Garden Under Glass

Do you remember how it felt?

How could I ever forget? I felt such sheer disbelief that it was actually happening. I breathed in the deepest breath and watched intently as the skin covering the first sector of my Earth Dome peeled away, exposing real air and natural sky. I recall wondering if things would now return to how they used to be – the way my grandmother used to describe her life “outside”.

You must remember that most of my thirty-seven years have been spent in the Lithgow Earth Dome just west of Sydney’s Blue Mountains. So, like you, I’ve been isolated from the real world by a thin film of plastic for most of my adult life. I do vaguely recall playing with my friends on Coogee beach and how good the sand felt between my toes. That was before the Domes spread like wild mushrooms in the decade from 2020 and the environment became increasingly more hostile to life as temperatures soared and sea levels rose by up to 85 centimeters. 

In the years following the Johannesburg Convention on Sustainability, which my grandma had attended in her capacity as a senior manager with the Australian Conservation Foundation, scientists’ inability to make significant inroads into the unrelenting environmental damage meant that a new approach was badly needed.  Faced with such evidence, the global scientific community persuaded an alliance of 100 multinational corporations and 128 countries to sign the landmark Beijing Earth Monitor Convention in 2015. This Convention established a program to map the socio-ecological systems at work on the planet and to convene joint action in using that knowledge to intervene appropriately in the global environmental system. 

As with earlier multilateral accords and treaties, signing it was one thing, getting underway another. Turning international agreement into international action was not a speedy process. There was no real infrastructure, no common understanding of systemic methodologies and they were pitted against the inevitable interference from individual vested interests. Companies still had to make a profit; nations still needed the support of their citizens…  What’s that saying about nothing changing the more change there is?

Creating a giant computerized earth model to enable this understanding and provide a certain degree of predictability didn’t come cheap, even then. For a long time it didn’t look like it would get off the ground, especially after the scandals surrounding the collapse of the Japanese-based Earth Simulator 1.2 in 2008. I mean, where is the profit in that kind of scientific endeavor? Who would be likely to fund the future of the Earth? 

As a kid growing up in Australia I felt lucky in many respects. I know it sounds crazy but we were far better placed than most as we were among the first to experience total environmental collapse. Being located directly under the massive breach in the ozone layer meant that our environment was one of the first to feel the pain of climatic volatility and therefore one of the first to take action. I can still feel the scorching heat of the sun on my back to this day. That’s something I can never forget.

How did you get involved in the Pandora Project?

That’s a long story. Let’s go back a few steps. In spite of the optimism surrounding the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which had focused on reducing the consumption of chlorofluorocarbons, the actual impact on the atmosphere was too slow. Most people were distracted by the global warming debate. But while that was certainly serious most people hadn’t spotted the other danger. Combined with a build-up of sulphuric acid droplets emanating from a succession of unexpected volcanic eruptions from Japan in the north to Antarctica in the south in the early years of the century the ozone layer all but disappeared over vast tracts of the southern hemisphere when I was growing up. That, combined with surging melanoma cases arising from greatly increased levels of ultraviolet radiation, the longest drought in Australian history, 25 per cent of our most valuable agricultural land lost to salinity and the devastating bush fires, floods, hurricanes and violent storms that characterized the first two decades of the new millennium, meant there was more pain, more urgency for a solution on this part of the planet.

Traumatized, federal and state governments refused to change deeply flawed policy settings. Funding for scientific agencies continued to decline as a proportion of national spending. Desperate to get their message across, scientists forged an alliance across agencies and took the issue to the corporate sector. Surprisingly, the response was positive. At last scientists realized they were not alone. 

My own involvement was more personal. It arose out of my mum’s death from melanoma, from my apprenticeship as a cinematographer working with James Cameron in Santa Monica after I graduated from the Australian Film, Television & Radio School, and from a chance meeting with members of The Constellation. I’d better explain. 

