I have had the distinct pleasure of living inside two biospheres. Of course we all here in this room live in Biosphere 1. I've also lived in Biosphere 2. And the wonderful thing about that is that I get to compare biospheres. And hopefully from that I get to learn something.
Imala sam to jedinstveno zadovoljstvo da sam živela u dve biosfere. Naravno, svi mi u ovoj sobi živimo u Biosferi 1. Ja sam takođe živela u Biosferi 2. Divna stvar u vezi sa ovim jeste što mogu da poredim te dve biosfere. I nadam se da iz toga mogu nešto i da naučim.
So what did I learn? Well, here I am inside Biosphere 2, making a pizza. So I am harvesting the wheat, in order to make the dough. And then of course I have to milk the goats and feed the goats in order to make the cheese. It took me four months in Biosphere 2 to make a pizza. Here in Biosphere 1, well it takes me about two minutes, because I pick up the phone and I call and say, "Hey, can you deliver the pizza?"
Šta sam to naučila? Pa, evo me u Biosferi 2, pravim picu. Dakle, žanjem pšenicu da bih napravila testo. I naravno, moram da pomuzem koze, i nahranim te koze da bih napravila sir. Trebalo mi je četiri meseca da u Biosferi 2 napravim picu. Ovde, u Biosferi 1, treba mi dva minuta. Zato što podignem slušalicu, pozovem i kažem: Hej, da li dostavljate picu?
So Biosphere 2 was essentially a three-acre, entirely sealed, miniature world that I lived in for two years and 20 minutes. (Laughter) Over the top it was sealed with steel and glass, underneath it was sealed with a pan of steel -- essentially entirely sealed. So we had our own miniature rainforest, a private beach with a coral reef. We had a savanna, a marsh, a desert. We had our own half-acre farm that we had to grow everything. And of course we had our human habitat, where we lived.
Dakle, Biosfera 2 koja se prostirala na 1.2 hektara, je u suštini bila potpuno zapečaćeni, minijaturni svet u kome sam živela dve godine i 20 minuta. (Smeh) Na vrhu je bila zapečaćena čelikom i staklom. Ispod je bila zapečaćena čeličnom pločom. U suštini, bila je potpuno zapečaćena. Dakle, imali smo našu ličnu minijaturnu prašumu, privatnu plažu sa koralnim grebenom. Imali smo savanu, močvaru, pustinju. Imali smo i našu ličnu farmu na kojoj smo uzgajali sve što nam je bilo neophodno. I naravno imali smo i habitat za ljude, gde smo živeli.
Back in the mid-'80s when we were designing Biosphere 2, we had to ask ourselves some pretty basic questions. I mean, what is a biosphere? Back then, yes, I guess we all know now that it is essentially the sphere of life around the Earth, right? Well, you have to get a little more specific than that if you're going to build one. And so we decided that what it really is is that it is entirely materially closed -- that is, nothing goes in or out at all, no material -- and energetically open, which is essentially what planet Earth is.
Ranije, sredinom 80ih, kada smo projektovali Biosferu 2, morali smo sebi da postavimo neka prilično elementarna pitanja. Mislim šta je uopšte biosfera? Onda, naravno, ali pretpostavljam da sada svi znamo da je to u suštini sfera života oko Zemlje, zar ne? Pa, morate da budete malo specifičniji od toga, ako planirate da izgradite jednu. I onda smo odlučili da je ona u stvari potpuno materijalno zatvorena to jest, ništa ne ulazi u nju, niti je napušta, nikakav materijal, ali je otvorena po pitanju energije. Što je u suštini ono što je i planeta Zemlja.
This is a chamber that was 1/400th the size of Biosphere 2 that we called our Test Module. And the very first day that this fellow, John Allen, walked in, to spend a couple of days in there with all the plants and animals and bacteria that we'd put in there to hopefully keep him alive, the doctors were incredibly concerned that he was going to succumb to some dreadful toxin, or that his lungs were going to get choked with bacteria or something, fungus. But of course none of that happened.
