Take This Terrarium and Shove It
by Marc Cooper
The Village Voice, April 2, 1991
ORACLE, Arizona-- Twenty miles north of Tucson, on a spectacular
desert site nestled in the Catalina mountains, a self-containcd
miniature Earth is about to be born. Just after passing the guard gate
on the 2500-acre SunSpace Ranch, an eye-popping glass terrarium the
size of three football fields glimmers under the desert sun. The
air-tight, waterproof structure of Biosphere 2-- built by the
avant-garde Pearce Systems-- is stunning in its scope and beauty:
inside and around this saguaro-ringed Arizona complex there's a
mounting anticipation, expectation, almost a fervor-- probably akin to
the frisson that permeated Alamogordo 45 years ago-- that all involved
are on the verge of something Very Big. When the few remaining glass
plates are sealed in the coming months, Biosphere 2 will become home
to an eight-person crew and 4,000 plant and animal species which-- cut
off from the earth's atmosphere-- will attempt to sustain themselves
for two years. Eventually, they hope to do so for as much as a
century.
I tingle as I enter this near-completed replicate world, as if
I'd been transported onto the set of the cult classic [ITALICS]Silent
Running[italics].
In the lush swaddle of the tropical rain forest "biome," a fertile
humidity caresses my lungs and the gentle babble of the human-made
waterfall soothes and calms. Above me, a mechanical cloud generator
spews a white puff that gathers and lingers underneath the sylvan
canopy. From this, the highest vantage point inside the human
aquarium, I can see the four other biomes-- a savanna, a desert, an
ocean, a marsh-- stretched out below, four complete ecosystems each
simultaneously autonomous and interdependent, each with a complex set
of tasks in achieving a bioiogical balance.
From the rain forest, a trail through a bamboo grove winds down
past a lagoon, over a Caribbean c{*filter*}reef, and skirts the "ocean,"
which is delicately stirred by a wave machine and teeming with fish. A
white sand beach against a grayish rock cliff seems lifted from
Acapulco.
To the left and upward, African grasslands form a verdant savanna
(a primary source of oxygen), which eventually yields to the
Biosphere's low point-- a cactus-studded desert much like the one on
the other side of the glass. Beside the mosquelike structure that will
be living quarters for the human crew, "intensive agriculture" plots
will serve as the Biospherians' breadbasket, Organic "soil bed
reactors"-- composed of plants and special microbes-- are to filter
out and absorb CO2. At the bottom end of the intensive ag area, tanks
of tilapia fish will not only provide protein for the humans but their
waste will fertilize the adjacent rice crops. Algae to feed the fish
will be fertilized by recycled human waste.
Conceived as a fusion of earth sciences and high technology,
Biosphere 2's ba{*filter*}t-- the "Technosphere"-- is crammed with tens of
millions of dollars in electronic and mechanical systems. As I descend
a winding staircase, I enter what looks like the innards of a
battleship or, better yet, a submarine. Air movers and filters hum,
mulchers and recyclers crunch and clang, banks of computers, sensors,
and monitors blink and flash. On either side of the Biosphere, two
humongous "lungs"-- each the size of a high school gymnasium, each
with an eight-ton {*filter*} diaphragm-- expand and contract as the glass
dome's interior temperature rises and falls.
After six years of planning and construction costing $100
million-- provided by Edward Bass, a member of America's fourth
richest family-- and after more than a year of postponements of its
"launch date," the facility is now scheduled for "final enclosure"
sometime this spring. Some are comparing Biosphere 2 to a modern-day
Noah's Ark. [ITALICS]Discover[italics] magazine calls it "the most exciting
scientific
project to be undertaken in the U.S. since President Kennedy launched
us toward the moon." Established as a for-profit venture capital
enterprise, the Biosphere intends to make scientific history while
making money. Its stated research goals-- in these ecologically minded
times-- are to teach us more about the intricate interaction of life
systems of our own world, how they can be protected and restored. And,
further, how we might extend life to other planets.
"It will teach us more about our natural world than we have
learned in all the time we have worked as scientists on the natural
world till now," says Dr. Walter Adey, whose Marine Systems Lab of the
Smithsonian Institution has been contracted as a consultant by the
Biosphere's parent company, Space Biospheres Venture (SBV).
