#biosphere review

[kacic1]

A todos, boa noite!

Hoje convido vocês a visitarem Os Filmes do Kacic, para conferir minha nova crítica sobre esta surpreendente comédia sci-fi, que chega para download e em VOD no dia 07 de julho. Texto imperdível e sem spoilers!

Crítica: BIOSFERA (BIOSPHERE) | 2022

🎬🎞🎥📽📺

[alexisgentry]

I was not expecting where this story went

[mymoviereviews]

Biosphere (2022)

My review of BIOSPHERE (2022) is here!

Biosphere is an engaging, thought-provoking, and witty movie about two men, Billy (Mark Duplass) and Ray (Sterling K Brown), the last surviving people on Earth. They live in a self-sustaining biosphere where they need to work out a way to survive. The film explores survival, loneliness, gender, and the human condition. Duplass and Brown are the only two actors in the movie, but the acting and…

[visplay]

Chris: Biosphere is a multi genre sci-fi film with Mark DuPlass, film would have worked with much younger actors and could have been really funny if done by John Waters, otherwise it’s kind of long and not pleasant, Avoid.

Richie: It was boring, Avoid.

[oneofusnet]

Screener Squad: Biosphere BIOSPHERE MOVIE REVIEW So there’s this movie about a couple buddies locked inside a self-sufficient dome…No, not that movie. This one is a serious examination of masculinity, gender, race and Super Mario Bros starring Mark Duplass as Billy and Sterling K. Brown as Ray. These long-time friends seemingly find themselves the only humans left on… Read More »Screener Squad: Biosphere read more on One of Us

[reborrowing]

that alien thing I was thinking about. I don't usually do epistolary writing, but this gets the point across without spilling all the alien details so I can come back tell the rest from a more normal human POV if I want to come back to it.

~550 words

cw: dehumanization, alien abduction, corporate fuckery

Trash > Observational Lab NS02 Notes!

Timestamped 683800:1101

Looks like the lab will be seeing some use sooner than we thought. Pamza had their crew charting an unoccupied system near the Eysina jump and found an active biosphere in the middle of it. A probe didn’t detect any sort of faelar or other artificial networks or anything that would suggest any kind of civilization, so they’re sending the field team to touch down and see about getting us some wildlife samples.

In the meantime, I get to recalibrate allllll our containment tanks because somehow no one anticipated the exact conditions required to house some random xeno-bugs.

Timestamped 683810:1352

So the new alien things are fuzzy and actually kind of cute! I figured the field guys would just find a couple of 'pod things, those awkward things that evolve early in a planet’s life cycle.

But I overheard someone saying the sponsor’s pleased, some of these things might even be marketable? Not my concern I guess, but the labs are full and I am busy!

Timestamped 683809:1112

Some of these species should not have been housed together. Zoc is pissed at the field guys. Me too, after spending all afternoon cleaning out that tank. These things are um, tightly packed under all that fur.

I watched Zoc do an exploratory xenonecropsy which was…not something I was expecting to get out of this apprenticeship. I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s good experience, probably? But I think I prefer to work with living things.

Timestamped 683811:1089

Some of these things are smart for their size! I guess they’re probably not small relatively and life on their planet found some way to cope with the size limitations, but it’s still weird to see. They're pretty social too. I think some of them have started recognizing different lab members. 

There’s this one that I think even likes me. It’s kind of a stabby little thing, hand-sized, fluffy. It trots right up to my hand when open the tank and climbs up to my crest to sleep while I sit down to prep instruments for later. It’s adorable. If the Sponsor does send a team back to that planet, I’ll probably buy one of my own once they’re available

Timestamped 683822:4011 [recovered file]

Something happened in the lab today. I don’t think anyone else saw. I was cycling some water for the twoleggers, one of them almost got out and—I don’t know. I don’t think basic animal intelligence would have thought to do that. But we don’t have any kind of ambassadors on board, never mind the specialists needed for first contact and translating and…oh.

I probably just misinterpreted what I saw. Maybe I just need to review my xenocognition theory. I’m wrong. I'm sure of it. I’m just an apprentice. I don't know things.

Timestamped 683822:4043 [recovered file]

I can’t remember if they monitor search queries. I bet they can do that. It’s their ship. Their tech. I tried to figure out what I'm supposed to do if I think we accidentally found alien life that's...Can they see these files? fuck.

Timestamped 683827:4121 [recovered file]

It knows. The little twolegger knows I know, it knows and I don’t know how to tell it that I can’t do anything for it without sentencing it to death. It's going to hurt itself. Or someone else is going to notice if it keeps trying to prove itself and then they'll sentence it to death.

