The Future (81 page)
Authors: Al Gore
406
increase its population 85 percent during the same period
Brown,
Plan B 4.0
.
407
complaints by Iraq and Syria that they are being treated unjustly
Brown, “This Will Be the Arab World’s Next Battle.”
408
will only get worse as populations in all the affected countries increase
“Thirsty South Asia’s River Rifts Threaten ‘Water Wars,’ ”
Alertnet
, July 23, 2012,
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/thirsty-south-asias-river-rifts-threaten-water-wars/
; “Southeast Asia Drought Triggers Debate Over Region’s Water Resources,” VOA News, March 24, 2010,
http://www.voanews.com/content/southeast-asia-drought-triggers-debate-over-regions-water-resources—89114447/114686.html
.
409
Colorado River system are being waged in court
Felicia Fonseca, “Arizona High Court Settles Water Rights Query,” Associated Press, September 12, 2012; “Colorado Court Ruling Limits Water Transfer
Rights,” American Water Intelligence, July 2011,
http://www.americanwaterintel.com/archive/2/7/opinion/colorado-court-ruling-limits-water-tranfers-rights.html
; “Pivotal Water Rights Case on Wastewater Rights,” American Water Intelligence, June 2011,
http://www.americanwaterintel.com/archive/2/6/analysis/pivotal-water-rights-case-wastewater-rights.html
; “Navajo Lawmakers Approve Water Rights Settlement,” Associated Press, November 5, 2010; Jim Carlton, “Wet Winter Can’t Slake West’s Thirst,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 31, 2011.
410
an official with a Kenyan NGO, Friends of Lake Turkana
Kremena Krumova, “Land Grabs in Africa Threaten Greater Poverty,”
Epoch Times
, September 21, 2011.
411
“There is no doubt”
Anil Ananthaswamy, “African Land Grabs Could Lead to Future Water Conflicts,”
New Scientist
, May 26, 2011.
412
“Rich countries are eyeing Africa”
John Vidal, “How Food and Water Are Driving a 21st-Century African Land Grab,”
Guardian
, March 6, 2010.
413
an agricultural real estate boom in Africa
Lorenzo Cotula, “Analysis: Land Grab or Development Opportunity?,” BBC News, February 21, 2012.
414
Liberia’s land, for example, has been sold to private investors
Anjala Nayar, “African Land Grabs Hinder Sustainable Development,”
Nature
, February 1, 2012.
415
signed deals with foreign growers for 21.1 percent of its land
Cotula, “Analysis: Land Grab or Development Opportunity?”
416
was sold to investors after the country won its independence
Nayar, “African Land Grabs Hinder Sustainable Development.”
417
grow palm oil for biofuel on 2.8 million hectares of land
Vidal, “How Food and Water Are Driving a 21st-Century African Land Grab.”
418
calculated that 44 percent was dedicated to biofuels
Krumova, “Land Grabs in Africa Threaten Greater Poverty.”
419
United Arab Emirates purchased slightly more
Vidal, “How Food and Water Are Driving a 21st-Century African Land Grab.”
420
“Thousands of people will be affected and people will go hungry”
Ibid.
421
area of the nation of Pakistan—and that two thirds
W. Anseeuw et al., “Transnational Land Deals for Agriculture in the Global South. Analytical Report Based on the Land Matrix Database,”
CDE/CIRAD/GIGA
, 2012.
422
people have claimed they were unjustly evicted
Ibid.
423
concerning difficulties in financing the projects
International Land Coalition, “Land Rights and the Rush for Land Report,” 2011.
424
will rely entirely on wheat imports by 2016
“Saudi Arabia Launches Tender to Buy 550,000 Tons of Wheat,”
Saudi Gazette
, August 30, 2012.
425
water from a deep nonrenewable aquifer
Brown, “This Will Be the Arab World’s Next Battle.”
426
80 to 85 percent of that water comes from underground aquifers
Reem Shamseddine and Barbara Lewis, “Saudi Arabia’s Water Needs Eating into Oil Wealth,” Reuters, September 9, 2011; Brown,
Plan B 4.0
.
427
will eventually involve desalination of seawater
Shamseddine and Lewis, “Saudi Arabia’s Water Needs Eating into Oil Wealth.”
428
locked up in the ice and snow of Antarctica and Greenland
Howard Perlman, U.S. Geological Survey, “Where Is Earth’s Water Located?,” September 7, 2012,
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html
.
429
even energy-rich Saudi Arabia cannot afford it
Caline Malek, “Solar Desalination ‘the Only Way’ for Gulf to Sustainably Produce Water,”
National
, April 24, 2012,
http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/solar-desalination-the-only-way-for-gulf-to-sustainably-produce-water
.