At the turn of the century just across the Tasman a burgeoning new industry was catalzsing public action like nothing before it. Filmmaker Peter Jackson had chosen New Zealand’s magnificent scenery as the backdrop for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. This inadvertently spawned a “back to nature” movement as filmmakers and audiences alike escaped into the grandeur of these ancient landscapes.

Then came along Avatar in 2010. James Cameron’s use of three-dimensional digital imaging combined with his mythic story-telling capacity and concern for nature and humanity, created a new sensitivity focused on our mutual responsibilities to each other and to all living beings. As more and more people started taking the precarious future and timeless beauty of our planet personally, scientists and artists joined ranks, determined to guide the rest of us into a future characterized by abundance and well-being. Meanwhile Jim Cameron had already started working with The Constellation, a global community of thought leaders, systems practitioners and institutions committed to evolving the art, science and craft of leadership. Using his expertise in visualizing complex information, Cameron joined forces with The Constellation to build the initial web of highly networked immersive “decision theaters” in Tempe, Chennai, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Canberra, Beijing and the Hague. These early locations were deliberately chosen so as to capture different cultural inflections and attitudes within the shared knowledge base. From this unlikely genesis blossomed the Pandora Project, the first authentically global quest aimed at environmental and social renewal.

As you will recall the arts industry worldwide swung into action. Musicians, DJs, filmmakers, performance artists, multimedia production, PR and merchandising departments now had dual imperatives: to make money and to conserve nature. What had been altruistic before now achieved a legitimacy that altered everything.

Inexplicably, the environment became the cause célèbre once again for a groundswell of international passion. Back home, national interest was clear. Not only were these ancient landscapes beautiful, they were vital to our future economic and social development. As an idealistic 18 year old I was certainly intent on doing what I could to change people’s notions of what was possible. That is when I was invited to become a systems modeller with the Australian decision theater at the ANU in Canberra. I leaped at the chance naturally.

With burgeoning public and corporate support for environmental action and money forthcoming from the arts and entertainment industry, the way was clear for some creative thinking about the future of our planet. In Australia and New Zealand the Social and Environmental Systems Trust [ANZSEST] was formed and I was invited into their youth network. We worked together in the decision theater, always sharing our thinking and progress with colleagues in the other centres. Armed with AI-enhanced systems thinking tools, sophisticated virtual reality depictions of a range of alternative futures, and a great deal of focused energy, ANZEST worked with The Constellation to commission action-research projects that would lead to alternative environmental knowledge. Some of these paid off handsomely. And of course it all made for great cinema as both the landscapes and the human and scientific processes of understanding and conserving them for future generations now grabbed the public’s attention. It was the new form of “reality TV” – not quite documentary, not quite fiction. Voyeurism with a lesson…

Our first program, which was also our first success, exemplified new thinking on a small scale. Taking a radically different “integral” approach to salinity (by mapping the interconnected social, aesthetic, spiritual, economic and environmental factors that had given rise to both predictable and emergent consequences) our eco-engineers were able to design alternative strategies to address what was previously thought to be beyond human capability to solve. From this extraordinary initiative, the notion of integral sustainability was born, complete with patented products and processes. At last there was real money to be made by conserving natural resources. 

Having confirmed the validity of the whole-of-system approach in agriculture, ANZEST turned its attention to industrial and urban development. Using design criteria derived from industrial ecology, EcoPark (Australia’s first eco-industrial park) was established in the new bush lands around Canberra. This first no-waste industrial and community development provided the focus, capital and a working model for other projects. Another new industry, Whole Systems Eco-Design, had been invented which went on, as you know, to work hand-in-glove with the Carbon War Room in Washington.

By that stage you had become a member of ANZEST’s Youth Board?

Yes. I was eighteen years old and the youngest member by far! ANZEST realized it was still only tinkering at the edges of what was possible. Decision theater processes and technologies gave us insights into altogether different realities. It was an amazing adventure. These early programs in the Pandora Project were powerful examples of strategic invention but they still didn’t address the deepening problems associated with climatic volatility and global warming. Sea levels continued to rise and by 2030 scientists were battling it on two fronts – one dealing with the present (through the Earth Domes) the second working at a global level as part of the Whole Earth Model Consortium, aimed at mapping, understanding and modelling the planet as a single living system.