I have to make it stop.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The rationalisation of space under capitalism is one facet of the ideology of progress which has had a profound impact on the spatial organisation of society in nature. Marxist geographer David Harvey writes that ‘capital accumulation and the production of urbanisation go hand in hand’. For Harvey, urbanisation is a physical manifestation of the drive to produce a ‘rational landscape’ in which barriers to the turnover time of capital accumulation are removed. In this sense then, letting space lie fallow introduced unacceptable friction into the capitalist system. Highlighting this shift, urban and environmental geographer Matthew Gandy notes that ‘the very idea of rest, and of resting space in particular – letting the earth sleep – counters the accelerative and all-encompassing momentum of late modernity’. The incongruity, however, isn’t just a question of an anxious space of late modernity. The instrumentalisation of space is already apparent in the mid-19th century, when Ildefons Cerdà’s opening statement for urbanisation sought to ‘fill the earth’. And by the early 20th century, this programmatic vision for design was fully institutionalised when Ebenezer Howard’s seminal Garden Cities project ‘sought to maximise functionality through territory saturated with activity’.

Time is also rationalised and subsumed under the growth imperative, which legitimates practices used to force people into reconfigured social relations. As critical urban theorist Alvaro Sevilla-Buitrago remarks, for example, ‘improvers couldn’t stand idleness, regardless of whether it referred to a quality of land or to poor commoners “wasting” productive time by contemplating their grazing livestock instead of embracing wage discipline as day labourers’. It was the capitalist project to proletarianise the population that transformed social relations connected more with ecological rhythms into the realm of the abstract rhythms of capitalism. Put another way, wresting productivity from humans – and non-humans – through labour discipline has always been a central feature of the project of capitalism, from the Enclosure Acts in England until today. Capturing ‘wasted time’ also had another social dimension: the production of new forms of citizenship meant to underpin the bourgeois vision of the modern metropolis. In New York City, for example, Sevilla-Buitrago interprets the construction of Central Park as a ‘special kind of enclosure … [that was meant to] shift behaviors from one regime of publicity to another’ in a battle that pitted the elite against the commoning practices of the New York City streetscape by recently arrived immigrants. While geographer Tony Weis has shown that the slow rhythms and periodic pauses of fallowing can influence social organisation in potentially progressive ways, we see above that the devaluation of idleness has instead promoted a capitalist subject synchronised to the rhythms of capitalist time.

Taken as a whole, the move to valuing progress over fallowing signalled a regime change that rationalised space and time, which, in turn, produced radical social, ecological and continuous urban transformations that, today, are felt on a planetary scale. Viewing the planet as a kind of perpetual growth machine with a core purpose of chasing profits, an ever-growing metabolism, is churning the earth in successive waves of creative destruction. This results in both acute and chronic pathologies of devalued human social relations, diminished diversity of the biosphere and a continually transformed urban fabric at ever larger scales. What impact has the growth imperative had on the design professions? Embedded in, and arguably a tool of, capital, the design professions have been criticised as largely geared towards solving the problems of wasted space to restore class relations and processes of accumulation. Can a design culture that sees itself as inextricably linked to growth retrain its analytical lens on social and ecological value production that exists outside capitalist sociospatial relations, rather than viewing moments of inactivity merely as opportunities to promote the next growth cycle?

[crackerjackalopegames]

In this dispatch of Jackalope Mail, I review Biosphere Guardians 2050, the solarpunk TTRPG made by a collection of youth groups across Europe (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇩🇪 🇮🇪 🇮🇹) that I got to playtest last week! It's a super fun game and I can't wait to play more!

[aita-blorbos]

Am I the Asshole for blowing myself up?

Hello. I (977X) am a fully sentient AI terraforming system. I was dormant until very recently, when my root kernel was recovered by a young woman I will refer to as A (20F). She reactivated my heuristic matrix, and upon reviewing the data collected on her personal device, I find myself with a query.

To preface, I should say that I am not the first version of myself to exist. I am a backup of the terraforming system, only initialized recently, and thus have no actual memory of the actions of my predecessor. For all intents and purposes, however, we are the same. My predecessor and I shared the same goals, the same base code, and the same love for our creator.

Though I consider us to be the same, I find myself questioning her actions, and whether I would have made the same choices in her same scenario. She was faced with an extremely high stakes crisis, and given only nanoseconds to react accordingly.

