Building better biodomes

Let’s face it, man has made a mess of the planet. He’s raped and pillaged its natural resources and left a toxic legacy that future generations may not even survive, let alone figure out ways to deal with.

There is a lot of discussion about the problem, but little in terms of real solutions to the problem itself. From an observers viewpoint there seem to be three options:

• Let politics sort it out
• Let science sort it out
• Let nature sort it out

The focus of the problem at the moment is the quantity of CO2 that we are producing. As populations increase, this will also increase, and while “lower emissions” for individuals have a nett long-term reduction effect, we still produce high emissions in producing the low-emission consumer products. And while business is allowed to trade emissions to offset the costs (penalties) levied against it for emissions “above targets”, we don’t have a viable solution which gets to the source of the problem. And that is industry itself.

So, that’s the political angle …

The scientific approach tends to revolve around throwing some form of as-yet-undiscovered technology at the problem to balance/filter the emissions and restore harmony. There is also the “sunscreen” approach written about in New Scientist. We’ve all seen visions of this future in the sci-fi writers handiwork, but is this “popular culture” approach the way to go?

And nature herself will sort it out quite happily – probably with an ice age. But we’d like to avoid that if at all possible!

But maybe we could benefit from a little combination between science and nature? This is of course where genetic modification comes in … which gets a lot of bad press, but could provide a silver lining to our current dilemma; that of too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

Let us start the premise with the fact that we are being encouraged to plant more trees – and we know that trees convert CO2 and so reduce the problem. But, so many trees have been lost, simply planting lots of new ones may be too little too late – if nothing else there will be plenty of trees after the ice age

However, if we enhance the CO2 converting potential of trees and genetically engineer a “super tree” which processes more CO2 more quickly, we could create a natural factory for processing the atmosphere. Since the tree is genetically modified, we don’t really want them in our back garden in case the modified genes enter the natural gene pool and spawn a generation of trees which over-oxygenate the planet and so poisons humanity…

So, the idea is that we take our GM trees and plant them in a large enclosure – a biodome. The biodome draws (polluted) air in and allows the trees to remove the CO2, and then “pumps” the clean air back out again. Naturally, the outgas is filtered for any spores that may allow the GM genes to get into the natural gene pool. These biodomes could be built all over the world, so creating “natural” air cleaning factories. We can switch them on and off as we need them and they don’t need lots of energy to operate – after all they are trees in a greenhouse.

Industry would lead their adoption – after all, the source of much of the CO2 is in the factories themselves. They could be made a mandate of business that above a certain level of emissions, instead of being able to sell the excess emissions and generate additional revenue (which sounds like we are rewarding “dirty” businesses to me) the business must build biodomes equating to an equivalent CO2 converting potential. Benevolent businesses could also plant them as part of their commitment to the longevity of humanity.

Maybe this is one string that will help us towards the Climate Neutral City?

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