430
purchase the use of water-rich land in Africa
John Vidal, “What Does the Arab World Do When Its Water Runs Out?,”
Guardian
, February 19, 2011.
431
many desalination plants in the world—including in Saudi Arabia
“Saudi Arabia and Desalinisation,”
Harvard International Review
, December 23, 2010,
http://hir.harvard.edu/pressing-change/saudi-arabia-and-desalination-0
.
432
towing them to areas experiencing severe droughts
Bob Yirka, “Simulation Shows It’s Possible to Tow an Iceberg to Drought Areas,” PhysOrg, August 9, 2011,
http://phys.org/news/2011-08-simulation-iceberg-drought-areas.html
.
433
could supply 500,000 people with freshwater for a year
Ibid.
434
supplied with ample amounts of water, nutrients, and sunlight
“Does It Really Stack Up?,”
Economist
, December 9, 2010,
http://www.economist.com/node/17647627
.
435
rely on fish for approximately 15 percent
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “The State of Fisheries and Aquaculture,” 2012, p. 5,
http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i2727e/i2727e00.htm
.
436
from twenty-two pounds per person per year to almost thirty-eight pounds
Bryan Walsh, “The End of the Line,”
Time
, July 7, 2011.
437
one third of fish stocks in the oceans
Ibid.
438
reduced by 90 percent since the 1960s
Ransom Myers and Boris Worm, “Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities,”
Nature
, May 15, 2003.
439
The world reached “peak fish” twenty-five years ago
Brad Plumer, “The End of Fish, in One Chart,”
Washington Post
, May 20, 2012.
440
“with 14% of assessed stocks collapsed in 2007”
Convention on Biological Diversity, “Global Biodiversity Outlook 3: Biodiversity in 2010,” 2010,
http://www.cbd.int/gbo3/?pub=6667§ion=6709
.
441
large marine area in the Pacific Ocean
Suzanne Goldberg, “Bush Designates Ocean Conservation Areas in Final Week as President,”
Guardian
, January 5, 2009.
442
61 percent of which will occur in China
OECD-FAO, “Agricultural Outlook 2011–2020.”
443
can be tainted by pollution, antibiotics, and antifungals
Laurel Adams, Center for Public Integrity, “FDA Screening of Fish Imports Not Catching Antibiotics and Drug Residue,” May 18, 2011,
http://www.publicintegrity.org/environment/natural-resources?page=3
; George Mateljan, “Is There Any Nutritional Difference Between Wild-Caught and Farm-Raised Fish? Is One Type Better for Me Than the Other?,” World’s Healthiest Foods,
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=96
.
444
five pounds of wild fish for each pound of farmed salmon produced
U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Trout-Grain Project,” 2012.
445
Over half of the fish food in agriculture
NOAA Fisheries Service–National Marine Fisheries Service, “Feeds for Aquaculture,” 2012.
446
Although more than 10 percent of all cropland
Elizabeth Weise, “More of World’s Crops Are Genetically Engineered,”
USA Today
, February 22, 2011.
1
introduce human genes into other animals
Richard Gray, “Genetically Modified Cows Produce ‘Human’ Milk,”
Telegraph
, April 2, 2011.
2
mixing the genes of spiders and goats
Adam Rutherford, “Synthetic Biology and the Rise of the ‘Spider-Goats,’ ”
Guardian
, January 14, 2012.
3
computer chips into the gray matter of human brains
Daniel H. Wilson, “Bionic Brains and Beyond,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 1, 2012.
4
parents who wish to design their own children
Keith Kleiner, “Designer Babies—Like It or Not, Here They Come,” Singularity Hub, February 25, 2009,
http://singularityhub.com/2009/02/25/designer-babies-like-it-or-not-here-they-come/
.
5
sometimes noted, “There Be Monsters”
H. P. Newquist,
Here There Be Monsters: The Legendary Kraken and the Giant Squid
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2010).
6
they seized knowledge that had been forbidden them
Genesis 3:16–19.
7
so he could endure the same fate the next morning
Thomas Chen and Peter Chen, “The Myth of Prometheus and the Liver,”
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
87 (December 1994): 754.
8
replacement livers in their laboratory bioreactors
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, 10-30-10, “Researchers Engineer Miniature Human Livers in the Lab,” October 30, 2010,
http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2010/Researchers_Engineer_Miniature_Human_Livers_in_the_Lab.htm
.
9
almost certainly become the model for medical care
“Personalized Medicine,”
USA Today
, January 20, 2011.
10
volume of fine-grained information about every individual
“Do Not Ask or Do Not Answer?,”
Economist
, August 23, 2007.
