whether the two global consortia had actually anticipated these technological problems – or whether they were simply scrambling now to survive the fallout if the technological failure became irreversible.

What was clear was that world governments and financial markets were continuing to assume that nanotechnology was a success. With this assumption, raw material markets were depressed, as were the stocks of those mining companies still clinging to the old technologies. Terra-Forma and Atom-Sphere were taking advantage of the buyer’s market to pick up companies and mineral reserves. Under the guise of searching for seismic faults, Terra-Forma’s mining partner was surveying and acquiring the vast mineral deposits of Central and Southern Africa. Similar efforts and acquisitions were taking place in the Andes and the Himalayas and across the vast archipelago of Indonesia.

“Those bastards are using the TTT to give themselves immunity,” Inga exclaimed, pounding the breakfast table.

“And to gobble up all the old-line companies, technologies and resources on the cheap,” Abebe added.

There was more information from WHO Watch. Anita Krishna’s team had a “Deep Throat” – someone inside one of the consortia – who had written evidence of the consortia’s collusion and their prior knowledge of nanotech’s environmental risks in the stratosphere and on ocean surfaces. WHO Watch couldn’t disclose details yet, but the working group was assured that the documentation would unleash a media hurricane.

It was after midnight before the group felt able to adjourn to their beds. There was more research to be done and conversations to be had with a number of governments and UN officials, but unless something unexpected turned up, an action plan was in place.

Lake Natron, Tanzania: Abebe slipped his wheelchair out from behind his driver's seat and shook it open on the ground. With what he liked to consider "cat-like" grace, knowing that the kids in the market would be watching, he dropped from the lorry into the seat and looked around.

Up the hill, above the village, he could see a large white building that had to be Tata Pharma’s soda ash plant, just as Tash had told him back in Geneva. He ignored the building and headed off instead toward a group of other drivers lounging outside a teashop.

Over pots of tea, Abebe learned that the drivers were hauling soda ash to the international airport in Arusha where Atom-Sphere’s private freight planes, manned by Russian crews, flew the cargo, according to the manifesto, to Minsk. The drivers also picked up drilling equipment and

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hauled kilometers of drilling pipe from the same aircraft. Most of the incoming cargo was marked with the Exxon-Siemens logo – another member of the Atom-Sphere consortia, Abebe knew.

"Oil-drilling equipment," Abebe asked? The drivers were in agreement. The manifestoes were unequivocal.

"Any explosives... landmines... military hardware," the Ethiopian pursued. None, he was assured.

Abebe changed the topic. Was the volcano acting up? Ol Doinyo Lengai towered above the Rift Valley partly visible from the marketplace.

He'd struck a popular topic. The old volcano was gurgling and spluttering and all the villages around it were concerned. There was also a disturbing pattern to the volcano's activities. First, there were earth tremors – minor earthquakes along the floor of the valley and under the lake.

Not immediately – but a day or two later – the volcano would belch out a small flow of lava that would slide harmlessly down its slopes. Then things would be quiet for another week or so.

Two of the drivers – older men from Dar es Salaam – made a connection between the oil drilling paraphernalia and the earth tremors. About once a fortnight, three men - Russians – dressed as civilians but with the bearing of soldiers – would drive out along the valley where Tata Pharma was drilling new holes. An hour or so later, they would drive back to town, the drilling area would be cleared, and a tremor would follow shortly after. No, the Russians weren't carrying boxes of explosives. They only had backpacks.

Abebe Jideani dug for additional information. Sometimes, he was told, the Russians were accompanied by Americans. They, too, seemed like military men.

He stayed in the area a few days longer on the pretense of looking for cargo that would pay his fuel costs back to Addis. Sitting in the same market tea shop the day Abebe was to leave, one of the lorry-drivers pointed out a Toyota speeding, too quickly, through the crowded market. "There are the Russians," he gestured, "there'll be tremors later today."

The car braked to avoid a local bus and came to a grudging halt almost directly in front of the teashop. "Who's the woman," Jideani inquired? "Have you seen her before?" An attractive middle-aged woman with brown hair and streaks of gray was sitting in the front seat beside the driver. She was dressed in a business suit – hardly Safari garb, Abebe thought – and she looked hot and uncomfortable.

"No, it's always just men," Abebe’s fellow driver advised. With the bus gone, the car shot forward and disappeared in the crowd.

Abebe Jideani wasn't an hour out of town when he felt the tremor rock his vehicle.

The Hague and Geneva, 2027: Not long after the New Year, the African Union – led by Zambia and Zimbabwe – filed a suit against Terra-Forma before the International Criminal

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Court. Atom-Sphere was cited as an accessory to criminal liability for theft, extortion and warmongering. On the same day, the TTT Campaign Group – led by the trade unions and WHO Watch – laid human rights charges before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The United States, China and the European Union, along with the two consortia – were charged with violating the human rights of all the world’s peoples and with violation of the Environmental Modification Treaty of 1978.

New York: A few hours later, when the UN General Assembly subcommittee on the TTT was scheduled to begin its latest round in New York, the Secretary-General announced a two-hour delay in the proceedings. Alerted in advance, most of the OECD country delegates were nowhere to be seen on UN Plaza, and the Delegate’s Lounge on the UN buildings second-floor was filled with excited gossip, as G77 ambassadors and aides mingled and munched away the time waiting further news. The opening session was rescheduled two more times before the Secretary-General finally entered the old Trusteeship Council chamber to announce that – following deliberations in a hastily-convened Friends of the Chair group – it was agreed that the timing for negotiations was not appropriate and that the meeting would be postponed to allow delegations to consult their capitals and other governments. No future date was established, but the Secretary-General allowed that it was unlikely that consultations could be completed before the temperate zone summer.

It wasn’t until they were leaving the Secretariat building that most delegations became aware of the huge demonstration on First Avenue. With the full support of the World Social Forum, the TTT Campaign had text-messaged and e-mailed everyone on the eastern seaboard who had ever attended a city, national or global forum. More than 200,000 people were in the street blocking traffic and chanting slogans against the TTT and the consortia. Some of the ambassadors gave the crowd “thumbs-up” and the protesters roared their support.

Months later – at another meeting of the UN General Assembly – the TTT officially morphed into a new negotiation for an International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies.

In order to save face, the new initiative was called TTT/ICENT. But those who were on 1 st Avenue’s UN Plaza that evening knew that the TTT was dead.

2035: By the mid-2030s, the peace movement had virtually shut down the arms trade from Europe and Canada and had orchestrated a massively effective boycott against US arms manufacturers to the point where even that government was forced to agree to establish a permanent UN peacekeeping force and a succession of treaties and treaty amendments that bound every government not to initiate war without the approval of the UN General Assembly.

Reflecting back on the pivotal changes brought about by the Harare success, Wu Suyuan, mused that the really great victory had been the conviction in civil society that peace was possible, that war was unacceptable and that “we, the people” were the only force who could bring about peace. It was that sense of power, the journalist insisted, that allowed the World Social Forum movement to change gears to take on the TTT and win again. Over the years, somehow, almost unbeknownst to its participants, the Forum had moved from passive to active. It had become a network of interlocking social movements. “The people – in their diversity – can unite on many fronts,” the old blogger concluded.

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Addis: When Alitash Teferra and Qi Qubìng hitched a ride with Tash’s old family friend for the rough road back from Kombolcha to Addis, Abebe had been visiting his mother – now living with his uncle (her younger brother) and his family. From Addis, Alitash was making a side trip to Arusha to visit Lake Natron.

"Want to make sure it's really shut down," the lorry-driver asked?

"I can't resist," Tash confessed, "the Tanzanian police have discovered some nanoparticle material they think might have been the explosive used by the Russians. A team of scientists is flying in from the Stockholm Peace Research Institute to look at the evidence. I want to be there," she admitted.

From the back seat, Qi leaned forward between them, "you and your bloody conspiracy theories," he sniffed, "I can't believe the companies let you get away with this!"

"Their excuse was that the soda ash business wasn't profitable enough to warrant the investigation and legal battle," Tash reminded him.

"Probably true," the international bureaucrat agreed, slouching back to stare out the window.

Postscript – Stockholm, December 2035: That year, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize was unusually controversial. The Norwegian Parliamentary committee unanimously agreed that the Prize should go to the World Social Forum. There had been a movement to give the WSF this award ever since the defeat of the TTT years earlier but Norwegian officials conceded that it was just too undiplomatic to grant a peace prize to a movement that had overturned the will of most industrial governments. In 2035, however, the WSF was nominated again for the demilitarization of Latin America’s Southern Cone and the successful negotiation of the international treaty governing the aquifer underneath. The United States – whose military base had been closed down in Paraguay as part of the Treaty agreement – protested the nomination vehemently. But, while most of the world enthusiastically supported the Nobel committee’s decision, the real controversy raged inside the WSF itself. In the end, the Forum organizers politely advised the Norwegian Parliament that, because of their policy to keep their distance from governments, the WSF could not accept the honour. A long-standing member of the executive of the WSF, Abebe Jideani, however, was honoured as one of the three recipients of that year's Right Livelihood Award in the Stockholm Parliament. Wu Suyuan liked that very much.

Aaa How Next #5: What should the relationship between NGOs and Social Movements be?

Eminence gris

Bête noire

Agent provocateur

The priority – by far – is to support and strengthen social movements. NGOs

Mass-membership NGOs can have expertise and political influence in a specific

The relationship should be ambiguous and flexible.

Supporting progressive social movements should be a priority

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must transform themselves into specialist services that can provide unique resources (money, information, strategy) to make social movements more effective.

area (peace, environment, health, etc.) that should not be muted or marginalized by social movements that often act out of unenlightened selfinterest.

for NGOs but social movements – with a natural tendency to grow conservative overtime – require a revolution every generation and a half. NGOs share this tendency, but the loss of a progressive social movement is much more serious.

Aaa How Next #6: Is there a place for collective long term (decade+) strategic organizing?

Actually, no

Intuitive Foresight

Actually, yes

Even pseudoformalized CSO collaboration over the long-term would lead to elitism and/or distrust. Any attempt at formalization would waste vast quantities of scarce time, energy and money.

Although far from perfect, the level of collaborative strategic planning (mostly in the shortterm, however) is increasing significantly. Progressive CSOs are evolving a “shared vision” and working together, as needed, in symbiotic strategies. It is difficult to imagine formal processes that would actually work.

The current level of collaboration is neither long-term nor consistent, but it is nevertheless personalized, elitist and subjective. A more formal long-term strategy would be institutional, less personality-driven and transparent (within the CSO community).

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Aaaa Course

3: People

Peripheral Visions In December 2035, Marta Flores began her long journey from Rosetta to Stockholm – as her travels always began – in the back of an open potato truck. She had swept aside the remonstrations of the Swedish ambassador – who wanted to send her a chauffeured embassy car –in her politest Spanish, asserting that enclosed vehicles made her puke. The whole seed committee, led by her daughter and granddaughter, Maria and Isabella, climbed aboard to accompany her as far as La Paz. As she wiggled herself comfortably amidst the potato bags and trussed-up chickens, Marta smiled up at the sky and her husband somewhere beyond and thought of how long the journey had already been and how far they had still to go.

Moscow, 2005: In November 2005, Yuri Izrael, the head of Russia’s Global Climate Centre, was working to convince his boss, Vladimir Putin, to release 600,000 tonnes of sulphur aerosol particles into the atmosphere as an experiment to lower temperatures. Half a world away, Texas Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a Republican allied to Bush Jr., introduced a bill to create an environmental modification facility in the United States. The bill died with the end of the US congressional session and Putin reportedly nixed the Russian proposal. Both initiatives would have violated a UN Environmental Modification Treaty adopted in the late 1970s. But, after 2005, the world got a little bit crazier...

Copenhagen, 2009: The virtual collapse of the climate change negotiations in December shocked no one. The peasants’ forum had largely stayed outside the diplomatic wrangle. They had tracked the negotiations throughout the year – the painful pageant from Poznan to Bonn to Bangkok to Barcelona and, finally, to Copenhagen trying to draw media attention to the food crisis and how much worse it was becoming with climate change. No one was listening. Allies embedded in the climate change process had also told them of the mysterious "Plan B" percolating among some scientists and governments: if Copenhagen failed the superpowers would have no choice but to geoengineer the planet's thermostat themselves. Even after Copenhagen, most of the peasants thought Plan B too absurd for contemplation. Where there was agreement, however, was that if peasants were going to stay on farms and if people were going to eat in the decades ahead, peasants couldn't look to governments or industry for help. They would have to adjust agriculture to global warming themselves. They determined to put more time and energy into national and inter-regional plant breeding and seed exchanges.

It was a tough time to launch new ideas. The peasants’ seed work had begun several years earlier and had very nearly fallen apart when the food crisis came together with the financial crisis. By Copenhagen, the development NGOs and foundations that were bankrolling critical parts of the peasant movement began to shrivel up, and show the strain of their 20-40% asset decline. Grants were cut back and even cancelled. Some of the funders pulled all their support from agriculture and threw it into carbon sequestration and other climate mitigation technologies. The El Niño event that began in 2009 hiked the panic up another notch, as funders in the United States and Europe feared for their own well-being.

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Then too, the new US president's enthusiasm for "clean technologies" – so-called synthetic biology and nanotechnology – worsened the situation. Peasant solutions were pushed off the table and funders scrambled to align their grants with the popular President’s flagship technologies.

For a while, it looked like the movement wouldn't survive, but it did. Painfully and carefully, the peasants weaned themselves off the aid treadmill and built up durable, self-funded coordination systems. By the time of the Rio+20 summit in 2012, peasants had a global strategy in place.

The Altiplana, Bolivia, 2015: Jaap Lemmers hunched forward toward the windscreen and tried to focus on the scene below. The journalist’s tummy wasn’t enjoying the ride. The aircraft was barely above the mountaintops and weaving around their contours to give its passengers a better view of the high valleys inbetween. The two Consortium officials, decked out conspicuously in suits and ties, seated behind Lemmers and the pilot looked equally distressed and one fumbled in his seat pocket to make sure the barf bag was handy. All three had binoculars and all three concentrated hard on the pilot’s commentary as he pointed out landmarks 8000 m beneath them.

The cabin of the small executive jet was crowded. In its standard configuration, the journalist surmised, it would comfortably host at least eight but the side walls and ceiling were jammed with telescopic lenses and a variety of satellite dishes - all squeezed behind sturdy nets to keep them from falling or shifting in turbulence. Above the pilot, a bank of video display screens offered standard and hyperspectral infrared imaging perspectives on the scenery below. Two screens to the right of the pilot were mostly static but occasionally blossomed into vivid and freakish ground-level shots that seemed as though the plane was hurtling through forests and fields like a crazed Disney adventure ride. Lemmers pointed inquiringly to the two screens. The young Brazilian pilot grinned, “Whenever we come in range of the ground cameras we get a three-dimensional confirmation of what we think we’re reading from the infrared satellite feeds.

If the satellite and ground data differ we know we need to recalibrate something. So far it’s all good,” he added.

Jaap Lemmers turned away from the blurry screens. They weren’t helping his stomach any. To business, he thought. He pulled out his directional mike and audio recorder hoping the engine noise and cabin vibrations would give the interview background ambience. “So,” he began levelling the mike at the pilot, “why do you call this little jet the flying eyeball?”

“Well,” the pilot hesitated, “we inherited both the plane and the name from the International Barcode of Life,” “IBOL”, Jaap prompted helpefully.

“Right,” the pilot fiddled unnecessarily with one of the screens, “when the consortium took over everything they upgraded all the technology but it basically serves the same purpose.”

“But, back at the very beginning,” the journalist pressed on, “the original intent was just to monitor carbon credit deals, wasn’t it? Then,” he went on, “when carbon trading got more sophisticated and biodiversity measurement got into the act, IBOL came into the picture?”

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“There was a market not just for biomass but for biodiversity,” the pilot agreed, “it wasn’t just how much you saved but how diverse it was. Luckily, the technology was keeping pace with the demand and old Eyeball here - and about another 20 like it - stepped up to the plate.”

“Okay,” Lemmer stepped in, “tell me what old Eyeball can do.”

From the backseat, the official with the death grip on the barf bag bent forward, “maybe not quite everything,” he cautioned, “the consortium still does some work for the government, don’t forget.” The exertion seemed to have sapped his energy and he sunk back into his seat looking away from the window.

Lemmers was mildly amused, “we’re in Bolivia… in the Andes… Columbia is just over there,” he motioned out the window, “I think most of us can guess what governments might be looking for.”

“It’s not just coca,” the pilot stops suddenly seeing the scowling man in the mirror behind him.

The journalist’s brows shot up but he kept quiet. Later, he thought. “Between the satellites above and the ground stations below, what can Eyeball see?”

“With hyperspectral imaging and infrared cameras, we can pretty accurately estimate the amount of biomass growing every square kilometre down there. We can compare current measurements with historic calculations and see if the carbon capture provisions are being met. Now that we’ve upgraded the pixel rate to one billion plus per image, we can adjust settings on infrared lens to tell us the soil conditions virtually every square meter and we can pretty much ascertain the kind of flora and fauna as well,” the pilot was more comfortable.

“Down to the meter?” Lemmers asked sceptically. He knew this was right but he wanted to goad the pilot into bragging a little. “what’s the cost?”

“Max? About eight cents a hectare. Cheap by any standards,” The pilot went on, “I can tell you if you’re screening a monkey or a man – whether it’s living, just died, or long dead.” He looked back at the functionary behind him who was astutely avoiding the windows. There was no objection. Banking slightly to follow a river that seem to be plunging steeply through the mountains, the pilot went on, “some of our lenses can bore right into the soil and estimate everything from its acidity to its humidity and mineral composition. The mining companies in the consortium use this to estimate the likelihood of related mineral deposits further down. Even as we’re flying, onboard computer algorithms can triangulate the floral taxonomy and density with soil conditions and link them to the longitude, latitude and altitude to get a pretty good picture of how climate change is affecting life down there.”

Lemmers was enthused, “How deep can you dig, I mean, biologically? If you can identify taxa can you get down to the species or variety?”

“Now that the Yanks have shared their military satellite software, with the right infrared spectrum,” the pilot jumped in happily, “we can dial right down to the DNA and see if the plants

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have any unusual characteristics or gene sequences. And,” he went on, “now with the cooperation of civilian aircraft we can compare the daily flights of every aircraft on the same route and merge their camera angles to get truly three-dimensional images.” The pilot reached up to turn on the middle screen, “Look, I can compare our flight pattern today from La Pas with all the commercial planes that have flown the same route on the same day over the past decade.

Then, I can see the differences over the years. And even home down two comparing flights at the same time of day – say, early morning or at sunset. I guess you know the chemical structure changes with the time of day?” he looked at Lemmers quizzically.

The man behind him was leaning forward again, pale but angry, “that’s over the top,” he snapped. “That’s off the record,” Turning to the journalist. He warned, “Either you forget what you’ve heard or we head straight back to La Pas.” The fourth man – the one sitting behind Lemmers, tapped his seatmate gently on the knee, “Julian, that’s why he’s here. We want to show him something, remember? He’s not just a journalist he’s also an agronomist with specialization in quinoa. There aren’t many of those around,” he added more to himself than his fellow passangers.

Julian looked irritated but eased back into his seat once again. His colleague spoke to the pilot, “why don’t you just go straight to the site and forget the travelogue for now?”

The pilot nodded and the plane tilted its wings.

Two minutes later the pilot nudged Lemmers and pointed over the fuselage, “You’re about to see a couple of villages at 12 o’clock on the screen and a road winding down to a largish town. What you’re interested in is the fields uphill above those villages [maybe at 11 o’clock. You won’t see anything on the ground screen, we don’t have any surveillance here.”

“Not much ground either,” Lemmers added staring at the confused terrain ahead. “I can’t make out anything much.”

The pilot gestured to the satellite screens, “Keep your eye on the middle infrared screen. We’re going to take two passes and I’m going to adjust the infrared settings with each pass.” As he spoke, the screen blue into a kaleidoscope of asynchronous patches wildly more varied than anything they’d seen until now. The patches disappeared as fast as they came and the aircraft wheeled about for a second run. The pilot adjusted the infrared wavelength; “The first pass showed the species diversity down there. The second pass is going to show you the overall biotic stress tolerance.” Seconds later, what Lemmers presumed to be the same plot of land that had seems so diverse before suddenly loomed up in complimentary shades of greens whereas everything around faded from gray to black.

“Was the data recorded?” the official behind Lemmers asked quietly.

“Got it,” said the pilot checking his instruments.

“What was it?” Lemmers asked, “What was I looking at?

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“Just some peasant fields. Quinoa mostly – but the computer algarythms insist there is also cassava and something called tef – a grain from Ethiopia apparently… and a bunch of other little plots of weird crops that make even less sense.”

“Tef? For Christ sakes,” Lemmers muttered.

“Feel tempted to take a closer look?” the Consortium official behind him smiled pleasantly.

Rosetta, Bolivia, 2015: Marta watched him climbing up from near the base of the mountain.

With his broad white cap protecting his pallid, pink skin and his ridiculous safari jacket with its countless pockets, he stood head and shoulders above the peasants around him. His walk was laboured. Not used to the altitude and the rocky terrain, she thought. A surveyor, the woman wondered, eyeing the camera slung across his chest – or maybe, an anthropologist? After the stranger bumbled about from shop to shop, old Chavez pointed up the hill in her direction. She sent Isabella, her 9-year-old granddaughter, to fetch her husband from the slopes above.

“Good day,” the man said in awkward Aymara. “I’m looking for Ignacio Flores. Maybe he’s your husband? I’m a photo-journalist,” he added, awkwardly holding up his camera for her inspection, “and sort of, an agronomist,” he concluded, blushing.

“I’m his wife,” she replied, “and my husband will be here soon.” Marta, sitting cross-legged on the stony earth in front of her home – inspecting potatoes – spread out on her ample skirts couldn’t help warming to the man. As bad as his Aymara was, it was at least the equal of most of the provincial bureaucrats. After all, this man was a gringo. He had also looked kindly on her grandchild, who had returned panting and triumphant from the field. Ignacio would be with them shortly. The reporter (or whatever he was) fiddled instinctively with his camera, but on further reflection, decided to leave it in its case.

Upon invitation, the man who professed to be a Dutch citizen by the name of Jaap Lemmers, set himself gingerly on the proffered stoop and attempted to engage her in conversation. He wanted to learn about the local work being done on quinoa … and the rumours that the villagers were also experimenting with crops like tef and cassava, he told her haltingly.ccxlvi His wife was Bolivian and they had been in La Paz visiting her family, when he heard about tef showing up in the market. He had bought some and brought it back to his sister-in-law’s for dinner. He had been drawn by more than just the plant’s vibrant colour. And the taste of the cereal was spectacular.

He’d once worked in Ethiopia but he had never encountered a more nutritious variety. His relatives served it up in salads, in soups and mixed the tef in with quinoa. But, as a sometimesagronomist, Lemmers was amazed by what he described as the "plasticity" of the tef. He’d seen it growing in fields near the capital and noted how easily the phenotype of the plant had adapted to different growing conditions. It seemed to be built for climate change. “I asked around,” the photographer told Marta, “and people told me it originated here. The people down there said to talk to you folks about how your husband found it.”

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“Found?” she asked, more offended by the notion that her community had stumbled upon their quinoa rather than that the stranger thought her husband was behind it. With little regard for his imperfect Aymara, she launched into a sharp rebuff and a quick history of the community tef crop. “First,” she told him, “it’s not just one, single variety; it’s a breeding line we are constantly adapting. Second, it is far from a discovery. Third,” she advised, smacking her hands on her knees to emphasize her point, “I’m in charge of the breeding around here – whether it’s kids or crops.” As Lemmers struggled to keep up, Marta recounted the seed fairs she had entered, from Cuzco to La Paz, and the seed exchanges she had made with fellow peasants so far away; she knew that she would have to leave her beloved mountains and even cross oceans if she were to visit them all. “Plant breeding is a community effort,” she announced.

Marta was the Convener of the Women’s Variety Assessment Committee. It had taken the local women years of delicate breeding to put together the genetic combination this man’s family had boiled up for dinner. From talking with other peasants at the seed fairs, she knew that the tef variety carried genes not only from Ethiopia, but also from long transplanted tef shared with Tibet.ccxlvii The result was a hardy, succulent and protein-rich variety that women in the community used to bring down their milk after childbirth, and as a weaning food later on. As importantly, the variety flourished under the increasingly adverse soil and climate conditions of the Altiplano.

Lemmers was incredulous. “Are you part of some HIVOS or church project?” he asked. She knew what he was inferring and she demurred: HIVOS was a Dutch development NGO. “Is there some kind of local NGO involved?” he asked. “No,” she told him. Relenting slightly before his confusion, she went on. Her family, as members of the regional municipality – and also as part of the peasants’ trade union – was linked to the entire Andean Aymara nation and connected to other peasant-researchers around the world. But these were not, she insisted, NGOs. Lemmers’ questions continued to tumble out in serviceable textbook Aymara, and Marta continued answering them. Yes, most of the breeders were women but that was not true for all crops. No, they did not go through government-sponsored research trials because these were hostage to the multinational seed and processing companies, which only wanted quinoa and tef for the upscale breakfast cereal market in Germany and Japan – and who usually dictated regulations to governments. Yes, that meant that the peasants did sidestep phytosanitary controls – not because they wanted to – but because the risks of importing or exporting diseases, they believed, were less than the likelihood of GM contaminationccxlviii that came with the global corporate marketplace.

“One of the big Swiss seed conglomerates,” she shook her fist theatrically, “geneticallyengineered the sacred quinoa grain with tef and kaniwa genes to construct a semi-dwarf type that yielded better in the US Rockies and Scandinavia. Ten years ago, the transgenes showed up on the Altiplano.” It had taken her Committee most of the decade to eradicate the contamination.

Yes, that did mean that Wal-Mart would probably never buy from them. But, she insisted, their goal was not to sell to Wal-Mart. It was to feed their families, barter with their neighbours and sell what remained to the towns around them. Yes, they did have access to the Internet down in the city. They used it as often as they could. They also had a community cell phone that old

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Chavez kept in a locked box under the stool in his food stall. With it, they kept in sporadic contact with the world beyond. (Marta omitted that the mobile’s solar battery failed regularly – not helped much by spending most of its daylight hours in a box – and that much of the time, the news arrived on foot.)

Did they benefit from the work of scientific researchers? She bristled at the question. Their own breeding work was “scientific,” she retorted, and it was highly experimental and fully evaluated within the community. Still, she conceded, they would take diversity from wherever they could get it. But, by and large she and her fellow-breeders found the offerings of the international scientific establishment too focused on yield and not enough on nutrition. We breed for the whole plant, Marta informed her inquisitor.

By the time her Ignacio slumped onto a stoop beside them, Marta was too engrossed in her subject to even notice. Soon, Lemmers was feeling light-headed – and not from the altitude.

