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.
我十分榮幸地 住過兩個生態圈。 當然,這房間裡的每個人,都住在生態圈一號裡。 我還曾在生態圈二號裡住過。 妙的是,我可以比較這兩個生態圈。 希望藉此能學到一些東西。
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?"
那麼,我學到了什麼呢?嗯, 這是我在生態圈二號裡做披薩。 我正在收割小麥,用來做麵糰。 然後,當然我也必須去擠羊奶 以及餵山羊,這樣才能做出乳酪。 在生態圈二號裡,我花了四個月才做出披薩。 在生態圈一號裡,這只要大約兩分鐘。 因為我只用打個電話,說, “嘿,你能送個披薩過來嗎?“
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.
生態圈二號 基本上是一個佔地三英畝, 完全封閉的小型世界 我在那裡住了二年又20分鐘。 (笑聲) 頂端是由鋼骨和玻璃封起來的。 底部也是由一塊大鐵盤封閉的。 基本上,這是完全封閉的。 因此,我們有自己的迷你雨林, 私人海灘帶有珊瑚礁。 我們有熱帶草原、沼澤、沙漠。 我們有半英畝的農場,用來養植任何東西。 當然,我們也有人類住處,供我們居住。
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.
1980年代中期,當我們設計生態圈二號的時候 我們必須問自己一些很基本的問題。 例如說,什麼是生態圈? 在那個時候,是的,我想現在我們都知道了 基本上那是一個供生命存活的圍繞著地球的圈子,對吧? 嗯,如果你要造一個的話,就必須比那個定義更明確一點。 因此,我們決定,它最必要的就是 它在物質上必須完全封閉, 也就是說,沒有任何材料的進出, 而能量是開放的。 基本上地球就是這樣。
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.
這是一個只有生態圈二號1/400大小的密室。 我們稱它為測試模組。 就在第一天,這位伙伴 John Allen, 走了進去,在那花了幾天, 和我們放進去的植物、動物、細菌一起 希望他能活著。 醫生十分擔心 他會感染上一些十分致命的病毒, 或者他的肺會嗆到細菌或別的東西,如菌類。 但是,當然這些都沒發生。
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?
在接下來的幾年裡, 有著不少關於生態圈二號設計的傳奇。 但是到了1991年 我們終於建了這個東西。 同時也到了我們進入的時間 去實測一下。 我們需要知道, 生命具有適應能力嗎? 你能把這個生態圈 從星球規模推演而來的, 將它壓縮成小瓶子, 而還能存活嗎? 都是大問題。 我們想知道,一方面為了能夠到宇宙他處, 例如說,我們要去火星, 我們要否帶個生態圈,住進去? 我們也想知道,以便我們能更了解 我們賴以生存的地球。 1991年,終於到了我們入住的時候 試驗一下我們的心血結晶。 讓我們來一趟處女航吧。 它會成功嗎?會不會有 我們不了解或應付不了的事發生? 從而否定了人造生態圈的概念?
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.
我們進去了八個人,四男四女。 以後會更多。 (笑聲) 這就是我們生活的世界。 在上層,我們有 美麗的雨林和海洋。 下面,有我們所稱的科技空間。 那裡有所有的幫浦和閥門 儲水槽和空氣處理裝置,以及其他設備。 一位圈中人稱它為:“航空母艦上的伊甸園"。 一位圈中人稱它為:“航空母艦上的伊甸園"。 當然,我們也有人類居住處, 有實驗室,諸如此類。 這是農業空間。 它基本上是個有機農場。
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.
我走進生態圈二號的那天, 我第一次 呼吸著和世界所有人 都不一樣的大氣。 除了另外和我同行的七人。 那一刻開始, 我成了那個生態圈的一部分。 我這可不是抽象地說說而已。 而是有十分具體的意思。 當我呼出空氣時,二氧化碳 供養著我種植的紅薯。 而我們吃了無數的紅薯。 (笑聲) 而這些紅薯 又變成了我身體的一部分。 實際上,我們吃了那麼多的紅薯, 因著紅薯, 我變成橙色的。 我實際上一次次吃著同樣的碳化物。 說得奇怪點,我不停地吃我自己。
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.