Ovo je komora, 400 puta manja od Biosfere 2 koju smo nazvali Test Modul. Prvog dana kada je naš ortak, Džon Alen, ušao unutra, da bi tamo proveo nekoliko dana sa svim biljkama, životinjama i bakterijama koje smo tamo ubacili, nadajući se da ga održimo u životu, doktori su bili neverovatno zabrinuti da će podleći nekom strašnom toksinu, ili da će da se uguši od bakterija ili gljivica. Naravno, ništa od toga se nije dogodilo.
And over the ensuing few years, there were great sagas about designing Biosphere 2. But by 1991 we finally had this thing built. And it was time for us to go in and give it a go. We needed to know, is life this malleable? Can you take this biosphere, that has evolved on a planetary scale, and jam it into a little bottle, and will it survive? Big questions. And we wanted to know this both for being able to go somewhere else in the universe -- if we were going to go to Mars, for instance, would we take a biosphere with us, to live in it? We also wanted to know so we can understand more about the Earth that we all live in. Well, in 1991 it was finally time for us to go in and try out this baby. Let's take it on a maiden voyage. Will it work? Or will something happen that we can't understand and we can't fix, thereby negating the concept of man-made biospheres?
Tokom sledećih nekoliko godina, bilo je velikih saga o dizajniranju Biosfere 2. Ali, do 1991. konačno smo izgradili ovu stvar. I došlo je vreme da uđemo unutra i pružimo joj šansu. Trebalo je da znamo da li je život toliko savitljiv? Možete li da uzmete ovu Biosferu, koja je evoluirala na planetarnoj skali, i nagurate je u bočicu i da li će preživeti? To su bitna pitanja. Trebalo nam je da znamo ovo da bismo mogli da putujemo negde drugde u svemir, ako bismo išli na Mars, na primer, da li bismo poneli sa nama ovakvu biosferu, da u njoj živimo? Takođe smo ovo želeli da znamo da bismo bolje razumeli Zemlju, na kojoj svi živimo. Pa, 1991. je konačno došlo vreme da uđemo i isprobamo ovo luče. Da je povedemo na prvo putovanje. Da li će raditi? Ili će da se desi nešto što ne razumemo i ne možemo da popravimo? Stoga negirajući koncept biosfera stvorenih od strane ljudi.
So eight of us went in: four men and four women. More on that later. (Laughter) And this is the world that we lived in. So, on the top, we had these beautiful rainforests and an ocean, and underneath we had all this technosphere, we called it, which is where all the pumps and the valves and the water tanks and the air handlers, and all of that. One of the Biospherians called it "garden of Eden on top of an aircraft carrier." And then also we had the human habitat of course, with the laboratories, and all of that. This is the agriculture. It was essentially an organic farm.
Dakle, osmoro nas je ušlo unutra. Četiri muškarca i četiri žene. O tome ćemo kasnije. (Smeh) Ovo je svet u kome smo živeli. Dakle, na vrhu smo imali ove predivne kišne šume i okean. A ispod je bila "tehnosfera" kako smo je nazvali. Tu su bile sve pumpe i ventili i tankovi sa vodom i uređaji za ventilaciju i ostalo. Jedan od ljudi koji su bili u Biosferi ju je nazvao "Edenski Vrt, na vrhu nosača aviona". I naravno, imali smo i ljudki habitat, sa laboratorijama i svim ostalim. Ovo je deo za poljoprivredu. U suštini, to je organska farma.
The day I walked into Biosphere 2, I was, for the first time, breathing a completely different atmosphere than everybody else in the world, except seven other people. At that moment I became part of that biosphere. And I don't mean that in an abstract sense; I mean it rather literally. When I breathed out, my CO2 fed the sweet potatoes that I was growing. And we ate an awful lot of the sweet potatoes. (Laughter) And those sweet potatoes became part of me. In fact, we ate so many sweet potatoes I became orange with sweet potato. I literally was eating the same carbon over and over again. I was eating myself in some strange sort of bizarre way.