Marta calmed down. She was rightfully proud of their breeding work and this was an opportunity to tell the story. Her guest made it easy, pressing her eagerly for details. With the husband now present, the camera was out and clicking away almost as rapidly as Marta was talking. Lemmers – who had abandoned agronomy for his camera years ago – found the story almost too counterintuitive. Compounding his problem, the story was delivered in staccato bursts of Aymara laced with Spanish – by a storyteller who took his awareness of Andean cosmovision and farm culture for granted. It was only when he returned to La Paz the next afternoon, exhausted and dirty from eight hours in the back of an open potato truck that he was able to piece together what he had learned.

Lima, Peru: A few days after his visit with Marta, over after-dinner brandies with the DirectorGeneral of the International Potato Centre at the DG’s residence in Lima, Jaap Lemmers likened the community-based research strategy to “P to P” – peer-to-peer distributive network systems on the Internet and in biosensors. The Director-General, a swashbuckling Aussie, was dubious, but Lemmers – red of nose from his second brandy – was oblivious. “We’ve always known that peasant selection increases yields – sometimes by as much as 1% or 2% per harvest,” the journalist insisted. “We’ve also known that such yield increases would not be sufficient to meet the calorie requirements of a population growing at 2% or 3% per annum. But the old peasantselection strategy thrived almost entirely upon regionally available germplasm. Yes, of course, community breeders did exchange seed and sometimes over long distances, but for the most part, neighbours swapped varieties with one another.”

“What if,” Lemmers poked the air with his finger, “peasant-selectors are able to evaluate germplasm from around the world and adapt their research to their own fields? What if – instead of breeding for them – we simply encourage them not only to select, but to experiment with other breeding strategies?” Lemmers was full of enthusiasm. “Instead of having a dozen potato or quinoa breeders work for a few million peasants trying to do the impossible – pretending to breed varieties appropriate for hugely-variable agro ecological zones, we concede that peasantled research is cheaper and more effective and we give peasants whatever germplasm they want to experiment with. Not only will yields go up, but the diversity created will be better adapted to local fields.”

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Despite his doubts, the next morning, the DG pulled up data on peasant-use of the potato tissue culture collection. They had begun tracking peasant access when the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources came into operation in 2004. The spreadsheet showed a substantial increase in peasant-driven germplasm demand rising until about two years ago when requests began to taper off. At the same time, the Centre’s statistics showed that potato yields and local nutrition had improved significantly from sometime before then and was continuing to grow. In its own fundraising efforts, the Potato Centre had taken credit for improved nutrition and yields when it talked to Northern governments. They had assumed – quite reasonably, the DG assured himself – that the benefits had been a result of their own breeding. The Aussie decided to keep his data review to himself.

Jaap Lemmers and his wife went home to Wageningen, his photo assignment completed. The DG was relieved to see him go. The man had become something of a pain.

Temuco, Chile, 2016: Shortly before Christmas, an NGO in southern Chile had invited Marta to Temuco for a meeting with Mapuche women and other indigenous peasants of the Andes. The Chileans wanted her to speak about her work with quinoa and tef and they wanted to tell her about the work they were doing trying to have traditional crops accepted in urban markets. They had mostly talked about farm economics – market problems, farm credit, the ever-sensitive land tenure issue and the growing encroachment of government regulators.

However, in the final days of the meeting, the visiting peasants were invited to join with the local women, and 11 chefs from the most famous restaurants in Chile (she learned later) to climb into the fields and forests above the city and, under the direction of the locals, gather up fruit, vegetables and nuts for a huge feast. The chefs were amazed by what they were asked to collect.

Their amazement turned to bedazzlement when they saw their hosts preparing a meal from the unlikely pickings. The bedazzlement became delight when they finally dug into the banquet placed before them. Marta, too, had been impressed. True, her mother had taught her how to use many of the same or similar species back in Bolivia, but over time she and the other women were using less and less of the local plants and more and more of the processed foods from the market.

Nationally televised in Temuco’s finest hotel, the feast was called a “Biodiversity Banquet.”ccxlix It was the discussion Marta had with the other women around the dinner table that stayed with her the longest. The women not only collected diverse plants for use in the kitchen, they were also actively breeding the crops. This too was not surprising in itself. Her mother and her neighbours had always bred potatoes and quinoa – selecting the best seeds and tubers from each harvest for the next planting and experimenting in the kitchen garden with varieties from their neighbours’ fields. Marta was ashamed to admit that – outside of a few critical crops like quinoa – this was a disappearing practice.

The women in Temuco seemed to have carried the breeding idea several steps further. Not only were they drawing from the diversity of their community fields, they were also aggressively demanding breeding material from gene banks throughout Chile and the entire Andes, from university and government scientists. Always methodical, the Mapuche farmed out the exotic germplasm they received to test accessions under different soil and slope conditions and at different altitudes. After harvest, they gathered for a community test, and they assessed how well

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their families liked the taste, as well as vital qualities like yield, storability, disease-resistance and fuel efficiency – a real concern on the Altiplano where firewood was scarce. The results were there for Marta to taste. The women told her that their homebred varieties were far more resistant to disease and tolerant to the cold. All factors considered, field productivity had almost doubled since they'd begun their breeding.

Caracas, 2017: In January, Marta was among a dozen community leaders in the Andes invited to attend the Peasants’ Forum held in conjunction with the polycentric World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela. Before 25,000 onlookers in the main stadium, they presented the first fruits of their global seeds campaign.ccl Peasant-breeders from around the world were made up of mostly indigenous people – most of them women. They offered baskets of seeds displaying the vast diversity of their own fields and handiwork.ccli Although Marta didn’t fully understand at the time, she was witnessing the early days of a global intra and inter-community network that was transforming agriculture in their communities.

The delegation of the Bolivian peasants persuaded Marta to be their spokesperson in the forum.

By the time the four-day event had ended, she had also been placed on the global Coordination Committee for future Forums. From that point on, she was embroiled in the fractious debates over the direction of the Forum movement – whether it should remain pluralistic or should be tightly focused on specific outcomes. Her instinct was for the tight focus, but as the years went by and different forces held sway, she came to appreciate the more laissez-faire, pluralistic position. The battle between general and specific came to a head in one of the African fora a few years later and almost destroyed the movement. It was only when all parties recognized how close the movement was to collapse that enough of them agreed to pull back.

The seeds campaign had not always gone smoothly, Marta told Jaap Lemmers in a second interview years afterward. Some of the communities feared biopiracy and refused to exchange seed. But after a time, flushed with the success of their own breeding efforts, they began to exchange germplasm with other communities. Occasionally, communities were lured by local entrepreneurs and dreams of El Dorado, and applied for patents. They rarely recouped their legal fees. Here and there along the way, a corrupt scientist would steal germplasm from the women and apply it for his own patents. Over time, however, the movement expanded and the low-key – sometimes surreptitious – exchange of breeding stock spread.

Marta was the first to acknowledge the value of communications technologies. Because of their trust in the peasant organizations, language differences and distances were a nuisance but not an impenetrable barrier. Information flowed relatively freely. News of the success of specific varieties spread like wildfire across the Internet, from mountaintop to valley, from Africa to Latin America. Seed fairs and shared nursery trials turned into cross-cultural festivals, as farming communities celebrated their diversity and successes.

João Sergio in Brazil wrote that this peasant-led technology strategy should be known as “widetech” (as contrasted to high or low tech) where communities invented complex ecosystem approaches to agricultural problems. Lab-based scientists, he opined, sought micro solutions to macro problems. They would develop a gene or a trait conferring some quality that might be applied in many ecosystems. The lab approach could, occasionally, provide valuable traits that

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peasants could adapt to their own conditions. But, problems arose if the gene or trait was locked inside a seed or a breeding strategy that couldn’t be unpacked by communities. Peasants, João Sergio went on, do the opposite, they develop complex multi-disciplinary or macro-technologies for microenvironments – "Wide-Tech".

There were also – Marta was fully aware – internal problems. One year, for example, a farm organizer in Botswana attempted to cover up an experiment with cassava that had gone terribly wrong. Because of the secrecy, the cassava variety, which caused paralysis, was exchanged with peasants in South India, a year later. The crop was abundant, but hundreds of people were paralyzed. The leader of the Botswana peasants’ movement, about to face re-election, accused the South Indians of mishandling the cassava. For a while, as national peasants movements lined up on either side of the dispute, it looked like the entire seeds campaign was in jeopardy. Things calmed down when the movement brought in a team of Latin American peasants, who helped sort out the technical problems.

Despite the organizational, political and territorial obstacles, the movement strengthened, and Marta and other women went on to take classes in breeding techniques and disease testing, offered by a farm organization in La Paz. The instructors were something of a shock – a husband and wife team – one a geneticist, the other a breeder – and both Ethiopian. Africans were hardly a standard sight on the Altiplano. The man, Teferra, had retired years earlier and volunteered as adviser to peasants’ organizations.

Sophie, his wife, had just retired as Ethiopia’s national expert on new crops. Although Sophie and Marta had never met, they had exchanged tef and quinoa-breeding material for years.

Despite the language barrier (the lectures were translated from English into Aymara and Quechua), Marta and Sophie formed a warm friendship as they worked through the nursery plots evaluating varieties bred by peasants from the Himalayas, the Ethiopian highlands and the long spine of mountains and plateaus running from southern Chile to Colorado.

For years afterward, the two women exchanged photographs on their birthdays – each sending pictures of their daughters and their tef and quinoa as each grew. Sophie and Teferra, Marta knew, had a daughter in China of whom they were very proud. Marta’s own daughter was a farm organizer in Sucre, and Isabella, her daughter’s daughter, was often left with the grandparents when her mother travelled.

In retrospect, Marta surmised, one of the greatest threats to their success, ironically enough, had been some NGOs. First, development and environmental NGOs had tried to take over the community-driven experimentation. Some had proposed certification systems to guarantee “quality” in the exchange process. Others had tried to convince the communities to orient their research toward organic markets in the industrialized countries. Organic food products, they argued, were more profitable. Other NGOs seemed desperate to take credit for the farming communities’ success, and to use it to persuade their own membership and foundations to give them more support. And, of course, with the financial crisis, the same NGOs backed off as the money dried up. Transferring their attention to “climate-ready” technologies, many of the same NGOs decided that they were “environmentalists” after all. All this had caused tensions, but none of it had prevented the communities from doing the work they needed to do.

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When the money was flowing, the NGOs had talked of “mainstreaming” or “scaling-up.” Within the peasant organizations, the debate had gone on for more than 20 years, as some of the Latin Americans pressed to take their community-based food sovereignty movement into municipalities and local agricultural schools. Local institutions could be transformed into allies, they had insisted. If municipal governments and educational bodies were not transformed, they’d argued, the long-term struggle for food sovereignty would be jeopardized. Other members who belonged to farm organizations resisted. National peasants’ organizations in Africa didn’t share the same municipal history. Asian peasants’ organizations, meanwhile, felt the heavy pressure of massive urban sprawl and wondered if it were not too late to seek local government allies.

One of the early successes of the Latin American approach was Marta's community, Rosetta – a half- day’s rough ride from the provincial capital and home to 20,000 souls within a much greater municipal region whose population the national government underestimated at 150,000.

The relatively impoverished town, nevertheless, supported an old agricultural college, a new medical training facility, and an almost-grandiose town hall – which in more orthodox times had been a convent. Marta Flores and her committee worked hard to bring the townspeople on their side, expanding market regulations to make space for biological diversity, and encouraging school meal programs and institutions to buy directly from the farms around them.

New York, 2021: The September meeting of the heads of government attending the UN General Assembly would normally have gone unnoticed on the Altiplano had it not been for the special focus on climate change. The meeting – originally scheduled earlier, had been delayed mainly because the Northern countries were embarrassed by their failure to meet even the very mediocre funding commitments made following the Copenhagen debacle. To further their embarrassment, the Venezuelan President used the General Assembly Summit to press his proposals for a Latin American peso bank, based on the strength of the region’s oil and natural gas reserves – mostly found in Venezuela and Bolivia. The climate change funding failure made it harder for the United States and its supporters to oppose the move. What really upset the US was that the peso bank would hold its foreign reserves in euros, not dollars, threatening US hegemony in the region.

The peasant movement and rural municipalities throughout Latin America threw their support behind the peso bank. While municipal financial backing was economically significant, the support demonstrated by towns and peasants working together gave the regional bank political clout and popular momentum. The blossoming “Food Sovereignty” axis of peasant, food, health, education and cultural networks used their collective influence over the municipal tax base to build wider bridges to political parties and urban union and consumer movements.

That year’s UN General assembly also launched negotiations over the Technology Transfer Treaty. The global debate over the TTT brought matters to a head and played into the hands of the nascent global coalition of alternative movements. The TTT became the step too far. If the World Trade Organization’s globalizing agenda hadn’t been bad enough, the TTT seemed bent on enforcing what the Geneva-based trade agency had ignored. Under the guise of public health and safety, multinational agribusiness was wiping out, through regulation, seeds and foods that could not meet rigorous protocols for distinctiveness, uniformity and long-term stability.

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Peasants would not be allowed to save or grow non-registered plant varieties. These plant varieties couldn’t be registered unless they were legally maintained or patented by an enterprise with inspected facilities and liability insurance. Legal (rather than agronomic) standards for size, shape and colour were prerequisites for registration.

“Our fruits and vegetables can't be marketed – even between peasants – unless certified and labelled,” Marta told the incredulous colleagues at the plant breeding committee meeting. Her words were ominous in the lantern-lit room. Marta had just returned from a hastily called peasants’ meeting in La Paz and had demanded a night meeting with the committee. Certification would become impossible without the use of specific pesticides and herbicides. Labelling would also be impossible without proof of purchase of specific seed drilling, cleaning and harvesting equipment.

From the hills above Kombocho, to the prairies of Saskatchewan, and the rocky plateaus of Rosetta, revolution was in the wind.

For the peasants around Rosetta, it was easier to resist than in some other places. Ever since Copenhagen, Marta and the rest of the leadership in the Bolivian farm movement had set to work cultivating relations with the municipal government and the agricultural school.

Over the years, members of the farm movement had – more often than not – occupied the mayor’s chair and had usually dominated the council chamber. Using the resources provided by the handful of remaining European NGOs, the peasants strategically supported classroom materials, seminars and speakers at the agricultural school. Often, the peasants proposed joint research initiatives with the school’s teachers and were able to come up with the money that made the school’s participation possible. When things came to a head in the 2020s, it was not hard to convince the municipality to side with the peasants.

The municipal allies passed deliberately obstructive bylaws that confounded agribusiness and supported local production. When the peasants organized highway blockades, the mayor refused to call out the police or request army intervention. Long-forgotten transport and sanitation laws were creatively interpreted to support the peasants against the companies. When the capital sent troops to Rosetta to clear the roads, the mayor rushed to the blockade and informed the irate colonel in charge that the peasants were a road repair crew hired by the municipality as part of a “Food for Work” project.

Moreover, Rosetta was connected to the world. Before dawn one Saturday morning, the mayor got out of bed to participate in a video conference call with city leaders throughout the world, who were supporting their peasants. During the call, the mayors and farm leaders answered questions from the international media. Wu Suyuan, the famous journalist from the Chinese Independent News Agency, was among them. Most of the answers to her questions came from Marta Flores – wrapped in blankets against the morning cold and crowding into the pre-dawn light of the mayor’s office lamp.

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Six months of demonstrations, road blockades, joint peasant/consumer boycotts and other protest actions on every continent forced the TTT negotiators to back down and make exemptions for Food Sovereignty.

The peasants enjoyed more support than expected from urban consumers. They had underestimated the awareness-raising work done by urban food sovereignty groups and citybased food activists. Alarmed by the coordinated opposition, national governments – usually firmly in the control of their local elites – agreed to hold referendums on the Treaty.

The referendum concession spelled the beginning of the end for the TTT. Despite a “gag order” from the global media/entertainment corporations, the “Indy” movement of musicians, poets and writers joined forces with artists and actors to create an astonishing demonstration of resistance, diversity and creativity. In every plaza and square, mall, street corner and in every village, the marginalized cultural spirit of a dismissed generation inspired the protests and led the marches – at first tens of thousands joined, and then tens of millions.

The first results from Africa, Latin America and Asia were an overwhelming rejection of the Treaty. With breathtaking speed, the revolt spread to Europe and North America and BANGaffiliated governments everywhere were in retreat. By the end of the year, the TTT was dead and pundits were predicting the revival of the United Nations as the only credible forum for political discourse.

Bolivia: The road to victory had, tragically and inevitably, been stained with blood. Around Sucre, Bolivia’s constitutional capital, the municipality took an unexpectedly hard line against peasant blockades. Troops were called in. Marta’s daughter – the farm organizer – put out an appeal for support from other districts. Marta’s Ignacio had been among the truckload of peasants who had rushed to the defence of their compatriots and had been forced off a cliff by the advancing army convoy.

Old Chavez’s solar cell phone worked that day and Marta received the news of her husband’s death, before the mid-day meal. That evening, she sat on the bare earth under the open sky sorting through their quinoa seeds, with her committee members murmuring gently around her, rocking rhythmically, Isabella’s head in her lap.

Temuco, 2025: Marta was back in Chile again with her old ally Pancho and the Mapuche women. They'd taken a break after an inter-regional seed exchange to climb into the high Andes near the border with Argentina. Technically, they were visiting local villages looking at their tuber production under extreme conditions. For both, however, it was a much-needed break. Not long after they'd gone to bed one evening, the earth rumbled and rolled beneath them and everybody ran outside. The risk was less from falling buildings – everything in the village was single-storey – than from fire. The rest of the night was spent huddled together out in the cold around an open fire. The tremors kept coming – some stronger - some weaker. Only the babies slept.

In the morning, Pancho told her that the earthquakes didn’t especially alarm the Mapuche, but that they were concerned that one or more of the many dormant volcanoes in the region might be

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stirred into action. The local knowledge was well established: earthquakes often led – whether it took days or months – to volcanic eruptions. Charles Darwin, voyaging in the Beagle along the Chilean coast in the 1830s, had observed the same phenomenon. Later, volcanists showed that chains of volcanoes – like those along the Chilean – Argentinian border – were found along the Earth's fault lines – the edges of tectonic plates – and that earthquake tremors could sufficiently destabilize the pressure around volcanoes to cause explosions. Although Andean indigenous knowledge didn't extend to an understanding of tectonic plates, it did lead them to oppose deep mining operations and the use of high explosives anywhere near active volcanoes. Marta was glad to get back to Rosetta where the nearest volcano was hundreds of kilometers distant.

2026: Opposition to the TTT had coalesced the energies of a number of social movements that had always known of one another – occasionally cooperated – but had rarely seen themselves as a common force that could bring about coordinated change. At least as far back as the mid1970s, peasants on the periphery of urban centres had struck up associations with concerned families, local food co-ops, food banks and alternative restaurants. Over time, these loose arrangements had morphed into regional, national and then global partnerships led by organizations such as the SeikatWu Consumer Club Cooperatives in Japan, Pergoa in Holland, Associations pour le maintien d'une agriculture paysanne (AMAP) in France and CommunitySupported Agriculture (CSA) in North America. With consumers buying “shares” in the farm family’s harvest from the beginning of the growing season (and sometimes contributing labourin-kind as well), the CSAs made it financially viable for more peasants to wean themselves off synthetic chemicals and practice organic farming, and allowed local families to access (and afford) organic fruits, vegetables and meat.cclii For decades, the CSAs had an intensely “local” focus – though the members always saw themselves living within a global framework, with an awareness of international food and agriculture issues. When GM crops popped up in the fields in the mid-1990s, support for CSAs and organic food exploded in industrialized countries.

From less than a quarter of a million CSA-family consumers in North America – when GM crops hit the grocery store – to several million families at the time of the TTT. The CSAs’ Japanese counterparts shot up from 5 million members in the 1990s following Fukushima. At the same time, consumer demand for organic foods jumped from around 2% at the turn of the century to compete toe-to-toe with the chemical farms and, in Sweden – whose government had set as a national goal that 20% of farmland would be for organics by 2010 – consumer insistence on organic products was taking control of the grocery shelves.ccliii Early in the new century, Community-Shared Agricultureccliv made its natural link to the Slow Food Movement that, by then, had spread from its Italian roots into a worldwide (if sometimes “yuppie”) network of restaurants and food activists.cclv As much as the Slow Food folks were critiqued for being bourgeois, the restaurants served as an important media-mediated bridge into consumer consciousness.

A connection, first made by the Seed-Savers Exchange in Iowa (USA), had also spread to the hillsides of Austria and the farm fields of Canada, into a global seed exchange network. Within this movement were those who prized the conservation of plant genetic diversity above all else,

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as well as those who insisted that this diversity served the everyday nutritional and economic needs of peasants and urban gardeners. Even in Canada, during harsh Winter weekends in February and March, scores of towns and cities had turned “Seedy Saturday” and “Seedy Sunday” into a festive meeting ground between peasants, gardeners and consumers, as seeds and stories changed hands and joined forces with the CSAs and Slow Food Movement.

The web of (at first, mostly "North") interlocking interests spread from food and agriculture into the health and urban planning movements. Increasingly alarmed by the explosion in obesity, diabetes, allergies, asthma and autism, municipal and regional health systems – spurred on by an equally desperate need to cut medical costs – reached out to neighbouring farms and local restaurants to coordinate a sea change in social thinking. Beyond urban gardens in vacant lots, social movements pushed hard for backyard, front yard and boulevard gardens and pressed schools to remove fast-food vending machines and replace them with Slow Food –cafeterias serving local food – and to change the landscape of barren school grounds into orchards and gardens.

In the USA, in 2009, the young President, confronted with the worst financial crisis in a century, had vowed to become the nation's "Farmer-in-Chief" and urged citizens to return to the World War II era of Victory Gardens when urban families had produced 40% of their own fruits and vegetables. What for the North had become an essential lifestyle change was for the South a more immediate matter of life and death. The seed fairs and forest harvests of rural peoples had long since reached into the towns and cities to find new markets and to make common cause with money-starved schools, hospitals, and especially, medical and agricultural training institutes. For its own needs as well as for export, Latin America embraced organic agriculture – or agro-ecology – with tens of thousands of peasants and still more hectares of land sown with organic crops or pasture in Argentina, Uruguay and Costa Rica, with Brazil, Bolivia and Peru not far behind.

In Latin America, organic farming was seen as an explicit form of resistance to multinational agribusiness. The continent's political energy was contagious.

Europe jumped from 167,000 organic farms in 2005 to dominate production at the time of the TTT. Asia, with only 130,000 registered organic farms in 2005 numbered millions more after Rio+20 in 2012. Despite enormous macro-economic pressure against them, the 12,000 organic farms in North America in 2005 grew and thrived.cclvi The tide turned when Via Campesina (the world’s largest association of peasant organizations) took over the podium at the UN Biodiversity Convention and proved that at least 70% of global food production was coming from peasant sources and that peasant production was more diverse, sustainable and efficient than the industrial food chain. Via Campesina argued that peasant farms delivered one kilo of food energy for every kilo of production energy whereas industrial farms used up four kilos of fossil fuels to produce one kilogram of food. Secondly, the peasants pointed out that industrial food waste was 10 times greater per capita than peasant food losses.

The industrial food chain should be closed down, Via Campesina demanded, if it couldn’t meet the environmental standards and efficiency of peasant agriculture.

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The sometimes autonomous movements in the North and South became bound together, as climate change spurred everyone toward innovation, experimentation and conservation. The natural link was the seed. As peasants always knew – and the rest of the world learned – the genetic diversity of major and minor food crops was almost entirely in the South. When global warming shifted crop territories and created new pest and disease challenges, the demand for crop genetic diversity grew greater and greater. Exchanges, which had previously taken place only within countries or continents, suddenly became global. Though they never met, the peasants of Rosetta, Bolivia found themselves working with their counterparts in Kombolcha (Ethiopia), Bern (Switzerland), Brandon (Canada) and Rasua (Nepal).

The need for peasant-led agricultural research became evident with global warming. The panicky efforts of the US government and Terra-Forma to avert disaster by seeding iron nanoparticles and nano-engineering ocean organisms had been joined by European efforts – abated by AtomSphere – to keep the warm ocean currents that bathed their Atlantic shores from drifting out to sea. Washington’s efforts conflicted with Brussels. Together, their something more than butterfly wings created an unpredictable, climate chain reaction that threatened the survival of Northern agriculture.

The town of Rosetta grew used to Northern visitors clambering through the hills and valleys in search of peasants and farm diversity. Not surprisingly, the high altitude crops of the Andes, the Himalayas and the Ethiopian highlands became the best hope for a good dinner in Europe. By the time the Northern scientists arrived, however, the so-called “periphery” – the diverse web of cooperation between farms and cities around the world – had consolidated.

La Paz, 2029: Marta Flores and the Australian Director General met at the 35th anniversary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity held in La Paz, Bolivia. Marta had long since grown resistant to travel and was content to remain with her daughter and grandchild at home. But old friends among the Mapuche, and much-loved, but unmet friends from around the world in the peasants movement, had convinced her to make the day-long journey to her nation’s capital. On behalf of peasants and her community – and following long hours of debate not only at home but among peasants around the world – she had, with quite uncharacteristic shyness, agreed to accept the World Food Prize on behalf of the global peasants’ organization.

The prize was normally presented in Des Moines, Iowa, but Marta had been unable to convince US embassy officials that she was not a “Massively-Destructive Individual” and had been denied a visa to attend the event. With considerable embarrassment, the awards committee had taken advantage of the presence of the Biodiversity Convention in Bolivia to move the ceremony.

Jaap Lemmers – who attended the ceremony on assignment for a Dutch magazine – opined that the International Potato Centre’s collapse could have been avoided if the DG had not tried to link the success of peasant breeders to the outreach work of the Washington-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) – a serious blunder, he reflected.

Marta had simply exploded on stage. Bad luck too that her Spanish had improved and the translator – exuding empathetic enthusiasm – picked up every insult and invective that she hurled not only at CIGAR, but also the International Potato Centre. By the time Marta marched off the

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stage, leaving the medal still in the DG’s trembling hands, the Centre was history (although this wasn’t definitive until the next funding cycle) and the CGIAR was moribund.

It hadn’t been too hard to convince Marta Flores to come to the UN Biodiversity Convention that was also held in La Paz that year. On the CBD’s agenda was an African initiative to ban “Zombie” seeds. Almost 30 years before, Southern governments had joined indigenous peoples and peasants in establishing a global ban on Terminator technology – genetically-modified seeds that committed “suicide” at harvest time, forcing peasants to buy new seed every growing season. That battle had been waged over decades, moving painfully from public condemnation to informal moratorium to global ban. Now, however, the world’s three largest seed companies – with more than half of the commercial seed market – had a strategy that, they claimed, sidestepped the Terminator ban while conferring even greater profit.