Of these two initiatives the Earth Domes was straightforward enough, at least from a scientific viewpoint. Learning from the Eden Project, a dome large enough for a whole city of around two million people was designed and constructed outside Hamilton. The still larger Lithgow Dome followed soon after and the stage was set for the ANZSEST Dome Construction Consortium’s international expansion. Managing the microclimate within each of the Domes was simple. Lessons from Earth Simulator 3.5 enabled reliable cybernetic modelling at this small scale.

It didn’t take long for the gloss to wear off did it? 

I guess managing the social interactions of people is beyond current scientific understanding. More so than, say, technology. People just aren’t as predictable. So sometimes it worked. But mostly it didn’t. Even so for most Domies it became a whole lot better than living rough outside on the planet’s unprotected surface. Much of the earth had become far too parched to sustain human life in those days.

And that created another set of issues. 

Yes. Those unable to afford a Domicile weren’t particularly happy. They thought it aggressively elitist in an otherwise egalitarian society. Security for the Domies became a huge issue. At first it was only a minor inconvenience, but as life on the “outside” became more uncomfortable, antagonism toward the Domies grew. At Lithgow we needed constant surveillance to ensure the integrity of the Dome. Inside, too, where the melting pot of different cultures and values all existing under the same roof caused one hassle after another!

Life in other parts of the planet was even worse of course, especially in Africa and South America where people still had no choice but to cope with the lack of drinking water and plummeting oxygen levels in the large cities. Sadly the social volatility in these regions rivals environmental issues in their complexity. The swine-flu pandemic of 2025, followed closely by widespread famine from the dumping of inert GM seed stock, greatly exacerbated already fragile political and social systems across Africa. The push to connect Africa into the global telenet in the 2030’s as a way of improving education and keeping teenagers in their home countries also had unintended consequences. 

People were now able to see even more clearly the inequality that existed between different communities. It’s difficult to live with such obvious social injustices. Yet nobody could hope to deliver on the demands for greater material wealth increasingly heard from those poor people. Not even today, using the most sophisticated systemic modelling mechanisms are we able to solve such ingrained problems. What we really need is a whole-of-system solution for Africa. Sadly, we have wiped our hands and walked away. Our only answer has been to quarantine the whole continent. In so doing, the developed world has knowingly condemned its inhabitants to isolation and ultimate ruin. But we cannot seem to find the reverse gear!

The gap between the rich and the poor gave rise to the age of terror ecology?

Yes. As if all of this wasn’t chaotic enough, a new brand of horror surfaced. Frustrated by years of ineffective pro-environmental activism and armed with a new systemic awareness, Greenwar, a breakaway group from within Greenpeace, began to employ a new form of activism - terror ecology. Devotees of Stuart Kauffman’s philosophy, that networks near the edge of chaos have the flexibility to adjust at an accelerated rate and trigger cascades of change, they took radical action to shift the environment into a state of chaos.

Their mantra “chaos for the planet” became a powerful attractor. 

It certainly did. The movement grew quickly, attracting not only other true believers, including many of my closest friends, but also systemic misfits looking for a home.  Here was a purpose that appeared to resonate strongly with the depressive death cults so common amongst disaffected young people at the time. For others I suppose it was just another opportunity to indulge in the latest “extreme sport” and live their life on the edge.

Greenwar’s opening gambit had been to nuke a number of oil fields in the Gulf of Thailand. Following that early success, more ambitious targets were identified.  Within days a number of major oil refineries across the globe had been bombed. The devastation wreaked was terrible. But the real shock was how slowly political systems responded. After half a century of non-violent activism, it was difficult for politicians to come to terms with the fact that this new wave of terrorism emanated from within the environmental movement itself.