11
reduce medical errors and enhance the skills of physicians
Farhad Manjoo, “Why the Highest-Paid Doctors Are the Most Vulnerable to Automation,”
Slate
, September 27, 2011,
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/robot_invasion/2011/09/will_robots_steal_your_job_3.html
.
12
“all are subject to radical transformation”
Topol,
The Creative Destruction of Medicine
, p. 243.
13
unhealthy behaviors in order to manage chronic diseases
David H. Freeman, “The Perfected Self,”
Atlantic
, June 2012; Mark Bowden, “The Measured Man,”
Atlantic
, July/August 2012.
14
digital monitors that are on—and inside—the patient’s body
Topol,
The Creative Destruction of Medicine
, pp. 59–76.
15
leads to an improvement in the amount of progress made
Janelle Nanos, “Are Smartphones Changing What It Means to Be Human?,”
Boston
, February 28, 2012.
16
will see their progress or lack thereof
Freeman, “The Perfected Self.”
17
global access to large-scale digital programs
John Havens, “How Big Data Can Make Us Happier and Healthier,” Mashable, October 8, 2012,
http://mashable.com/2012/10/08/the-power-of-quantified-self/
.
18
living systems are also being applied to the human brain
Matthew Hougan and Bruce Altevogt,
From Molecules to Minds: Challenges for the 21st Century
, Board on Health Sciences Policy, Institute of Medicine, 2008.
19
prosthetic arms and legs with their brains
Associated Press, “Man with Bionic Leg Climbs Chicago Skyscraper,” November 5, 2012.
20
curing some brain diseases
Meghan Rosen, “Beginnings of Bionic,”
Science News
182, no. 10 (November 17, 2012): 18.
21
mapping of what brain scientists call the “connectome”
Olaf Sporns, a professor of computational cognitive neuroscience at Indiana University, was the first to coin the word “connectome.” The National Institutes of Health now have a “Human Connectome Project.” Ian Sample, “Quest for the Connectome: Scientists Investigate Ways of Mapping the Brain,”
Guardian
, May 7, 2012.
22
greater than that required for mapping the genome
Hougan and Altevogt,
From Molecules to Minds
.
23
technologies necessary to complete the map are still in development
“Brain Researchers Start Mapping the Human ‘Connectome,’ ”
ScienceDaily
, July 2, 2012,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120702152652.htm
.
24
complete the first “larger-scale maps of neural wiring”
Sample, “Quest for the Connectome.”
25
“artificially perfect the thinking instrument itself”
Eric Steinhart, “Teilhard de Chardin and Transhumanism,”
Journal of Evolution and Technology
20, no. 1 (December 2008): 1–22.
26
for the brains of people who have Parkinson’s disease
Wilson, “Bionic Brains and Beyond.”
27
provide deep brain stimulation to alleviate their symptoms
Ibid.
28
activated in stages to give the brain a chance to adjust to them
Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cochlear Implant Information,
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/otolaryngology/specialty_areas/listencenter/cochlear_info.html#activation
.
29
“designer babies” may be highly appealing to some parents
Kleiner, “Designer Babies”; Mark Henderson, “Demand for ‘Designer Babies’ to Grow Dramatically,”
Times
(London), January 7, 2010.
30
competitive parenting has already done for the test preparation industry
Jose Ferreira, “A Short History of the Standardized Test Prep Industry,” Knewton Blog, February 17, 2010,
http://www.knewton.com/blog/edtech/2010/02/17/a-short-history-of-the-standardized-test-prep-industry/
; Julian Brookes, “Chris Hayes on the Twilight of the Elites and the End of Meritocracy,”
Rolling Stone
, July 11, 2012.
31
other parents may feel that they have to do the same
Armand Marie Leroi, “The Future of Neo-Eugenics,”
EMBO Reports
7 (2006): 1184–87.
32
may trigger collateral genetic changes that are not yet fully understood
Mike Steere, “Designer Babies: Creating the Perfect Child,” CNN, October 30, 2008.
33
“We will have converted old-style evolution into neo-evolution”
Harvey Fineberg, “Are We Ready for Neo-Evolution?,” TED Talks, 2011.
34
the United States is decreasing its investment in biomedical research
Robert D. Atkinson et al.,
Leadership in Decline: Assessing U.S. International Competitiveness in Biomedical Research
(Washington, DC: Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 2012).
35
“It’s time for everyone to pull their heads out of the sand”
“Designer Baby Row Over US Clinic,” BBC, March 2, 2009.
36
“who deserves to be born?”
Andrew Pollack, “DNA Blueprint for Fetus Built Using Tests of Parents,”
New York Times
, June 6, 2012.