Prvog dana kada sam kročila u Biosferu 2, po prvi put sam udisala vazduh koji se razlikovao od onog koji je udisao bilo ko drugi na svetu, osim sedmoro ostalih ljudi. Tog trenutka, ja sam postala deo te biosfere. I ne mislim to na neki apstraktan način. Mislim bukvalno. Kad god bih izdahnula, moj ugljen-dioksid hranio je slatke krompire koje sam uzgajala. A jeli smo užasno mnogo slatkog krompira. (Smeh) I ti slatki krompiri postali su deo mene. U stvari, jeli smo toliko slatkog krompira da sam od njega postala narandžasta. Bukvalno sam iznova i iznova jela isti ugljenik. Na neki čudan i bizaran način, jela sam samu sebe.
When it came to our atmosphere, however, it wasn't that much of a joke over the long term, because it turned out that we were losing oxygen, quite a lot of oxygen. And we knew that we were losing CO2. And so we were working to sequester carbon. Good lord -- we know that term now. We were growing plants like crazy. We were taking their biomass, storing them in the basement, growing plants, going around, around, around, trying to take all of that carbon out of the atmosphere. We were trying to stop carbon from going into the atmosphere. We stopped irrigating our soil, as much as we could. We stopped tilling, so that we could prevent greenhouse gasses from going into the air. But our oxygen was going down faster than our CO2 was going up, which was quite unexpected, because we had seen them going in tandem in the test module. And it was like playing atomic hide-and-seek. We had lost seven tons of oxygen. And we had no clue where it was.
Kada se radilo o našoj atmosferi, gledano na duge staze, tu već nije bilo mesta za šalu. Zato što se ispostavilo da smo gubili kiseonik i to u velikim količinama. A znali smo da smo gubili i ugljen-dioksid. I tako smo počeli da izolujemo ugljenik. Gospode Bože. Sada nam je taj termin dobro poznat. Uzgajali smo biljke kao ludi. Uzimali smo njihovu biomasu i skladištili je u podrumu, ponovo uzgajali biljke vrteći se u krug, u krug, pokušavajući da odstranimo sav taj ugljenik iz atmosfere. Pokušavali smo da sprečimo ugljenik da ode u atmosferu. Prestali smo da navodnjavamo zemljište, koliko god smo mogli. Prestali smo da obrađujemo zemljište, da bi sprečili gasove, izazivače efekta staklene bašte, da odlaze u vazduh. Ali količina kiseonika je brže opadala nego što je količina ugljen-dioksida rasla, što je bilo potpuno neočekivano. Zato što su se njihove količine u Test Modulu kretale u tandemu. Bilo je to kao da se igramo žmurke sa atomima. Izgubili smo sedam tona kiseonika. I nismo imali pojma gde se nalazio.
And I tell you, when you lose a lot of oxygen -- and our oxygen went down quite far; it went from 21 percent down to 14.2 percent -- my goodness, do you feel dreadful. I mean we were dragging ourselves around the Biosphere. And we had sleep apnea at night. So you'd wake up gasping with breath, because your blood chemistry has changed. And that you literally do that. You stop breathing and then you -- (Gasps) -- take a breath and it wakes you up. And it's very irritating. And everybody outside thought we were dying. I mean, the media was making it sound like were were dying. And I had to call up my mother every other day saying, "No, Mum, it's fine, fine. We're not dead. We're fine. We're fine." And the doctor was, in fact, checking us to make sure we were, in fact, fine. But in fact he was the person who was most susceptible to the oxygen. And one day he couldn't add up a line of figures. And it was time for us to put oxygen in. And you might think, well, "Boy, your life support system was failing you. Wasn't that dreadful?" Yes. In a sense it was terrifying. Except that I knew I could walk out the airlock door at any time, if it really got bad, though who was going to say, "I can't take it anymore!"? Not me, that was for sure.