The sterile seed ban achieved in 2000 may – or may not – Marta learned, have a loophole. If the seed that died at harvest time could be somehow brought back to life, the companies argued, then it wasn’t really a suicide seed. Earlier in the century, the European Union had commissioned a number of research institutes to develop exactly such a seed. At the time, they had argued that “born-again” seeds would help genetically-modified crops coexist with conventional crops by controlling gene flow: No one would have to worry about unintended cross-pollination because seed would be sterile by default. Public pressure had quashed the research. Now it was back, being pushed by GEnome Corporation, which had taken over top rung in the global seed industry after General Electric merged with a number of pharmaceutical and synthetic biology companies and then merged again with Monsanto. Now, Genome had an important ally. Genome’s synthetic biology subsidiaries had taken over Brazil's sugarcane industry and was also developing synthetic trees for their biomass factories. The companies needed Terminator to make sure their patented technology didn't blow away. Genetically-modified trees notoriously spread their pollen over dozens or even hundreds of kilometers and it was physically impractical to impose land barriers that would block the pollen. Terminator would save them money and protect their monopoly. The Brazilian government decided to champion their cause and overthrow the UN ban. If the ban were defeated, of course, suicide seeds would be allowed not just in trees but also in every crop.

Peasants dubbed the hyper-Terminator technology the “Zombie” seed. Marta Flores explained to her breeding committee that in order to bring the seeds back to life, peasants would have to truck the seed down the road to the seed company where it would be “soaked” in some kind of chemical cocktail that would knock out the fertility-inhibiting genes and allow the seed to grow again.

A peasants’ organization in India offered the sharpest analysis: “The drawback to Terminator – from the company perspective – was that they still had to multiply, ship, warehouse, advertise and distribute seeds. If peasants can be made to save their seed themselves and have it rejuvenated via the company’s proprietary chemicals – which peasants would have to “rent” every season – all those costs evaporate.”

“In fact,” the analysis continued, “GEnome could even reduce or eliminate its breeding and other R&D programmes since peasants will be trapped. The other two multinational seed companies

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have already announced their own versions of the same technology. Governments will let them get away with this because they are not violating the Terminator ban and, once again, seed companies are promising to feed the world.”

The meeting of the Biodiversity Convention became a classic encounter between civil society and the corporations. The seed companies (and their pharmaceutical masters) were well represented on all the delegations of OECD governments and within many of the so-called “mega-diverse” countries (e.g., Brazil, South Africa, Colombia, Mexico). Because it was a meeting of governments, the “official” supporters of Zombie were Brazil, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Constrained by its EU membership, Britain had to hold back – and the US was equally inhibited by its non-membership in the CBD. In the end, Brazil and Canada carried the flag for the corporations.

Outside the conference hall, nearly 7,000 peasants demonstrated daily in the streets and 1,000 more indigenous people and peasants clogged the conference corridors buttonholing delegates, holding lunchtime side events and demonstrating in the plenary hall.

For all the hoopla in La Paz, the real battle was fought in national capitals where farm unions joined with urban unions, environmentalists, development activists and consumers to lobby their individual governments. For every CSO activist that went to Bolivia, another hundred were back home contacting parliamentarians and organizing letter-writing campaigns. During the CBD itself, the campaigners in Bolivia kept in constant touch with their partners in the capitals and every move by delegates was recorded and reported for parliamentary debate back home.

In the end, most of Africa (but not South Africa) and Latin America (but not Mexico or Brazil) and much of Asia joined the protesters and forced a vote. Marta was jubilant that the loophole was closed – Zombie seeds were firmly interred and wouldn’t threaten seed (and food) sovereignty.

The CBD conference had been a two-week marathon encompassing dozens of agenda items spread over parallel committees and commissions that left little time for rest. CSO monitors met to set their strategies before breakfast each morning and usually gathered somewhere at the back of the plenary hall before leaving the conference centre each night. As always, despite the unending succession of negotiations, groups came to Bolivia to piggyback a score of other agendas and meetings around the edges of the main event.

This, in part, had drawn Anita Krishna and WHO Watch to La Paz. WHO Watch had been adamantly opposed to Zombie seeds – opposition was grounded in the belief that nutriceuticals – or so-called functional foods – would divert funds and fields away from more effective solutions to improve health. But WHO Watch was also gearing up to oppose China’s call for a “Green Economies” summit that it wanted to host in Canton in 2032 – sixty years after the first global environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972.

WHO Watch saw China’s push for green economies as an effort to deflect attention from the collapsing raw material commodity prices afflicting the global South and to push the so-called ‘clean technologies’ like nanotech and synthetic biology. Tropical and subtropical states were

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already experiencing the worst of nanotech’s impact on commodity prices. China’s proposal was being trumpeted as a solidarity move to focus world attention on the economic turmoil. The colossal and highly-public scandals around Terra-Forma and Atom-Sphere’s geoengineering attempts – both depending heavily on nano-scale technologies - increased people’s distrust of the technology. Some CSO’s hoped to turn the popular distrust and uncertainty in the North into a new development strategy. WHO Watch was skeptical.

Marta Flores was well acquainted with the consortia’s failed attempts at techno-fixes for global warming. The Andes had been hard hit with long droughts and deadly rains that drove the soil and people down the hillsides into the towns. When she first heard about the Summit proposal during the Convention on Biological Diversity protests, she thought it might be a good idea. “Get all the leaders together, lock the door and don’t let them out until they have an action plan we can see and trust,” she told Anita over a hotel breakfast one morning.

“China and its corporations are as deep into geoengineering as the US and Europe are,” the Indian activist replied. “This is just another approach designed to look pro-South.”

“I wouldn’t trust anything China proposes,” said an environmentalist from Jordan, taking the seat beside Marta, juggling a breakfast tray. “In return for doing something sometime in the future, maybe, the superpowers will armtwist the South into surrendering cheap natural resources now,” he added, shovelling sugar into his coffee cup.

Anita automatically switched into interpreter mode to give Marta the gist of the Jordanian’s opinion. “What I’m told,” she added in Spanish, “is that China and the North will offer a basket of economic and environmental supports to access green technologies and to stabilize commodity prices in return for ‘voluntary’ controls on migration. They’re also going to propose some kind of super-disease monitoring system that will make it easier for them to draw a ‘hospital curtain’ across disease-prone tropical regions. In other words, so-called public health concerns would be able to overrule so-called free trade if a country suspects that exported goods from one region could cause an epidemic in another. She paused to translate for the environmentalist.

The Terminator side-event was about to start so the three hurried to finish their breakfasts in the awkward silence of colleagues isolated by language.

After several false starts, the groups anxious to discuss China’s proposed Summit managed to get together on Sunday morning, at the end of the first week of the CBD. They gathered in one of the several CSO-dominated hotels downtown. Someone from the African Women’s Caucus offered to chair. Because the China proposal was for the Summit to be held in Canton, CSO custom dictated that someone from another region should lead the discussion.

The meeting barely had time to lay out the issues: mainstreaming versus marginalization (a favourite topic), governments’ political and financial commitment to follow-through, the need for representation beyond the conventional climate change/environmental movement. From the outset, it was clear that all the issues were potentially divisive and – with the possible exception of the Chinese CSOs – most organizations were undecided. They agreed to meet again in the

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upstairs bar of the same hotel the next evening. For reasons no one could understand, the bar closed promptly at six each night but the hotel management had no objection to it being used for other purposes.

In the elevator on her way up to drop off her backpack before that meeting, Anita had eavesdropped (imperfectly) on a conversation in French between two African passengers. They were talking about climate change and money. For the past two decades, government and philanthropic funders had thrown their weight behind initiatives to reduce global warming, virtually to the exclusion of everything else.

Governments wanted to pay for studies on alternatives to fossil fuels, early warning systems and photosynthetic strategies to maintain food production. The mainstream foundations only wanted to hear about “cutting-edge” research or “type-2 partnerships” – projects involving business & government or business & CSOs. Even the progressive foundations, development NGOs and government ministries wanted to put their money into supporting the participation of indigenous peoples and other social movements in intergovernmental meetings addressing, guess what, new clean technologies and climate change.

In short, if climate change wasn’t in the title of the grant proposal, the likelihood of getting funding was poor. The Africans’ resentment was palpable in the elevator. The scramble for funding was blatantly distorting the goals of development and environment NGOs and had created a handful of new climate change NGOs, which had been quick enough off-the-block to corner funds in the early days.

Not much of this was new to Anita Krishna. The CSOs who hung around the World Health Assembly and the World Health Organization had also learned to put a climate spin on their work. Nevertheless, until then, she hadn’t fully grasped the extent to which the climate agenda had overwhelmed everybody’s work. She missed her floor and decided that rather than be late for the meeting, she’d ride back down to the bar with her backpack.

The second meeting was three times the size of the first (Sunday mornings never being popular with CSOs) and the hotel manager had astutely kept his bar open. The bar tables and chairs were pushed into a rough circle around the many pillars in the low-ceilinged room. The Kenyan chaired, and gave the floor to the Chinese representative of a global climate change organization.

Wisely, he criticized the Summit and pointed darkly to the intent and ulterior motives of the Beijing government. Predictably, though, he came around to supporting the Summit, putting a martial arts spin on the conventional CSO argument… CSOs would use jujitsu, he told the packed room, “and we’ll use the weight and momentum of the superpowers by moving with them and redirecting their energy toward our own goals.” Marta, leaning heavily on Anita’s whispered translation, couldn’t judge who was buying or rejecting the man’s analogy.

"What does a Green Economies or Stockholm+60 summit have to do with climate change,” someone called out?

Before the chair could act, a white-haired German woman stood to explain. "Nothing really," she began, "mostly, China wants to show off its superpower status by throwing a bash in Beijing. It

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also wants to claim the prestige of the old environmental events in Stockholm, Rio and Johannesburg. But, as it hosts the party, China and the other superpowers also have a little business to transact. The superpowers gambled that nano-scale technologies would reduce or eliminate their dependence on scarce natural resources... they’d dig all the raw materials they needed out of their garbage bins. It hasn't worked out like they expected. The nanotechnologies they've been using to fertilize the oceans and cloud the stratosphere have also failed to deliver in manufacturing. But, what they have accomplished," she continued shaking her fist, "is to create chaos in natural resource commodity markets and the chaos is devastating the economies of poor resource-exporting countries. India, China, the United States and Brazil are scampering around the globe trying to buy up commodity buffer stocks and takeover mining companies that they once thought irrelevant. In order to get access to these natural resources at a cheaper price, they're still playing up the potential of nanotechnology and they're offering these new technologies to address the worst impacts of climate change at the national level. The summit is a trick to get easier access to the South’s raw materials," she concluded, sitting down.

Among the forest of hands that shot up, the chair picked out the Jordanian. “This isn't another Stockholm environmental conference -- it's the Stockholm syndrome. China wants to hold a party and they want civil society to provide the entertainment. It's time we rejected this kind of pretense. There are real issues that should be discussed. I live in Amman,” he told the bar, “but my parents grew up on farms near the Dead Sea. No one can farm there now. In Jordan, we know all about the failure of synthetic biology and other nanotechnologies to deal with global warming. As an environmentalist, I’m fighting to protect our lands and people. But every time we have a Summit, we suck the media’s attention into the theatrics of summitry and away from the practical realities. China and the other superpowers know all about jujitsu. They’ve already figured out the moves and countermoves. They see the Summit as a smokescreen to let them get their way on other fronts. The only thing we can do is boycott.” He sat down to scattered applause.

The argument seesawed back and forth for more than an hour. Anita – and Marta, with Anita’s help – jumped in and out of the increasingly rancorous debate, both finding themselves opposing the Summit. After a Maori woman politely suggested that the battlefront was at the national level now – after decades of failed effort at the international level – the Chinese environmentalist interrupted dismissively: “Flora and fauna don’t know national boundaries. Climate change is wiping out biodiversity everywhere. National laws can’t protect birds that fly halfway around the world every year. Who’s going to speak for the pandas and the whales if we don’t?”

“I want to answer that,” said the Jordanian, jumping to his feet, struggling for composure, “No one speaks for other species or for the environment.”

Someone with a British accent at the back muttered, “our Chinese friend thinks he’s bloody Dr. Doolittle!” The remark caused as much confusion as laughter and the Kenyan Chair, looking frustrated, called for quiet. The Jordanian held the floor: “Pretending you can speak for other species is an insult to the rest of us. All we can do is speak for ourselves. If we can give voice to the most marginalized in our countries and understand what they want, we’ll do better than pretending we have a special relationship with dolphins.” There was table thumping and the Brit at the back let out a whoop.

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The Chinese man was on his feet, demanding space. A tall, Francophone African quietly stood up in front of him. The Chair gave her the nod. Later, Marta learned she was from Mali. A second woman, sitting beside the speaker, translated. “"We don't want another feel-good summit where leaders parade their green credentials. We especially don't want civil society to be caught up once again in this Stockholm syndrome thing.

We need to lay out our own agenda. We need to decide where we place these new techno-fixes for climate change on the agenda,” she said firmly. “No one denies – not even the United States government – that we are in the middle of global warming nor that it’s disruptive for all of us and disastrous for most of us. They call it the battle of the century.” The woman looked over her shoulder at the Chinese environmentalist, “They’re wrong. In the 20 th century, we were told that the battle was over ideology – capitalism, communism and fascism. Now, the new battle is about terrorism and climate change. Terrorism lets the North take over our lives; climate change lets them take over the planet. The real issues of the 20th century were poverty, discrimination and the environment. In my organization, women are less shy about pointing the finger: poverty, patriarchy and pollution!”

Marta’s sonic boom in the front row left no doubt who was speaking next. Anita fought to keep up. “Exactly,” she translated the Bolivian woman. “The only way to solve climate change is to end injustice. Any other approach…” Anita paused more for effect than out of shyness, “…is bullshit!”

The meeting could have ended then; the issue was resolved. CSOs would boycott the Summit and try to dissuade their governments from participating if the Summit went ahead. But, in the time-honoured tradition of CSOs, the debate meandered on for another hour. The Chinese CSOs did win agreement to meet one more time later in the week to deal with “outstanding issues.”

In the days that followed, the big climate change and environmental organizations, charter members of the Stockholm syndrome – already committed to Summit preparations because of their public or private fund-raising– fought a constant rear-guard action to protect their money.

At a poorly attended meeting at the back of the CBD hall on the final day, they tried to get other CSOs to let them act as a monitoring body on behalf of the wider group. The Malian woman – joined by the Jordanian and Marta – flatly rejected the proposal as a backdoor attempt to be the de facto spokes-group if the Summit went ahead.

When Marta left the plenary hall on the final night, the Jordanian walked her to the CSO bus and cordially thanked her, through a Mexican translator, for her role opposing the Summit. Tiny Marta crushed the bottom half of him in a huge hug, leaving him smiling, if a little embarrassed, at the curb.

2031: The battle over the holding of China’s Green Economies Summit waxed and waned for close to two years before finally withering away in a subcommittee, buried in the basement of the UN Secretariat building. When Indian and European CSOs joined forces with their Latin American and African colleagues, their governments were dragged along. It took some time for China to admit that it couldn’t pull off a Summit on its own. The global geo-political battle

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awoke the more progressive funders and, over time, they swung their support behind the Summit’s opponents and those CSOs working on a more justice-oriented solution to resource commodity problems and climate change.

2035: It was the video conference call that Marta had dominated during the Technology Transfer Treaty strike that brought Wu Suyuan to Rosetta after her visit to Brazil and Paraguay. João Sergio, some months before her Latin American visit, had answered the journalist’s e-mails about the impassioned, female farm leader high in the Andes. It had not taken the blogger long to realize that this was the same woman Tash’s mother occasionally wrote about.

What impressed the journalist most was not the community’s famous quinoa, which still clung tenuously to the deeply eroded soils, but the teff and cassava that now grew and flourished alongside the quinoa. Marta and her allies had been prepared for climate change. As temperatures rose, they shared varieties and crops up and down the mountainside, and along the latitudes, and looked to other peasants throughout Africa and Asia for crops that could withstand the new pests, diseases and temperatures. While the huge monocultures of North America, Australia and Europe staggered under the blows of the sudden temperature shifts, peasant producers kept food on the table.

From the slopes of the Andes, to the savannas of East Africa, to the paddy fields of Mindanao, farming communities and peasants’ organizations had quietly strengthened their expertise. For the most part, governments wisely steered clear. Although corporations occasionally pushed politicians to intercede, they usually avoided direct confrontation. As a result, a highly scientific and extraordinarily interactive research dynamic connected farms and villages, sellers and buyers, in a strategy that not only increased yields and nutrition but also encouraged biological diversity. The right-wing bioethicist, Deter Panger, had warned Wall Street that the greatest threat to capitalism would not be found in the cities or in governments, but among the small, renegade farms of the global South. For once, the bioethicist was spot on.

Postscript – December, 2035: The Right Livelihood Award was controversial again. The United States had tried to pressure Sweden’s Queen not to confer the award at all that year. Together with Australia, the UK and Kuwait, the US ambassador boycotted the ceremony. Marta started her journey from Rosetta via potato truck to La Pas. João Sergio joined her in São Paulo where she changed planes and they flew on together via Lisbon to Stockholm. He was accompanying Marta partly as an old friend and partly to help with translation via his best Portuñol. Once again, the Award went to a social movement, but the peasants were insistent that Marta and another farm leader from the Philippines represent them. Standing in the wonderful old chamber, Marta Flores looked tiny and uncharacteristically shy. Her audience sometimes had to strain to catch her words. In the closing of her short acceptance speech, the flash returned. “The people,” the old peasant told them, “in their diversity, will never be defeated!” Standing beside her, Abebe Jideani grinned and applauded vigorously. In the audience, Anita Krishna and Inga Thorvaldson both whooped. Watching the webcast from their hotel room, Tash clapped happily and Wu, slightly distracted by their baby pulling at her face, smiled. Qi Qubìng – nodding and smirking – watched it all on the TV screen in his corner office overlooking Lake Geneva.

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Aaa How Next #7: Should our priority be on the “global” or the “local”?

Think globally – act locally

Think locally – act globally

Although it is vitally important to remain cognizant of our global context, the strength of people’ movements will always be at the local (national or sub-national) level where our actions can directly affect daily lives.

These local actions of course can be “patch worked” into a quilt of highlydiverse communities working together that provide a consistent global framework.

US hegemony, climate change, militaries and multinational corporations are all global in scope.

Without denigrating the need for strong local initiatives, it is critical that at least some CSOs take their principles from these local conditions and struggles and take on the global issues that are capable of wiping out progress achieved at the local level.

Think Local realities should never be undermined by global exigencies.

However, recognizing the power of global forces, we need to innovative two-way channels of communication and cooperation that make it possible for those working at the global level to better support local initiatives and vice-versa. This will not be easy.

Aaa Time to Change Our Word View #1: “poor” They’re “always with us”

Reductionist deficitism

“The poor” isn’t some cute term dreamt up by under-employed anthropologists. It has been with us for thousands of years and it serves a purpose. It identifies class and needs, and makes it very clear to everyone, whose side somebody is on.

The term “poor” has never worked. It doesn’t make clear how people become poor, who made them poor or other qualities the poor may have.

“Poor” robs people of their culture and creativity.

Aaa Time to Change Our Word View #2: “reality” It’s a grand conspiracy.

It’s much more nuanced.

Yes, it is a conspiracy. It may be a conspiracy of culture or of class – it may not be understood even by the conspirators – but in the final analysis, those who have power – corporations or governments or the BANG consortia – somehow come out on top. This happens time after time. The absurdity is that some people in the CSOs, in the North, never seem to learn from experience.

Some of our partners want everything to be “Black or White.” They don’t pick up on the internal tensions between government departments or the rivalries between corporations.

Because we, as civil society actors, see this, we are able to manoeuvre – taking advantage of the bureaucratic or corporate divisions to at least make some progress.

Taking sides: I've tried to lay out these boxes is neutrally as possible but, in this case, I can't disguise my own strong personal opinion. Over more than four decades of international activism, I've often been in the situation where someone from a social movement assumes a corporate conspiracy where I have no factual

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evidence that one exists. My standard practice has always been to gently "correct" my misguided colleague and to guide my friend into the subtle sophistication's of intergovernmental negotiations. Far too recently, I've realized how wrong I have been. Of course, the corporate influence – or the influence of the BANG members – rarely amounts to a criminal conspiracy (at least, as our courts would define it). But, the nuances of bureaucratic bargaining fail to recognize that the class and cultural context of the negotiations amount to a genuine conspiracy of mutual interest that is so self-assured and absorbed that it seldom recognizes its own duplicity. I see the trees, my “naïve” friend sees the forest. Yes, Virginia, there really is a conspiracy.

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Aaaa Reviewing

the Course:

What’s Possible?

Taken individually, none of these three course changes will quickly end corporate globalization or overturn the US, Chinese or Indian empires. Looking at them a generation down the road (i.e., 30 years), their successes may seem perhaps disappointing. And, as modest as they are, it could also seem a tad too “romantic” (or at least convenient) that the characters in each story have some connection to one another. In a world brimming with nearly 7 billion people, is this really credible?

Yes it is. These modest stories are not played out separately. Many other “courses” with equal or greater foundation in reality, could come together and create faster and greater changes. Each step can be accompanied.

Likewise, the fact that the people in each story know of – or have contact with and collaborate with – each other, is not surprising, either in 2005 or in 2035. Their connectedness is not only through the “miracle” of IT – or, not exclusively so. Each character in each “course” is fictional but we all know these people – or at least have friends like them. These people are not “superheroes” – they are members in the ranks of civil society everywhere. We meet them often – under the steaming canopies of Porto Alegre, under the banners of a Hong Kong protest or across the jerry-rigged tables of an impromptu working group in Geneva or Johannesburg. We are coming to know one another more and more.

This makes an enormous difference to the impact of CSOs and social movements. Just as the “business-as-usual” scenario, China sundown, is reasonable and even likely, the alternative courses have a strong basis in reality.

Course 1, about the reform of the UN system and the establishment of WHO Watch and TechReckoner, is also well within the realm of possibility. The rudiments of WHO Watch already exist in New York and Geneva, and there is a close parallel in the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty (IPC) network monitoring the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. In fact, just a few short years ago, FAO’s union reported on an internal staff survey that showed that the overwhelming majority of all respondents were unhappy with their Director-General and his plans for restructuring the organization. Simultaneously, the Dutch Assistant Deputy Director-General resigned, many believe, to run for her boss’s job in 2011. Anyone who follows the machinations of UN agencies will recognize the petty and grand corruptions that haunt intergovernmental organizations. It is not difficult to envision how civil society organizations could improve the governance of UN agencies. Incidentally, the newlyelected (June, 2011) director general of FAO happens to be a Brazilian strongly supported by civil society Latin America Nor is it a “stretch” to take a cue from Wikipedia, to build Tech-Reckoner. In fact, it may only take an augmentation of the existing online encyclopedia to turn it into a technology monitoring and evaluation system. In fact, Wiki-leaks – which lept on the world stage in 2010 with the

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quarter million absconded e-mails from US diplomats – makes the idea of a popular technologymonitoring network seem like child’s play. Could such an open source assessment mechanism really influence government regulators? Wouldn’t industry counterattack by hacking into and compromising its credibility? Yes, to both questions. But, the open-source movement has shown itself to be hugely resilient and remarkably creative. There is a chance – worth taking (and hard to avoid) – that this kind of electronic assessment could embarrass governments and industry into behaving at least marginally better. More importantly, this global social collaboration could foment the desperately needed critique of technology and progress that has been missing for several generations.

Finally, does the corporate world surrender whistle-blowers like Qi Qubìng with sufficient regularity or is this unrealistic or just dumb luck? Actually, yes it does. The nuclear and tobacco industries have the bruises to prove it. The fictional Chinese Canadian scientist, Qi Qubìng, was written into the scenario as a conundrum – a warning about the Stockholm Syndrome – the risk of civil society organizations getting too close to industry. Qi was not the perfect candidate to become the next WHO Director-General. As charming and as basically sympathetic as Qi is, I’d like to think that Anita Krishna and WHO Watch would have come up with a better candidate and might even have opposed Qi’s election. Still, Qi is undoubtedly a better Director-General than most of those who have held similar offices in UN agencies. The standard went up with pressure from WHO Watch.

Would it be better to have a UN Convention on the Evaluation of New Technologies than nothing at all? The debate between WHO Watch and the Uruguayan technology activist (in actuality, my colleague, Silvia Ribeiro) is quite real. The Uruguayan informs Anita that getting a corporate-driven ICENT had not solved their problems. Hence the question of who’s in the driver’s seat, and what kind of treaty gets negotiated, comes up again.

The comparison to the Biosafety Protocol is also reasonable. It would have been better if this protocol had not come into existence. Then, corporations would have had to debate genetically modified crops country by country. The Biosafety Protocol legitimized GM crops and turned the biodiversity Convention into a facilitating mechanism for crop contamination.

That doesn’t mean that ICENT can’t have a different outcome. Certainly, global negotiations can stir up a global debate and lead to more useful national consequences. Monitoring – even if it is not legally binding – can sometimes be useful.

Many in civil society would argue that the big issue raised by Course 1 is whether or not this kind of UN strategy feeds into the Stockholm Syndrome, the empathy that victims may develop towards their captors. Many CSOs working at the UN level have fallen victim to this and have lost their ability to see beyond the priorities of UN bureaucrats. We need a healthy debate in civil society about this problem. Is WHO Watch captive or captor?cclvii Course 2: Perhaps the hardest things for many of us to accept here are the simplicity of the World Social Forum intervention on the Zimbabwe–Zambian border and the complexity of the CSO strategy to overturn the TTT. That these two different initiatives play out involving some of

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the same organizations and individuals we have already encountered possibly adds to the incredibility of the story.

Yet, it is not such a leap from the mass demonstrations of Seattle, Genoa, Cancun, Hong Kong and the anti-war demonstrations of 2003 to the “human shield” in the African border confrontation. More than anywhere else in civil society, the Peace Movement has demonstrated the courage and resourcefulness to make big moves. We need this to happen – more often and more creatively.

Neither is it unlikely that the World Social Forum – however it might play out in the decades ahead – can bring together really diverse social activists and social movements that could cooperate together and supports one another on several fronts. The message is that we in civil society can walk and chew gum at the same time. We need to recognize and take advantage of our diversity and flexibility to come together at strategic moments to do big things. We’ve been there and done that. We can do it bigger, better and we can keep on doing it decade after decade.

After all the emphasis on the importance of technology in world affairs – especially in the three decades ahead of us –could nanotechnology fail, and corporations and governments return to the old, raw materials industries?

We can’t be certain. Yet, it is certain that the hype around nanotechnology exaggerates its speed and efficiency. There will undoubtedly be failures. Even if the technology is scientifically successful, industry will probably only get it half-right. We should neither abandon the old technologies, nor the old resources on the assumption that they are no longer important. In the field of agricultural biotechnology, after all, the companies produced miserably poor results, yet they still succeeded in gaining control of the first link in the food chain – the seed. As I’ve already argued, it is not necessary for a technology to succeed for the industry to flourish.

But, the big challenge in Course 2 is to take advantage of the regional and world social fora and to build a wider sense of shared identity and common cause in the struggle for peace and the fight against corporate-driven globalization. Can we overcome our egos and institutions to make this happen? I think and hope so. In January 2010, I was invited to participate in the 10th anniversary celebrations of the WSF in Porto Alegre. It was intended as a local celebration of a global phenomena taking place in the city where it began. The spirit of the World Social Forum will take it wherever it wants to go.

