The Potential Use and Misuse of Genes In Promoting Sustainable Resource Utilization

Biomass is defined as plant material of recent origin. Included under this category are materials found in forest, industry, agricultural residues, solid wastes, crops etc.

In general, people want the same services they already have using fossil fuels, natural gas, and other conventional sources of energy, but they want them with less harm to the environment. The current industrial ecology is one which draws all its resources from the environment, passes them through production processes, moves them onto the consumers as goods and services, and ends up creating large amounts of wastes. Some of these wastes can again be passed through processing to make new products and services, but again the end result is the production of wastes. These wastes are in turn passed on to treatment facilities where they are treated to the point of being almost pure, but never absolutely pure, and then are eventually returned to the environment as residues. This system causes harm to the environment and is provoking scientists to look for other ways of meeting public needs while maintaining the environment. Seemingly, the farthest reaching investigations into this problem would search for new resources, which is where Biomass comes in.

Biomass presents the world with a resource that has a high degree of sustainability, that is, a material which can be used as a source of energy and products in perpetuity.

Biomass is the world's only source of organic materials, which constitute a much larger amount of material than simply food and cotton. Materials such as plastic, polyester, grass, and nylon all fall under organic material used in the human world. A notable statistic regarding Biomass is that amounts of Biomass, which is self sustaining and replenishable, are equal to the amounts of fossil fuels in the world, which are unsustainable and disappearing at a rapid pace.

This fact and the belief in the Carbohydrate Economy, the idea that chemicals and materials now derived from oil could be derived form biomass, have attracted intense industrial interest. Doctor Lynd believes that Biomass can also be used to create more products than are currently available with fossil fuels.

Plants have several properties which make them ideal for energy usage and processing. They are solar collectors, that is, they readily store energy as a fact of their existence and they need no impetus to do so. Plants are self regenerating as well, and they are totally and spontaneously recyclable. Another aspect is that of the potential wildlife habitat and aesthetic beauty created by biomass. The fuel cycles created by Biomass processing would not have any greenhouse emissions, and this processing is already easily convertible and compatible to the existing infrastructure of energy in the world.

One drawback of Biomass processing would be the incredible need for precise and excellent management of the system, since the adoption of such a system would be an enormous fundamental change in the world as we know it.

Despite the magnitude of the problem of management, Doctor Lynd thinks that a revolutionary increase in the magnitude and diversity of biomass utilization by modern society appears possible over the next quarter century.

Certain genetic questions do present themselves in the proposed shift towards Biomass processing. For example, the processing of plant material involves a process by which cellulose, the principal component of plants, is digested and processed. This process, which is comprised of four steps, has been made more efficient to the point where it can be done in two. The final reduction of this process to one step, which would dramatically increase efficiency and output, involves production of the cellulose digesting enzyme cellulase. If this enzyme could be produced while the other three steps are being performed, the process as a whole would be much better. Genetic engineering is the tool which would enable this process to happen, but the process of synthesizing a new competitive systems could have serious effects on the ecosystem (Dr. Lynd proposed the extinction of bovine life on the face of the earth as one possible consequence of the introduction of methane generating bacteria). Several ethical questions arise out of this: Should science toy with genes in order to dramatically improve society as we know it, and should science proceed with these procedures without fully knowing and comprehending the possible results of their actions?

While Doctor Lynd was very much an active supporter of the Biomass production for the futire, he also strongly wanted to point out that dangers are definitely inherent in this sort of experimentation and should be taken fairly seriously.