What do the BP oil spill and the recent announcement of a scientist creating a living cell have in common?
A dangerous threat to the Commons, our shared life here on earth.
Just as BP throws up it hands and says, 'we don't know how to fix it', someday the GMO algea may get loose in the ocean and out compete normal algea, creating a disrupted oceanic ecosystem.
A scientist is pulling the most productive algea components out the algea DNA, and creating a super algea that would be useful in producing fuel. Now, I'm not a super scientist or anything, but it doesn't take alot to see where this one would go into the dickey weeds. It gets loose, it out-competes, disrupts the ecosystem, spreads a mad red tide across the planet, and so on...
our Commons, our shared earth, is a shared valueable treasure, and individuals and corporations don't have the right to disrupt it just for their own greed or desire for scientific fame.
Corporations aren't people, they don't die or feel empathetic pain of others, and one of humanity's great challenges is figuring out how to put humans in the driver's seat instead of faceless corporations. The other great challenge is to learn to handle our super scientific powers and place them in the context of a breakable ecology and a useful morality.
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