I have had the distinct pleasure of living inside two biospheres. Cause we all here in this room live in Biosphere 1. I've also lived in Biosphere 2. The wonderful thing about that is that I get to compare biospheres. And hopefully from that I get to learn something.

So what did I learn? Well, here I am inside Biosphere 2, making a pizza. So I am harvesting the wheat, in order to make the dough. And then of course I have to milk the goats to feed the goats in order to make the cheese. It took me four months in Biosphere 2 to make a pizza. Here in Biosphere 1, well it takes me about two minutes, cause I pick up the phone and I call and say, "Hey, can you deliver the pizza?"

So Biosphere 2 was essentially a three-acre, entirely sealed, miniature world that I lived in for two years and 20 minutes. (Laughter) Over the top it was sealed with steel and glass. Underneath it was sealed with a pan of steel. Essentially entirely sealed. So we had our own miniature rainforest, a private beach with a coral reef. We had a savanna, a marsh, a desert. We had our own half-acre farm that we had to grow everything. And of course we had our human habitat, where we lived.

Back in the mid-80s when we were designing Biosphere 2, we had to ask ourselves some pretty basic questions. I mean, what is a biosphere? Back then, yes, I guess we all know now that it is essentially the sphere of life around the earth, right? Well, you have to get a little more specific than that if you're going to build one. And so we decided that what it really is is that it is entirely materially closed, that is, nothing goes in or out at all, no material, and energetically open, which is essentially what planet Earth is.

This is a chamber that was 1/400th the size of Biosphere 2 that we called our test module. And the very first day that this fellow, John Allen, walked in, to spend a couple of days in there, with all the plants and animals and bacteria that we'd put in there to hopefully keep him alive. The doctors were incredibly concerned that he was gonna succumb to some dreadful toxin, or that his lungs were gonna get choked with bacteria or something, fungus. But of course none of that happened.

And over the ensuing few years, there were great sagas about designing Biosphere 2. But by 1991 we finally had this thing built. And it was time for us to go in and give it a go. We need to know, is life this malleable? Can you take this biosphere that has evolved on a planetary scale, and jam it into a little bottle, and will it survive? Big questions. And we wanted to know this both for being able to go somewhere else in the universe, if we were going to go to Mars, for instance, would we take a biosphere with us, to live in it? We also wanted to know so we can understand more about the earth that we all live in. Well, in 1991 it was finally time for us to go in and try out this baby. Let’s take it on a maiden voyage. Will it work? Or will something happen that we can't understand and we can't fix? Thereby negating the concept of man-made biospheres.

So eight of us went in, four men and four women, more than that later. (Laughter) ,so, on the top, we had these beautiful rainforest and an ocean. And underneath we had all this technosphere, we called it which is where all the pumps and the valves and the water tanks and the air handlers, and all of that. One of the Biospherians called it "garden of Eden on top of an aircraft carrier." And then we also had the human habitat of course, with the laboratories, and all of that. This is the agriculture. It was essentially an organic farm.

The day I walked into Biosphere 2, I was, for the first time, breathing a completely different atmosphere than everybody else in the world except seven other people. At that moment I became part of that biosphere. And I don't mean that in an abstract sense. I mean it rather literally. When I breathed out, my CO2 fed the sweet potatoes that I was growing. And we ate an awful lot of the sweet potatoes. (Laughter) And those sweet potatoes became part of me. In fact, we ate so many sweet potatoes, I became orange with sweet potato. I literally was eating the same carbon over and over again. I was eating myself in some strange sort of bizzare way.

When it came to our atmosphere, however, it wasn't that much of a joke over the long term. Because it turned out that we were losing oxygen, quite a lot of oxygen. And we knew that we were losing CO2. And so we were working crazy to sequester carbon. Good lord. We know that term now. We were growing plants like crazy. We were taking their biomass, storing them in the basement, growing plants, going around, around, around, trying to take all of that carbon out of the atmosphere. We were trying to stop carbon from going in to the atmosphere. We stopped irrigating our soil, as much as we could. We stopped tilling, so that we could prevent greenhouse gasses from going into the air. But our oxygen was going down faster than our CO2 was going up, which was quite unexpected. Cause we had seen them going in tandem in the test module. And it was like playing atomic hide-and-seek. We had lost seven tons of oxygen. And we had no clue where it was.