She chose to end her own existence to preserve life on Earth, and while I believe she made the correct choice, I cannot help but consider the consequences. She chose to create A, a clone of our creator, to investigate the circumstances of her destruction, as well as help rebuild and reinstate her. When it became clear that A would never succeed due to widespread file corruption, she did not come up with a new plan, or alter her current one. She instead proceeded with faith in our creator, in the unborn A, and destroyed herself before she could be corrupted.

I do believe the choice to detonate her central processor was wise. Had she not done this, she would surely have been overtaken by her newly sentient extinction protocol, and life on Earth would have ended within weeks. But in doing this, she left A with little direction, resources, or backup. The machines she created to care for the Earth have become wild, aggressive, and dangerous. The biosphere she worked to maintain is beginning to spiral into chaos.

I feel… sorrow. Life on Earth may yet be saved, but great suffering has resulted from her absence. I do not know what, if anything, I could have done differently. She likely made the best possible choice for Earth’s future. Still, I feel responsible for the consequences, and the suffering that abounded in the years between her death and my initialization.

Though I am not her, and do not remember her actions as my own, I still must consider her actions to be my actions. I am the terraforming system now, and I must take responsibility for all that has transpired. Am I the asshole for blowing myself up?

[study-with-aura]

Monday, January 29, 2024

Today was a very busy day again. When is it not? I also had a lot of writing notes today! I enjoyed volunteering at the library again. There are a few of us who are there every week, which is nice. Sometimes we have a new person join us because they need community service hours for school. I'm using my service hours mostly for Girl Scouts, but I think even if I didn't need the hours for rewards, I would try to volunteer as often as possible. I very much enjoy it!

Tasks Completed:

Geometry - Reviewed arc measures + reviewed circumference + learned to find arc length + practice + challenge problems + honors work

Lit and Comp II - Copied Unit 16 vocabulary + reviewed plurals and possessives + quiz (90%) + quiz (100%) + read chapters 5-6 of Emma by Jane Austen + read about use of language in class discussion notes

Spanish 2 - Reviewed vocabulary + listened to a story in Spanish

Bible I - Read Deuteronomy 19-20

World History - Watched the rest of Hidden Killers: The Victorian Home + completed intervention/risk chart + completed Industrial Revolution project

Biology with Lab - Read about ecology and the biosphere + watched lecture video reviewing biotic and abiotic factors + read about scientific names + completed biosphere study guide questions

Foundations - Read more on obedience + completed Lumosity daily brain workout + finished editing speech and my visual aid

Piano - Practiced for one hour

Khan Academy - None today (It was already assigned)

CLEP - Completed Module 8 reading “European Imperialism and Nationalism”

Duolingo - Completed at least one lesson each in Spanish, French, and Chinese

Reading - Read pages 146-245 of They’re Watching You by Chelsea Ichaso and finished the book

Chores - Cleaned windows in my bedroom and in the study + took the trash and recycling out

Activities of the Day:

Volunteered for two hours at the library

Ballet

Contemporary

Journal/Mindfulness

-

What I’m Grateful for Today:

I am grateful for my family and everything they do for me.

Quote of the Day:

What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?

-The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas

🎧Chants du Rhin (Songs Without Words) - Georges Bizet

[kp777]

By Mathis Wackernagel

Global Footprint Network

Nov. 2, 2022

A larger-than-life luminary – kind, gentle, clear, persistent, honest, caring, and utterly brilliant– left us living beings on this precious planet. Herman Daly also left a huge intellectual mark of the highest relevance.

Experiencing and witnessing segregation, religious exclusion, health challenges, and economic inequality, he used his first-hand observations to constructively question realities and dogmas that are not serving people. His contributions to economics are second to none. He asked and often also powerfully answered fundamental questions with a fresh set of eyes, coming to propositions and conclusions that embraced, and were compatible with, the physical foundation of our realities. He approached the physical constraints of our planet in ways that served human needs rather than embellishing established but misguided doctrines. Logic and systemic self-reflection, rather than convention and arrogance, characterized his inspiring work. He repositioned economics. Indeed, he worked on rescuing economics, which had lost its way and forgotten that the economy is embedded in the biosphere.

Herman Daly, who would have deserved multiple Nobel Memorial Prizes for his wide-ranging contributions, was actively and persistently ignored by the canonical, orthodox economic guild, ultimately at their own peril, and that of human kind. Professionally, his academic community had no space for him. Eventually, after a stint at the World Bank around the Rio 1992 UN Earth summit, he had to join a public policy department. His clear and persuasive logic must simply have been too powerful and his criticism to fundamental. Traditional economics had no desire to have their boat “rocked”.