Market reaction was much faster of course, as it always has been. Although solar had become the main source of powering the cities, oil, coal and gas was still in plentiful supply for those who could afford it. Suddenly the use of fossil fuels dropped by 80 per cent almost overnight as supplies dried up and people rapidly moved to adopt the substitute alternatives that had been waiting in the wings for over half a century.  Thankfully most manufacturers were still profit driven and were able to gear up production relatively quickly. 

Overall, the impact was to create further instability in the system. This provided yet another powerful reason to “go under glass” into an environment that was safer and more secure. Construction of Earth Domes accelerated apace. Within ten years, thirty domes had been completed on high ground in Australia and New Zealand alone, offering a safe alternative to chaotic environments and a new social life as the promotional material so compellingly claimed.

Social disruption didn’t disappear though.

No, in fact it was probably aggravated further if the truth were known. For a start, the Domes couldn’t house everyone so security became a continuing issue. Life inside the Domes wasn’t so easy either. Many became a hotbed of frustration and elitism rather than the safe cocoon we had originally envisaged. Soon strict regulations governed who could live in the Dome, and what happened inside them.  Even then it was still much better than living “outside”.

What was the biggest challenge for you?

Undoubtedly tackling the Whole Earth Model. For all of us in the Pandora Project this was the really big issue and it was an altogether different ball game. It was too big, too complex and too chaotic for humans to fully understand. Many of our envoys genuinely believed we would need to postpone work until super humans could address the challenge. Seriously!

The creation of a hybrid species of superhuman was becoming a force to be reckoned with. In laboratories all over China competing environmental programs were well underway...

Absolutely. One such program entailed the harnessing of Artificial Intelligence and materials science to create super-intelligent beings. In this way, or so it was thought, we would come to understand the universe differently and develop a new appreciation of the world that might transcend our current, limited beliefs. 

Another program in competition with ours entailed the establishment of a Living Earth Model by a Chinese-Indian-Pakistani consortium. A designated regional system was marked out in economically depressed north western China, including Tibet and stretching down into the Punjab region that had been inundated by the floods of 2010, using its people and ecosystems as a giant real-time systems laboratory. While viewed sceptically by many of my more rationally minded colleagues, the aim was to monitor and test large system events, trends and interventions within a designated area and map the resulting causal loops to gain a greater understanding of cause and consequence.

My close friend Zhou Huiching was a Causal Mapper for the project. She claimed it was more accurate than the computer modelling of our Whole Earth Model and I tend to agree with her. What she began to notice was that serendipitous and watershed events weren’t coincidence. They appeared to have a mappable pattern and sequence to them, based on the levels of connectivity and behaviors in the region.

What Huiching still couldn’t get her head around, though, were the outcomes of behavior or action past about the fourth order of consequence. Her analytical tools just couldn’t hold that level of complexity and variability. This is where our machine models had it over her team. By that stage, though, we were all really just guessing what was going to happen, without much basis in fact.

You’ve been quite sceptical about American science.

Since the US started its decline at the beginning of the century, the vibrancy of innovation in science and technology has diminished considerably. The US still spends far too much on military protectionism and “selfish” science and very little on the environment. It’s so macho, such a wank! It’s all been funded by the conservative baby boomers, after all. They’ve put significant scientific effort into extending life, maintaining youth, cheating death...  Many aging baby boomers were even making deposits to Genetic Savings & Clone and spending their money on re-creating their pets. It’s all quite bizarre. Only in America, as they say!

So ANZSEST persevered against these odds? 

We couldn’t just give up. In the race to find workable solutions, the consortium deployed millions of nanosensors across Australia and New Zealand designed to measure every aspect of the biosphere. This provided the indispensable data needed to run simulations through the Whole Earth Model. The Grid – a third generation Internet system designed specifically to handle large amounts of data at phenomenal speeds – was requisitioned to connect interested non-aligned agencies all over the world. Gradually, clues as to a sustainable working model began to surface. It was an exciting time.

Yet, even at this stage, the project was plagued by uncertainties. 