A kažem vam, kada izgubite mnogo kiseonika - a naš je poprilično opao, pao je sa 21. procenta na 14.2 procenata - nebesa, kako se loše osećate. Mislim, vukli smo se po Biosferi. Čak smo imali i apneje tokom noći. Tako da smo se budili vapeći za vazduhom. To je zato što vam se krvna slika promeni. I onda doslovce uradite ovo: prestanete da dišete i onda (štucne) udahnete i to vas probudi. Veoma je iritantno. Svi spolja su mislili da umiremo. Mislim, mediji su naduvali priču tako da je zvučalo kao da umiremo. Morala sam da zovem majku svakog drugog dana da joj kažem: "Ne mama, u redu je, u redu je. Nismo mrtvi, dobro smo. Dobro smo." A doktor nas je stalno proveravao da bi bio siguran da smo, zapravo, dobro. A on je u stvari, bio najpodložniji nedostatku kiseonika. Jednog dana čak nije mogao da sabere niz brojeva. I došlo je vreme da ubacimo nešto kiseonika unutra. I verovatno sada mislite: "Čoveče, izdavao vas je sistem za održavanje života. Zar to nije bilo zastrašujuće?" Jeste. U nekom smislu, bilo je zastrašujuće. Osim što sam znala da sam mogla da išetam kroz hermetička vrata u svakom trenutku, ako bi situacija postala veoma loša. Mada, ko bi rekao: "Ne mogu više ovo da podnesem!"? Ja ne, to je bilo sigurno.
But on the other hand, it was the scientific gold of the project, because we could really crank this baby up, as a scientific tool, and see if we could, in fact, find where those seven tons of oxygen had gone. And we did indeed find it. And we found it in the concrete. Essentially it had done something very simple. We had put too much carbon in the soil in the form of compost. It broke down; it took oxygen out of the air; it put CO2 into the air; and it went into the concrete. Pretty straightforward really.
Sa druge strane, ovo je bilo pravo blago ovog projekta za naučnike, zato što smo zaista mogli da iskoristimo ovo u naučne svrhe i vidimo da li možemo, zapravo, da nađemo gde je nestalo tih sedam tona kiseonika. I jesmo ga našli. A našli smo ga u betonu. Ono što je uradio bilo je, u stvari, veoma jednostavno. Pošto smo ubacili previše ugljenika u zemljište u vidu komposta, on se raspao, vezao kiseonik iz vazduha, i oslobodio ugljendioksid u vazduh. I rastvorio se u betonu. U stvari je veoma jednostavno.
So at the end of the two years when we came out, we were elated, because, in fact, although you might say we had discovered something that was quite "uhh," when your oxygen is going down, stopped working, essentially, in your life support system, that's a very bad failure. Except that we knew what it was. And we knew how to fix it. And nothing else emerged that really was as serious as that. And we proved the concept, more or less. People, on the other hand, was a different subject. We were -- yeah I don't know that we were fixable. We all went quite nuts, I will say.
Dakle, na kraju te dve godine, kada smo izašli, bili smo ushićeni. Jer, iako bi mnogi od vas rekli da smo otkrili nešto što je "eh", kada vam nivo kiseonika opada kada praktično prestane da radi u vašem sistemu za održavanje života, to je veliki neuspeh. Ali mi smo znali u čemu je problem. I znali smo kako da ga rešimo. I ništa drugo se nije pojavilo a da je bilo tako ozbiljno. I u većoj ili manjoj meri, dokazali smo koncept. Ljudi su, sa druge strane, bili potpuno drugačija stvar. Mi smo - ne znam da li je bilo moguće nas popraviti. Kažem vam, postali smo ludi.
And the day I came out of Biosphere 2, I was thrilled I was going to see all my family and my friends. For two years I'd been seeing people through the glass. And everybody ran up to me. And I recoiled. They stank! People stink! We stink of hairspray and underarm deodorant, and all kinds of stuff. Now we had stuff inside Biosphere to keep ourselves clean, but nothing with perfume. And boy do we stink out here. Not only that, but I lost touch of where my food came from. I had been growing all my own food. I had no idea what was in my food, where it came from. I didn't even recognize half the names in most of the food that I was eating. In fact, I would stand for hours in the aisles of shops, reading all the names on all of the things. People must have thought I was nuts. It was really quite astonishing. And I slowly lost track of where I was in this big biosphere, in this big biosphere that we all live in. In Biosphere 2 I totally understood that I had a huge impact on my biosphere, everyday, and it had an impact on me, very viscerally, very literally.