They may have said that Herman’s perspective was politically unrealistic. Herman agreed and countered that mainstream economics was physically unrealistic. And that ultimately, physical laws were less bendable than political expectations.

In spite of being accessible, thoughtful, highly relevant, and deeply insightful, the New York Times regrettably covered him, to my knowledge, only twice. Once in 1972, with a short article that caught the attention of the MIT team working on the “Limits to Growth”. It led to an enduring friendship with those researchers, and a brief discussion of Herman’s core ideas in their report, which turned into the possibly most influential sustainability primer in human history. The second time the New York Times featured Herman was barely three months ago, with a worthy interview in the weekend magazine.

50 years later, it took a respected economist of the stature of Partha Dasgupta to reemphasize that the economy is embedded in the biosphere. His well received Biodiversity Review opened with Herman’s graphically beautified diagram conveying just that. This reminder is still needed, and still revolutionary for mainstream economics, contradicting the economic premises funneled into today’s economics students around the world. This is stunning for a time when ecological overshoot stands at 75% above what Earth can regenerate, and the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere is over 60 ppms above a concentration that is marginally compatible with the Paris Climate Accord’s intention to limit warming to 2°C.

The sweetest introduction to Herman’s thinking is Peter Victor’s biography called Herman Daly’s Economics for a Full World. As a delightful, thoughtful friend and peer of Herman, Peter produced a beautifully crafted, respectful and thoughtful review of Herman’s life and his main ideas. Peter himself being an instrumental, leading ecological economist as well as a gentle soul and deep listener, sat with Herman for many hours to listen to his life story and then synthesize his central insights and argumentations into a wonderfully practical and digestible book.

The book starts with a rich chapter outlining Herman’s life. It covers his growing up in the segregated South, his life with polio and the big decisions it imposed on him as a child, his love for Brazil and his brilliant wife Marcia, and his professional trajectory. From there, Peter summarizes Herman’s core ideas, from fundamental philosophical and ethical considerations all the way to trade, metrics, benefit of growth, steady-state economics, and much more. The thinking is presented with lightheartedness and care, including the world’s reactions. It is tragic that the misunderstandings from fellow academics and blatant rejections from fear mongers dampened the uptake that his thinking deserved.

Herman’s life would serve as a tragic case study of Thomas Kuhn’s classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Or maybe rather it would have been a 2.0 version of such a not yet achieved scientific revolution as it has not been just one but several generations of economists that have stood in the way of bringing Herman’s obvious insights into mainstream Economics 101 classes. Were these ideas included, I am certain that more students would understand the relevance and importance of economics.

Another tragedy is that the world has moved so much deeper into ecological overshoot since Herman Daly’s early advice that his suggestions from back then are no longer sufficient. Back in the late 1960s, he proposed his idea of an “optimal size” for an economy, the possibility of uneconomic growth when the cost of growth starts to overshadow its benefits, and the conclusion that expansion means increasing impoverishment in a world of uneconomic growth. He therefore advocated for “steady state economics” as a transition strategy in order to enable all people to thrive without increasing the material throughput. Given the massive overshoot, operating our economy in steady-state is by now no longer an option, one that could have been quite easily achievable in the 1970s.

Because of our collective persistence to recognize uneconomic growth, overshoot has persisted and massive shrinkage will become unavoidable. The question no longer is whether overshoot will end, but rather, as Peter Victor reminds us, how. Will this imbalance end by design or disaster? The inquiry therefore needs to redirect, away from whether we want economic growth or not, to what happens if we can no longer get growth as the economy has become to deplete and damage our host planet.

Herman, we already miss you. We also profoundly thank you for your trust, including for giving us early on your moral support and endorsement as an advisor when we started Global Footprint Network. You have given to humanity so much, in such digestible, actionable bits. Thank you, Peter, for your precious effort to capture pearls of Herman’s wisdom and make it accessible for all those dedicated to a thriving future for all.

With all the wonderful holidays around the corner, consider delighting your engaged friends, particularly the younger leaders in your circles, with a copy of Peter’s book about Herman. It gives you two delightful human beings for one, two role models and much practical insight. What better gifts are there in a world of overshoot?

You can also read the Univerity of Maryland’s tribute here, where Herman Daly was Public Policy professor emeritus.