And I tell you, when you lose a lot of oxygen -- and our oxygen went down quite far, it went from 21 percent down to 14.2 percent -- my goodness, do you feel dreadful. I mean we were dragging ourselves around the biosphere. And we had sleep apnea at night. So you'd wake up gasping with breath, because your blood chemistry has changed. And that you literally do that. You stop breathing and then you -- (Gasps) -- take a breath and it wakes you up. And it's very irritating. And everybody outside thought we were dying. I mean, the media made it sound like we were dying. And I had to call up my mother every other day saying, "No, Mum, it's fine, fine. We're not dead. We're fine. We're fine." And the doctor was, in fact, checking us to make sure we were, in fact, fine. But in fact he was the person who was most susceptible to the oxygen. And one day he couldn't add up a line of figures. And it was time for us to put oxygen in and you might think, well, "Boy, your life support system was failing you. Wasn't that dreadful?" Yes. In a sense it was terrifying. Except that I knew I could walk out the airlock door at any time, if it really got bad. Though who was going to say, "I can't take it any more!"? Not me, that was for sure.

But on the other hand it was the scientific gold of the project. Because we could really crank this baby up, as a scientific tool, and see if we could, in fact, find where those seven tons of oxygen had gone. And we did indeed find it. And we found it in the concrete. Essentially it had done something very simple. We had put too much carbon in the soil in the form of compost. It broke down; it took oxygen out of the air. It put CO2 into the air. And it went into the concrete, pretty straightforward really.

So at the end of the two years when we came out, we were elated. Because, in fact, although you might say we had discovered something that was quite "uhh," when your oxygen is going down, stopped working, essentially, in your life support system, that's a very bad failure. Except that we knew what it was. And we knew how to fix it. And nothing else emerged that really was as serious as that. And we proved the concept, more or less. People, on the other hand, were a different subject. We were -- I never know that we were fixable. We all went quite nuts, I will say.

And the day I came out of Biosphere 2 I was thrilled I was going to see all my family and my friends. For two years I'd been seeing people through the glass. And everybody ran up to me. And I recoiled. They stank! People stink! We stink of hairspray and underarm deoderant, and all kinds of stuff. Now we had stuff inside Biosphere to keep ourselves clean, but nothing with perfume. And boy do we stink out here. Not only that, but I lost touch of where my food came from. I had been growing all my own food. I had no idea what was in my food, where it came from. I didn't even recognize half the names in most of the food that I was eating. In fact, I would stand for hours in the isles of shops, reading all the names on all of the things. People must have thought I was nuts. It was really quite astonishing. And I slowly lost track of where I was in this big biosphere, in this big biosphere that we all live in. In Biosphere 2 I totally understood that I had a huge impact on my biosphere, everyday, and it had an impact on me, very viscerally, very literally.

So I went about my business. Paragon Space Development Corporation, a little firm I started with people while I was in the Biosphere, because I had nothing else to do. And one of the things we did was try to figure out how small you can make these biospheres. And what can you do with them? And so we sent one onto the Muir Space Station. We had one on the shuttle and one on the International Space Station, for 16 months, where we managed to produce the first organisms to go through complete multiple life cycles in space. Really pushing the envelope of understanding how malleable our life systems are.

And I'm also proud to announce, that you're getting a sneak preview -- on Friday we're going to announce that we're actually forming a team to develop a system to grow plants on the moon,which is going to be pretty fun. And the legacy of that is a system that we were designing, an entirely sealed system to grow plants to grow on Mars. And part of that is that we had to model very rapid circulation of CO2 and oxygen and water, through this plant system.