37
“They feel disempowered”
Steere, “Designer Babies.”
38
“would undermine humanity and create a techno-eugenic rat race”
Ibid.
39
will soon exceed the sequencing capacity of the entire United States
Japan External Trade Organization, “BGI, China’s Leading Genome Research Institute, Has Established a Japanese Arm in Kobe,” February 7, 2012; Fiona Tam, “Scientists Seek to Unravel the Mystery of IQ,” translated by Steve Hsu,
South China Morning Post
, December 4, 2010.
40
occupations that make the best use of their capabilities
“The Dragon’s DNA,”
Economist
, June 17, 2010; Emily Chang, “In China, DNA Tests on Kids ID Genetic Gifts, Careers,” CNN, August 5, 2009,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/08/03/china.dna.children.ability/
.
41
over $100 billion on life sciences research over just the last three years
Lone Frank, “High-Quality DNA,”
Newsweek
, April 24, 2011.
42
“science discovery and innovation within the next decade”
Ibid.
43
industry will be one of the pillars
“China Establishes National Gene Bank in Shenzhe,” Xinhua News Agency, June 18, 2011.
44
eventually sequence the genomes of almost every child in China
David Cyranoski, “Chinese Bioscience: The Sequence Factory,”
Nature
, March 3, 2010.
45
first patent on a gene
Harriet A. Washington,
Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself—and the Consequences for Your Healthy and Our Medical Future
(New York: Doubleday, 2011), p. 181.
46
more than 40,000 gene patents have been issued, covering 2,000 human genes
Sharon Begley, “In Surprise Ruling, Court Declares Two Gene Patents Invalid,”
Daily Beast
, March 29, 2010.
47
used for commercial purposes without their permission
Washington,
Deadly Monopolies
, chs. 1 and 7.
48
gene therapy drug, known as Glybera
Ben Hirschler, “Europe Approves High-Price Gene Therapy,” Reuters, November 2, 2012.
49
treatment of a rare genetic disorder
Andrew Pollack, “European Agency Backs Approval of a Gene Therapy,”
New York Times
, July 20, 2012.
50
approved a drug known as Crizotinib
Alice T. Shaw, “The Crizotinib Story: From Target to FDA Approval and Beyond,” InforMEDical, 2012,
http://www.informedicalcme.com/lucatoday/crizotinib-story-from-target-to-fda-approval
.
51
“We now believe that Monsanto”
“Monsanto Strong-Arms Seed Industry,” Associated Press, January 4, 2011.
52
“Could you patent the sun?”
“ ‘Deadly Monopolies’? Patenting the Human Body,”
Fresh Air
, NPR, October 24, 2011,
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/24/141429392/deadly-monopolies-patenting-the-human-body
. The groundbreaking work of Albert Sabin—whose vaccine became the most widely used—cannot be overlooked as well.
53
research into the genome was still in its early stages
Norman Borlaug, biography,
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-bio.html
.
54
“God help us if that were to happen”
Vandana Shiva, “The Indian Seed Act and Patent Act: Sowing the Seeds of Dictatorship,”
ZNet, February 14, 2005,
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/2166-india-seed-act-patent-act-sowing-the-seeds-of-dictatorship
.
55
“always stood for free exchange of germplasm”
Ibid.
56
courts continue to uphold the patentability of genes
Reuters, “Court Reaffirms Right of Myriad Genetics to Patent Genes,”
New York Times
, August 16, 2012.
57
we gain the ability to understand and manipulate the reality
Michael S. Gazzaniga,
Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 199.
58
four letters: A, T, C, and G
“The four bases—ATCG,” Scitable, Nature Education, 2012,
http://www.nature.com/scitable/content/the-four-bases-atcg-6491969
.
59
“device the size of your thumb could store”
Robert Lee Hotz, “Harvard Researchers Turn Book into DNA Code,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 16, 2012.
60
discovered by James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin
Lynne Osman Elkin, “Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix,”
Physics Today
56, no. 3 (March 2003): 42–48.
61
exactly fifty years later, the human genome was sequenced
US Department of Energy, Office of Science, “History of the Human Genome Project,” June 4, 2012,
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/hgp.shtml
.
62
they are beginning to sequence RNA
Genetics Home Reference, “RNA,”
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/glossary=rna
.
63
system to convey the information that is translated into proteins
“RNAi,” Nova scienceNOW, PBS, July 26, 2005,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/rnai.html
.
64
cells that make up all forms of life
Genetics Home Reference, “Protein,”
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/glossary=protein
.
65
being analyzed in the Human Proteome Project
Human Proteome Organisation, “Human Proteome Project (HPP),” 2010,
http://www.hupo.org/research/hpp/
.