biosphere experiment is a way of determining whether you can
[create] a self-replicating atmosphere so that you have the carbon
dioxide balanced with oxygen and so on, as we have right here
sitting outside on this patio in biosphere one (Earth).
Talk to any environmentalist and they are exclusively gloomy
about the future. The problem is overpopulation of our species,
which has been enormously successful. When you think about
evolution, we always think in terms of moving toward a higher
form, but that’s not necessarily the case. There are mutations that
may be valuable and allow one species to get a hold over another.
CONVERSATIONS
I wonder if our brain power is at an evolutionary dead end that
is going to eventually wipe us out. Maybe we needed it at first,
in the way that grizzly bears need that mass and speed and that
smelling ability. But maybe our brain power is an evolutionary
backwater and is our doom.
We talk about saving the Earth, but Earth will go on for
another three and a half billion years; it’s the conditions on this
Earth that allowed our species to thrive that are endangered. That’s
the problem.
If humans become slaves of the state, will it really matter that we
survive at all?
I think we
are
slaves of the state. Certainly I am, but I’m a
willing
slave because this society has allowed me to be an artist, to
be what I want, and to thrive, and that’s a great gift. It’s a miracle
that we live in a democracy, that we can continue to express
ourselves and have social mobility, at least in my time anyway. We
thought democracy was going to be the way of the world, but the
way of the world is the bully boy and the gang. I can’t really see
any good news, and if I have learned anything in my entire life, it
is that everything always gets worse.
Well, we’re pretty comfortable here in Montecito, which seems to
have been your first choice as a place to live. What would your second
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fall