Course 3: Finally, here, we have what some might regard as the most unrealistic scenario of all.

The notion that small rural communities on the periphery of the metropolitan powers could weave a network of grass-roots strategies that could challenge the powers-that-be might seem absurd to those who have lived their lives in urban centres.

It doesn’t seem absurd, at all, to peasants or indigenous peoples and their organizations. Neither does it seem absurd to those struggling with health or education issues in local municipalities.

Not only is the periphery likely to be ignored by the elite, it is also highly possible to organize here. Rural communities on the periphery already have high levels of organization. They are already more self-sustaining than urban communities. There is already a huge potential for farm

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organizations, organic growers, urban gardeners, Community Shared Agriculture and the Slow Food Movement to unite with concerned consumer organizations to challenge the industrial food system.

One of the best responses to What Now? in 1975 was the establishment of the Right Livelihood Award in 1980 – dubbed the Alternative Nobel Prize. Every December since then, the Right Livelihood Awards have brought together leaders from three or four CSOs in a ceremony in the Stockholm Parliament. Every year it seems less surprising that the award recipients know each other – or, at least, have heard of one another. It is not at all surprising if the people in these scenarios bump into one another at the RLA. They could also meet at global or regional social fora. They might meet at anti-WTO (or G8 or G20) events or peace demonstrations.

And whenever and wherever such people gather, there is reason for hope.

Asilomar moments – then and now: In 1975, a group of scientists gathered at Asilomar, California to examine the possible health and environmental risks associated with genetic engineering. With a perfect sense of media management, they announced that they were taking all the necessary steps – as responsible scientists – to assure society that the new science would proceed with great care and caution and bring enormous social benefit. Here and there around the world, the Asilomar statement was greeted with anxiety, or at least great scepticism. But, each of us read the news reports and studied the technology in isolation. We didn’t know each other – didn’t know of each other – and had no common forum for communication and cooperation. It took us 12 years to put together the first international meeting of civil society activists concerned about biotechnology. The old Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation convened a meeting in Bogève, France, in 1987, and together we produced the Bogève Declaration, warning the Asilomar scientists that, beyond health and environmental issues, there were socio-economic, cultural and military concerns as well.cclviii It took us another nine years to awaken at least some of the public to our worries and launch the great debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). History has yet to confirm whether or not we were too late.

Thirty years later, in 2005, another band of young scientists gathered in a conference they called Synthetic Biology 1.0. With vast confidence and enthusiasm, they discussed how it would be possible to create a “spare parts” shelf of biological modules that could be clamped and soldered together to create entirely new life forms.

This time, civil society was paying attention and we were organized to respond. Already, in 2001, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and ETC Group had organized a global meeting in Uppsala on nanotechnology – including its most controversial area, nanobiotechnology or “synthetic biology.” On the eve of Synthetic Biology 2.0 at the end of May 2006, 38 organizations, including major players in the environmental movement, trade unions, farm organizations, anti-globalization activists and scientific unions sent an “open letter” to the Synthetic Biology scientists warning them not to proceed with their proposed Asilomar II declaration, which was a short manifesto cobbled together by the scientists themselves to fend off government regulators and other critics, in advance of their research.

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The “open letter” worked. The scientists backed down and – as this book goes to press – national and global discussions are underway on how best to build a people-led dialogue process to evaluate this extraordinarily powerful new technology.

The most important thing about this change – the change between Asilomar I and “Asilomar II” – is that the 38 diverse organizations (headquartered in almost as many countries) actually got together by e-mail and Skype over the course of one week. In the brief space of a few days, individuals and organizations were able to adopt a strategy and agree on a text that represented their common views. The work was done without formality. That group of people was every bit as diverse in their background and experience as the folks in our stories.

This was not an isolated experience. Less than three months before the synthetic biology faceoff, more than 6,500 peasants and hundreds of indigenous people and activist NGOs in Curitiba, Brazil, confronted the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, at a meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity– and won. The fight was over Terminator technology – what the media called genetically-modified suicide seeds and what peasant organizations called genocide seeds – because the inability to save and replant seed will wipe out crop genetic diversity and small peasants around the world.

Pushed by Monsanto and other multinational seed companies, four governments were trying to overturn the UN’s de facto moratorium against the use of Terminator. Going into the meeting, all sides were betting that the United States and Monsanto would win. Nothing more than the sheer energy and persistence of the people turned defeat into a huge victory. By the end of the UN meeting, the “de facto” moratorium was universally recognized to be a real moratorium, and the corporations and their pet countries retreated into silence.

One moment turned the tide against the US and Monsanto. At a critical juncture in the middle of the vast intergovernmental meeting, about 50 indigenous peasant women stood up from their places in the back, lined themselves along the front of the podium, lit candles and held up handwritten placards warning against Terminator seeds. The silent vigil won the thanks of the Chair and the applause of the delegations. Of course, there were also huge marches and protests – banners and posters – and all contributed to the defeat of the corporate agenda and the strengthening of the moratorium. But, in the end, what worked was the close collaboration of NGOs with social movements, working in their national capitals and in Brazil – many of whom hadn’t planned to work together until they found themselves in Curitiba – and a single demonstration by 50 women.

Marta Flores’s battle to defend the Terminator moratorium is accurate. However, at the time of this writing in 2011, there are two bills before the Brazilian Congress that would overturn Brazil's legal ban on Terminator. The reason: because synthetic biology companies want to develop GE trees and the biosafety conditions to protect from the pollen spread are too expensive. MST (Brazil's famous landless movement) and other allies in Brazil are gearing up for a major battle that will probably be fought out at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 2012.

Depending on the outcome of that battle, an even larger encounter may take place in Hyderabad India in October 2012 when the Biodiversity Convention meets again. Whatever the final result,

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the 2006 struggle was a truly remarkable victory for peasant movements and civil society and whatever happens in 2012, a better world is possible.

Late in 2008, about 40 key civil society actors met outside Montpellier France to talk about BANGcclix. The toughest topic for everyone to get their heads around was geoengineering. For many, it just seemed too incredible. Hardly a year later, after the collapse of Copenhagen, the incredibility was gone and people around the world are working to organize resistance. And, hopefully, just in time. Symbolically, in 2010, the world's leading geoengineers met in Asilomar to adopt their own voluntary code of conduct for geoengineering experiments. They deliberately chose Asilomar to make the link with the genetic engineers of 1975. As with synthetic biology, civil society was organized and brought to bear sufficient extra pressure to cause internal revolt.

The notion of a voluntary code was quietly abandoned. Then, in October 2010, she is oh so social movements went to another meeting of the UN Biodiversity Convention and convinced 193 member governments to agree to a moratorium against all forms of geoengineering. As this book is being finished, however, industry and governments are organizing again to overturn both the Terminator and the geoengineering moratoria. The struggle doesn't end.

For all our defeats and pseudo successes, civil society is stronger and more capable today than ever before. We can do a lot. We can make things happen. We can change the world.

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Aaaa Common

Course:

Community in the Old House In December 2035, there was a ceremony in the old chamber of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. Recipients of the Right livelihood Award: WHO Watch, the Disability Rights Movement, and La Via Campesina were honoured in the chamber and celebrated around the world via live media coverage. As they were gathered together on the podium, onlookers couldn't help observe that the recipients – despite their differences in age, gender and geography – and even the foci of their social activism – all seem to be old friends. They were.

Uppsala, 2035: The day after the Right Livelihood Award, Anita went back out to Sweden’s Arlanda Airport to meet Qi and the two raced to catch a late commuter train to the little university town not far from the capital. Qi crashed into the carriage corridor so forcefully that he almost bounced Abebe Jideani from his wheelchair. The Ethiopian was with Alitash Teferra, Wu Suyuan and their baby waiting for a gaggle of commuters to clear the aisle so they could stow his wheelchair. In the end, Tash plunked the baby in Qi’s lap and joined Anita on the seats across from Qi and Wu. The World Health Organization’s Director-General accepted the infant gracefully and seemed happily at ease. That didn't stop him from grumbling that the Swedish foreign ministry would have given him a limo for their ride. Wu elbowed him affectionately as she watched him fuss with the baby. She was eager to talk with Abebe whom she hadn’t seen since the Harare social forum.

Getting down from the train in the old town, Abebe eyed the long line of tiny taxis dubiously until Wu cheerfully volunteered Qi to push the wheelchair the kilometre route up the hill. Qi muttered something unintelligible and surrendered the baby to Tash.

“You can forgo the infomercial on synthetic legs,” Abebe scowled amiably over his shoulder at the WHO Director. Carefully putting on an elegant pair of leather gloves to protect against the cold, Qi frowned down at him. “We have ways to make you walk,” he minced menacingly.

Sweden was making global warming a liar this winter. There was an unusual amount of fluffy snow for early December and it seemed inclined to stay around. The little band of foreigners trudged across the bridge, up the hill and past the castle surrounded by a city preparing for the Festival of Santa Lucia. Passers-by – mostly students – looked happy about the wintry weather.

Lights shone through the windows of the old house, welcoming them as they reached the top of the hill and crossed into the courtyard.

Inga Thorvaldson was already in the downstairs kitchen putting together a drinks tray. “Not upstairs…” Abebe groaned, as they trailed single-file into the house, “not again?”

“You need the exercise,” she chided him; “you’re getting fat,” she added, leaning down to give him a hug.

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To Qi’ssmay, Abebe popped out of the wheelchair and scampered, cat-like, up the staircase.

There were sounds of laughter somewhere up above.

The old house, built in the early 1700s, was the office of an institute well known to its visitors and – for the last half decade – revitalized by Inga after her brief sojourn in national politics. The travellers followed Abebe up and walked through the conference room to the cosy, little salon at the rear of the building. Someone had lit candles to soften the Swedish winter darkness. This time of year and this far north, the sun had already been swallowed by the horizon at midafternoon and wouldn’t make another appearance until late the next morning.

Marta Flores and João Sergio were already there. They had accepted a ride from the Right Livelihood Award organizers earlier in the day. Marta was drinking tea, while João Sergio was admiring the bottles on Inga’s tray.

Qi made for the sofa and patted the empty seat beside him, looking at Anita invitingly. She smiled back sweetly and folded herself into the wicker chair opposite. Wu, with the baby once again, commandeered the remainder of the sofa and immediately poured herself and Qi a hefty dollop of Scotch. Qi scrutinized the game bird on the label apprehensively. “It’s the best blended Scotch there is,” the journalist told him.

“That says it all,” Qi sighed. For a time, the bottle flitted from hand to hand, the quiet only broken by the clatter of ice cubes and the soft snores of the sleeping little boy.

“To the fall of BANG!” Inga raised her glass. “At least for the moment,” Qi piped up, unable to resist. They all raised their glasses saluting the toast and nodding their acknowledgment of Qi’s warning. Even Marta hoisted her teacup.

They were eight in all. Friends – old and those who mostly knew each other by reputation or organization. João Sergio had resigned himself to an evening as Marta’s interpreter, but as it turned out, Qi and Anita were both fluent in Spanish. It was a little stilted at first but before long, the reception began to feel like a reunion.

The coffee table, the side tables and every nook and cranny in the salon were stuffed with books and papers. Next to the little clearing made for the drinks tray, one document caught Wu and’s attention. “What’s this?” she asked no one in particular, “‘from shareholder to stakeholder – and and and and shaping the corporation,’ where did this come from?”

“It’s that Ginger group working on grand challenges coming out of Oxford,” Inga Thorvaldson answered.

“Very cutting-edge,” Qi chimed in. “I like their stuff… they’ve been looking at ways to push the global consortia on disease research to the next level.” He paused to translate for Marta.

“So, they’re apologists for the corporations?” Abebe asked, reaching for the bottle bearing the game bird.

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“Maybe they’re just realistic,” the WHO official snorted. “Rather than complaining about the gang, they’re trying to make a bad thing better – rather than hang around waiting for Nirvana or the revolution!”

Alitash Teferra took the paper from her partner. “They did a workshop at the African Union a couple of years ago,” she offered, “interesting. They argue that head-on attacks and campaigns against specific corporations or industries are getting us nowhere and that we have to strike at the core of the corporation – challenge the notion that they can occupy public space solely for the profit of their shareholders. They’re saying that we need to reinterpret the role of stakeholders in the corporation and instil the legal concept that every stakeholder is equal. By their reckoning, the conventional shareholder is only one among those invested in the company, including those who represent the workers through trade unions, provide natural resources, technologies, or environmental services. By restructuring the concept of the corporation and who they answer to, they hope to wind down destructive capitalism and replace it with socially-oriented, public/private production.”

“It’s a little simplistic,” Qi added, “but at least it’s an effort to get things moving – and its shortterm strategy is still to promote public/private partnerships that have immediate benefits, like drugs for poor people. As all the stakeholders build up their experience with these partnerships, they think the government and the companies will have to accept growing public opinion that the corporations must change.”

“That’s bullshit,” growled João Sergio.

“It’s worse than bullshit,” Wu said from her corner of the sofa, “it’s bloody destructive.” The infant beside her startled, coughed and settled.

“I think I’ll get another bottle,” said Inga, heading for the stairs.

Anita planted her feet on the ground and leaned forward, “what it does is help governments persuade the public that companies are good public-spirited citizens even when they do nothing.

The last time the secretary-general launched a round of Global Compact partnerships; barely five of the 500 agreements announced actually made it past the talking stage. The companies just got tonnes of free publicity and the critics lost ground.”

“But,” Qi interjected, “they have donated some patents and they have supported some drug research. No one is saying they do this out of the goodness of their heart but, at least, they are being forced to do something.”

“However did you get elected?” Anita wondered.

“I have friends in low places,” Qi giggled.

Inga was back with fresh bottles and pots of tea. “The unions are mostly compromised,” she told them, “they want to increase their stake in corporate governance, of course, but they really don’t

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want to share power with a bunch of activist NGOs that don’t depend on the success of the company for their paychecks.”

“They’ve got a point,” Wu conceded, “NGOs are great at staking out the moral high ground and not caring if the stake is driven through someone else’s heart.” The journalist turned to Marta and João Sergio. “Peasants’ organizations have had their problems with NGOs too, haven’t you?”

Anita translated for Marta, as João Sergio replied. “When I was a kid in the movement,” João remembered, “NGOs didn’t even know we existed. We’d go to meetings and the NGOs, the governments and the scientists would sit around talking about us and about food security as though we weren’t in the room. I remember one meeting of that big international scientific network that Marta fought with...” he paused and consulted with Marta. “At one meeting,” he continued, “someone said, ‘why don’t you invite peasants to be on your management committees?’ Someone else, I think from some US foundation, said it was a good idea but peasants didn’t have time.” The farm organizer lifted his arms as those seeking divine understanding, “it’s like all peasants have to be home by nightfall to milk their cows.” He paused again for another exchange with Marta, “but the NGOs were worse. They insisted on speaking for us and when we tried to get financial support for our organizations, they did everything in their power to be the intermediaries between us and donor aid agencies in the north. The more we organized, the more they felt threatened.”

The dam burst. Marta – who until then, had maintained an unnatural calm – threw herself into the debate. “João Sergio is an old man,” she said affectionately, “by the time I came along – attending social forums and those terrible meetings with the Biodiversity Convention – NGOs were trying to be our best friends. They acted like they were our advisors, our experts… the political strategists who really knew what was going on. These were the same NGOs that a few years before didn’t even realize that peasants were carefully saving more seed diversity than governments and that we were doing more plant breeding than scientific institutions.”

“Hey,” Anita laughed with a tinge of awkwardness, “I’m an NGO. We don’t all act like that.”

For a moment, Anita disappeared, enveloped in Marta’s huge hug. “Of course not – not you! The worst were the really big environment and development NGOs.” As Anita sucked oxygen back into her lungs, Marta went on, “those big NGOs act like the big corporations. They only care about fund-raising and publicity. Of course, they have some good people and do some good work but they’ve lost sight of their goal.”

“In Ethiopia,” Abebe Jideani added, “we used to make fun of them. We joked about how all of the big development NGOs would merge into one multinational monstrosity.”

“I love it,” Qi chortled. “How about I arrange a merger with Anita – we’d call it ‘WHO Witch’?”

“I thought we were talking about corporations,” Wu suppressed a chuckle, “let’s just agree that within the civil society orbit, NGOs and social movements have some serious talking to do.”

Prediction: Misfortune’s 500 – Multinational do-gooders in 2035

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Northern CSOs will have morphed and merged into five “Big Box” development NGOs: Big Boxfam will top the charts of secular multifunctional development NGOs and faith-based NGOs will be folded under the not-so-dovish wing of World Fusion. In the Star Wars battle for emergency relief and celebrity support, the Red Cross will emerge victorious and change its name to RCU2. Losing ground to the Red Cross, CARE will succumb to a friendly takeover bid by a private company to blend its famous CARE Package logo into the company’s top brand under the new name, TupperCARE. Following its campaigns to bring all OECD states up to the 0.7% aid level, the world’s leading advocacy NGO will change its name to Fraction Aid. To the translater and layout process: this box fit well here content-wise, but may disturb the flow of reading in the story, partly depending on the final layout of the book. Can be moved to another section – for later consideration!

“Sure, back to corporations,” Inga agreed. “But I want to make the point that big social movements – whether they’re farm organizations or trade unions or whatever kind of mass membership structure – have an inherent tendency toward conservatism as they become stronger.

Rather than get in bed with them, activist-NGOs have a role as outside agitators and friendly critics.”

“NGOs can grow conservative too,” Jaoa Sergio insisted. “They have no constituency – no one to answer to. They can become arrogant or fall apart when they’re needed.”

Inga nodded, “So, the answer is not to depend on them. If they fall down or screw up, the social movements and communities should be able to select other allies. Fundamentally, NGOs are replaceable. Good social movements are hard to find.”

João Sergio had discovered maté in the downstairs kitchen and he sucked on the metal straw staring reflectively at Inga. “In the early days of the union movement, we let ourselves be divided by corporations and by industry. We should have stuck together. The same has been true for civil society in general. Some work on water, some work on global warming, some are peace activists… We have NGOs only concerned about forests or dams and others that only work on literacy or health or human rights. We’re missing the point. We all realize it’s the gang – the companies and their pet governments – that has to change. We need to work together to fight the damned multinationals,” his hand slapped the coffee table. The game bird hit the floor running and the baby yelped briefly.

“I’ll get another bottle – and tea,” their host assured them heading once more for the staircase.

“If you’re talking about creating a supra-activist civil society organization,” Abebe stormed, “forget it. We’re smart dust. We work better as smart dust. We need to be self-sustaining but we also need to work together whenever the synergy is necessary. Of course, we could network better – more consciously and consistently – but we’ve been improving on that for a long time now. We don’t do so badly,” the truck driver concluded.

“United you fall,” Qi said softly, “divided you stand.” There was his trademark giggle that never quite made it to his eyes, “The people united...”

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“Shut up,” Anita and Wu snapped in unison.

Qi ignored them and turned to Abebe. The two men had met several times before, first with Tash in Kombolcha and then often when the scientist visited Ethiopia on duty travel working for the WHO. He had persuaded Abebe to serve on a Disability Rights advisory panel. “So, what can civil society really do about multinational corporations and their dominance of the government agenda?”

“Do what Marta and João Sergio have taught us. Stay small, stay diverse, stay on the periphery and stay connected. Don’t make an easy target.”

“Then, why not add to that diversity by allowing this Oxford group to knock the corporations’ legs out from under them by shifting the ownership from shareholders to stakeholders?” Then, without pausing, “Do you think they deliver pizzas this hour of the night?” the Director-General looked around hopefully.

Wu Suyuan wanted in. “You don’t fight corporate collusion by joining it,” she insisted.

“Triangular partnerships between governments, corporations and civil society are always based on a technical fix where the companies provide the expertise. This plays to their strength. It just makes it easier for them to make demands on government and the rest of us. Look at Atomsphere and Terra-forma. Their problem wasn’t to sequester carbon dioxide in the ocean or shield us from solar heat waves; their problem was to convince governments and society that alreadygiant corporations should be allowed to merge across every sector of the economy and that they should be able to monopolize the periodic table to the exclusion of others. The big environmental NGOs almost let them get away with it. They almost got what they wanted.”

Qi, pursuing another game bird, joined Inga in the downstairs kitchen. “The truth is,” he mused, “you all hate corporations and you all hate technology – any kind of technology since the printing press!”

Inga laughed, “I’ve spent most of my career working for a chemical union,” she reminded him, “by your reckoning, I should be out organizing Amish farmers! We’re not against science and there is a lot of technology we really like,” she added. “The problem comes when others try to manipulate technology into waves that drown the marginalized and enrich the powerful.”

Qi cleared a space for himself on the kitchen counter. “You can’t stop a good idea whose time has come,” the scientist yawned too casually. “Television followed the radio that followed the telegraph – and the Internet picked up where television left off. Once we knew we could send information down an electric wire there was no stopping history. Once you’ve got gunpowder and brass, you’ve got cannons, then you have bigger cannons, then you have iron-hulled battleships and torpedoes, laser-guided missiles and, now, nano bombs. That’s just the way it is.”

Even ensconced among the glasses and bottles with his back against the microwave, Qi still managed to look patronizing. “And, once you know that viruses and bacteria spread disease, the antibiotics and diagnostic kits are sure to follow, and – before long – abracadabra, childhood diseases begin to fade and people live longer. Overall, technology has been pretty good to us.”

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“You make it sound all so inevitable,” his hostess countered. “It’s not. We reject technologies all the time – for good and bad reasons. The Chinese scrapped their ocean-going fleets in the 15th century because they didn’t think the rest of the world had much to offer and they had enough trouble on their western border. The Japanese learned gun making from the Europeans and outdid them at their own technology, but once Japan was unified, guns and gunpowder were abandoned as too disruptive. The chemical industry had a viable commercial replacement for CFCs 40 years before governments banned them as a threat to the climate. Industry couldn’t be bothered. The same with automobile exhaust emissions... Efficient and effective technologies to slash pollution were available decades before the carmakers used them. There’s nothing inevitable about technology waves,” Inga thumped the refrigerator, “tech waves are the product of social manipulation.”

Qi was unflappable. “A little history is a dangerous thing,” he cranked open a bottle. “Culture and class turned Gutenberg’s printing press into a social revolution in Europe because it came at the right time. True enough, the Chinese and the Arabs had movable type centuries earlier but it didn’t serve the interests of those with power,” Qi’s tone was insufferable. “But you can’t compare the 21st century with the 15th,” he dropped ice cubes into two glasses. “As much as there is a tipping in climate change, there is a tipping in the pace of technological change. We’re there and we’ve been there for sometime. Fossil fuels, electricity and nuclear power have given us the energy to make change rapidly. Computers and communications have accelerated change even more. Changes are now coming faster than governments can comprehend. We no longer control our technological future.” Qi did not look as impressed with himself as his tone implied. He poured for both of them.

Inga accepted the glass sceptically. “Aren’t we supposed to be disagreeing?” she asked.

“Especially with medical technologies, I don’t agree with your contention that medical research has done much to make our lives better. As a doctor and a scientist you should know that the decline in maternal and infant mortality and childhood diseases came well before the development of antibiotics and new drugs. Clean water and basic sanitation along with a safe and steady food supply made a real difference. It was mainly social policy – not technology – that increased life expectancy. As much as the pharmaceutical industry wants us to think otherwise, their contribution has only added a few months to our lives.”

“You’re spending way too much time with Anita,” the Director-General snorted. He fiddled absently with a pair of old skis propped in a corner. “Your snow technology could stand an upgrade,” he suggested.

“Not mine,” Inga shrugged, “They came with the house. We move them from room to room occasionally.” They headed back upstairs to join the others.

“My point remains,” Qi continued. “You activist CSOs are Luddites. I can agree that the ownership and control of a new technology will largely determine whether it is used for good or for ill, but the technology itself is neutral.”

The Swedish lawyer halted on the landing. “Good, we disagree. Some technologies are inherently centralizing and undemocratic. Some are inherently dangerous – like nuclear power.

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But, I agree, the ownership and control of a technology will determine its role in society and even useful technologies can cause damage in the wrong hands.”

“You have some pithy historical anecdotes to back that up?” Qi interrupted.

“Even conservative economists agree,” she went on, “that new technologies launch a period of so-called ‘creative destruction’ that destabilizes the earlier economy. Those with wealth and power see the technology coming and use their influence to manipulate the wave to their benefit.

Marginalized peoples don’t see the wave coming and drown in its trough. Poor people don’t usually have the manoeuvrability to manage sudden instability. Any technology that is introduced into a society that is not a socially-just society will not only exacerbate the gap between the powerful and the weak but will actually do harm to the marginalized.” Inga continued up the stairs, “Look at the history of the Industrial Revolution and, for that matter, the Green Revolution too.”

Qi called after her, “ I think we’re agreeing that technology has not been the determinant of history. Are we also agreeing that we’re losing control of technology and that it is now becoming a determining factor?”

She looked over her shoulder, “I think we’re going to find out very soon.”

“So, that’s peachy for you,” the scientist muttered, “All your gang has to do is bash everything – slam the corporations, slam the technologies. All I have to do is to try to make something work.

Nice job if you can get it!”

Inga paused to eye the elegant, international civil servant lounging in her doorway, “I feel your pain.”

In the salon, the conversation had turned to volcanoes. "The BANG we almost didn't avoid," Abebe Jideani was saying, "was Atom-Sphere’s attempt to blow a real volcano." Tash agreed emphatically. João Sergio and Wu were silent. Inga, still at the top of the stairs, looked uncertain.

Marta jumped in, "I know we don't all agree," she ventured, "but I do and, anyway, I think even the possibility warranted the fight."

Slipping into a chair, Inga spoke quietly, "I don't know... it was such a high-risk strategy..." her voice trailed off.

By the window, looking out, Qi looked and sounded stiff, "I thought you were all crazy... really over the top. I still don't believe anybody was trying to take on global warming by blowing up that volcano in Tanzania. At most, that was just a test run where they hoped the nano bomb experiment would go unnoticed. But," he went on, awkwardly indecisive, "given the other technological failures all around the consortia, it made economic sense – it made business sense – there was a chance they could have got away with it." He turned from the window looking around the room. His gaze fell briefly on the sleeping baby, "I know they still vilify you for it,

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but you CSOs wear sackcloth very well." He sat down beside Anita picking up a book on the side table, "and Anita is stunning in sackcloth".

The tide of debate ebbed and flowed around the candle-lit room, swinging from attacks on corporations to jabs at civil society and swirling around the need to build resiliency and community. More papers were moved and sifted and more of the coffee table was liberated for competing pots of coffee, tea and bottles of Scotch and wine. There were times when Qi Qubìng and Wu Suyuan seemed on the verge of war and, as the hours progressed, more times when the anger in her voice harmonized with the sadness in his and the two seemed somehow close.

Occasionally, the conversation splintered as Abebe, Marta and João compared notes on rural organizing or as Tash pulled Anita and Inga into strategies for some upcoming UN conferences they would all attend. Much of the time, they laughed together – as often gossiping as organizing.

