Computers, Society, and Nature

Undeniably, Climate Change is ‘in’, ‘hip’, and ‘with it’. If you’ve got an eye out for mention of greenhouse gases, the hydrogen economy, emission credit trading… you’ll start to see it everywhere. And the New York Times certainly has its finger on the pulse: nuclear waste casks are suddenly popular, squeezing more energy from the consumer-side (finally!), and an article + audio slideshow of the most commercially-inclined hydrogen car to date.

In a move that Democrats and Californians alike are no doubt grinning about, Gov. Schwarzenegger has broken ranks with the Republican majority in re: climate change. “I say the debate is over,” he says, and summarily convinced, Arnold put California leaps and bounds ahead of any other US state with its ambitious legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. A scant review of this program’s ‘teeth’ is covered in the NYTimes article.

Happily, many states are falling under the auspices of the Kyoto protocol by mechanisms of their own design – with (obviously) no support or backing from the federal government. Actions include letigation and lawsuits against power plants (most famously last summer’s suit), to bolstering renewable energy (see UCS factsheet), to good, old-fashioned muckracking against the President (see angry formal letter), to simply adopting the Kyoto protocol on some respectable level. 44 case studes are available from the Pew Center’s database.

As Pablo Picasso once said, “every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” This is important when you observe the debate over cloning. From an NY Times article: ‘”I never destroy any life during my process,” said Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, the laboratory director, his eyes flashing above his surgical mask as he gave a reporter a rare look at the controversial human-cell transfer process developed at this small lab on the sixth floor of Building No. 85 at Seoul National University.”

But he goes on to make a distinction, and stating that embryos are never formed… ‘”We have never attempted human cloning.”‘ Enough people from the opposite point of view state the opposite. If the process creates embryos, the process is cloning.

So what of Alma Matter? Embryos are being produce. . . thawed after being frozen at a rate of 20,000 degrees C, no less! Also, a baby was actually born of this embryo, as reported by McGill’s Newswire. It seems there is no forseeable end to reproductive innovation.