Na dan kada sam napustila Biosferu 2 bila sam oduševljena što ću videti moju porodicu i moje prijatelje. Zadnje dve godine, viđala sam ljude kroz staklo, i svi su potrčali ka meni. Ali ja sam ustuknula. Smrdeli su! Ljudi smrde! Smrdimo na sprej za kosu i dezodoranse i mnoštvo drugih stvari. Mi jesmo imali sredstva za higijenu u Biosferi, ali nismo imali ništa sa parfemima. Bože što mi smrdimo ovde. Ne samo to, ja sam izgubila i osećaj odakle dolazi moja hrana. Bila sam sama uzgajala svu svoju hranu. A sada nisam imala pojma šta se sve nalazilo u mojoj hrani, niti odakle je dolazila. Čak nisam mogla da prepoznam polovinu imena stvari koje sam jela. U stvari, satima sam stajala pored polica u prodavnicama, čitajući sva imena sastojaka na svim stvarima. Ljudi su sigurno mislili da sam poludela. To je bilo zaista začuđujuće. I polako sam izgubila trag tome gde sam ja u ovoj velikoj biosferi, biosferi u kojoj svi živimo. U Biosferi 2 sam potpuno razumela da sam svakodnevno imala ogroman uticaj na moju biosferu, i da je ona imala uticaj na mene, veoma jak i bukvalan.
So I went about my business: Paragon Space Development Corporation, a little firm I started with people while I was in the Biosphere, because I had nothing else to do. And one of the things we did was try to figure out: how small can you make these biospheres, and what can you do with them? And so we sent one onto the Mir Space Station. We had one on the shuttle and one on the International Space Station, for 16 months, where we managed to produce the first organisms to go through complete multiple life cycles in space -- really pushing the envelope of understanding how malleable our life systems are.
I tako sam se posvetila svom poslu, Paragonskoj Korporaciji za Prostorno Uređenje, maloj firmi koju sam osnovala dok sam bila u Biosferi, jer nisam imala šta drugo da radim. Jedna od stvari na kojima smo radili je bio pokušaj da otkrijemo koliko malim možete da napravite ove biosfere. I šta sve možete da uradite sa njima? Tako smo jednu poslali na svemirsku stanicu Mir. Jednu smo držali u šatlu, a drugu u međunarodnoj svemirskoj stanici tokom 16 meseci, gde smo uspeli da stvorimo prve organizme koji su prošli više životnih ciklusa u svemiru. Time smo zaista pomerili granice razumevanja o tome koliko su fleksibilni naši životni sistemi.
And I'm also proud to announce that you're getting a sneak preview -- on Friday we're going to announce that we're actually forming a team to develop a system to grow plants on the Moon, which is going to be pretty fun. And the legacy of that is a system that we were designing: an entirely sealed system to grow plants to grow on Mars. And part of that is that we had to model very rapid circulation of CO2 and oxygen and water through this plant system.
Oduševljena sam što mogu da objavim, da prvi imate uvid u ovo - u petak ćemo objaviti da zapravo formiramo tim za razvoj sistema za uzgoj biljaka na Mesecu, što će biti veoma zabavno. Ishod svega toga biće sistem koji smo dizajnirali, potpuno zatvoreni sistem za uzgoj biljaka za uzgoj na Marsu. Deo ovoga je bio modelovanje veoma brzog kruženja ugljen-dioksida i kiseonika i vode, kroz ovaj biljni sistem.
As a result of that modeling I ended up in all places, in Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea, formerly part of Ethiopia, is one of those places that is astonishingly beautiful, incredibly stark, and I have no understanding of how people eke out a living there. It is so dry. This is what I saw. But this is also what I saw. I saw a company that had taken seawater and sand, and they were growing a kind of crop that will grow on pure salt water without having to treat it. And it will produce a food crop. In this case it was oilseed. It was astonishing. They were also producing mangroves in a plantation. And the mangroves were providing wood and honey and leaves for the animals, so that they could produce milk and whatnot, like we had in the Biosphere.