But, Anita and Qi had to be at Arlanda Airport early in the morning and Wu and Alitash not much later – and the little baby was awake and hungry. With a happy tiredness, they helped Inga clean up the salon and wash the dishes in the kitchen. Those who weren’t staying with Inga were staying at a little hotel by the river. Inga proposed a final toast. Qi grabbed the game bird by its neck and poured for everyone.

As they stood together on the steps outside with their coats on, Inga raised her glass to the group; “To the people!” she saluted. “To Pachamama!” Marta added tactfully pouring the spirit onto the ground. They clinked glasses, drank briefly and forged their separate pathways through the bright, clean snow.

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aaaa On

Changing Course and

The Half-Full Hourglass Making is harder than breaking. Construction is slow; destruction is swift. That's why there is a Precautionary Principle – caution trumps risk taking – most of the time. But, this could also mean that we – as a species – are hardwired to perceive danger and less able to discern opportunity. If so, China Sundown might be too cynical and, perhaps too, the cumulative import of our three Course Change scenarios could "tip" much more than the gathering in The Old House assumes. Thirty years – even 100 – is only a snapshot in humanity's long struggle for peace and justice. We can't be certain if the changes we see around us are tipping events, transient, or just a few wobbly steps toward a shifting destination. In looking for a better future, we need to first check our looking glasses. Do we have the right perspective? Is the glass halfempty or half-full? Or, is it, anyway, an hourglass?

Looking glass wars?

Through the more than half-full looking glass: The End of the World has been coming for a very long time. We could conclude that Armageddon is a tardy creature that has, thus far, missed innumerable curtain calls. Pessimists who see doom and destruction around every corner have almost always been wrong or exaggerating. As disturbed as I am about the immediate decades ahead, I have some sympathy for Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist, cclx who’s looking glass into our future is at least half-full and filling steadily. His optimism is shared by the Cato Institutecclxi and the redoubtable Chris Patten (another Brit -- probably best known as the last governor of Hong Kong -- but a long-time (unexpectedly liberal) policy wonk for Margaret Thatcher and cabinet minister)) whose 2009 book, dismayingly titled What Next?, conveys a reasoned optimism about our future. Without denying the threat of climate change, the risk of nuclear annihilation or the unacceptability of hunger and poverty, Ridley and Patten still see humanity advancing if not throughout history at least over the last couple of hundred years and especially over the last half century. Since 1800, Ridley points out, world population has grown six fold while average life expectancy has more than doubled and average real income has risen nine times plus.

Living longer and healthier? Comparing the half-century between 1955 and 2005, Ridley continues, the average person made nearly three times as much money (inflation adjusted), ate one-third more calories (waistline adjusted), lived one-third longer and lost one-third fewer children. Over the 50 years, real per capita income dipped in only six states, life expectancy in three, and infant mortality either stayed steady or improved everywhere. Nepal's infant mortality rate today is better than Italy's in 1951. South Koreans live 26 years longer and earn 15 times more than in 1955`and - across the Pacific -- Mexicans live longer than Britons in 1955.

Nigerians live nine years longer and the Chinese live 28 years longer than they did in 1955. For all my concerns about hunger and pandemics, Ridley argues that life expectancy in the world’s healthiest countries continues to increase at a steady rate of a quarter of a year per annum.

According to the optimist, we are not only living longer but much healthier. Despite cancers and obesity, heart attacks and strokes, these scourges arrive later in life (in OECD states, at least)

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than they used to a half-century ago and at least some of the menaces of old age are in decline.

Deaths from stroke fell by 70% between 1950 and 2000 in the USA and Europe, for example.

Global benefits? The global South grew their consumption in the first two decades of the neoliberal dominance (1980 -- 2000) twice as fast as the world as a whole. In fact, Matt Ridley sites a United Nations source that estimates that poverty has declined more in the last fifty years than in the previous 500. Since the 1950s, the percentage of the world population living in absolute poverty has dropped by more than half - to less than 18%. Chinese workers also earn 10 times more and Nigerians are twice as rich. Workers in Botswana today earn as much as the average Finn in 1955.

According to Ridley, the European or North American middle class of 1955 would today be described as `below the poverty line'. The average British workingman in 1957 was earning less in real terms than his 2005 counterpart (on welfare with three children). Today, of “poor" US citizens, 99% have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95% have a television, 88% a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70% air conditioning. Matt Ridley cites the Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek with enthusiasm, `once the rise in the position of the lower classes gathers speed, catering to the rich ceases to be the main source of great gain and gives place to efforts directed towards the needs of the masses.' Thus, also, saith Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

Technological progress? Optimists place their faith in capitalism, globalization and (especially) the march and market of technological progress. Good health, improved nutrition, and speed, ease and cheapness are generally ascribed to technology. Technology: says Ridley, has even been a boon to justice. To date he tells us, 234 innocent Americans have been freed as a result of DNA analysis after serving an average of twelve years in prison. Genomics saved 17 from death row.cclxii Time-honoured transitions (and new technologies)? In the first decade of the 21st century, say the optimist, humanity also knows its world better. As late as the mid-1800s, a stagecoach journey from Paris to Bordeaux cost the equivalent of a clerk's monthly wages; today (with a whack of new technological options) the journey costs a day or so and is fifty times as fast. A three-minute phone call from New York to Los Angeles cost ninety hours of work at the average wage in 1910; today it costs less than two minutes. A kilowatthour of electricity cost an hour of work in 1900 and five minutes today.

Faster food? A half-gallon of milk cost the average American 10 minutes of work in 1970, but only seven minutes in 1997. In the 1950s it took thirty minutes work, to earn the price of a McDonald's cheeseburger; today it takes three minutes. (Exactly how these factoids fit into the positive column is hard to fathom -- either for peasants or consumers.)

Environmental improvements? The Rational Optimist -- and many others -- also see considerable environmental improvement over the last half-century. In Europe and the USA, Ridley tells us, "‌ rivers, lakes, seas and the air are getting cleaner all the time. The Thames has less fesces and more fish. Lake Erie's water snakes, on the brink of extinction in the 1960s, are now abundant. Bald eagles have boomed. Pasadena has few patches of smog. Swedish birds'

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eggs have 75% fewer pollutants in them than in the 1960s…" when Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring". US carbon monoxide emissions from transport are down 75% in 25 years. Today, a car emits less pollution travelling at full throttle than an idling jalopy in the mid-80s. Although not a climate denier, Matt Ridley warns us that environmentalists can both over-react and get things wrong altogether. His prime example is the response to acid rain in the 1980s when German and Swedish environmentalists (and their governments) panicked that the last tree in Germany would be gone by 2002 and that Scandinavian forests, too, were marching to their doom. Counterpart environmentalists in Canada and the United States predicted the same demise for the forests on the eastern seaboard as well as for at least 50% of lakes. In the end, Ridley states, forest biomass in Sweden actually increased during the 1980s, Germany's forests soldier on, and only 4% of lakes in the eastern United States suffered any ill effects from acid rain. He acknowledges that the prompt adoption of legislation in Europe and North America did ease the danger but insists that the whole issue was massively overblown by-the 700 environmental scientists who chased after the nearly half-billion dollars in grant money governments ponied up to combat acid rain.

Narrowing the gap? And, Ridley tells us; we are all getting smarter together. The spread of IQ scores has been shrinking steadily - because the low scores have been gaining on the high ones.

Average IQs are improving by 3% per decade -- less because of better educational opportunities and more because of better nutrition and more diversified childhood experience, Ridley says.

Through the (more than) half-empty looking glass? So, if the techno-optimists have got their facts right, what's the fuss?

No one should be surprised that the increasingly global Human Web during the last half millennium or so -- with its continuous and intense coming together of peoples and cultures -has stimulated an acceleration in all kinds of directions -- including human opportunities. The simple transfer of crops and livestock between the continents has massively impacted -positively and negatively -- food and health. Our widespread appreciation of clean water and sanitation is making a huge difference to our well-being. The diffusion of information – at least 129 million books between Gutenberg’s bible and Zuckerburg’s Facebook -- has expanded our possibilities enormously. This should not be surprising. What we have the right to condemn is that despite the phenomenal opportunities created by human networking, we continue to have so much hunger, poverty, disease and ecological destruction. There is no excuse for a billion hungry people and more than 2 billion people without adequate sanitation today. We could have done -could be doing -- so much better.

As significantly, the "acceleration" (of progress and problems) has gone off in all directions. The human web has accelerated many benefits but it has also -- for the first time in history -accelerated our potential for disaster. Human self-destructiveness in the form of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, environmental collapse and global warming have also accelerated.

Four caveats: The optimists’ enthusiasm for the trendline suffers from four major problems: First, their data depends heavily upon averages -- hopefully assuming that the disparity between those richest in a country is not so great from those poorest. This is rarely the case and even Matt

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Ridley concedes that income inequality has increased in the UK and USA since the ascendancy of Reagan and Thattcher.

And this relates to the second problem: timing. Optimists tend to cling to examples where the years compared are questionable -- South Korea after civil war for example - or the price drop for new telephones, computers or pocket calculators between the year of introduction and any year after. The increase in GM crop area since 1995 (there were no GM fields before) is, of course, "astronomical".

The third problem is context or attribution. Most historians concur that the economy and equality both boomed for much of the world between the end of World War II and the mid or late 1970s.

Income gaps narrowed, access to education improved, and there were major gains in life expectancy and, in general, health. The very important gains in these two largely came through much earlier investments in public sanitation that paid off in declines in childhood diseases.

Almost all of these improvements, incidentally, came prior to the modern era of vaccinations and antibiotics. The most notable feature of recent decades, in fact, is the spreading stagnation in positive societal benefits. The number of US citizens below the poverty line increased between 2005 and 2009cclxiii and is now increasing again with at least 45 million Americans lining up for food stamps. cclxiv The techno-optimists are also sanguine about the depletion of natural resources including fossil fuels and metals. The Limits to Growth, they claim with some justification, grossly underestimated the capacity of market prices to stimulate new technologies to access more resources. The Club of Rome (who initiated the report in the early 70s) underestimated the willingness of the global mining monoliths to lop off a thousand feet of Appelachian mountain tops cclxv and global oil companies to drill, cavallierly, eight thousand feet deep into the Gulf of Mexico cclxvi or to grab savannas and forests for the bogus "carbohydrate economy". To be fair, the ultimate limits to natural resources are unclear but there are, clearly, no Limits to Plunder.

Ridley's environmental optimism -- and his choice of examples -- is (to be generous) wildly incorrect. He may be able to go fishing on the Thames now but 20% of all freshwater fish species and three-quarters of the global fish stocks monitored by FAO are fully-exploited, overexploited, or depleted. But even the fish harvested aren’t doing well: fish biomass has declined 11% since 1977. Vertebrate species numbers have fallen by an average of one-third between 1970 and 2006. Bald eagles may be soaring and Swedish birds may have fewer pollutants but there are also fewer Swedish birds. Farmland bird populations in Europe have declined by more than 50% since 1980, North American grassland bird populations have dropped by about onethird since 1960, and 40% of global bird species are in decline. Great Lake snakes may be getting on swimmingly but salt marshes, important as natural storm barriers and as habitats for shorebirds, have lost some 25% of the area they originally covered globally. The loss is estimated between one and 2% per annum. Globally, 85% of oyster reefs have been lost.

And the optimists are missing a major economic reality. The real reason for the 6% decline in industrial pollution in Europe between 1990 and 2008 was the increase in industrial pollution elsewhere. One third of China’s pollution, for example, comes from the manufacture of products that will go to OECD consumers. If outsourced pollution is taken into account, then Europe's

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emissions have climbed 6% over 1990 -- 2008.cclxvii While some “gaps” may be narrowing in some places, they are widening in others. Patriarchy, for example, is booming. In 1990, Amartya Sen estimated the total global infanticide of females at 100 million. In China the gender imbalance was 108 boys to 100 girls for the generation born in the late 1980s; today’s generation (thanks to the unanticipated consequences of ultrasound technology) is 124 to 100.cclxviii The Economist says India loses 600,000 infant girls to new technologies every year. cclxix Ridley's claim that strokes in the United States – and all forms of cardiovascular disease -- now cause 70% fewer deaths needs closer examination. Post 1977, US citizens shifted their diets from fats to carbs (fats declined from 42% of caloric intake in 1977 to 34% in 1995), but, Michael Pollan tells us, US citizens didn’t cut their fat intake; they ate more of other things. Consumption of saturated fats did decline but was replaced by polyunsaturated fats and trans fats. As Pollan records, "after peaking in 1969, deaths from heart disease fell by 50% in the US “ But, a 10 year study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1998 strongly suggests that the decline in deaths, identified by Ridley, has not meant a decline in heart disease. Hospital admissions for heart attack have not dropped;cclxx emergency rooms are just getting better at resuscitation.

More than 50 years ago Rene Dubos showed that the hygiene movement in Europe and North America launched an era of improved health without the benefit of scientific reasoning or improved technologies. Although German measles and polio grew more serious with better sanitation, most other common diseases went into steep decline beginning in the second half of the 19th century -- long before there were available antibiotics or vaccines. Even measles has gone into decline although there are no medical strategies to fend off the disease. cclxxi Triumphal tech? Yes, genomic technologies have saved a few US prisoners from the gallows -but, doubts are being raised now about the accuracy of DNA analysis as we learn more and more about the shortcomings of once scientifically-trusted technologies like fingerprinting and lie detectors. The bigger question, of course, remains why are there 2 1/2 million people incarcerated in the US at all? If the US prison population were one city, it would rank fourth in numbers -- just behind New York Chicago and Los Angeles.

Multinational monopolies and globalization may have cut the time it takes to purchase a half gallon of cow’s milk from 10 minutes to seven and a beefburger from 30 minutes to three but Matt Ridley fails to address the cow’s other uses. In Kolowa, Kenya in 1986, Chris Patten tells us, it took 15 cows to buy an AK-47. In 2005 it took only five cows. And, worldwide, healthcare and education costs more in terms of hours worked now than in the 1950s.

Anyway, Matt Ridley's ability to foretell the future has a bad track record. He was, after all, chair of the board of Northern Rock when the British bank went belly up at the beginning of the financial crisis.cclxxii The optimists have one incontrovertible point: not everything is bad and nothing is hopeless. We can have a much better future. The rich have been on a binge for the last several decades --

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several centuries. Lest we forget, the world's 500 million richest people (who all earn more than the average American) constitute just 7% of the population but contribute 50% of GHGs. And, as Third World Network warns us, the poorest 3.1 billion people are responsible for only 5-10% of emissions. So, we know where to go to make the changes But, the looking glass isn't going to look any better unless we challenge a couple of conventional assumptions. First, no technology (good or bad) is inevitable. Second, the path to a better world Is neither straight, nor flat, nor consistent. We in civil society may even now be at one -- or several -- “tipping points” where great change is possible.

Aaa Techno "Tips": The inevitability of technological “progress” There is an overwhelming assumption in most of our societies that the triumph of a new technology is inevitable – that once conjured, it will be constructed, and once constructed, it will be consumed. This is simply not true. History is full of examples of where – for good reasons and bad – for decades, for centuries, for now or forever – technologies have been halted. The “rightfulness” of technological inevitability is so entrenched that it is important to document and understand how – and why – some technologies have been defeated or delayed.

Ideas whose time hadn’t come? Technologies that, today, seem obviously valuable, have gone unused or were adopted only to be discarded later. Ancient Roman pottery has been unearthed that depict African peasants ploughing with a horse harness never used in Rome. Roman peasants made do with a much inferior yoke for oxen that wasted time and fodder. Perhaps, the African technology was ignored because the Romans had legions of slaves and weren't concerned with labour-saving devices. The cheap abundance of slaves could also be why the Romans may have made limited use of waterwheels. The technology (first developed in China and then advanced in Persia) was known and available, and the efficiencies of waterwheels for grinding grain were manifest. The hills and rivers of Italy's apian spine were ideal but the technology was underexploited.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the Chinese boasted a world-beating armada of huge double-hulled junks that could have (and, perhaps, did) circumnavigate the planet. A few decades later, they scuttled the fleet. Why? Most obviously, their resources were redirected to the threat of invasion on their land frontier but, perhaps, the decision to withdraw from the oceans was made easier because the Chinese found nothing much out there of interest?

The Chinese also invented paper and block type but neither invention achieved the importance they earned in Europe in the 15th century. Paper and printing blossomed in Europe after the Black Death at a time of scarce labour and political and religious foment when mass communication served many interests. An idea whose coming was timely. China's emperors and mandarins had no such need.cclxxiii Or, perhaps, like their Arab counterparts, Chinese scribes may have lobbied successfully against the competition.cclxxiv Lost and found ideas: Sometimes good insights or ideas run afoul of perceived professional wisdom. Sometimes, to, they get lost. As long ago as 1546, for example, Girolamo Fracastoro

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argued that diseases could be caused by contagious germs. A century and a half later, Giovanni Bonomo returned to the point insisting that diseases were transmitted from person to person via miniscule organisms. It took another couple of hundred years before anybody paid attention. In 1795: Scottish physician Alexander Gordon suggested that puerperal fever in women undergoing obstetric examination might be prevented if doctors and midwives just washed their hands. It took most of a century -- and tens of thousands of women's lives as well as the efforts of two other researchers - to get the medical profession to listen.cclxxv Two generations before Darwin penned The Origin of Species, other researchers reached the same conclusion at least about the origin of dogs. Then the idea somehow slipped away… cclxxvi the flying shuttle was found in 1749 and then lost and found once more.cclxxvii Napoleon’s army accidentally rediscovered lost pottery technologies during the Emperor’s Egyptian campaign.cclxxviii And, sometimes things aren't so much lost as the victim of subjective amnesia. We tend to think that innovations happen in cities and then are shared with our country cousins. The reverse is equally true. The difference is that the records are kept in the cities. It's the winners who write history.cclxxix Economic historian, Joel Mokyr, has given us a long list of examples where scientific or technological advances were slowed because of the refusal of other scientists to accept inconvenient truths. In his 2002 book, The Gifts of Athena, Mokyr writes, “Among the most famous examples are Tycho Brahe's denial of the Copernican system, Einstein's resistance to quantum theory, Priestley's refusal to give up his belief in phlogiston, Claude Bernard's opposition to any use of statistics in medicine, Kelvin's adherence to the indivisibity of the atom and rejection of Maxwell's electromagnetics, von Liebig's denial of Pasteur's proof that fermentation was a biological and not a chemical process, and James Watt's stubborn resistance to the workability of high-pressure engines.” cclxxx Ideas that missed the boat: The New England whaling industry collapsed instead of taking up the new harpoon and refrigeration technologies developed by the Scandinavians.cclxxxi The US Navy and Air Force fought over systems of meteorological monitoring that caused decades of delay in improving weather mapping technologies. cclxxxii Above water, engineers spent 40 years squabbling over the merits of lattice versus tubular bridges. In the name of "sound science" and at considerable risk to everyone crossing on or under them, opponents deliberately distorted evidence to champion their interests.cclxxxiii Ideas whose offer can’t be refused: Sometimes, profitable or promising technologies are abandoned for (purportedly) more attractive alternatives, or for BANG member offers, "that can't be refused." Although electric cars, for example, ran well into the 1920s – and offered some important benefits over internal combustion engines – intense pressure from the new petroleum industry drove both electric cars and steam cars off the roads. It is only now – most of a century later – that researchers are resuming the discarded efforts of earlier inventors to find new ways to improve steam and battery technologies for transportation.

Sometimes technological improvements are halted for what now appear to be the most trivial of reasons. In the early 1970s, Air France used its political clout to block the development of France's Aero train – a high-speed, energy-efficient jet train technology whose experimental line was to connect Parisian travelers to the Orley and Charles de Gaulle airports. But, Air France had

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invested in a fleet of buses that monopolized passenger travel to the airports so the technology was mothballed.cclxxxiv Aside from steam engines and electric cars the last century saw almost total scientific neglect of human-powered mechanical devices, non-recreational bicycles and tricycles and dirigibles and sailing ships. Although global warming and "peak oil" are combining to attract new research into solar and wind power today, we have lost virtually a century of research time that – if it had not been abandoned – could have made our world a much better place right now. The withdrawal of investigation from these fields was not merely serendipitous for the petroleum, coal and nuclear industries. In fact, huge state and private investments in wind and solar power in the 1970s only crashed because oil prices went down and government subsidies dried up.

Ideas not in a “class” of their own: Changes in household lighting over the last two centuries marched to the beat of a different drummer. The availability of servants and aspects of family culture (echoes of the Romans with their slaves) meant that many upper-class British and American households who could afford the technology were slow to adopt electric lighting. cclxxxv But tardiness in accepting new technologies isn’t just for the upper crust, in the lean years following World War II, and in sharp contrast with the consumerism overwhelming their neighbor to the south, young Canadian women voluntarily eschewed automatic washers in favour of labour-intensive ringer-washers, we are told, out of a sense of economic and environmental responsibility. cclxxxvi Hard-driving ideas: US car companies were well aware that their drive to keep production costs low and profits high endangered their customers at least as far back as 1937 when the first attempts were made to do simple things like pad dashboards. Nevertheless, in Senate testimony in 1965, a Ford president, argued that his company's rigid steering column was actually a safety device because it limited the forward motion of the driver in an accident. One angry senator pointed out the obvious: that 50,000 drivers had skewered themselves on Ford's little safety feature.cclxxxvii A year later, Detroit's big automakers got into a tussle over the first generation of antilock brakes. The rivalry and secrecy kept the life-saving improvement sub-optimal until the early Seventies.cclxxxviii Despite public pressure, Detroit kept on stalling on everything from seatbelts to airbags well into the 1980s and continues to block other health and environmental safety technologies today.

The automobile industry has been notoriously slow to improve its energy technology. Ford's Model T., for example, got 25 miles to the gallon when it was introduced in 1913 but the efficiency of US cars hardly improved between the 1930s and the 1970s when soaring oil prices encouraged the doubling of US auto efficiency to almost 28 miles per gallon. US enthusiasm for energy efficiency dissipated with lower oil prices, however and by 1985 the mpg was on a downward trend reaching 22 mpg in 2006. Europe, on the other hand, demands 47 miles per gallon.

If soaring to the efficiencies of a 1913 model T. seems underwhelming, consider Nikola Tesla’s patent on an alternating current induction motor which Toyota says is three times more efficient than the standard direct current engine. Beyond its impressive efficiencies, Tesla’s electric motor doesn't require neodymium – a scarce, expensive and toxic rare earth. This breakthrough should

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make Tesla a rich man except that he got his patent in 1888. cclxxxix Legend has it that Thomas Edison didn't want Tesla's AC technology to undercut his DC Empire. The moral? Big money can beat a good idea -- at least for a century or so.

Bombshell ideas: We too easily assume that the military search for the high ground leads generals and admirals to try out anything and everything. Not always. The Egyptians knew about iron metallurgy for centuries without trying to adapt it to their own civilization. An iron dagger was buried with King Tutankhamen in 1339 BCE, for example, but it wasn't until the Assyrians shattered the Egyptian’s bronze-age shields with their iron-age swords in the 660’s -- nearly 700 years later -- that the Pharaoh’s war cabinet got the message.ccxc Why, the Egyptian militaryindustrial establishment might have asked, bother to retool when there isn't any competition?

There is an urban legend that Europe conquered the world because no one else had guns and gunpowder. Not entirely. Beginning in the 1540s, the Japanese adopted European cannon and guns with alacrity and used them to great effect for most of a century, before abandoning the technology. Centuries later, relics of the Japanese arms industry are seen to be superior to European guns of the same era. But, after using guns to consolidate their island empire, the Japanese samurai nobility found it just too embarrassing - after a lifetime of duelling and jousting - to be shot off their horses by peasants with guns and no training. Not that guns were prohibited. They just didn't fit the culture and gradually – over a century – faded away into family heirlooms.ccxci The Japanese rejection of guns is not a singular experience. In the same decade that Portuguese seamen showed off their muskets to the Japanese, victorious Songhai cavalry (in present-day Mali and Niger) threw captured Moroccan muskets into the Niger River believing (like their chivalrous oriental counterparts) that firearms were unmanly. Only the Borno, at the end of the 16th century (on the savannas south of Lake Chad) used guns, but limited this use to Borno’s fighting slaves and Ottoman mercenaries. Even these muskets were discarded by the 17 th century.ccxcii Some Islamic authorities disallowed the use of the mangonel, the giant siege catapult, because it was seen as an unconscionable weapon of mass destruction.ccxciii Technologies have been rejected out of matter of national pride. Russian generals, for instance, refused to adopt smokeless gunpowder technologies patented in other countries. They wanted their own smokeless gunpowder or none at all. Unless you’ve fired a musket lately, the subtle point here is that smoke means wasted energy and contributes to the original “fog of battle” making it hard for commanders and captains to see their enemy. . After being blown out of the water by the Japanese, the Russian admirals relented.ccxciv This isn't a Russian thing -- nothing to do with Czars or Troitkas. US admirals resisted the deployment of rapid-fire cannon on destroyers until their Commander-in-Chief cracked the whip and force them to accept the technology on the eve of World War II. Likewise, the US Air Force and Navy fought over competing systems of meteorological monitoring delaying weather mapping efficiencies by decades.ccxcv Some technologies just don't seem to fit with the military psyche. Toward the close of the Napoleonic wars, in 1811 the British Admiralty contemplated (and rejected) blowing asphixiants

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from their warships to suffocate land-based armies. The British Navy also considered (and again rejected) the use of chemicals in the Crimea. But, after World War I, generals grew less squeamish: the British dropped gas bombs on the Afghans in 1920 and the French used chemicals against the Moroccans in 1925.ccxcvi Military technologies can occasionally wreak havoc when transferred to civilian use. In 1953, US President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program encouraged the infant commercial nuclear power industry to adopt US Navy nuclear submarine standards which gave priority to power plants that were compact and required less refueling -- two qualities irrelevant to the commercial industry. The dumb decision Caused enormous difficulties for the industry. By the 1970s, the nuclear companies were confronted with a new regulation every single day and these transaction expenses and cost overruns forced the near-collapse of one of the world’s most powerfully backed technologies. The industry, of course, looked like it was gearing up for a second run as the “clean, environmentally-friendly” energy source at the beginning of this century and then along came Fukushima and the industry's future is once again in doubt.

It may seem counterintuitive to modern folklore but many military historians argue that technology takes a backseat to other agendas. By some estimates, there have been between 21 and 23 of what historians call “Revolutions in Military Affairs" (RMAs). Surprisingly, historians rarely anchor the introduction of these revolutions to new technologies.ccxcvii Preventive creation: The textile industry is generally seen to have led the Industrial Revolution.

Yet, neither science nor technology played the pivotal role in its explosive development that some historians have claimed. Because of their heavy investments in plantation production and transportation systems for natural colorants, entrepreneurs – and many scientists – were reluctant to move to synthetic dyes. ccxcviii Neither was the expansion of the textile industry due to steam power. In fact, old-fashioned and inexpensive waterwheels outperformed steam engines for 60 years – well into the 1840s.ccxcix The lumber industries of both Norway and Sweden had the same experience. Steam power was an idea whose time had not quite come in Scandinavia.