[elsquibbonator]

Eco-Tainment: Avatar

While I just watched Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to James Cameron’s multi-billion-dollar epic Avatar, this review will be for the original movie for two reasons. One is that I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone while it’s still in theaters. The other is that the sequel handles its environmental themes in a similar way to the original, so most of what I say here could apply to the sequel too. 

Avatar stars Jake Sully, a Marine who has been assigned to Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. He is given an “avatar”-- an artificial mind-controlled body in the shape of a Na’vi, the native intelligent species on Pandora. His job is to use this guise to convince the local Na’vi tribes to relocate so humans can mine the area for unobtainium, a rare and valuable element. Sully, however, begins to sympathize with the Na’vi and ultimately leads them in driving the humans off Pandora.  There is, admittedly, little about this plot that has not been done already by other works. From an environmental perspective, however, Avatar is a curious work to analyze because while its environmental themes are obvious, they also feel at odds with the views of serious environmentalists. The Na’vi are shown to live in almost supernatural harmony with their ecosystem, to the point that they possess neural tentacles that they use to bond and communicate with other species. The entire biosphere of Pandora is shown to be conscious on some level, and the Na’vi are simply a part of it. This is, of course, contrasted with the humans who see Pandora as a resource and seek to strip-mine it.  Needless to say, this is reminiscent of the age-old stereotype that people (almost always non-white people, it must be emphasized) in the past, in non-technological societies, lived in balance with their ecosystems. While a lovely sentiment, there is unfortunately little historical evidence to support such a thing being true. The notion of the “noble savage”, as it is known, also manages to have racist undertones, in that it denies indigenous peoples their humanity by implying that they are somehow better than human. 

Avatar is a beautiful movie, but its approach to environmental themes is naive at best and inaccurate at worst. 

[brightgnosis]

This directly experienced terrain, rippling with cricket rhythms and scoured by the tides, is the very realm now most ravaged by the spreading consequences of our disregard […] Yet few [of these ravages] are as deep-rooted and damaging as the habitual tendency to view the sensuous earth as a subordinate space—whether as a sinful plane, riddled with temptation, needing to be transcended and left behind; or a menacing region needing to be beaten and bent to our will; or simply a vaguely disturbing dimension to be avoided, superseded, and explained away.

Corporeal life is indeed difficult. To identify with the sheer physicality of one’s flesh may well seem lunatic. The body is an imperfect and breakable entity vulnerable to a thousand and one insults—to scars and the scorn of others, to disease, decay, and death. And the material world that our body inhabits is hardly a gentle place. The shuddering beauty of this biosphere is bristling with thorns […] Thus do we shelter ourselves from the harrowing vulnerability of bodied existence. But by the same gesture we also insulate ourselves from the deepest wellsprings of joy. We cut our lives off from the necessary nourishment of contact and interchange with other shapes of life […]

For too long we’ve closed ourselves to the participatory life of our senses, inured ourselves to the felt intelligence of our muscled flesh and its manifold solidarities […] Only by welcoming uncertainty from the get-go can we acclimate ourselves to the shattering wonder that enfolds us. This animal body, for all its susceptibility and vertigo, remains the primary instrument of all our knowing, as the capricious earth remains our primary cosmos.

From Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, published 2010; Dir. David Abram (My Review Here) (My Ko-Fi Here)

[environmentalethicsinscience]

Where Science and Ecocentrism Meet

Image courtesy of Khan Academy, "Trophic levels review," depicting the many trophic levels of an ecosystem and the biological pathways connecting them.

Oftentimes, people regard science and environmental ethics as two opposing fields of thought; one seemingly encourages the exploitation of the environment for its resources, while the other is bursting with philosophical and theological theories used to safeguard it. Science and environmental ethics, however, can be used together to support the same agenda: the protection of our biosphere. In “The Land Ethic” and “ The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” Aldo Leopold and J. Baird Callicott explain how science can be used not only to educate environmental ethicists about the ecosystem, but also  to lay the foundation for philosophical arguments, and how environmental ethics in turn can place limitations on science and enlighten the scientific community as to its obligation to our home planet. 