Kao rezultat tog modelovanja, završila sam na svakakvim mestima u Eritreji, na Rogu Afrike. Eritreja, nekadašnji deo Etiopije, je jedno od onih zadivljujuće lepih mesta neverovatno jednostavno, a opet nisam mogla da razumem kako ljudi preživljavaju tamo. Tako je suvo. Ovo je ono što sam videla. Ali i ovo je deo onoga što sam videla. Videla sam kompaniju koja je na morskoj vodi i pesku, uzgajala poljoprivrednu kulturu koja može da se uzgaja na slanoj vodi bez potrebe da se preradi. I proizvešće hranu. U ovom slučaju uljane semenke. To je bilo zadivljujuće. Takođe su proizvodili mangrove na plantaži. A mangrove su dalje korišćene za dobijanje drveta, meda i lišća za životinje tako da su one mogle da daju mleko i još štošta kao što smo mi radili u Biosferi.
And all of it was coming from this: shrimp farms. Shrimp farms are a scourge on the earth, frankly, from an environmental point of view. They pour huge amounts of pollutants into the ocean. They also pollute their next-door neighbors. So they're all shitting each other's ponds, quite literally. And what this project was doing was taking the effluent of these, and turning them into all of this food. They were literally turning pollution into abundance for a desert people. They had created an industrial ecosystem, of a sense.
A sve to je dolazilo iz ovoga, farme škampa. Farme škampa su pošast na zemlji, iskreno, sa stanovišta životne sredine. One oslobađaju ogromne količine zagađivača u okean. Takođe zagađuju i svoje najbliže komšije. Dakle, upropašćuju jezerca jedno drugom. Bukvalno. Ono što se radilo u ovom projektu, jeste da je tečan otpad sa ovih farmi, pretvaran u svu ovu hranu. Doslovce su zagađenje pretvarali u obilje za ljude iz pustinje. Stvorili su neku vrstu industrijskog ekosistema.
I was there because I was actually modeling the mangrove portion for a carbon credit program, under the U.N. Kyoto Protocol system. And as I was modeling this mangrove swamp, I was thinking to myself, "How do you put a box around this?" When I'm modeling a plant in a box, literally, I know where to draw the boundary. In a mangrove forest like this I have no idea. Well, of course you have to draw the boundary around the whole of the Earth. And understand its interactions with the entire Earth. And put your project in that context.
Bila sam tamo jer sam zapravo pravila model udela mangrova za kreditni program ugljenika, pod pokroviteljstvom Ujedinjenih Nacija u okviru Kjoto protokola. I dok sam pravila ovaj model močvare mangrova, razmišljala sam: "Kako ovo da stavim u kutiju"? Kada pravim model biljke u kutiji, bukvalno znam gde da povučem granice. Ali u šumi mangrove kao što je ova, nisam imala pojma. Naravno, granica se mora iscrtati oko cele Zemlje. I moramo da razumemo njene interakcije sa celom Zemljom. A svoj projekat stavljate u taj kontekst.
Around the world today we're seeing an incredible transformation, from what I would call a biocidal species, one that -- whether we intentionally or unintentionally -- have designed our systems to kill life, a lot of the time. This is in fact, this beautiful photograph, is in fact over the Amazon. And here the light green are areas of massive deforestation. And those beautiful wispy clouds are, in fact, fires, human-made fires. We're in the process of transforming from this, to what I would call a biophilic society, one where we learn to nurture society. Now it may not seem like it, but we are. It is happening all across the world, in every kind of walk of life, and every kind of career and industry that you can think of. And I think often times people get lost in that. They go, "But how can I possibly find my way in that? It's such a huge subject." And I would say that the small stuff counts. It really does.
Danas širom sveta vidimo jednu neverovatnu transformaciju. Od onoga što ja nazivam bioubistvena vrsta, ona koju smo namerno ili nenamerno dizajnirali u našim sistemima da većinu vremena uništava život. Ovo je u stvari, ova prelepa fotografija, je napravljena iznad Amazona. Ovde su, kao svetlo zelene, prikazane regije masovne seče šuma. A ovi prelepi paperjasti oblaci su, zapravo, namerno uzrokovani požari. Trenutno smo u procesu transformacije iz ovoga u ono sto bih ja nazvala društvom koje obožava prirodu, u ono u kome učimo da vrednujemo društvo. Možda vam se čini da nismo u tom procesu, ali zapravo jesmo. To se trenutno dešava širom sveta, u svakom segmentu života, u svakoj vrsti karijere i industrije koju možemo da zamislimo. Često razmišljam o tome da su se ljudi tu izgubili. Oni često govore: "Ali kako ja mogu na nađem svoj put u svemu tome? To je tako krupna stvar." Ali ja bih rekla da se male stvari računaju. Zaista je tako.