The same story played out in North America. In the 1960s, my father was the sales director of the Singer Sewing Machine company’s Western Canadian division. I remember him returning from a trip to Toronto where he had been given a tour of the company's research facilities. He had been amazed to see models of sewing machines much superior to those he was selling. The inventions, he was told, were being kept in reserve to counter anticipated Japanese challengers.

The strategy was to exhaust the commercial sales potential of each invention before bringing on new innovations. Just like the Bronze Age Egyptians, why retool your manufacturing only to undercut your own product sales?

This is, of course, standard industrial strategy. North America began adopting HDTV (HighDefinition Television) and 3G cell phones long years after the technologies were commercialized in Europe and Asia. US companies thought the requisite industrial restructuring a bother when the markets for old-fashioned but big-screen TVs and less data-friendly mobiles were not yet sated.ccc

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Contrary to media messaging, the "slow-mode movement” has a long history in the communications industry. After all, we are all still using QWERTY keyboards – initially designed by typewriter companies to slow us down and prevent keys from jamming. Half a century after IBM's typing ball and Apple's computer made the slow keyboards inefficient, we are still thumbing along.

Industry’s argument, of course, is that customers didn't want change -- and, the customer is always right. Yet, since IBM's typing ball, Canadians have been forced metric and Swedes have been made to cross the road into right-hand driving – huge inconveniences to customers.

America's VHS system marginalized and eliminated Betamax even though Sony’s Betamax system was technologically superior.ccci Sometimes new technologies just fall flat on their face. Like AT&T's Picturephone of the late 1960s-early 1970s, that was either too expensive or too invasive for the consumers of forty years ago;cccii hard to believe in today's era of two-way cell phone cameras and Skype video conferencing. In the early days of commercial radio in the United States, the blossoming radio networks insisted upon radio frequency technology that, they claimed, would offer consumers clear sound that was not garbled. Europe went another route. Only recently have historians exposed the truth. The US radio frequency model didn't increase sound quality. Its sole merit was that it reduced competition and facilitated national networks.ccciii This technological foot dragging holds true even when worker or customer safety is at stake.

Famously, US icemakers continued to use freon gas despite a long and horrific succession of spectacular fires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – even when they knew that a safer chemical was available in Europe. Likewise, steamers on the Mississippi and coastal steamers employed outmoded engine boilers – their manufacturers resisted government regulation – despite many tragic and costly explosions.

In it's groundbreaking report, "Late Lessons From Early Warnings" ccciv, the European Environmental Bureau documents example after example where industrialists or their cartels employed every strategy, from lying to bribery, to delay the inevitable replacement of hazardous chemicals or processes. On average, the big companies managed to stall “good” technological advances by thirty years.

Doctors, for example, first warned against the indiscriminate use of x-rays (especially for "skin whitening" and shoe sizing) in 1896 but the first curbs against the practice weren’t imposed until 1928. I remember being x-rayed for shoes as a child in department stores in Canada in the 1950s.

It required almost an epidemic among Turkish leather workers in the 1960s to restrict benzene use, but the first medical warnings came in 1897, and real change didn't come into force until 1977, following a 10-year battle with industry.

In 1898, one year after the first x-ray risk reports, medical experts expressed alarm over asbestos.

Action wasn’t taken for another 33 years, and European regulators still anticipate another 250,000 – 400,000 asbestos-related deaths in the decades ahead. Opposition to asbestos

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regulation came from Turner Bros. Company and a cartel that still makes it possible for some forms of asbestos to be exported from Canada to the global South today.

Monsanto, once a major supplier of PCBs, withheld medical evidence, thus allowing continued use of the carcinogen until 1972. The early warnings began in 1899. Although the warnings against chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) came in 1938, an intense lobby led by DuPont kept the greenhouse gas emitting chemicals on the market until 1997.

Likewise, Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, fought against the removal of DES (an animal growth hormone) for 33 years, after its toxic effect on young women and pregnant mothers was reported in 1938. TBT (Tributyltin), an antifoulant used to paint and protect ships, was quickly shown to be dangerously toxic to oysters and other shellfish – and those who eat them – but it took 12 years – till 1982 – before the paint was abandoned.

Some fights, (including the one over asbestos) are ongoing. Another example is antimicrobials.

The early warning that antimicrobials for livestock might be carcinogenic for humans came in 1945, but the pharmaceutical/veterinary medicine industry has been fighting hard against it ever since. Some restrictions were introduced as early as 1970, but a recent move to ban antimicrobials in the United States evaporated late in 2008.

Cars and carcinogens: Industrial history shows that companies don't allow governments to regulate away a chemical or a process until they have exhausted its use and an economically attractive alternative is available. This is particularly true for the energy and automobile industries that fought tooth and nail to retain sulphur dioxide in fuels despite acid rain concerns as far back as 1952. Regulatory action wasn't taken until 1979, when companies had profitable options.

It took until 2000 (46 years) for regulators to oust MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether), once thought to be a safe substitute for lead in fuels, although the risk of cancer and asthma was first reported in 1954. This should surprise no one. After all, for the half a century before MTBE came along, companies like General Motors and Dow Chemical withheld the truth about lead in car exhausts.cccv The very automobile industry that sought protection from bankruptcy at the end of 2008 has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying against consumer protection over the last five decades even though the technological solutions were on the shelf.

Food safety: In case you've forgotten, the point in all of these examples is to show that new science and technology can be stopped – has been stopped – is stopped all the time. The science that proves that BSE ("Mad Cow Disease") was a real and present danger to British beefeaters was denied and withheld for at least eight years before industry allowed government to act. DDT – one of the world's first pesticides – came on the market in 1947; was shown to be toxic in 1962; but remained in the shops until 1969. Improved methods of detecting food borne pathogens were developed in the US space program before 1960, but the obstruction of food processors blocked their use in regulatory practice for an entire generation.cccvi Chinese scientists and regulators knew that melamine (plastic protein) dosing of their milk supply was systemic at least months – probably years – before they took action. The avoidance

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of "sound science" and the prevention of "improved” technologies is standard practice in our industrialized world.

Workers and society in general have the unassailable right to say no to bad science and bad technologies. And, if a new technology clearly confers some benefits, but also comes with short or medium-term economic risks, for example, those at risk have every right to demand compensation and/or a delay to allow them to adjust to the changing economic environment.

This is the practical response to the late economist, Joseph Schumpeter's famous "creative destruction" theory. Confronted with sudden technological changes, corporations seek state protection from Schumpeter’s destruction all the time.

Phasing in justice: After all, despite collapsing ecosystems, industries are allowed to gradually phase in pollution standards and energy efficiencies just as drug and chemical companies are allowed to phase out hazardous products. This kind of corporate protectionism turns environmental priorities upside down, compromising fundamental common interests. In the long litany of profit protectionism, perhaps none is more grotesque than the deal struck by Caribbean plantation slavers who persuaded their colonial governments to “phase in” the human rights of their chattel. The African slaves were to be granted freedom, but they were obliged to remain on their plantations – with negligible rights – for a period of years to allow the slaveholders and their investors to recoup their investments. The very idea of "phasing in" human rights is a total juridical disgrace.

Yet, when – in the face of nanotechnology or synthetic biology or – in earlier times – synthetic dyes or textile machinery – workers and countries sought time to make the transition to a changed economy, industry insists that they are Luddites, standing in the way of inevitable technological progress.

Listening to the Sounds of Science? Whenever a diplomat or lobbyist invokes, "sound science", the hair stands up on the back of my neck and my hand reaches out for a plausible projectile. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term used in intergovernmental negotiations where it wasn’t intended to imply that only the speaker -- or her country, company or class -- has access to "sound science" and everybody else in the meeting climbed out of our family tree prematurely.

"Sound science" only appears in debates when we are about to be lied to. This is not to say that there are not thousands of good scientists nor to deny either the importance or the reliability of proven scientific principles. But, when science meets politics, politics wins every time. Even with the best of intentions, good scientists find their best work slandered or shelved or (worse!) distorted beyond forensic recognition. There is, for example, a sweet naïveté among those physical scientists who believe that common sense can prevail and that their modest proposals for geoengineering experiments won't pivot into political proclamations that science has sounded the demise of global warming and the reprise of gross consumerism.

This is the same "sound science" that allows lead to seep into our children's toys and paints; lets BP oil paint the Gulf of Mexico; allows nanoparticles into our fields and foods; and assures us that yellow cake uranium isn’t weaponizablecccvii and that the world's governments agree that the 1500 whales slaughtered annually by Japan, Norway and Iceland are solely for "scientific research".cccviii

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There are 10 billion different products for sale in New York or London. cccix These 10 billion are made from 10 million different materials cccx including about 100 thousand chemicals cccxi - most of them quite new. All of the above, however, are made from just a hundred or so elements in the periodic table. cccxii At the living end of nature, the world's 10 million or so species are all variations on a theme of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon - with a little sugar and phosphate thrown in for taste. The complexities, conjugations, and complications of all of these chemicals, materials and products acting together – many of the combinations only a generation old – cries out for cautious humility not callous hubris. "Sound science?" Give me a break!

Aaa Power tips: The People, united… ?

Aside from the presumed "inevitability" of technological triumphs, the second false assumption is that we, the people, must always lose. Not so. We win sometimes. "Tipping” can be good.

History has many examples where the launching of new cultural memes has been beneficial.

Well-memeing: Late in 2008, as my plane touched down in Davao, Mindanao Island, the Philippines, the pilot announced that not only was there no smoking in the terminal – but no smoking in the city. Neth Dano (an old friend and ally now with ETC Group) told me that the city has also banned pesticides. Thirty years ago, the airline that landed me in the Philippines didn’t even have non-smoking seats. What Davao did about smoking as a city, Kenya did as a country – as have Ireland and Italy. It was only ten years ago that the tobacco industry finally confessed that smoking causes cancer.

The anti-tobacco meme is not historically unique. After millennia, slavery became internationally unacceptable in less than a century. Torture is at least as entrenched but became morally repugnant in the early 20 th century (though hardly extinct). cccxiii The notion that women's rights were equal to men's took longer but became a social "given" within a generation. Global rejection of capital punishment (although still glaringly persistent in some countries) became nearly universal in three decades. Corporal punishment - in schools or by parents - went from the commonplace when I was strapped in grade school to the criminal by the time I reached high school. The long-standing and dreadful hostility to same-sex relationships is becoming unacceptable within my lifetime. (Even in the USA, at the end of 2010, one of Barack Obama’s few notable successes was Congress’s acceptance of gays in the military.)

Of course no meme works perfectly – or, necessarily forever. The UN says there are 28 million slaves today (probably more than ever before in history though – also probably – the lowest percentage of humanity in history), the US government publicly (and many others privately) condones torture, child labour and sexual abuse are far from eradicated and the companies that used to sell us nicotine have segued into peddling obesity. (And, yes, I know, the annual death rate from smoking is expected to double as the addiction spreads through Asia. But even in China, the handwriting is on the Great Wall.) The point is that we now have global social norms that condemn many practices and we sometimes even have workable legislation that constrains human rights violations.

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Many of these changes began with the deliberate introduction of new cultural memes in the form of novels, songs, poetry, paintings, photographs or mythologies that grew into iconic truths.cccxiv Given the depressing trend line of China sundown and the less-than-triumphal conclusions of the Course Changes stories, a cautious recounting of a few of our more-or-less successful memes is in order...

Torture has been abolished many times. It was prohibited in the English Magna Carta almost 800 years ago cccxv but was standard practice elsewhere. By the 16th century, while governments’ right to torture was unquestioned, jurists were clearly moving to constrain its practice. Then, in 1766, the unquestionable suddenly became the unthinkable when Voltaire turned one outrageous abuse in southern France into a cause célèbre with a single passionate essay. Sweden abolished torture six years later and Bohemia and Austria followed four years after that. By the time the French Revolution officially abolished torture in 1789 the meme was already in place. The new American republic soon followed and the British, guiltily dusting off their Magna Carta, concluded it was bad form to roast ladies on spits. Did it take Europe half a millennium to eschew torture or, once the tipping point was reached, was the gruesome practice defeated in the three decades between 1766 and 1789? Should the credit go to poets and dreamers (Voltaire’s essay)) or should it go to politicians (Voltaire's friend, Frederick the Great of Prussia, who abolished torture on his lands a dozen years before the incident in France)? Torture was always loathed. Perhaps the revolutionary wind of the 18th century was the pressure needed to turn it into the bad idea whose time was done.

Death penalty: Single transformations can cascade into social revolutions. It could be argued that – in the struggle for Human Rights – the abolition of torture was an easier win than most.

But a 25-year-old Italian aristocrat named Cesare Beccaria led a campaign against both torture and the death penalty beginning in 1764 – two years before Voltaire and two centuries before most of the world paid attention. (Cynics are quick to point out that William the Conqueror abolished the death penalty -except in times of war - 1000 years earlier.) It was only after World War II that government after government, sickened by the bloodshed of war, renounced capital punishment. By 1975, almost all of the world’s so-called democracies had abolished the death penalty. (Yes, it's true, capital punishment still reigns in the United States, China, Indonesia and Malaysia and several other countries – but its use is much more restricted.) Even in bloodthirsty California, while there were 714 inmates on death row in 2011, only 13 have been executed since the mid-70s.cccxvi Again, there is a "tipping effect".

On morality and myopia: This is not to pretend that revolutionary "tippers" don't have blind spots. It was an American abolitionist who, in 1841, encouraged neighbors to snitch on their friends and hired private snoops to establish the first credit-rating system. cccxvii Sir Thomas More wanted free speech for parliamentarians but not an English-language Bible that might let ordinary people interpret religion for themselves. Another Brit, Sir Edward Coke’s ruled that the law was above the king -- and then went back to groveling for Royal favours. David Hume, another Brit -- and one of his country’s greatest advocates for liberty --, thought Africans were “naturally inferior”. Another staunch freedom fighter, John Wilkes, was famously licentious and equally dedicated to liberating other people’s wallets. In the 19th century, the cutting edge of British democracy might have been Walter Bagehot, founding editor of the Economist, who was prepared to grant the franchise to the middle class but no further.cccxviii Men aren’t uniquely myopic. On Parliament Hill in Ottawa there stand statues of three women who brought Canada

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female suffrage. One of them, Nelly McClung (maiden name, Mooney) won the vote for women in the Province of Manitoba and led Canada’s delegation to the League of Nations. She was also a eugenicist who presided over the forced sterilization of the poor, orphaned and mentally ill.

Democracy: Have we seen a change in social norms – or just a change in elite tactics? What is democracy, anyway? Athenian democracy was built on slavery. Throughout the centuries, citystates from India to Flanders experimented with greater or lesser degrees of democratic government. Although far from perfect, the American and French Revolutions propelled bourgeois democratic movements in Europe that grew into a political force in the 1830s, and led to the widespread acceptance of universal (male) suffrage by World War I. It was a long time in coming, but the "tipping point" was probably reached in the 1870s. Many critics – myself included – would still argue that the "gang" – especially the corporate media – has eaten away at voting rights and democracy for at least the past three decades. Nevertheless, again, the meme of universal suffrage is established.

There have been times-- centuries past where the shape of democracy has been seen more clearly and sometimes social progress results from “corollary advantage”, for example, when the theocracy versus autocracy juridical battle between England’s Henry II and the Catholic Church inadvertently entrenched Trial by Jury (“friendly friar”?). cccxix Likewise, England’s Magna Carta was intended not to take power from the king and give it to the people but to give it to the barons. Somehow the ‘good old boys’ got carried away and an important step was taken that at least made a better world possible for a few more people than the barons intended.

Sticking with the British example: For two weeks in late 1647, the Putney debates gave the world an extraordinary dialogue on Britain’s future constitution that even ensnared Oliver Cromwell. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the universal right to vote – almost everything was on the table even female suffrage. Although some English women of property had exercised voting rights since the Middle Ages, only John Lilburne, the Puritan leader of the Levellers argued for gender equality in Putney. Oliver Cromwell demurred. cccxx The battle to build and maintain positive social memes is never over. Consider Argentina - where democracy was declared in 1912, rescinded in 1930, rehabilitated in 1946, refuted in 1955, revitalized in 1973, renounced in 1976, reestablished in 1983 and no one is betting that the struggle is behind them.

Slavery and discrimination: Slavery is another example of a practice that has fallen in and out of favour for thousands of years. Yes, there are 28 million slaves today, but we can still argue that the concept of slavery is now unacceptable around the world. The global legal struggle to abolish slavery began in earnest in the 1780s; achieved significant victories in the first decade of the 1800s; was almost universal by the 1840s; and was finally rejected even by the major slaveowning countries of the USA and Brazil, a century after the campaign began. The "tipping point" is clearly between 1800 and the 1830s.

The formal end of slavery doesn't mean an end to racism. Was the "freeing" of 3.9 million slaves at the end of the US Civil War a great victory – or, is it a tragedy that 90 years later a black woman in Alabama could make headlines just by refusing to sit at the back of a bus? Or is it a victory that Rosa Parks’ proud sit turned into the election of Barak Obama a half-century later?

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Cynics can argue that Obama became President thanks to a Perfect Storm – a discredited President leading a despised war in the midst of a desperate economic meltdown combined with an African-American candidate of remarkable poise and rhetorical skill. However, a look back in history could conclude that many or most US presidents have lucked their way to power. Bill Clinton, after all, was a poor southern kid in a single-parent family.) What we have learned, over the years, is that racism and/or “fear of others” is deeply ingrained in our psyches. Three-yearold toddlers will almost invariably gravitate to their own race. Interestingly, toddlers with Williams syndrome (a rare genetic disorder with mild to moderate cognitive impairment) show no evidence of racial discrimination but they do manifest gender bias. cccxxi The fight for justice and equality has many battlefronts and, it is hard to take them all on at once.

The record of the French Revolution serves up the best and worst of our collective tipping experiences. The expansion of human rights in the early days of the revolution was at a dizzying pace. Legislators literally went to work in the morning intent on giving voting rights to Protestants and came home at night, scratching their heads, having enfranchised Jews and ended slavery. In 1791, the French revolutionary government granted equal rights to Jews; in 1792, men without property were enfranchised; and in 1794, they abolished slavery. Yet, in the midst of this euphoria over liberty and equality, it somehow never occurred to men to liberate women.cccxxii Indeed, the revolutionary fervor to eradicate the guild system robbed many women of very important economic rights. Neither did the juridical acceptance of Jews or the banishment of slavery end discrimination. 10 years after the abolition of slavery, France waged a futile but ruthless, bloody war to keep Haiti enslaved. Tellingly, 100 years after Jews were granted French citizenship, one Jewish officer was persecuted by the Catholic military elite in the famous Dreyfus affair. True, poets and writers flew to his defense and Alfred Dreyfus was finally released but few of his defenders ever invited him to dinner. After Dreyfus's death, his wife changed her name. His granddaughter -- who loyally fought in the French resistance wound up in Auschwitz.cccxxiii When the French government wanted to honor the soldiers who fell in World War I with the artifice of the "tomb of the unknown soldier" under the Arc de Triomphe, the order went out to exhume a corpse from a field in Verdun assumed free of Jewish and Negro heroes. cccxxiv Patriarchy: It also took a half-century between female suffrage coming into force and a woman becoming the leader of a government. And, perhaps only once – in macho Argentina – has a second, different, woman president or prime minister come to office in the same country.

On the other hand, three recent US Secretaries of State – arguably the second most important job in the superpower – under the three most recent presidents and two different parties – have all been women. Patriarchy, although it has waxed and waned in different times and cultures – has been with us a very long time. The first UN women's conference was in 1975. Thirty-five years later, in 2010 the UN established a UN Womens’ Agency. We can’t protect P achamama unless we defeat macho papa! Yes, there is a glass ceiling , but there is also cause for hope. Will the world look back and see a gathering trend we are too close to observe?

Decolonization: Have we been fighting a hopeless battle against imperialism and colonialism since the Assyrians... only to see the language morph adroitly from colonialism to neocolonialism and from imperialism to neo-liberalism? Or, was the real battle only engaged in 1952 when the UN General Assembly set decolonization as its task? If so, then the social norm

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was won in 1975, when Portugal – the last of the old European colonial powers – relinquished its last African and Asian colonies.

Environmentalism: Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" in 1962 and 10 years later the world held the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and – 30 years after Carson's book – the Rio Earth Summit launched a series of environmental agreements on biodiversity, desertification, forests and climate change. Is this a case of the people united refusing defeat? Or the last hurrahs of a departing species? In 2012, governments will convene “Rio+20” and, as of this writing, no one is sure whether it will be a “good-bye to Gaia” or “Silent Spring -50” wakeup call to move sustainable development to the radical, transformative agenda it should be.

Monopolies: Rightfully vilified as they are, we forget that patents didn't become a real commercial force until the Industrial Revolution. From the 1760s to the 1850s the strength of the patent monopoly grew prodigiously, until round the mid-19th century point, when a number of opposing countries, companies, and citizens banded together. There were small and large victories across Europe over the next quarter-century until a compromise was reached with the largest industrial companies. Even then, the power of the patent remained modest for almost a century, when the twin attractions of biotechnology and informatics came together, and patent monopolies exploded into a major tool of corporate control. Civil society opposition to this new patent power has grown apace with patents, but it is still too soon to judge who will be the victor.

Are we at a point where intellectual monopolies will gain absolute control over nature? Or have the new technologies rendered patents unnecessary... or, is the defeat of exclusive patent monopolies already at hand?

Food sovereignty: On the negative side of tipping,, control of the world's food supply seems perilous. Just six multinationals (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, Bayer, and BASF) control 71% of crop chemicals, 53% of commercial seed sales, and 77% of so-called “climate-ready” crop patent claims worldwide. Today, the largest supermarket chains control 40-50% of the food market in Latin America, 10% in China, 30% in South Africa and 50% in Indonesia. The leading 100 processors control 77% of packaged foods globally and 10-11% of the whole colossal world retail food market.

Does this mean that Marta Flores’s Andean Cosmovision in Course Three is just a pipe dream?

Not yet, at least. Three-quarters of the world's 450 million peasants either breed their own crop varieties or save their seed and have little or nothing to do with multinational seed and pesticide companies. Eighty-five per cent of the world's food supply is consumed close to where it has been grown, or at least within national boundaries, and well away from multinational processors and retailers.

Although 82% of commercial seed sales are patented, Marta’s peasants not only don't buy the seeds but also breed millions of varieties of their own. Even these figures belie the fact that as much as a third of the nutrients that feed rural peoples are not cultivated, but gathered or hunted, and that 15 to 20% of global fruits, vegetables and small livestock are grown in cities. In the global South, 70% of medicines are also gathered in nature and marketed outside of multinational monopolies. The world food supply is still firmly in the hands of its peasants, fishers, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples. There is reason for hope.

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People: I'm not in search of heroic figures. There are heroes aplenty around us all the time.

However, we could use a few more opportunists. Eduardo Galliano advises us to "postpone our pessimism for better times". The proper opposite of a pessimist is an opportunist. 2011 marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddites and I take some pleasure in noting that the first-ever undersea telegraph cable was “caught” (and broken) by a local fisher in 1830s a few hours after it was laid between Dover and Calaiscccxxv and that it was a 75-year-old farmer in Romania who, in this anniversary year, twice “harvested” the cable that binds 90% of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan to the Internet.cccxxvi Take that, Invincible Technology! The best laid cables …

The default setting in all our social software is stuck in the negative position. This is a mistake.

As much as my brain tells me that the next several decades are going to be worse than the ones before I can still be opportunistic that we are in the midst of a "tip" we haven't yet seen. Who was it, on May 2nd 1989, that foresaw that Hungary and Austria’s lowering of their border fortifications would lead to a “Pan-European Picnic” on August 19th that gave 600-700 East Germans the courage to cross into Austria. Or that a Hungarian border officer named Árpád Bella would seize this opportunity to tell his guards to let the picnickers pass? And, who would have thought that this small act would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November? Who would have thought that two decades later, the self immolation of a despairing 26-year-old Tunisian student, Muhammad Bouazizi, on January 4th , 2011 could create space for revolution across North Africa and the Middle East -- an "Arab Spring" still storming through summer?

Yes, as always, the defeat of a few dictators or even an entire empire does not play out like a heroic drama. Social justice doesn't have a closing curtain.

Peace: Against the backdrop of the $1 trillion plus a year spent on armaments, the decade-long, victorious battle in banning landmines can seem absurdly small. But, is this the right context? At a hardly-noticed ceremony in Oslo in December 2008, civil society achieved a ban on cluster bombs and the campaign to ban the export of small arms carries on. Perhaps more accurately, the landmine and cluster bomb victories should be seen as among a succession of battles toward an anti-war social norm that began with the "Ban the Bomb" movement of the 1950s, that led to nuclear test ban treaties and expanded to the anti-nuclear power movement of the 1970s that stopped an extraordinarily powerful industry in its tracks (at least for now). cccxxvii Even the beleaguered chemical and biological warfare agreements, and the 1978 Environmental Modification Treaty referenced in several of the stories, might better be seen as part of a wider positive change. Yes, more than 100 million people did die in wars in the 20th Century, but perhaps, without the Peace Movement, the carnage would have been worse. Maybe Course Two’s African Social Forum could be – or could speed up – the Peace Movement’s tipping point?

For all of human history, brigands, kings and presidents have claimed the inalienable right to make war. The puny efforts of the League of Nations couldn't hold foreign powers from intervening in the Spanish Civil War; keep the Italians out of Ethiopia; or delay Hitler's march into Sudetenland. Another noble aspiration bites the dust? But, without the League, there would have been at least two more European wars between 1919 and 1939. Likewise, while the United Nations is much derided for its manifest failures to prevent wars and atrocities, insiders like Brian Urqhart (the second international civil servant to be hired in the UN in 1945) insist that the

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quiet diplomacy afforded by the UN system has prevented at least a handful of other wars. In our hardwired caution, we see the wars that have happened and not the wars that have not.

Could it be that the most brutal century in history also spawned a trend line that may someday make war unacceptable? Or does the reverse Stockholm syndrome espoused in Course One’s Geneva Watch give the UN System a backbone and turn civil society into a tough and savvy player in intergovernmental politics? Are we on the verge of another "tipping"?

Aren't we, after all, among the people who made the Vietnam War unwinnable for the USA? Didn’t we force the war to an earlier end? Aren't we, after all, that "other superpower" that marched in the millions against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and made the most powerful military force in history quake? We all know what we didn’t achieve in those marches but do we know all that we did accomplish? In December 2010, for the first time ever, a US Democratic president got a nuclear control bill ratified by Congress. When Heads of Government gather in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, couldn’t civil society demand the beginning of negotiations that, by 2019 (a century after the end of the War to End All Wars) could become the Peace to End All Wars?

Those of us who see the glass half-empty have much to make our case. Many of our old victories seem forever fragile, if not collapsing. But, justice never has a final victory. Why would we ever think otherwise? History – as we discussed at the beginning – is neither pageant nor pendulum but a constant struggle.

