Green Machines: Life and Liberty in the Era of High Biotechnology

by Nigel Calder

Describes a possible future, narrated from the vantage point of the year 2000, where manipulated biology could create abundant food, energy, and raw materials, eliminate starvation, and change the world for the better

205 pages, Hardcover

Published November 17, 1986

Reviews

[Cole Nesselson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nigel Calder was a famous science writer that wrote for the English prestigious journal called The New Scientist. He did not believe in human-induced climate change because he thought that funding and political factors fabricated this narrative. In Calder’s The Green Machines, he discusses a future world defined by highly optimized techniques for producing energy and more efficient forms of government. With genetic engineering, scientists increase the efficiency of crops in their ability to absorb sunlight and withstand disease or adverse conditions, increasing yields which accommodates a growing population. Then, the possibility of using the surplus from this highly optimized system to make fuel with the help of microbes. Calder adds the caveat that these green machines are humanity's best case scenario. The advent of nuclear technologies of mass destruction might interfere with the future existence of humans on Earth. He discusses aspects of human nature and believes that humans are not predisposed to be greedy and power hungry. In the end, he suggests a future system of decentralized, small communities of people that live efficiently and can return much of the land presently exploited by humans back to Nature. This book is intended for the public and does not assume the reader has any knowledge on the subject of Green Machines or any related science. Calder uses effective analogies to communicate his concepts to the reader. To describe how overcomplicated a chloroplast is in using the sun’s energy to split water, he compares it to “building a Mercedes just to be able to set fire to gasoline” (108).
Calder describes each technology with detail while keeping it accessible to the average reader. I found it fascinating that energy from the sun is equivalent to “more than 100 liters of gasoline raining on each square meter of ground in the course of a year” (117). Also, Calder exposes how Nature itself functions randomly in terms of the process of evolution and so, if we chose to truthfully model after nature, then anarchism would be the ideal political structure.
The most intriguing part of his message was that he used Switzerland as a model of an ideal society that was truly run by the people and for the people. He attributes guns as the primary reason for their ability to keep a stable, village-based political organization. He argues that no central government would be comfortable while the people held the power to overthrow it at any time. I find this fascinating because in the US, gun reform seems like the most beneficial option to prevent bad people from committing mass murders. Perhaps this behavioral issue should not be addressed with guns but some other structural reform.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the potential futures for society from a scientific perspective. The concepts outlined in Green Machines are captivating and carry over into other fields of thought such as philosophy and sociology.