Brave Green World: How Science Can Save Our Planet

Biologist Asher and physicist Forman debut with an uneven survey of green technological solutions to a global environmental crisis. The authors focus on a “circular economy” of technology that can be produced efficiently and disposed of sustainably. To that end, they suggest a “synthernet” that would “provide an interface between humans, the internet, ecosystems, and biogeochemical cycles,” and detail how industries could use biochemical processes such as photosynthesis to produce environmentally sustainable goods including “biosmartphones” (“How incredible would it be if a smartphone could be grown like an apple on a tree?” they ask). Asher and Forman offer brief summaries of how this might be done, suggesting that solar energy and “an on-board supply of water” could power a phone “without a single metal wire,” that individual cells’ energy-producing mitochondria could be used to revolutionize cellular circuitry, and polymer molecular assembly could be combined with 3D printing to make such a device. Unfortunately, lengthy and basic descriptions (for example, how energy flows through ecosystems) overpower their curious thought experiment, and the text is laden with ecological platitudes: “Loss of a keystone species has disastrous effects on ecosystems.” More a primer on the living environment than a game-changer, this one misses the mark. (Mar.)