And the prestigious U.S. government-supported Smithsonian is not
the only institution to sign on as enthusiastic project participants
and boosters. The National Center for Atmospheric Research-- financed
by the National Science Foundation-- has expert monitors working in a
joint project with Biosphere personnel. As does the Yale School of
Forestry and Ecological Science. The New York Botanical Gardens also
has attached a team of researchers. Dr. Ghillean Prance, director of
the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England, has been contracted to
build the simulated rain forest. Specialists from the University of
Arizona's Environmental Research Laboratory (ERL) have been employed
to work on intensive agriculture and carbon recycling systems. Experts
from Hawaii's Bishop Museum and the U.S. Geological Society regularly
check in. Top researchers from NASA, frequently seen on site, maintain
"informal liaison," and participate in joint conferences with
Biosphere directors.
And with final enclosure drawing near, the Biosphere site has
taken on much of the pulsing buzz of a NASA launch-- in part because
the SBV company has intentionally adopted a Space Age panache. Hence,
the terms "crew," "launch date," and the dubbing of the computerized
command center as "Mission Control." The crew, led by two "co-
captains," strut around in coral-red nylon space suits and matching
boots. Dozens of SBV technicians and assistants pack state-of-the-art
two-way radios day and night.
The media coverage has become so intense that reporters are
scheduled and packaged into convenient-to-handle bunches. Hosannas for
the Biosphere have poured in from not only the London
[ITALICS]Guardian[italics] and the
German [ITALICS]Geo[italics], but also in long articles in [ITALICS]The New
York Times[italics] and the
[ITALICS]Times[italics] Sunday magazine, the [ITALICS]Los Angeles
Times[italics], [ITALICS]The Boston Globe[italics], [ITALICS]the[italics]
[ITALICS]Washington Post[italics], and dozens of second- and third-string
newspapers;
magazines such as [ITALICS]Newsweek[italics], [ITALICS]Time[italics],
[ITALICS]Omni[italics], and the [ITALICS]National Geographic[italics]
[ITALICS]World[italics]; and also and also broadcast pieces on ABC's
[ITALICS]World News Tonight[italics]
and [ITALICS]Prime Time Live[italics]. Phil Donahue went a step further,
holding an
hour-long live show from the experiment site, concluding the Biosphere
to be "one of the most ambitious man-made projects ever."
On any given day, the hundreds of ticket holding {*filter*}neckers
who ooh and aah through the Biosphere site on five daily tours have to
s{*filter*}it out with intrusive still and video photographers trying to
get that perfect shot of the orange sun melting behind the glistening
outline of the steel and glazed-glass structure manned by red-suited
Biospherians.
That the Biosphere basks in all these camera-friendly theatrics
is hardly an accident, Because in all of this gee-whiz imagery of an
ecologically balanced Earth-in-a-bottle, there's an ugly crack.
Indeed, the group that built, conceived, and directs the
biosphere project is not a group of high-tech researchers on the
cutting edge of science but a claque of recycled theater performers
that evolved out of an authoritarian-- and decidedly nonscientific--
personality cult.
Based on dozens of interviews with current and former associates
of both the Biosphere and the cult behind it, the [ITALICS]Voice[italics]
has uncovered
how the core group of the Arizona project has little loyalty either to
honest and open scientific inquiry or to any ecological quest to save
the Earth. Instead, its only allegiance is pledged to one individual:
John P. Allen, whose eerie doomsday dogma makes him much more the Jim
Jones than the Johnny Appleseed of the ecology movement.
The mountains of cash put at the disposal of the group by Texas
millionaire and Allen follower Edward P. Bass have served to exorcise
the organization's shadowy cult-like reputation, allowing it to
achieve truly dazzling levels of respectability. While the media's
initial uncritical response to Biosphere may be acceptable behavior
for an industry that thrives on systematically destroying credibility,
the same is not true for the scientific community. The participation
of highly respected universities and scientific institutions (some of
them taxpayer-supported) and individual scientists in this project--
in exchange for research funding from the Biosphere group-- does raise
serious and disturbing questions about the ethical standards of the
U.S scientific community. In short, the Biospherians may be
[ITALICS]talking[italics]
science, but what they are [ITALICS]doing[italics] is more akin to
well-financed science
fiction.
[BOLD]Prelude: Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch[bold]
By most press accounts, the Biosphere project sprung up,
...
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Biosphere Part I