然而, 當提到我們的大氣圈時, 從長遠來看, 這可不僅僅是個笑話。 因為它顯示出,我們在失去氧氣,數量可觀的氧氣。 而且我們也知道,我們在失去二氧化碳。 所以我們努力固碳。 感謝上帝,我們現在知道了這個術語。 我們像瘋了一樣地種著植物。 我們把那些生物質移到地下室儲存, 不停地種植,不停地種, 試圖吸收大氣圈裡多餘的碳。 我們也試圖阻止碳進入大氣圈。 我們盡可能停止灌溉土壤。 我們停止翻土,這樣我們可能避免溫室氣體進入空氣。 但我們失去氧氣的速度更快, 比二氧化碳增加的速度還快,這是意料外的。 因為在測試模組裡,我們同步檢驗過。 這就像玩原子的捉迷藏。 我們已經失去了七噸的氧氣。 而我們絲毫不知它藏在哪裡。
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.
我告訴你,當你失去了很多氧氣時 -- 而我們失去的氧氣是很多的, 從21%降到到14.2% -- 天哪,感覺是很恐怖的。 我指的是,我們在生態圈裡勉強度日。 睡覺時,我們會呼吸暫停。 因而你會醒過來緊急吸氣。 因為你的血液化學已經起了改變。 你真的會那樣。你會停止呼吸,然後你 -- (喘息) -- 吸一口氣,就會驚醒,這十分討厭。 外面的人都以為我們快死了。 我是說,媒體讓這看起來,像是我們快死了。 我得每隔一天打電話給我媽, 說, “沒事,媽,沒問題。 我們沒有死,我們很好,我們很好。" 事實上, 醫生檢查著我們 來確定我們沒有事。 但實際上,他才是最容易缺氧的那個人。 有一天,他幾乎不能做簡單的算術。 那也是我們該放氧氣進來的時候。 你也許會在想,看吧, "天呀, 你們的生命支援系統 正在殺你。那不可怕嗎?” 是的,某個觀點上,那很可怕。 除了我知道,我可以走出那扇氣密門 隨時都可以,如果事情變得很糟。 不過,誰會說 “我不行了!”? 顯然不會是我。
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.
但是另一方面,這是科學研究計畫的黃金。 因為我們真的可能把這搞定, 當成科學工具, 看看我們能否真的找到 那七噸氧氣到底去哪了。 我們的確找到了它。 我們是在水泥裡找到的。 基本上, 那很簡單。 我們以堆肥方式在土壤裡存了太多的碳。 它分解了,把空氣中的氧氣帶走了。 把二氧化碳放入空氣,然後它又跑進水泥裡。 其實十分直截了當。
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.
所以在兩年後, 當我們出去的時候,我們都十分高興。 因為,實際上,儘管你會說 我們發現的只是個 "原來如此" 的問題, 當你的氧氣下降, 基本上,在你的生存系統裡停止工作, 那是十分失敗的。 除非我們知道是怎麼回事,以及我們知道如何修復。 而且不再發生別的 像那麼嚴重的問題。 我們多多少少證明了這個概念可行。 另一方面,人類則是另一回事。 我們 -- 我不知道我們是不是可修復。 我會說,我們都變得怪怪的。
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.
當我從生態圈二號中走出來 我很激動,就要見到我的家人和朋友。 兩年來,我都是透著玻璃看人。 當每個人走向我而來。 我退縮。他們臭死了! 人臭死了! 我們發臭,因為噴了髮膠和腋下除臭劑, 以及其他各種東西。 我們在生態圈裡有東西保持我們乾淨。 但不是用香水。 而外面的人, 卻那麼臭。 不僅僅是那樣, 在外面, 我不知道食物從哪裡來的。 我一直在種植我們自己的糧食。 在外面, 我不知道我的食物裡有什麼,從哪來的。 我幾乎不能認出一半我吃的是什麼。 實際上,我會在商店裡站一個來小時, 讀著商品上事物的名字。 人們一定以為我是怪人。 這實在是令人震驚的。 我漸漸地迷失 於此大生態圈中,這個大家一起生活的生態圈。 在生態圈二號中,我完全懂得 我對我的生態圈每天都有巨大的影響, 它也對我有影響, 十分直覺,十分具象。
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.
所以我開辦了自己的公司。 Paragon 太空發展公司, 在生態圈二號中與人草創的小公司, 因為閒著沒事可做。 其中一件事情就是 試著確定生態圈可以做多小。 以及可以做什麼用? 因此我們送一個上 Muir 太空站, 我們有一個在太空梭裡,還有一個在國際太空站裡, 16個月來,在那裡我們可以生產 第一個有機物,在太空裡 經歷多次的完整生命周期。 真正推進了極限 去了解我們生命系統的適應能力。 去了解我們生命系統的適應能力。
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.
現在我自豪地宣布, 你們將提前知道 -- 星期五我們將宣布 我們要組成一個小組 去開發月球上的種植系統。 那將是十分有趣。 它的前身就是我們過去設計的系統。 一個完全封閉的,能在火星上栽培植物的系統。 其中一部分是,我們必須模擬 十分快速的二氧化碳、氧 和水的循環,在此種植系統中。
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.