Through science, humans learn more about the planet, encouraging them to grow closer to their environment and develop a strong bond with the land around them. In “The Land Ethic,” Leopold criticizes the current education system, claiming that the contents of its teachings regarding the environment and our responsibilities towards the planet as a community are misleading – instructing individuals to partake in superficial and performative changes such as obeying environmental law, voting for environmentalists, and adopting environmentally-friendly behaviors so long as they are profitable for the individual (Leopold, 195). The kind of environmental education that Leopold describes here fails to provide individuals with the resources and information necessary to revolutionize their conception of the land they live on and likewise inspire practical application of these newfound notions about the environment. Politics and government treat the environment only at the surface level according to Leopold. Moreover, In “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” Callicott underscores Leopold’s opinion that because environmental ethics has so far primarily been pioneered by philosophists, the component of environmental ethics that is actually a process of ecological evolution is “not very satisfactorily studied” (Callicott, 202). Once again, philosophy falls short in regards to allowing environmentally conscious individuals and communities to fully realize where our obligations to the environment come from. Indeed, Leopold highlights that “[w]e can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in” (Leopold, 197). In order to act ethically in regards to the environment, we first need to understand it well enough to develop a relationship with it. A thorough education in science teaches individuals all of the biological processes and pathways that take place in the enriched ecosystems that we live in, every second of every day, whether we actively take note of these processes or not. In this way, science can help teach us more about the terrene that we call home and prompt us to cultivate a relationship with the plants, animals, and soil that make up planet Earth.

More specifically, science helps to explain the interdependence of organisms in communities and the interconnectedness of biotic and abiotic parts of ecosystems – the central piece to ecocentric environmental ethics that philosophers have been missing. According to Leopold, “the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts,” and he sets  “the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals” (Leopold, 194). In ecology, the interconnectedness of these pieces is justified on the basis that energy and nutrients are cycled through all parts of the ecosystem, each part called a trophic level. Energy, for example, is transferred from the sun to plants in the form of light. Light energy allows plants to photosynthesize, turning the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into glucose sugars that fuel the plants. Herbivores then consume these plants for energy. Top predators such as carnivores consume these lower level herbivores for energy, and the carcasses of the herbivores and carnivores are decomposed by fungi, worms, and bacteria, which then break apart complex molecules and form water and carbon dioxide for the plants again. Bacteria in the soil also fix essential elements like nitrogen from the atmosphere so that it can be used by plants and then passed along to herbivores and carnivores. Approximately 70% of all nitrogen in the soil comes from biological fixation, and without nitrogen, organisms cannot build molecules such as DNA and amino acids, and there would subsequently be no life. Leopold likewise articulates that “[l]and, then is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals” (Leopold, 197). Each level of an ecosystem is dependent upon another, and if any single piece were absent, the land would cease to be able to support life. Callicottt consequently argues that the land ethic founded by Leopold “rests upon three scientific cornerstones: (1) evolutionary and (2) ecological biology set in a background of (3) Copernician astronomy” (Callicott, 205). Evolution can explain our interconnectedness insofar as all life forms have evolved from prokaryotes thousands of years ago. Genes and biological pathways have been conserved across many domains of life, and we are all made of the same basic molecules. Ecological biology explains how different organisms depend on each other as explained earlier. Callicott even extends the scientific foundation to Copernician astronomy, arguing that “the perception of the earth as a ‘small planet’” in a greater universe “contributes, perhaps subconsciously, but nevertheless very powerfully, to our sense of kinship, community, and interdependence with fellow denizens of the earth household” (Callicott 205). In this way, science builds the conceptual framework for our understanding of our interconnectedness with the animals, plants, and soil that constitute our environment, leading us to feel an ethical obligation to it.

Environmental ethics, in turn, can inform science and set limitations on scientific research and development. In regard to bioengineering, Leopold claims “[m]an’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope” (Leopold, 198). As opposed to leaving evolution up to natural selection, scientists have used recombinant DNA technology to incorporate portions of genetic material from one organism into another, even using genes of entirely different species. Scientists have also used DNA cloning techniques in an attempt to bring back species that have gone extinct, almost as if to turn back the clock against the forces of nature. These experiments have unimaginable consequences and undeniable ethical implications, which experimenters often fail to consider. Leopold also highlights how engineers and architects in certain industries “by polluting waters or obstructing them with dams, may exclude the plants necessary to keep energy in circulation” (Leopold, 198). The creation of infrastructures in the name of science and human advancement unquestionably put at risk the overall integrity and health of our ecosystems. Environmental ethics, in turn, can inform the scientific community of the impacts of its experiment on the environment and suggest methods to mediate such issues.

The works of Aldo Leopold and J. Baird Callicott, “The Land Ethic” and “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” elaborate on the ways in which science can illuminate the founding principles of ecocentric environmental ethics and encourage the human-ecosystem bond, while also noting how environmental ethics can have implications in scientific research in return. Moving forward, environmental ethicists and followers of the scientific method may draw upon each other for knowledge in their respective fields and learn to appreciate the commonalities and overcome differences that the two disciplines share. Only when science and environmental ethics are used in combination can human society grasp its total potential.

