Stewart Brand: belief

Transcript context

…In what year will we bring back the woolly mammoth? What’s your point estimate? Certainly in this century, I think we’ll have what looks like and acts like woolly mammoths back. I would like to see them back in large herds in the Siberian and in the northern Canadian steppes, doing their old job of eating the grass and therefore causing the grass . . . grazers make grass. The so-called mammoth steppe, which was once the world’s largest biome, reaching all the way around the North Pole and the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Climatologically it’s much more stable, but mainly, it was the Serengeti of the North. Endless large animals and an incredibly rich animal and vegetable ecosystem compared to what’s there now. That’s a case where humans — to some extent climate, but mainly humans — got rid of all the megafauna by killing them and eating them. That keeps happening. As they come back, they will — the way the elephants and rhinos and whatnot do in Africa — they will bring back the mosaic landscape that is drastically richer and, by the way, much more stable in terms of climate. What’s stopping us from doing this within the next, say, 20 years?…

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