Unfortunately that’s right. Competing views on what systems methodology to use, problems with Google’s Earth Monitor software, and escalating pressure on the consortium due to increasingly frequent environmental disasters, conspired to undermine effective decision-making. We also had scalability and interoperability problems with the data we were using. Our monitors were placed over a relatively small test area and it was impossible to create boundaries sufficient to remove systemic interference from the rest of the planet.

Progress slowed as we became bogged down in bureaucratic trivia. At times it seemed as though we were getting even further away from creating a really systemic appreciation of interacting human systems. Each time the Consortium’s lead scientists thought they had a viable solution within their grasp, something else (like Greenwar atrocities, for example) popped up to hinder our work and perturb the system further.  Was it chaos at work, or just too complex for us to understand just yet?  None of us could really say.

But we persisted. By 2040 a working model was up and running. Incomplete, but robust enough... Or so we thought. What we had not envisaged was the impact on our project from jettisoning other forms of knowledge. Remember we had started in an integral space. But by 2045 a global model was developed in which rationality and science prevailed. We had come to know how the world’s environmental system actually worked. We had the proof we needed. It was now clear what needed to be done in order to manage the system. The evidence was irrefutable and our scientists were euphoric. I remember the Board meeting…

But that’s when things started to go badly wrong?

Yes, at the height of our elation. Ironically, no sooner had the new policies been deployed than glitches started appearing in the system. The temperature started to fall.  The ice caps began to re-form. Huge numbers of the nanosensors began to “drop out” of the satellite navigation grid for no rational reason. Others showed up in the strangest of places.

What was happening? Had Greenwar finally inspired a systemic snapback? Had we reached a new equilibrium? Or was this the lull before the storm, the beginning of the end for the Whole Earth Model? The conversations in our network went haywire! Decision theaters all around the world were being used 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nothing in the model could explain the wild fluctuations that were now occurring at an increasingly inexplicable rate. Even with the sophistication of the model, the ubiquitous nature of the biosensors, and the vast amounts of technological and logistics support, we still couldn’t quite manage it all.

Who first realized what was happening?

Actually it was a few activists, members of the arts community, like myself, who first grasped the unintended consequences - a few ordinary citizens saw what was actually happening. I well remember Amanda Lucas, George Lucas’s daughter, pointing out that there were so many nanosensors that they were like dust clouds forming a UV shield reflecting the sun’s rays back into space. And she was right! Originally, you see, the scientists assumed they’d only need the sensors for around ten years, so they programmed and powered them for this lifespan. But as the nanobots aged they decommissioned, and without adequate propelling and locating sensors they swarmed, gluing together forming vapor clouds in the atmosphere that blocked out the sunlight.

Once the scientists understood what was happening, they just packed up and prepared for Armageddon. They could manage global warming. But this? The planet, many believed, would just “cook”. Fortunately the decline in fossil fuel consumption was actually reducing the total amount of heat generated on the planet. The Earth Domes and EcoParks were containing a significant amount of the heat generated. Far from creating an insulating blanket, the “nanoclouds” were acting as a heat regulator, transferring heat away from the atmosphere and acting as a kind of planetary thermostat. It was uncanny – something nobody could have predicted.

We’ve now come full circle almost.  The Domes are being dismantled even as we speak.

Yes. As the environment began to stabilize, pressure mounted on councils to remove the Domes. For many Domies, the need for the Earth Domes became not so great.  They had served their purpose after all. For some, the sanitized environments are simply too safe a haven to leave. They still cannot bring themselves to trust living in the open air again.  For still others, it is all they have ever known especially now that there is such social control within some Domes. There is safety in the scientifically controlled environments and they do not want to envisage anything else.

Any regrets?

No, not as far as I’m concerned. Oh, I would love to have seen my grandma’s face as we removed the skins at Lithgow. But for me, for my partner and for our children, the adventure is just beginning.  We can breathe fresh air again. And I can’t wait to feel the sand between my toes.