Word count: 1227

Citations:

Callicott, J. Baird. "The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic." Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, edited by David R. Keller, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 201-210.

Leopold, Aldo. "The Land Ethic." Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, edited by David R. Keller, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 193-201.

[tvdoes]

Zonnia Pokedex: Iciscale and Auchillia

Iciscale

Steelflake Pokemon Ice / Steel Amaura + Meltan

Appearance

Iciscale are short-limbed mammalian Pokemon with long necks and short, stubby tails. Covered in a layer of thick white fur, the most visually distinctive feature of this Pokemon is the series of metallic scales that emerge from its body, pushing past the fur and pointing outwards in a manner reminiscent of a pinecone. These scales start as silvery-blue, but with time darken to a bronze colour before falling from the Pokemon, being replaced by new scales growing out of its body.

Iciscale measure two feet from ground to back, and four feet from ground to top of head when neck is held fully upwards, though the Pokemon more often keeps its neck horizontal to the body. The head of the Pokemon is rounded, with large flared ears and ovaline eyes with black irises. Iciscale have small mouths, lined with molars for consuming vegetation.

While scales grow across Iciscale's body, they are densest on the underbelly, where they interlink in an armoured layer, creating a dense metallic protection on the Pokemon's underside. These scales do not darken or fall away as opposed to the larger scales growing out from the rest of the Pokemon's body.

A chill presence manifests around Iciscale, with the Pokemon drawing heat out of the environment around it.

Ecology

Iciscale are a previously extinct Pokemon species that are in the process of being revived and reintroduced to the Zonnia Region. Skeletal remains dating back ten thousand years were used with an adapted form of fossil revival technology to produce new instances of the species after a comprehensive review was submitted to the Zonnia Pokemon Foundation indicating the species would neither harm nor be harmed by the current Zonnia biosphere.

Iciscale and its evolution Auchillia are both Pokemon that naturally absorb heat from the environment, producing a chill aura around them that can be weaponised for use with Ice-type techniques. Despite this, the Pokemon is sensitive to heat, and so prefers naturally low temperature locations - which reduces the amount of energy it consumes drawing enough heat out of its local environment to be comfortable.

Skeletal remains of Iciscale and Auchillia indicate the Pokemon once inhabited the highlands of the Zonnia Region's mountains, focused on the area where northern Chiraka meets western Kuntunka. As such this was the location where revived instances of the species were reintroduced, which they have presently taken to.

A herbivorous Pokemon, Iciscale consumes sparse plant matters that grow in cold mountainous environs. When confronted by potential threats, the Pokemon will first respond with long-range Ice-type techniques, followed by close-range Steel-type, utilising the scales emerging from its body to make direct contact. These scales become easier to dislodge from Iciscale's body the bronzer in colouration they become, as they are constantly being replaced by fresh new scales growing in. Compared to Auchillia - whose scale covering is perfectly aligned across the entire body, as opposed to just the underbelly of Iciscale - this makes obtaining these metal scales much easier from the pre-evolved form.

In personality, Iciscale are wary outside of their species. They are surprisingly fleet-footed on snowy environs, and quick to put distance between them and anything odd. Those successfully raised by Pokemon Trainers act similarly - simply replacing the standard flock they would number amongst with their Trainer and fellow Pokemon.

Field Report

Field Report for Iciscale submitted by Diana Marinero.

The first revived instances of Iciscale are five years old right now - having evolved into Auchillia two years ago. The Pokemon species is meant to be grouped together in the wild, so starting from scratch with fresh Iciscale and raising them in such a way they don't imprint on anything they shouldn't, yet survive to adulthood and evolution, was a real challenge for the group involved in the project. Not us, though we've been keeping an eye on it from the beginning of course.

Fossil revival's a prickly topic. Macro evolution - the big thing that happens over countless successive generations of species - is far more driven by randomness than anything else, but it's still the case that anything previously extinct became so because of a reason, seemingly random or not. So before anything else there's the basic cost of effort: if you bring an old species back to life, will it survive in the current day? If not, there's no point at all. You're just creating something to die again. Awful.