Hope and the Half-full Hourglass: So, where does all this leave us? Certainly, I see no basis for technological determinism. History shows that the success or failure of technologies is always manipulated, often whimsical, and highly unpredictable. But, to be confusing, the pace of technological change is making it impossible for any of us to be confident of our capacity to control technologies. Likewise, we cannot be certain of the outcome of our shifting social mores. It may be that some of the old sins -- torture, slavery, capital punishment, gender discrimination, racism, etc. are nearing their end.

But, they may be replaced by new dogmas linked to economic, genomic and neural manipulations that could defeat dissent, upend democracy, and produce new forms of discrimination. Some or all of this may be clarified over the next 30 years... or, maybe not.

These last pages are not an apology for Armageddon or a plea for paradise. There is no evidence that the Good, the Bad or the Ugly can be forever entrenched in the human genome. This is -- at once -- the good news and the bad news.

Our progress may be fickle but change is constant. We can also learn how to handle change better and make progress more consistent. Have we missed the early warnings or forgotten the early winnings? Must we only see the night at the end of the tunnel? An old friend of mine going back to the 60s, Bob Carty, has a song about hope where he sings that we have to see our world with “desert eyes” – we must learn to see all the life blooming in the desert when, at first, we think it's barren. Another friend, Bruce Cockburn, sings that we need to "kick back at the darkness until it bleeds daylight”. I like these images. At Christmas, 2008, confronted with the reality of two tiny grandchildren, my wife Susie challenged me to come up with something

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positive to write for them. It was, honestly, a painful exercise at which I failed miserably. A couple of months later, good friends of ours at Inter-Pares (a wonderful civil society partner we've worked with for 30 years here in Ottawa and around the world) asked me to speak about hope at their annual meeting. They'll never do that again!

But the truth is, genetic defect or whatever, I am an optimist and I do think my optimism is grounded in logic. I could try to write a lot about the reasons for my optimism but the elaboration doesn't really make much difference. So, here they are – some causes for optimism...

-

I've rarely met someone I didn't consider good and decent; There is no endpoint - our struggle for dignity and decency is the solution; Nothing is inevitable, impervious or interminable; Our resources are beyond the BANG members’ measure; In every struggle there are tipping points – but the tips can take a generation; In the Fog of War it is sometimes hard to discern our victories; Real change is nurtured and marshaled along the periphery of the metropolis; and We the People, in our diversity, will never be defeated.

And that's good enough for me!

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Notes

i

Michael White, The Fruits Of War - How Military Conflict Accelerates Technology, London, U.K: Simon & Schuster, 2005. ii Richard A. Posner, Catastrophe Risk and Response, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. iii Douglas Mulhall, Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World, New York: Prometheus Books, 2002. iv Bootke, et al., “Stochastic Late Accretion to Earth, the Moon, and Mars,” Science Magazine, 10 December 2010: vol. 330 (6010): 1527-1530. DOI: 10.1126/science.1196874. v The real threat, however, is probably from an orange dwarf star called Gliese 710 which has an 86% chance of impacting our solar system sometime within the next 1.5 million years. It could set a spray of millions of asteroids in our direction over many years.

Source: VV Bobylev, “Searching for stars closely encountering with the solar system,” Astronomy Letters, 2010: vol. 36, no.3: 220-226. DOI: 10.1134/S1063773710030060. vi In late August, 2011, gold oscillated well above $1900 per ounce. Commodity predictions went in both directions. vii Martin Rees, Our Final Hour, A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in this Century – on Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p.26. viii Chris Patten, What Next? Surviving the Twenty-first Century, Toronto: Viking, 2009, p.79. ix Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain, Dell, NY: 1969, p. 247. x Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, New York: Viking, 2005, p.212. xi Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 16. xii Credit for inventing BANG to describe the convergence of bits, atoms, neurons and genes goes entirely to Jim Thomas of ETC Group, who got tired of the other governmental acronyms. xiii ETC Group, The Potential Impacts of Nano-Scale Technologies on Commodity Markets: The Implications For Commodity Dependent Developing Countries, South Centre Research Paper, Trade-Related Agenda, Development and Equity, Geneva, November 2005. The paper was presented during the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial at a seminar sponsored by the South Centre on 12 December 2005, online at: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/45. xiv Nano Science and Technology Institute, “In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina, Nanotechnology Provides Innovative Solution to Environmental Clean-Up,” Nano Science and Technology Institute, 13 September 2005, online at: http://www.nsti.org/news/breaking.html?id=40. xv ETC Group News Release, “Nanotech Product Recall Underscores Need for Nanotech Moratorium: Is the Magic Gone?” ETC Group, 7 April 2006, online at: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/14. xvi Natasha Gilbert, “Nanoparticle Safety in Doubt,” Nature News, 18 August 2009, online at: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090818/full/460937a.html. xvii J. Craig Venter Institute, “Press Release, IBEA Researchers Publish Results From Environmental Shotgun Sequencing of Sargasso Sea. Discover 1800 New Species And 1.2 Million New Genes. Including Nearly 800 New Photoreceptor Genes,” J. Craig Venter Institute, 4 March 2004, online at: http://www.venterinstitute.org/press/news/news_2004_03_04.php. xviii Concentrations of brevetoxin 3, a neurotoxin produced by Karenia brevis - the major cause of Florida’s “red tides” are 50 times greater as aerosols in the wind blown surf than in the water. 85% of the aerosol particles end up in the upper airway, causing nose and throat irritation but 6% reach dangerously into the lungs.

Source: R.H. Pierce, et al., “Brevetoxin composition in water and marine aerosol along a Florida beach: Assessing potential human exposure to marine biotoxins,” Harmful Algae, November 2005: vol. 4, issue 6: 965-972. DOI: 10.1016/j.hal.2004.11.004. xix The Economist, “Bacteria and climate change – Invisible carbon pumps,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 9 September 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16990766. xx Linda Geddes, “Life’s code rewritten in four-letter words,” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 20 February 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527484.000-lifes-code-rewritten-in-fourletter-words.html. xxi See ETC Group, “Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology,” ETC Group, January 2007, online at: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/602.

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United Nations World Economic and Social Survey 2011, The Great Green Technological Transformation, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, 2011. xxiii John Vidal, “Giant pipe and balloon to pump water into the sky in climate experiment,” The Guardian UK, 31 August 2011. xxiv New Scientist “Fukushima throws spotlight on quake zone nuclear power”,electronic edition, March 19, 2011. xxv Kate Ravilious, “Supervolcano: How humanity survived its darkest hour,” New Scientist, 17 April 2010: issue , 2756: 28-33. xxvi Kate Ravilious, “Blame the volcano trouble on sun and global warming,” New Scientist, 24 April 2010: issue 2757: 4. xxvii Philippe Colson, et al., “Pepper Mild Mottle Virus, a Plant Virus Associated with Specific Immune Responses, Fever, Abdominal Pains, and Pruritus in Humans,” PLoS ONE, 6 April 2010: 5(4): e10041. DOI: 10.1371/journal/pone/0010041. xxviii ETC Group’s Communiqué on the endod case is available at www.etcgroup.org Today, there is a parallel case in the use of China’s wormwood shrub as a defence against malaria. Chinese peasants have historically grown the shrub for this purpose and it is proven effective by the WHO. Currently, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, Novartis, is contracting to purchase the global war wormwood crop in order to commercialize the malaria drug. Synthetic biologists in the USA, at the same time, are working to synthesize the active compound in order to sidestep farm production. Meanwhile, a health-oriented NGO has shown that the wormwood shrub can be farmed in most parts of Asia, Africa, and South America where malaria is a problem.

Rather than concentrating production in one or two industrial plants and then trying to overcome the huge distribution problems and costs of getting the synthetic drug around the world’s tropics, the NGO proposes to decentralize production to the village level making distribution easy and inexpensive. In this way, the benefits of production accrue to small peasants not to big pharma. For details, see ETC Group’s special reports, “NanoRx” and “Extreme Biology” at www.etcgroup.org. xxix Dominic Ziegler, “Banyan: Splittism on the roof of the world,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 15 July 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16595117. xxx James C Riley, “AIDS,” Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 19. xxx Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 16. xxxi ETC Group, “Special Report: NanoRx,” September 2006, available at www.etcgroup.org. xxxii Brian Gormley, “Searching for a new way to treat type II diabetes,” Wall Street Journal, Electronic edition, 15 December 2010, online at: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/12/14/searching-for-a-new-way-to-treat-type-2diabetes/. xxxiii “European Drug Regulator Head Warns on Poor Drug Innovation,” Wall Street Journal, Electronic edition, 16 December 2010. xxxiv Wall Street Journal, “A Healthy Forecast for Pharma - Roche CEO Expects Progress in Genetics and Molecular Biology to Provide Promising New Disease Treatments”, electronic edition, August 22, 2011. xxxv The Economist, “Crazy-talking boffins,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 22 January 2011, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/17928971. xxxvi Aaron Back and Jason Dean, “China Growth Shows Contrast with US,” Wall Street Journal, Electronic edition, 20 January 2011, online at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704590704576092730688164622.html. xxxvii The Economist, “China’s currency – The rise of the redback,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 20 January 2011, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/17959580. xxxviii Paul Marks, “Robot border guards to patrol future frontiers,” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 8 January 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.600-robot-border-guards-to-patrol-future-frontiers.html. xxxix Paul Marks, “Robot border guards to patrol future frontiers,” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 8 January 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.600-robot-border-guards-to-patrol-future-frontiers.html. xl Paul Marks, “Robot border guards to patrol future frontiers,” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 8 January 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.600-robot-border-guards-to-patrol-future-frontiers.html. xli Since opening its portal in February 2005, this web site has attracted 6.1 million video clips (1 million downloads per day) and is growing by 20% per month in mid-2006.

Source: Lee Gomes, “Will all of us get our 15 minutes on a youtube video?” The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2006, p. B1.

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YouTube Blog, "Thanks, YouTube community, for two BIG gifts on our sixth birthday!" The Official Google Blog, 25 May 2011, online at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/thanks-youtube-community-for-two-big.html xliii Telecompaper, "Skype grows FY revenues 20%, reaches 663 mln users," Telecompaper, 8 March 2011, online at: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/skype-grows-fy-revenues-20-reaches-663-mln-users. xliv Paul Sonne, Margaret Coker, “Firms Aided Libyan Spies: First Look Inside Security Unit Shows How Citizens Were Tracked,” Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2011, online at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904199404576538721260166388.html. xlv Steve Rubel, “Myspace mania,” 30 March 2006, online at: http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/03/myspacemania.html. xlvi The Economist, “News Corporation – Old mogul, new media,” 19 January 2006, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/5407672. xlvii New Scientist, “Engines of the Future: What’s next in internet search?” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 20 November 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/special/engines-of-the-future. xlviii The Economist, “A special report on social networking – A world of connections,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 28 January 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/15351002. xlix Technorati, an internet search engine for blogs, have indexed a total of 133 million blogs since 2002, with comScore estimate that there are about 346 million people globally who read blogs on a regular basis [2008], with 900,000 the average number of new blog posts in a 24 hour period. Source: Adam Singer, "Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats," The Future Buzz, 12 January 2009, online at: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/socialmedia-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/. Adam Singer, "Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats," The Future Buzz, 12 January 2009, online at: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/. l Maggie Shiels, "Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey rejoins company," BBC, 28 March 2011, online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12889048. li New Scientist, “Sneaky DNA analysis to be outlawed,” New Scientist, 26 August 2006: issue 2566: 6-7. lii David R. Montgomery, Dirt - the Erosion of Civilizations, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Read especially Chapter 4, "Graveyard of Empires." liii According to the US National Center for Health Statistics —women born in the late 1950s and early 1960s average just under five feet five. Ten years later, women grew up a third of an inch shorter.

Source: Burkhard Bilger, “The Height Gap - Why Europeans are getting taller and taller—and Americans aren’t,” New Yorker, 5 April 2004. liv In a survey of almost 37 million US babies born between 1990 and 2005, researchers found an unexplainable decline in average birth weight of 52 grams.

Source: Sara Donahue, et al., “Trends in Birth Weight and Gestational Length Among Singleton Term Births in the United States: 1990-2005,” Obstetrics & Gynecology, February 2010: vol. 115, issue 2, part 1: 357-364. DOI: 10.1097/AOG.0b013e3181cbd5f5. lv Anonymous, “Revenue from nanotechnology-enabled products to equal IT and telecom by 2014, exceed biotech by 10 times,” Lux Research, 25 October 2004, online at: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/revenue-fromnanotechnology-enabled-products-to-equal-it-and-telecom-by-2014-exceed-biotech-by-10-times-74956547.html. lvi Executive summary refers only to government spending.

Source: Trevor Keel, Richard Holliday and Tim Harper, "Gold for Good -- Gold and Nanotechnology in the Age of Innovation", World Gold Council and Cientifica, February 2010.

Another source estimates that total public and private spending on nanotechnology was $10 billion in 2005 alone.

Source: Stacy Lawrence, “Nanotech Grows Up,” Technology Review, June 2005: 31. lvii David R. Montgomery, Dirt - The Erosion of Civilizations, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p.15. lviii See for example: Rappoport, “Patent No US5126439: Artificial DNA base pair analogues” and Benner, “Patent No US5432272: Method for incorporating into a DNA or RNA oligonucleotide using nucleotides bearing heterocyclic bases.” lix Thomas A Bass, “Gene Genie,” Wired, August 1995: issue 3.08. lx These and other patent examples are described in the 35 page report which is available online at: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/54.

Source: ETC Group, “ETC Group special report -- Communiqué number 87 and 88, “Nanotech’s ‘Second Nature’ Patents: Implications for the Global South,” March/April and May/June, 2005. lxi Trade between China and Africa stood at $3 billion per annum in 1995 and rose to $32 billion by 2005.

Source: The Economist, “China in Africa – Never too late to scramble,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 26 October 2006, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/8089719.

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Fuel Cell Industry Report, September 2005: vol. 6, no. 9: 1.

Gérald Estur, “Cotton: Commodity Profile,” International Cotton Advisory Committee, Washington, D.C., June 2004: 1-2, 31. lxiv The Economist, "Clothes as batteries – Plug-in garments," The Economist, Electronic edition, 11 February 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/15495928. lxv John I. Glass, et al., “Estimation of the Minimal Mycoplasma Gene Set Using Global Transposon Mutagenesis and Comparative Genomics,” Genomes to Life Contractor-Grantee Workshop III, 6-9 February 2005, Washington, D.C. lxvi Jeronimo Cello, Aniko V. Paul and Eckard Wimmer, “Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template” Science, 9 August 2002: vol. 297, no.5583: 1016-1018. DOI: 10.1126/science.1072266. lxvii Mark Williams, “The Knowledge,” Technology Review, March 2006. lxviii Roger Kalla, “Resurrecting the zombie killer flu virus” On Line Opinion, 14 October 2005, online at: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=96. lxix The Economist, “Genetics – Cracking the Neanderthal code,” The Economist, 18 November 2006, p. 88. lxx New Scientist, December 11, 2010 electronic edition, “The poison eaters: alternative life forms”. lxxi The Economist, “A special report on the human genome: Inhuman genomes,” The Economist, 17 June 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16349380. lxxii The Economist, ”A special report on the human genome: Biology 2.0,” The Economist, 17 June 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16349358. lxxiii Helmut Haberl, K. Heinz Erb, Fridolin Krausmann, Veronika Gaube, Alberte Bondeau, Christoph Plutzar, Simone Gingrich, Wolfgang Lucht, and Marina Fischer-Kowalski, “Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth’s terrestrial ecosystems," Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 25 May 2007, online at: www.pnas.org/content/104/31/12942.full.pdf. lxxiv Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 16. lxxv The concept of “relinquishment” was popularized by Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in an article in Wired Magazine in 2000. Joy suggests that certain technologies - such as molecular self-assembly - might have to be slowed or rejected for social/safety reasons. Dr. Martin Reese, President of the UK’s Royal Society, supports Joy’s “relinquishment” proposal in his 2003 book, Our Final Hour. Although these sentiments are appreciated, civil society has the right to reject negative technologies. lxxvi The Economist, “Regulation and the Obama administration: Red tape rising,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 20 January 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/17961890. lxxvii Wall Street Journal electronic edition, “What’s News Worldwide?”, August lxxviii Daniel Michaels, “Merge This,” Wall Street Journal Blogs, Electronic edition, 15 October 2010, online at: 25, 2011, p.1.http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2010/10/15/merge-this/. lxxix Susan George, Whose Crisis - Whose Future? -- Towards a Fairer, Greener, Richer World, Polity Press, 2010. lxxx Peter Turchin, WAR AND PEACE AND WAR , PLUME, Penguin, 2006. lxxxi S. Vitali, J.B. Glattfelder, and S. Battiston, The network of global corporate control lxxxii Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976, (second edition, 1989).

See, especially, Chapter 11 and the endnotes to Chapter 11 written in 1989. lxxxiii Martin Rees explicitly recognizes the possibility of medicating society, offers current examples, and quotes Francis Fukuyama as being opposed and B.F. Skinner as considering social medication unavoidable. Rees himself seems uncertain.

Source: Martin Rees, “Chapter 5,” Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003. lxxxiv The report actually speaks of “individuals who can be massively destructive.”

Source: “Chapter 5: Environmental Security,” State of the Future, United Nations University, 2005. lxxxv Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 41. lxxxvi Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 61. lxxxvii Scientific American, “Fast Facts, Suicide Bombers,” Scientific American, January 2006, citing: Scott Atran, the Jean Nicod Institute, CNRS ; Bruce Hoffman, RAND Corporation. lxiii

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Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 4. lxxxix Personal communication with Hope Shand, ETC Group Research Director following her presentation at the Nano-Fair in St. Gallen, Austria in 2005. xc The Economist, “The newspaper industry – More media, less news” The Economist, Electronic Edition, 24 August 2006, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/7827135. xci Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 63. xcii Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 64. xciii Examples from: William Illsey Atkinson, “They’re watching you,” Globe & Mail, Toronto, 13 September 2005. xciv William Illsey Atkinson, “They’re watching you,” Globe & Mail, Toronto, 13 September 2005. xcv William Illsey Atkinson, “They’re watching you,” Globe & Mail, Toronto, 13 September 2005. xcvi Cited research by University of Chicago historian, William McNeill.

Source: Deborah McKenzie, “How the humble potato could feed the world?” New Scientist, 6 August 2008: issue 2667L: 30-33. xcvii Julia Keller, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel – The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It, New York: Viking Publishing, 2008, p. 139. xcviii Ronald E. Doel and Kristine C. Harper, “Prometheus Unleashed: Science as a Diplomatic Weapon in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration,” Osiris, 2006: 2nd series, vol. 21, online at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4129755. xcix Frank Swain, “How an MP3 can be used to hack your car,” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 15 March 2011, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/how-an-mp3-can-be-used-to-hack.html. c William P Fox, John Vesecky, Kenneth Laws, “Sensing and Identifying the Improvised Explosive Device Suicide Bombers: People Carrying Wires on their Body,” The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, January 2011: vol. 8, no. 1: 5-24. DOI: 10.1177/1548512910384604. ci “Solar Updates Marines' Arsenal,” Wall Street Journal, Electronic edition, 9 May 2011. cii Davide Castelvecchi, “Affordable Orbital: Tiny Satellites Make for Democratic Access to Space,” Scientific American, 9 February 2011, online at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cubesats-photos. ciii The Economist, “Innovation: The Military-Consumer Complex,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 12 December 2009. civ Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 79. cv Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 79 (footnote). cvi William Illsey Atkinson, “They’re watching you,” Globe & Mail, Toronto, 13 September 2005. cvii The Economist, “Monitor: Air power on the cheap,” The Economist, electronic edition, 9 December 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/17647585. cviii The actual figures are that DOD has received $1.219 billion between 2001 and 2005 which is 30% of the $4.1 billion spent so far, however Aspects of Dept of Energy funding, NASA funding and Dept of Justice and Homeland Security are also defence related.

Source: National Nanotechnology Initiative, “Funding,” http://www.nano.gov/html/about/funding.html. cix Smartcode RFID Integrated Circuit was announced in Jan. 2004 – its is 0.25mm square – a barely visible speck of silicon – see http://www.smartcodecorp.com/newsroom/13-01-04.asp. cx Chuck Squatriglia, “Spy Fly: Tiny, winged robot to mimic nature’s fighter jets,” San Francisco Chronicle, 2 November 1999: p. A17. cxi Ed Stiles, “UA Flying High after MAV Competition,” The University of Arizona, 15 April 2004, online at: http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/2/wa/EngrStoryDetails?ArticleID=9047. cxii Eric Talmadoe, “Japan’s Latest Innovation: A Remote-Control Roach,” Associated Press, online at: http://www.intercorr.com/roach.htm. cxiii Nathan Hodge, “ China Debuts a Drone at Robotics Show,” Wall Street Journal, 18 August 2011, online at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904070604576514782800973542.html. cxiv . The Economist, “Artificial intelligence: No command, and control,” The Economist, electronic edition, 25 November 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/17572232. cxv Nathan Hodge, “ China Debuts a Drone at Robotics Show,” Wall Street Journal, 18 August 2011, online at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904070604576514782800973542.html. lxxxviii

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Paul Marks, “3D printing: The world’s first printed plane,” New Scientist, 1 August 2011, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20737-3d-printing-the-worlds-first-printed-plane.html?full=true. cxvii William Illsey Atkinson, “They’re watching you,” Globe & Mail, Toronto, 13 September 2005. cxviii Social Shopping, "Groupon hits 50m Subscribers - Shopping site sensation," Social Shopping, online at: http://www.socialshopping.com/Groupon/news/Groupon-hits-50m-Subscribers-Shopping-site-sensation201101210398/. cxix Miguel Bustillo, Ann Zimmerman,”Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear Into Retailers,” Wall Street Journal, 15 December 2010. cxx Zoe Corbyn, “Twitter to track dengue fever outbreaks in Brazil,” New Scientist, 18 July 2011: issue 2821: p. 18. cxxi The Economist, “Monitor: Loose clicks sink ships,” The Economist, 10 June 2010. cxxii The Economist, “Contact lenses: Look into my eyes,” The Economist, 2 June 2011. cxxiii Nic Fleming, “Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket,” New Scientist, 3 August 2011: issue 2823: 42-45. cxxiv Nic Fleming, “Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket,” New Scientist, 3 August 2011: issue 2823: 4245. cxxv Nic Fleming, “Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket,” New Scientist, 3 August 2011: issue 2823: 4245. cxxvi Nic Fleming, “Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket,” New Scientist, 3 August 2011: issue 2823: 4245. cxxvii Nic Fleming, “Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket,” New Scientist, 3 August 2011: issue 2823: 42-45. cxxviii Peter Aldhous, “Automating the hunt for child pornographers,” New Scientist, 11 April 2011: issue 2807: 2324. cxxix Stephan C. Schuster et al., "Letters: Complete Khoisan and Bantu genomes from southern Africa," Nature Genomics, 18 February 2010: issue 463: 943-947. DOI: 10.1038/nature08795. cxxx This article was received electronically from the reporter. The story includes my reaction to the event.

Source: Rob Stein, "Archbishop Tutu's genomic blueprint helps show African diversity," Washington Post, 17 February 2010.

