The story of Wall-E is a futuristic thought experiment of STEM unhindered by the human relationship to nature and each other, leading to the collapse of the biosphere. In the story, obese humans depart Earth to live in space terrariums and enjoy endless fast food and simplistic social engagements. At the same time, on Earth, the little robot Wall-E wanders endless trash heaps but then finds a lone seedling and discovers a deep desire to save it (yes, emotive AI is a real thing). It’s a story of STEM-making stuff but without a conservation ethic. How real could the WALL-E story be?
STEM education needs guiding ethics. First thoughts are obvious things like ensuring we’re not building bombs, cloning people, or inventing killer pathogens in the classroom. When we think of ethics in STEM, three ideas come to mind:
STEM for Good
Identify, understand, and mitigate harm to society.
Respect the planet and its finite resources.
Ensure innovation and entrepreneurship are for our benefit.
STEM for Intellectualism
Reinforce evidence-based critical thinking and open-minded skepticism.
Maintains a free, independent, and unbiased flow of ideas and creativity.
Demands academic honesty and integrity of research.
STEM for All
Equity in access.
Actively reduce barriers to programs.
STEM requires a conservation ethic, which Wall-E’s world didn’t have. In that world, the ratio of stuff to life is 99.99% to .01%, with one little plant (and a cockroach sidekick). To understand the ratio of stuff to life today, we start by comparing the biomass of all life on earth to the “technomass” of all humans have made.
The Biomass of Life
A 2018 study of the Biomass Distribution on Earth estimates that “the sum of all life (biomass) across all taxa on Earth, measured by weight in carbon, is ≈550 Gt C, of which ≈80% (≈450 Gt C) are plants, dominated by land plants (embryophytes). The second major biomass component is bacteria (≈70 Gt C), constituting ≈15% of the global biomass. In descending order, other groups are fungi, archaea, protists, animals, and viruses, which together account for the remaining <10%.” The biomass of humans, roughly eight billion of us, weighs only 120 million tons. At the 550 gigaton biomass of all life on the planet now, so far, we’ve made roughly 2% of that in plastic alone.
The Technomass of Stuff
The diversity of waste is more than just plastics, including metals, concrete, and asphalt, all wiring, circuit boards, and all of the 10s of thousands of chemicals we’ve invented. Plastic is but a fraction of the total mass. What does this look like when we compare the sum total of all non-living stuff we’ve made “technomass” to the biomass of all life? A recent effort by Brice Ménard at Johns Hopkins University aimed to visualize the data from that 2018 study of the Biomass Distribution on Earth and other significant numerical waste estimates that are hard to grasp.
At some recent pivotal moment in human history, we surpassed the “Wall-E Threshold,” making more stuff (1200Gt) than the total of all life on earth (1100Gt), and things are not slowing down. What drives the production and consumption of stuff is largely population growth and a rising middle class. In the next quarter century, by 2050, we’ll exceed 10 billion people, and the growth economies of China and India alone, 1/3 of the human population, will demand more stuff than civilization consumes now. A STEM conservation ethic would allow civilization to enjoy prosperity without harm. This is more comprehensive than the common technofix adage, “technology can fix whatever it breaks,” while not stiffening innovation. Four ideas are foundational.
Biophilia
Conservation of the natural world is in our DNA. The human relationship to nature is a set of behaviors, learning biases, and psychological well-being emerging from our evolutionary history. The benefits from engagement with nature and disorders related to deficits of experience with nature are well documented. There are nine categories of biophilia, ranging from aesthetic preferences for natural settings and spiritual reverence to utilitarian exploitation of food and shelter. Collectively illuminating our complex relationship to nature and our disability without it.
Arts and Humanities
While STEM explores the “How” of the universe, the Arts and Humanities explore the “Why.” Meaning, purpose, and thus ethics emerge from philosophical dialogues and creative works. While there’s some overlap with biophilia, the Arts and Humanities are a more culturally derived set of values and ethics rather than purely biological.
Society
From both the sciences and humanities emerges a conservation ethic that can be applied culturally to our institutions, whether defining educational curriculum or applying legal protections for nature and wildlife. In addition, we recognize that in the hierarchy of human needs a conservation ethic by other needs, such as security, access to health care and education, and the basic needs of food, water and housing. Lastly, equity in access to STEM out of respect for human dignity, but also knowing the next solution/innovation is in the mind of a child sitting in a classroom somewhere right now, waiting for society to provide a door for that child to open. Without social justice, people are not in a position to prioritize environmental justice.
Environment
Fully functional, healthy, and stable ecosystems are necessary to meet human societal and biophilic needs. Understanding threats to ecosystem health is thoroughly described by the Planetary Boundaries Framework and Existential Risk. STEM becomes an opportunity to find solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing our biosphere today.
These four ideas: Biophilia, Arts, Society and the Environment (BASE) are foundational to building a strong STEM conservation ethic. Therefore, the inclusion of BASE in STEM will go a long way to ensure Wall-E World remains fiction.
Comentarios