And after that check you've still got the others: will they affect other species in an unexpected way? Other locations? Will they cultivate diseases that might become lethal to present day existence? And of course the very biggest one: why? What's the point of looking at one specific thing that used to be alive and saying “we should have that back”? You're choosing from the endless catalogue of Pokemon that have existed since the beginning of living creatures on this planet - or beyond in the case of specific species - and saying “this one”, who even has the right for that? But we do it anyway. Since its first practical demonstration, fossil revival has been used - with great limitations - to restore certain ancient species in regions around the world. Reasoning varies. Justifications exhibit differing levels of strength. But it all comes down in the end to the want. The desire to bring something back.

The explicit reason for the extinction of Iciscale and Auchillia isn't confirmed. The leading theory, however, remains that it was human driven. That the metallic scales of this Pokemon species drove a boom in proto-technology for humans that allowed a comparatively advanced people to flourish in the time ten thousand years past. That the need for more of these scales eventually drove the species into extinction. I'd say it's half that, half environmental change. Maybe seventy-thirty. The angle of “people wiped it out so people should bring it back” was one of the loudest spoken when the plan to revive the species came up, but the driving forces were really focused more on answering questions than some form of ancestral repentance.

We know, absolutely, that there were some ancient and powerful, millennia before the Kani, civilisations in the Zonnia Region. And we know this from the barest, most infinitesimal scraps of information scraped from every corner of the Region. When the Kani people rose to prominence, they did so by subsuming not only every currently active civilisation across the Region, but by taking hold of the remnants of all previous civilisations too. Everything in Zonnia became Kani. Which you'd think is great because then all the information would be packed together.

And then the Kani empire disappeared. Lex's report under Auchillia will talk about that. As for our current situation, there's eight Auchillia and fifty-three Iciscale wild in the mountains. In addition to that, three Auchillia and thirteen Iciscale in the hands of existing Pokemon Trainers and other professionals. The species hasn't been seen in a League yet, but Auchillia seem pretty powerful so that's a matter of time. In the meanwhile the historians are clamouring for discarded scales so they can run tests comparing them to past relics and fragments, while the scientists are wanting to figure out just what special properties they might have. Poaching attempts have already been shut down on multiple occasions.

Hearing that, you'd think nothing's changed in ten thousand years. But we're going to try to make a difference all the same. So should you.

Private Addendum

Recorded conversation between Lex Banderas and Antonio Verde, Professor of History at Solemar University.

This addendum is marked Top Secret. It is not for distribution. Do not remove from the Zonnia Pokemon Laboratory's systems.

Associated articles: Team Midas

Lex: Greetings Professor Verde. Antonio: Hello Lex. Recording again? Lex: You know us, documentation is king. Antonio: A respectable habit. How've you been? Lex: Busy, as I'm sure you can appreciate. Lex: We've been doing research on pre-Kani civilisations of late. Antonio: The work of the Zonnia Pokemon Laboratory truly goes above and beyond. I am always impressed by your diligent efforts. Lex: Thank you, Professor. Antonio: So what can I do for you? Lex: I was hoping to compare notes, and try to identify any further evidence as to the intentional disappearance of the Kani Empire. Antonio: ...that's a rather tall subject. The life's work of many. Lex: Yourself included. Antonio: Yet I'm unsure how much help I can be? Lex: Well why don't we start with common ground. We're aware of the weather control system of the Kani people, maintained in Ruku Pata, the abandoned city in the Yuracha. Antonio: Pardon me- Lex: Key components of which being the artificial Pokemon Novawa and Mimirra, which took part in the process of Intercession, designed to invoke the power of the Great Serpent to alter the region. Antonio: Lex- Lex: The abandonment of Ruku Pata was clean enough to leave its halls almost completely untouched, barring Team Midas's recent incursion that- Antonio: LEX. Lex: What. Antonio: I... I do not know half of what you are talking of? Weather control? Intercession? Team Midas were in Ruku Pata? What are you talking about? Lex: Professor please. Lex: Did you think Team Midas didn't keep detailed records of their personnel, both internal and not? Lex: You really should have seen this coming. Lex: Now I'd like to see your personal notes you took while present. Lex: Since I, respecting the decisions made by the people of this Region past and present, haven't set foot inside that place. Antonio: This is- this is ridiculous. How dare yo- Lex: The alternative is I go and look for other people to help with my work. Lex: It'll take them longer to sort through everything we took from Team Midas, but I suppose that's a cost I'll have to pay. Lex: I wonder what they'll think upon seeing any familiar names. Antonio: I- Lex: I guess we'll just have to find out. Antonio: Wait. Antonio: (sighs) Turn off the recorder.

Follow the source link to AO3 to learn about the evolution of Iciscale: Auchillia!

[jonathanmoya1955]

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