模擬的結果是 許多地方中,我找到了 厄立特里亞,位於非洲之角。 厄立特里亞,曾是衣索比亞的一部分, 是一個驚人美麗的地方, 極度嚴酷,我一無所知 那裡的人是怎麼謀生的。 那麼乾燥。 這是我看到的。 但這也是我看到的。 我看到一個公司 利用海水, 和沙去種植 一種作物,它能純靠未經處理的鹹水生長。 而且它將產生一種食物。 那就是油籽。 我震驚。他們同時也生產紅樹林 在人工林裡。 而紅樹林會提供木材、 蜂蜜,和葉子給動物吃, 因而它們可以產奶等等, 像我們在生態圈二號中一樣。
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.
所有資源都來自這個,養蝦場。 養蝦場是地球的一個禍害, 坦白說,從環境的角度來說。 它往海洋裡排放大量的污染。 同時也污染它的鄰居。它們各自排泄到對方的池裡。 十分形象的。 但是這個專案所做的, 是把這些排出物, 全部轉化為食物。 他們實際上是把污染轉為資源,送給沙漠居民。 某種意義上,他們創造了一種環保工業系統。
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.
我去那裡,因為我實際去模擬紅樹林部分 為一個碳信用額計畫,來自 聯合國的京都議定書。 就當我在模擬紅樹林沼澤時, 我想,“你如何在周圍加個盒子?” 當我在盒子裡模擬植物時,實際上, 我知道界限在哪裡。 像這樣的紅樹林,我則完全沒有概念。 嗯,當然你也可以把整個地球當界限。 然後,去理解它與整個地球的互動。 把你的專案放在那個脈絡裡。
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.
今天我們正在全球看到一個驚人的變化。 從原本我稱之為 "殺生" 的物種, 一個無論我們是故意或無意 設計我們的系統來消滅生命,常常是這樣的。 這真是一張美麗的照片, 是在亞馬遜河上面照的。 這裡的淺綠色地區有大量的森林砍伐。 而這裡美麗的細細雲彩 則是火,人造大火。 我們正在這個轉變的過程, 轉變為我將稱之為 "愛生" 的社會, 一個我們學會培育的社會。 現在還不怎麼像,但我們是這樣的。 這就在全世界發生著, 在所有活著的生命中、 各種事業和工業中, 任何你能想得到的。 我常常認為,人們會迷失在那裡。 他們說,“但我如何在那裡找到自己的方法?” 那是個很大的話題。 但我會說,小事情也有影響,真的。
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.
這是我家後院一個耙子的故事。 這是我家後院, 很早前,當我剛買下房子的時候。 在亞利桑那州,大家當然都鋪碎石子。 他們喜歡把地面耙得乾淨美麗,而且總把葉子清掉。 星期天早上,鄰居的樹葉吹集機響起, 我真想掐他們脖子。 這是一種審美觀, 我們不能容忍不整潔。 因此我扔掉我的耙子。 我讓從樹上掉子的所有葉子,都留在房產上。 長時來,基本上我做的是什麼呢? 我在培育表層土壤。 現在所有鳥類都來,我還有老鷹。 我有一個綠洲。 這是每年春天時,每六星期, 六到八個星期,我就有這個繁茂的綠州。 這裡其實是個河岸區。 整個圖森地區都可以變成這樣 只要每個人改變一下,扔掉耙子。 小事物也有其份量。
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.
工業革命和普羅米修士, 給我們帶來了這個,點亮世界的能力。 同時也帶來了這個, 從外太空看世界的能力。 現在也許我們不會有 另一個可移住的生態圈, 將它和現在這個的生態圈相比 但是我們可以看看世界, 試著理解我們在此脈絡中的位置, 以及我們要如何和它互動。
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)
如果你在自己的生態圈中迷失了自己, 或者無法聯繫上 你是身在此生態圈中的何處, 我會跟你說, 做個深呼吸。 瑜珈人士是對的。 呼吸的確把大家都聯繫了起來, 以一個十分具體的方式。 現在深呼吸一下。 呼吸時,思考一下, 你的呼吸裡有什麼。 也許裡面含有你鄰座所呼出的二氧化碳。 也許有一點點的氧氣 來自離此不遠沙灘上的藻類。 呼吸也從時間上聯繫我們。 也許你呼吸中含有的碳 是來自於恐龍。 也許你現在呼出的碳, 將會出現在你子子孫孫的呼吸中。 將會出現在你子子孫孫的呼吸中。 謝謝。