This is the story of a rake in my backyard. This was my backyard, very early on, when I bought my property. And in Arizona, of course, everybody puts gravel down. And they like to keep everything beautifully raked. And they keep all the leaves away. And on Sunday morning the neighbors leaf blower comes out, and I want to throttle them. It's a certain type of aesthetic. We're very uncomfortable with untidiness. And I threw away my rake. And I let all of the leaves fall from the trees that I have on my property. And over time, essentially what have I been doing? I've been building topsoil. And so now all the birds come in. And I have hawks. And I have an oasis. This is what happens every spring. For six weeks, six to eight weeks, I have this flush of green oasis. This is actually in a riparian area. And all of Tucson could be like this if everybody would just revolt and throw away the rake. The small stuff counts.
Ovo je priča o grabulji iz mog zadnjeg dvorišta. Ovo je bilo moje dvorište, jako odavno, kada sam tek kupila svoje imanje. A u Arizoni naravno, svi posipaju svoja dvorišta šljunkom. Vole da je sve divno izgrabuljano. Uklanjaju svo lišće. Nedeljom ujutro, komšije uklanjaju lišće duvačicama, a ja želim da ih zadavim. To je pitanje estetike. Ne osećamo se prijatno pored neurednosti. I tako sam ja odbacila moju grabulju. I pustila sam svo lišće da otpadne sa drveća koje imam na svom posedu. Šta sam ja to, u stvari, radila? Formirala sam površinski sloj komposta. Tako da sada dolaze ptice. Čak i jastrebi. Ja sada imam oazu. Ovo se dešava svakog proleća. Tokom šest nedelja, šest do osam nedelja, ja imam pravi bum zelenila. Ovo je zapravo u priobalnom pojasu. I ceo Tuson bi mogao da bude ovakav samo kada bi se svi pobunili i odbacili svoje grabulje. Male stvari se računaju.
The Industrial Revolution -- and Prometheus -- has given us this, the ability to light up the world. It has also given us this, the ability to look at the world from the outside. Now we may not all have another biosphere that we can run to, and compare it to this biosphere. But we can look at the world, and try to understand where we are in its context, and how we choose to interact with it.
Industrijska revolucija i Prometej, dali su nam ovo: mogućnost da osvetlimo svet. Takođe su nam dali i ovo: da na svet gledamo spolja. Sada, možda nemamo svi drugu biosferu u koju možemo da odemo i uporedimo je sa ovom. Ali možemo da pogledamo na svet i pokušamo da razumemo gde smo mi u njegovom kontekstu i kako biramo da vršimo interakciju sa njim.
And if you lose where you are in your biosphere, or are perhaps having a difficulty connecting with where you are in the biosphere, I would say to you, take a deep breath. The yogis had it right. Breath does, in fact, connect us all in a very literal way. Take a breath now. And as you breathe, think about what is in your breath. There perhaps is the CO2 from the person sitting next-door to you. Maybe there is a little bit of oxygen from some algae on the beach not far from here. It also connects us in time. There may be some carbon in your breath from the dinosaurs. There could also be carbon that you are exhaling now that will be in the breath of your great-great-great-grandchildren. Thank you. (Applause)
Ako izgubite pojam o tome gde ste u vašoj biosferi, ili ako možda imate problem sa povezivanjem sa tim gde ste unutar nje, rekla bih vam da udahnete duboko. Jogisti su u pravu, znate. Dah nas, u stvari, sve povezuje na veoma bukvalan način. Sada udahnite. Dok dišete, razmišljajte o tome šta se nalazi u vašem dahu. Tu je verovatno ugljen-dioksid osobe koja sedi u susednoj sobi. Možda u njemu ima i nešto kiseonika od algi sa plaže koja se nalazi nedaleko odavde. Takođe nas to povezuje i u vremenu. Možda u vašem dahu ima ugljenika dinosaurusa. Možda čak ima i ugljenika koji sada izdišete, a koji će se naći u dahu vaših pra-pra-pra-unuka. Hvala.