Also note, Gary Stix, "Archbishop Tutu gets sequenced -- and finds a surprise in his genetic ancestry," Scientific American, Electronic edition, 18 February 2010. cxxxi Linda Geddes, “Air detectives know where the bodies are buried,” New Scientist, 12 April 2010: issue 2755: 1819, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627555.400-air-detectives-know-where-the-bodies-areburied.html. cxxxii Carnegie Institute, “News release: Carbon mapping breakthrough,” Carnegie Institute Stanford University, 7 September 2010, online at: http://carnegiescience.edu/news/carbon_mapping_breakthrough. cxxxiii Rhett A. Butler, “Peru's rainforest highway triggers surge in deforestation, according to new 3D forest mapping,” mongabay.com, 6 September 2010. cxxxiv David Hambling, “Airborne radar will map the ground in 3D,” New Scientist, 8 April 2011: issue 2806: 24. cxxxv When the Rural Advancement Foundation International got its first computers in 1982, environmentalists in Germany roundly criticized it. However, RAFI’s ability to undertake an analysis of the collection and movement of crop germplasm end of gene bank storage standards was central to its success in forcing the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to establish a Commission on Genetic Resources in 1983. Similar stories are told by the Pesticides Action Network in their work monitoring crop chemicals. cxxxvi R. James Ferguson, “Lecture 10: Scripts for Cooperation and Protest: People Power, Low-Violence Strategies and Cosmopolitan Governance,” 2005, online at: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:viD5evHfn14J:www.international-relations.com/wbadvir/ADVIR-Lec102005.doc+manila+citizen+protests+in+2000+fax+technology&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=50&client=firefox-a. cxxxvii Castells Manuel, Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol, Jack Linchuan Qiu, and Araba Sey, editors, Mobile Communication and Society A Global Perspective, MIT Press, 2007. cxxxviii Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ”Philippine Activism, At Push of a Button: Technology Used to Spur Political Change,” Washington Post Foreign Service, 10 December 2000: p. A44. cxxxix Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future, Washington D.C.: American Council for the United Nation’s University, 2005, p 22. cxl Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future, Washington D.C.: American Council for the United Nation’s University, 2005, p 22. cxvi

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Debora L. Spar, “Chapter 2 – The Codemakers,” Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet, New York: Harcourt Inc, 2001. cxlii Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike, Communication and Empire: Media, Markets, and Globalization, 1860–1930, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007. As reviewed by Elizabeth Yale in Technology and Culture, October 2008: vol. 49, no. 4: 1071-1072. DOI: 101.1353/tech.0.0142. cxliii Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. New York: Basic Books, 2004. As reviewed by Wade Roush in Technology and Culture, April 2005: vol. 46, no. 2. cxliv Debora L. Spar, “Chapter 3 – Radio Days,” Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet, New York: Harcourt Inc, 2001. cxlv Lars Heide, Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880-1945, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009, as reviewed in Nathan Ensmenger, Technology and Culture, April 2011: vol. 52, no. 2: 420422. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2011.0080. cxlvi Wall Street Journal, “What’s New (Front Page),” Wall Street Journal, Electronic edition, 16 December 2010. cxlvii The Economist, "A special report on social networking: Global Swap Shops," The Economist, Electronic edition, 28 January 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/15350972. cxlviii The Economist, "A special report on social networking: Yammering Away at the Office,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 28 January 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/15350928. cxlix The Economist, “Cyberwar: War in the fifth domain,” The Economist, 1 July 2010. cl The Economist, “High-tech warfare: Something wrong with our **** chips today,” The Economist, 7 April 2011. cli Jim Giles, “Are states unleashing the dogs of cyber war?” New Scientist 16 December 2010: issue 2791: 22-23. clii New Scientist, April 2, 2011, electronic edition. cliii Wall Street Journal electronic edition, August 26, 2010,p1. cliv New Scientist electronic edition, December 4, 2010, “ The phoney chips that could cripple military tech”. clv Economist, “The threat from the internet- Cyberwar -It is time for countries to start talking about arms control on the internet”, July 1st 2010, clvi Jim Giles, “Fake tweets by 'socialbot' fool hundreds of followers,” New Scientist, 24 March 2011: issue 2804: 28. clvii New Scientist, “Happy tweeting,” New Scientist, Electronic edition, 19 March 2011. clviii The Economist, “Monitor: Putting your money where your mouse is,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 2 September 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16909869. clix Les Chemins de la nouveauté: Innover, inventer au regard de l’histoire, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Anne-Françoise Garçon, eds., Paris: Editions du CTHS, 2003: p. 473: i38, as reviewed in Daryl M Hafter, Technology and Culture, October 2007: vol. 48, no. 4: 850-852. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2007.0165. clx Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: : An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850, London: Yale University Press, p. 91. clxi Les Chemins de la nouveauté: Innover, inventer au regard de l’histoire, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Anne-Françoise Garçon, eds., Paris: Editions du CTHS, 2003: p. 473: i38, as reviewed in Daryl M Hafter, Technology and Culture, October 2007: vol. 48, no. 4: 850-852. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2007.0165. clxii Cary Fowler, Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution, Gordon and Breach, 2004, p. 1617. clxiii William Boyd, “Making Meat - Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production”, Technology and Culture, October 2001: vol.42, no. 4: 631-644. clxiv Celeste Biever, “Cryptographers chosen to duke it out in final fight,” New Scientist, Electronic edition. 13 December 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19865-cryptographers-chosen-to-duke-it-out-infinal-fight.html. clxv New Scientist, “FBI calls on codebreakers to decipher murder notes,” New Scientist, 9 April 2011: issue 2807: 67. clxvi The Economist, “Brain scan: Mr. Segway’s difficult path,” The Economist, 10 June 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16295592. clxvii Davide Castelvecchi, “Affordable Orbital: Tiny Satellites Make for Democratic Access to Space,” Scientific American, 9 February 2011, online at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cubesats-photos. clxviii W Patrick McCray, Keep Watching the Skies: The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, as reviewed in Chihyung Jeon, Technology and Culture, October 2009: vol. 50, no. 4: 946-947. DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0381. clxix John Danner, "Webcast: Synthetic Biology 2.0," Codon Devices, 20 May 2006, online at: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?webcastid=15766, as cited in, ETC Group, Extreme Genetic cxli

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Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology, January 2007, online at: http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/602: p. 16. clxx Nick Turner, “Apple Briefly Passes Exxon as World’s Largest Company,” Bloomberg Businessweek, 9 August 2011, online at: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-08-09/apple-briefly-passes-exxon-as-world-s-largestcompany.html. clxxi Paul Marks, “3D printing: The world’s first printed plane,” New Scientist, 1 August 2011, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20737-3d-printing-the-worlds-first-printed-plane.html?full=true. clxxii Justin Mullins, “Innovation: The relentless rise of the digital worker,” New Scientist, 15 January 2010, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18395-innovation-the-relentless-rise-of-the-digital-worker.html. clxxiii John McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor, Farrar, Strass and Giroux, 1974, p. 124, as cited by David E. Nye, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. clxxiv Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Exorcising Ghosts in the Age of Automation United Nations Experts and Atoms for Peace,” Technology and Culture, October 2006: vol.47, no.4: 734-756. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2006.0226. clxxv Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 2. clxxvi Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 5. clxxvii Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 13. clxxviii Martin Rees, Our Final Hour -- A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century On Earth and Beyond, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 68-69. clxxix Bill Durodie, “Understanding the broader context,” in Technology and Security: Governing Threats in the New Millennium, edited by Brian Rappert, University of Exeter: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. clxxx Ethan Watters, “How the US exports its mental illnesses,” New Scientist, 20 January 2010: issue 2744: 26-27. clxxxi New Scientist electronic edition, April 9, 2011 clxxxii The Economist, “Science of the mind: Proustian moments,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 2 March 2006, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/5572453. clxxxiii Herman A Dierick, Ralph J Greenspan, “Molecular analysis of flies selected for aggressive behaviour,” Nature Genetics, 13 August 2006: vol. 38: 1023-1031. DOI: 10.1038/ng1864. clxxxiv Rowan Hooper, “Men inherit hidden costs of dads’ vices,” New Scientist, 6 January 2006, Electronic edition, online at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925334.000-men-inherit-hidden-cost-of-dads-vices.html. clxxxv Nadia Tsankova, Olivier Berton, William REnthal, Arvind Kumar, Rachel L Neve, Eric J Nestler, “Sustained hippocampal chromatin regulation in a mouse model of depression and antidepressant action,” Nature Neuroscience, 26 February 2006: vol 9: 519-525. DOI: 10.1038/nn1659. clxxxvi See, for example, Bob Weinhold, “Epigenetics: The Science of Change,” Environmental Health Perspectives, March 2006: vol. 114, no. 3: 160-167. DOI: 10.1289/ehp.114-160. clxxxvii Gary W. Strong and William S. Bainbridge, “Memetics: A Potential New Science,” in Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance -- Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive-sciences, edited by Mikkail Roco and William S. Bainbridge, National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce, June 2002: p. 179-186. clxxxviii Gary W. Strong and William S. Bainbridge, “Memetics: A Potential New Science,” in Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance -- Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive-sciences, edited by Mikkail Roco and William S. Bainbridge, National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce, June 2002: p. 179-186. clxxxix Gary W. Strong and William S. Bainbridge, “Memetics: A Potential New Science,” in Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance -- Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive-sciences, edited by Mikkail Roco and William S. Bainbridge, National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce, June 2002: p. 179-186. cxc Gary W. Strong and William S. Bainbridge, “Memetics: A Potential New Science,” in Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance -- Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive-sciences, edited by Mikkail Roco and William S. Bainbridge, National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce, June 2002: p. 179-186.

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cxci

Mikkail Roco and William S. Bainbridge, editors, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance -- Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive-sciences, National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce, June 2002, p. x. cxcii M Berdoy, JP Webster, DW Macdonald, “Fatal Attraction in Rats Infected with Toxoplasma Gondii: Proceedings,” Biological Sciences/The Royal Society, United Kingdom: Oxford University Veterinary Services: 7 August 200: vol 267, no. 1452: 1591-1594. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2000.1182. cxciii James Owen, “Suicide Grasshoppers Brainwashed by Parasite Worms,” National Geographic News, 1 September 2005, online at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0901_050901_wormparasite.html. cxciv L. H. McFarland, K. N. Mouritsen and R Poulin, “From first to second and back to first intermediate host: the unusual transmission route of Curtuteria australis (Digenea: Echinostomatidae),” Journal for Parasitology, June 2003: vol. 89, issue 3: 625-8. cxcv Andrew Peacock, “Animal Diseases Factsheet –Publication AP059 – Dicrocoelium dendriticum - The Lancet Fluke of Sheep,” Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, online at: http://www.nr.gov.nl.ca/agric/animal_diseases/domestic/pdf/dicro.pdf. cxcvi Rachel Nowak, “Cosmetic surgery special: When looks can kill,” New Scientist, 19 October 2006: issue 2574: 18-21. cxcvii Jo Whelan, “Reproduction revolution: Sex for fun, IVF for children,” New Scientist, 20 October 2006: issue 2574: 42-45. cxcviii Jo Whelan, “Reproduction revolution: Sex for fun, IVF for children,” New Scientist, 20 October 2006: issue 2574: 42-45. cxcix According to this report, some scientists anticipate that market-based genetic technologies will eclipse sociosexual selection.

Source: Kate Douglas, “Are we still evolving?” New Scientist, 11 March 2006: issue 2542: 5. cc Gwen Bingle, “Review of Leben mit Ersatzteilen, Deutsches Museum, Munich,” Technology and Culture, July 2006: vol. 47, no. 3. cci See also ETC Group, “Nanotech Rx– Medical applications of nano-scale technologies: what impact on marginalised communities” and Gregor Wolbring “What Next for the human species? Human performance enhancement, ableism and pluralism” in What Next Volume II, published as Development Dialogue no 52, August 2009 and downloadable at www.whatnext.org for more elaborated discussions on human performance enhancement. ccii Newsweek, "Year of Terror," Newsweek, 5 January 1976, p. 24-26. cciii J. Samuel Walker, “Regulating against Nuclear Terrorism: The Domestic Safeguards Issue, 1970-1979,” Technology and Culture, January 2001: vol. 42, no. 1: 107-132. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2001.0045. cciv Jim Rutenberg, “Solution to Greenhouse Gases is New Nuclear Plants, Bush Says,” New York Times, 25 May 2006, online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/washington/25bush.html. ccv According to the US State Department (on their web site, 28 November 2005) the US and the Soviet Union introduced identical treaty texts at the UN in 1975, and the treaty came into force on May 18, 1978. The strongly worded treaty bans all military and other hostile efforts at environmental modification but does not preclude beneficial modifications. To date, 51 countries have ratified the treaty including almost all major OECD and South governments except South Africa and Mexico. ccvi For a recent overview of geoengineering, see the report “Retooling the planet – Climate chaos in the geoengineering age” by ETC Group, commissioned and published by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (www.naturskyddsforeningen.se). Much information on geoengineering can be found and downloaded at www.etcgroup.org. ccvii Philip Bethge, Sebastian Knauer, “How Close Did Sweden Come to Disaster?” Spiegel Online, 7 August 2006, online at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,430458,00.html. ccviii Philip Bethge, Sebastian Knauer, “How Close Did Sweden Come to Disaster?” Spiegel Online, 7 August 2006, online at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,430458,00.html. ccix Drake Bennett, “Don’t like the weather? Change it - The weird science of weather modification makes a comeback.” Boston Globe, 3 July 2005. ccx Kate Ravilious, “Kicking up a storm with the cloud seeders,” New Scientist, 16 April 2005: issue 2495: 40-43. ccxi In this article, the UAE, Australia, Israel, Russia, South Africa and India are added to the list of countries using weather modification.

Source: Kate Ravilious, “Kicking up a storm with the cloud seeders,” New Scientist, 16 April 2005: issue 2495: 4043.

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Daniel Pendick, “Cloud Dancers: Will Efforts To Change The Weather Ever Attain Scientific Legitimacy?”

Scientific American, 2000: 64-69. ccxiii Tamzy J. House et al., “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.” A research paper presented to Air Force 2025, Air University, 1996. ccxiv Kate Ravilious, “Kicking up a storm with the cloud seeders,” New Scientist, 16 April 2005: issue 2495: 40-43. ccxv BBC News, “Thai king’s patent to make rain,” BBC News, 27 May 2003, online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/2940430.stm. ccxvi J.R. McNeill, Something New Under The Sun., An Environmental History Of The Twentieth-Century World, New York: Norton & Co., 2000, p. 357. ccxvii Clyde Prestowitz, Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift Of Wealth And Power To The East. New York: Basic Books, 2005, p. 259. ccxviii Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future, Washington D.C.: American Council for the United Nation’s University, 2005, p. 36. ccxix Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future, Washington D.C.: American Council for the United Nation’s University, 2005, p. 36.. ccxx Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future, Washington D.C.: American Council for the United Nation’s University, 2005, p. 36. ccxxi Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, State of the Future, Washington D.C.: American Council for the United Nation’s University, 2005, p. 36. ccxxii Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing The Climate and What It Means For Life On Earth, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005, p. 290. ccxxiii Edward Teller, L. Wood, and R. Hyde, “Global Warming and Ice Ages: Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change,” prepared for submittal to the 22nd International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, Erice (Sicily), Italy, 20-23 August 1997. ccxxiv Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing The Climate and What It Means For Life On Earth, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005, p. 191. ccxxv National Academy of Sciences Report, National Research Council, “Research Committee on the Status of and Future Directions in U.S. Weather Modification Research and Operations,” Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, 2003, online at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10829.html.

Also cited in: Drake Bennett, “Don’t like the weather? Change it - The weird science of weather modification makes a comeback.” Boston Globe, 3 July 2005. ccxxvi The Economist, “The Military-Consumer Complex,” The Economist, Electronic edition, 10 December 2009, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/15065709. ccxxvii WHO, “Estimated deaths and DALYs attributable to selected environmental risk factors by WHO Member States,” 2002. ccxxviii William J. Broad, “How to Cool a Planet (Maybe)” New York Times, 27 June 2006. ccxxix William J. Broad, “How to Cool a Planet (Maybe)” New York Times, 27 June 2006. ccxxx William J. Broad, “How to Cool a Planet (Maybe)” New York Times, 27 June 2006. ccxxxi Wikipedia, “Iron Fertilization,” Wikipedia, 15 December 2006, online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization. ccxxxii Global Security.org, “Knock Nevis/ex-Jahre Viking,” Global Security.org, online at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/jahre-viking.htm. ccxxxiii Reference.com, “Iron Fertilization,” Reference.com, 2009, online at: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Iron_fertilization. ccxxxiv For further information: Philippe Bovet and Francois Ploye, “Clean futures market,” Le Monde diplomatique, online at: http://mondediplo.com/2002/07/18weather. ccxxxv redOrbit, “Planktos Indefinitely Postpones Ocean Iron Fertilization Project,” redOrbit, 13 February 2008, online at: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1253657/planktos_indefinitely_postpones_ocean_iron_fertilization_project/i ndex.html. ccxxxvi Larry Lohmann et al., “Carbon Trading a critical conversation on climate change, privatisation and power,” Development Dialogue, no. 48, September 2006. Downloadable at www.thecornerhouse.org.uk. ccxxxvii From Wikipedia, “iron fertilization” as of 15 December 2006, online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization. ccxii

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J. Craig Venter Institute, “Press Release, IBEA Researchers Publish Results From Environmental Shotgun Sequencing of Sargasso Sea. Discover 1800 New Species And 1.2 Million New Genes. Including Nearly 800 New Photoreceptor Genes,” J. Craig Venter Institute, 4 March 2004, online at: http://www.venterinstitute.org/press/news/news_2004_03_04.php. ccxxxix S. 517: Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005, Introduced: Mar 3, 2005; Sponsor: Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]. 109th Congress. ccxl S. 517: Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005, Introduced: Mar 3, 2005; Sponsor: Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]. 109th Congress. ccxli Amy Sowder, “Hurricane workshop to meet in Bay Area - National Science Board to take look at recovery,” Pensacola News Journal, 17 April 2006. ccxlii Charles J. Hanley, “Top Scientists Say Man May Need to Dirty Skies to Shield against Warming” Associated Press, 16 November as distributed by ENN: Environmental News Network. ccxliii Drake Bennett, “Don’t like the weather? Change it - The weird science of weather modification makes a comeback,” Boston Globe, 3 July 2005. ccxliv J.R. McNeill, Something New Under The Sun., An Environmental History Of The Twentieth-Century World, New York: Norton & Co., 2000, p. 357. ccxlv Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers - How We Are Changing The Climate And What It Means For Life On Earth, Toronto: HarperCollins, 2005, p. 214. ccxlvi Botanical name of quinoa is “Chenopodium quinoa Willdenow” Family: “Chenopodiaceae” US National Research Council, Lost Crops of the Incas - Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation, Report of an Ad Hoc Panel of the Advisory Committee on Technology Innovation Board on Science and Technology for International Development, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington.

D. C., 1989, p 159. ccxlvii US National Research Council, Lost Crops of the Incas - Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation, Report of an Ad Hoc Panel of the Advisory Committee on Technology Innovation Board on Science and Technology for International Development, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington. DC, 1989, p.150. ccxlviii In 1989, a US government study speculated that biotechnology might be able to transfer genes from Kaniwa to Quinoa to confer increased hardiness and dwarf stature. US National Research Council, Lost Crops of the Incas Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation, Report of an Ad Hoc Panel of the Advisory Committee on Technology Innovation Board on Science and Technology for International Development, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington. D C, 1989, p.135. ccxlix This event did take place but in 2001 under the leadership of CET-Sur, an NGO headquartered in southern Chile. Camilla Montecinos coordinated the programme. Marta, a fictional character, did not attend. ccl This event took place in January 2003 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. ccli This event took place in January 2002 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. cclii Accurate global statistics on the number – or percentage – of organic peasants are not reliable. To the extent that Canada is “typical” of OECD countries, in 2004 about 1.5% of all peasants were certified organic. This number is increasing significantly each year. The Canadian figures are from Anne Macey, “Certified Organic Production Canada 2004”, November, 2005. ccliii All references related to organic production and consumption and to Community-Shared Agriculture and its counterparts related to 2006 or earlier are accurate. Projections beyond 2006 are estimates. ccliv Estimates of the number of CSA farms in North America, for example, circa 2005, range from 1,300 to 3,000. cclv From its small beginning in 1986, the Slow Food Movement grew to more than 800 “convivia” (clubs or associations) with 83,000 members in 50 countries with offices in seven countries by 2004. cclvi The number of organic farms in each region are actually 42,004 as reported in “World Organic Farms in 2006”. cclvii See Pat Mooney, “Stop the Stockholm Syndrome! Lessons learned from 30 years of UN summits,” in What Next Volume I: Setting the context, originally published as Development Dialogue, no 47, June 2006. Download at www.whatnext.org. cclviii Twenty-eight participants from 19 countries met at La Soleillette, Bogève, France, March 7-12, for the 1987 Dag Hammarskjöld Seminar entitled, “The Socioeconomic Impact of New Biotechnologies on Basic Health and Agriculture in the Third World.” The seminar was organized and sponsored by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden, and the Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI, now renamed the ETC Group), Pittsboro, NC, U.S.A., and Brandon, Canada, in cooperation with the International Organization of Consumers Unions (IOCU), Penang, Malaysia, The International Coalition for Development Action (ICDA), Brussels, Belgium, and the ccxxxviii

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United Nations Non- Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) in Geneva. See www.etcgroup.org for downloadable version of the declaration. cclix See www.whatnext.org for more information on the BANG meeting and reading material. cclx Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist -- How Prosperity Evolves, New York: HarperCollins, 2010. cclxi Stephen Moore and Julian Simon, Its Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years, Cato Institute, Washington D.C., 2000. cclxii Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist -- How Prosperity Evolves, New York: HarperCollins, 2010, p.19. cclxiii Economist, “The bottom of the pyramid - Businesses are learning to serve the growing number of hard-up Americans”,June 25, 2011, electronic edition. cclxiv Economist, “The Struggle to Eat",June 16, 2011, electronic edition. cclxv Shirley Stewart Burns. Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal on Southern West Virginia Communities, Morgantown: University of West Virginia Press, 2007 as reviewed in Technology and Culture, Vol.50, No. 3. cclxvi Wall Street Journal electronic edition, “4th UPDATE: Gulf Oil, Gas Producers Evacuate Some Workers” July 28, 2011. cclxvii Economist electronic edition, "zzz", June 4, 2011. cclxviii The Economist, “The war on baby girls: Gendercide,” The Economist, 6 March 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/15606229. cclxix The Economist, electronic edition, " Editorial: Add sugar and spice - India’s sex ratio is getting worse. The trend can be reversed", April 9, 2011. cclxx Michael Pollan, In Defence of Food - An Eater's Manifesto, New York: Penguin Books, 2008. cclxxi Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health - Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1959. cclxxii To maintain fairness, it must be noted that Ridley acknowledges this point himself in the introduction to his book.

Source: Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist -- How Prosperity Evolves, New York: HarperCollins, 2010, p.9. cclxxiii Chow Kai-Wing, "Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China," Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, as reviewed in, Technology and Culture, 2006: vol. 47, no. 1. cclxxiv Jonathan T. Reynolds and Erik Gilbert, Africa in world history - From Prehistory to the Present, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2004. cclxxv Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena - Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford, 2002. cclxxvi Richard Bulliett, Hunters, Herders and Hambugers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, p. 221. cclxxvii Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Catherine Verna, “Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era: New Approaches and Methodological Issues,” Technology and Culture, July 2006: vol. 47, no. 3: 536-565, p. 552. cclxxviii Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Catherine Verna, “Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era: New Approaches and Methodological Issues,” Technology and Culture, July 2006: vol. 47, no. 3: 536-565, p. 555. cclxxix Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Catherine Verna, “Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era: New Approaches and Methodological Issues,” Technology and Culture, July 2006: vol. 47, no. 3: 536-565, p. 557. cclxxx Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena - Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford, 2002. cclxxxi Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, New York: WW Norton, 2007, as reviewed in Karen Oslund, Technology and Culture, July 2010: vol. 51, no. 3: 745-746. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2010.0023. cclxxxii Kristine Harper, Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008, as reviewed in Roger Turner, Technology and Culture, October 2009: vol 50, no. 4: 966-968. cclxxxiii Gregory Dreicer, “Building Bridges and Boundaries: The Lattice and the Tube, 1820-1860,” Technology and Culture, January 2010: vol. 51, no. 1: 126-163. DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0406. cclxxxiv Vincent Guigueno, “Building a High-Speed Society France and the Aérotrain, 1962–1974,” Technology and Culture, January 2008: vol. 49, no. 1: 21-40. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2008.0018. cclxxxv Brian Bowers, Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, as reviewed in, Technology and Culture, 2002: vol. 43, no. 1: 193-194.

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Joy Parr, Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral, and the Economic in the Postwar Years, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, "What Makes Washday Less Blue?" p. 205. cclxxxvii Paul Collins, “Why the Survival Car died an early death,” New Scientist, 21 Febraury 2009: issue 2696: 4445. cclxxxviii Ann Johnson, Hitting the Brakes: Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010. As reviewed in Technology and Culture, Vol.52 No.2. cclxxxix The Economist electronic edition, “Nikola Tesla's revenge: Transport: The car industry’s effort to reduce its dependence on rare-earth elements has prompted a revival in the fortunes of an old-fashioned sort of electric motor”, June 4, 2011. ccxc Basil Davidson, African History – Themes and Outlines, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966 revised 1991, p.

39. ccxci Noel Perrin, Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, David R. Godine Inc, 1988 revised 2004. ccxcii John Iliffe, Africans – The History of a Continent, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 77–78. ccxciii The Economist, “The self-destructive gene,” The Economist, 17 July 2008, online at: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=11701267. ccxciv Michael D Gordin, “A Modernization of "Peerless Homogeneity:" The Creation of Russian Smokeless Gunpowder,” Technology and Culture, October 2003: vol. 44, no. 4: 677-702. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2003.0161. ccxcv Kristine Harper, Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008, as reviewed in Roger Turner, Technology and Culture, October 2009: vol 50, no. 4: 966-968. ccxcvi TC49.2 ccxcvii Colin Gray, Strategy For Chaos - Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History, London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2002, p. 39. ccxcviii Agustí Nieto-Galan, Colouring Textiles: A History of Natural Dyestuffs in Industrial Europe, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, as reviewed in, Anthony S Travis, Technology and Culture, July 2002: vol. 43, no. 3: 602-603. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2002.0143. ccxcix Bernard C. Beaudreau, Energy and the Rise and Fall of Political Economy, Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1999, as reviewed in, Technology and Culture, 2003: vol. 44, no. 1. ccc Jeffrey A. Hart, Technology, Television, and Competition: The Politics of Digital TV, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, as reviewed in Megan Gwynne Mullen, Technology and Culture, October 2005: vol. 46, no.

4: 833-835. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2006.0030. ccci Frederick Wasser, Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002, as reviewed in Joshua M. Greenberg, Technology and Culture, January 2004: vol. 45, no. 1: 211-212, p. 269.

DOI: 10.1353/tech.2004.0017. cccii Kenneth Lipartito, “Picturephone and the Information Age, The Social Meaning of Failure,” Technology and Culture, January 2003: vol. 44 no. 1: 50-81. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2003.0033. ccciii Michael J Socolow, “A Wavelength for Every Network: Synchronous Broadcasting and National Radio in the United States, 1926-1932,” Technology and Culture, January 2008: vol. 49, no. 1: 89-113. ccciv European Environment Bureau, Lessons From Early Warnings: the precautionary principle from 1896-2000, 2002. Available for free download at www.eea.europa.eu/publications/environmental_issue_report_2001_22. cccv Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, as reviewed in, Hugh S. Gorman, Technology and Culture, January 2004: vol.

45, no. 1:219-221. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2004.0016. cccvi Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, as reviewed in, Terry G Sharrer, Technology and Culture, January 2006: vol.46, no. 1: 257-259. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2005.0045. cccvii Gabrielle Hecht, “The Power of Nuclear Things,” Technology and Culture, January 2010: vol. 51, no.1: 1-30.

DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0396. cccviii Catherine Brahic, Wendy Zukerman, “Lose whaling loopholes, consider quotas,” New Scientist, 22 June 2010: issue 2766: 5.

Alternate: The Independent, “Iceland Whales,” The Independent, online at: http://search.independent.co.uk/topic/iceland-whales. cccix Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist -- How Prosperity Evolves, New York: HarperCollins, 2010, p. 12. cccx Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefèvre, Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007, as reviewed in, Jack H. Westbrook, Technology and Culture, October 2008: vol. 49, no. 4: 1104-1104. DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0155.

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Brian Rappert, Technology and Security: Governing Threats in the New Millennium, ed. Brian Rappert, University of Exeter, Exeter: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. cccxii The periodic table, of course, has more than 100 elements but the remainder are not known to exist commercially -- or, at least, outside the lab or particle accelerator. cccxiii David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old -- Technology and Global History Since 1900, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 156. cccxiv Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights - A History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. This book offers a fascinating account of the role of 18th century fiction in France, England, and the USA in developing the concept of human rights. She particularly emphasizes the impact of popular fiction on the anti-slavery movement and the movement to abolish torture. cccxv Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto - Liberties and Commons for All, Berkeley: University Of California Press, 2008, p. 7. cccxvi The Economist, “California’s criminal law: So bad, it could get better,” The Economist, 14 July 2011. cccxvii Josh Lauer, “From Rumor to Written Record - Credit Reporting and the Invention of Financial Identity in Nineteenth-Century America,” Technology and Culture, April 2008: vol. 49 no. 2: 301-324. DOI: 10.1353/tech.0.0001. cccxviii Peter Kellner, Democracy - 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty, London: Mainstream Publishers, 2009, p.

331. cccxix Peter Kellner, Democracy - 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty, London: Mainstream Publishers, 2009, p.

24. cccxx Peter Kellner, Democracy - 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty, London: Mainstream Publishers, 2009, p.

134. cccxxi Andreia Santos, Andreas Meyer-Lindenbrg, Christine Deruelle, “Absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping in Williams syndrom children,” Current Biology, 13 April 2010: vol 20, issue 7: 307-308. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.02.009. cccxxii Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights, A History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007, p. 28. cccxxiii The Economist, “The Dreyfus Affair – Pointing fingers,” The Economist, 10 June 2010, online at: http://www.economist.com/node/16316811. cccxxiv According to Chris Patten, if the French have been a little absent minded on the human rights front, the British have been stupid. Following World War I, one famous British Duchess -- the wife of a cabinet minister -- proposed to invite the mother of Britain's Unknown Soldier to tea. cccxxv Daniel R. Headrick Invisible Weapon - Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945, Oxford University Press, 1991. cccxxvi Tom Parfitt, "Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia," The Guardian UK, 6 April 2011, online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access. cccxxvii Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971-Present, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, as reviewed in Russell B Olwell, Technology and Culture, October 2004: vol. 45, no. 4: 868-869. DOI: 10.1353/tech.2004.0194.

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