As a result of that modeling I ended up in all places, in Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea, formerly part of Ethiopia, is one of those places that is astonishingly beautiful, incredibly stark, and I have no understanding of how people eek out a living there. It is so dry. This is what I saw. But this is also what I saw. I saw a company that had taken seawater, and sand, and they were growing a kind of crop that will grow on pure salt water without having to treat it.. And it will produce a food crop. In this case it was oilseed. It was astonishing. They were also producing mangroves in a plantation, and the mangroves where providing wood and honey, and leaves for the animals, so that they could produce milk and whatnot, like we had in the Biosphere.
And all of it was coming from this, shrimp farms. Shrimp farms are a scourge on the earth, frankly, from an environmental point of view. They pour huge amounts of pollutants into the ocean. They also pollute their next-door neighbors. So they're all shitting eachother's ponds. Quite literally. And what this project was doing, was taking the effluent of these, and turning them into all of this food. They were literally turning pollution into abundance for a desert people. They had created an industrial ecosystem, of a sense.

I was there because I was actually modeling the mangrove portion for a carbon credit program, under the U.N. Kyoto Protocol system. And as I was modeling this mangrove swamp, I was thinking to myself, "How do you put a box around this?" When I'm modeling a plant in a box, literally, I know where to draw the boundary. In a mangrove forest like this I have no idea. Well, of course you have to draw the boundary around the whole of the earth. And understand its interactions with the entire earth. And put your project in that context.

Around the world today we're seeing an incredible transformation. From what I would call a biocidal species, one that whether we intentionally or unintentionally have designed our systems to kill life, a lot of the time. This is in fact, this beautiful photograph, is in fact over the Amazon. And here the light green are areas of massive deforestation. And those beautiful wispy clouds are, in fact, fires, human-made fires. We're in the process of transforming from this, to what I would call a biophilic society, one where we learn to nurture society. Now it may not seem like it, but we are. It is happening all across the world, in every kind of walk of life, and every kind of career and industry that you can think of. And I think often times people get lost in that. And they go, "But how can I possibly find my way in that? It's such a huge subject. And I would say that the small stuff counts. It really does.

This is the story of a rake in my backyard. This was my backyard, very early on, when I bought my property. And in Arizona, of course, everybody puts gravel down. And they like to keep everything beautifully raked. And they keep all the leaves away. And on Sunday morning the neighbor’s leaf blower comes out, and I want to throttle them. There is a certain type of aesthetic. We're very uncomfortable with untidiness. And I threw away my rake. And I let all of the leaves fall from the trees that I have on my property. And over time, essentially what have I been doing? I've been building topsoil. And so now all the birds come in. And I have hawks. And I have an oasis. This is what happens every spring. For six weeks, six to eight weeks, I have this flush of green oasis. This is actually in a riparian area. And all of Tuscon could be like this if everybody would just revolt and throw away the rake. The small stuff counts.

The Industrial Revolution, and Prometheus, has given us this, the ability to light up the world. It has also given us this, the ability to look at the world from the outside. Now we may not all have another biosphere that we can run to, and compare it to this biosphere. But we can look at the world, and try to understand where we are in its context, and how we chose to interact with it.

And if you lose where you are in your biosphere, or are perhaps having a difficulty connecting with where you are in the biosphere, I would say to you, take a deep breath. The yogis had it right. Breath does, in fact, connect us all in a very literal way. Take a breath now. And as you breathe, think about what is in your breath. There perhaps is the CO2 from the person sitting next-door to you. Maybe there is a little bit of oxygen from some algae on the beach not far from here. It also connects us in time. There may be some carbon in your breath from the dinosaurs. There could also be carbon that you are exhaling now, that will be in the breath of your great-great-great-grandchildren.

Thank you.

我十分荣幸地在两个生态圈中生活过。当然，在这间屋子里的人都在生态圈1里，我还曾在生态圈2里生活过。这其中最美妙的事是，我可以比较这两个生态圈。借此我希望能从中学到一些知识。

那么我们学到了什么？好吧，这是我在生态圈2里做披萨。我正在收割小麦，这样我才有材料做面团。当然我也必须挤好羊奶以及饲养山羊，这样我才能做出奶酪。在生态圈2里我花了4个月才做出一个披萨。在生态圈1里，这只用花2分钟。因为我只用打个电话,说：“嘿，你能给我送个披萨过来吗？”
所以生态圈2是一个由三个圆顶组成的，完全封闭的小天地。我在那里生存了2年又20分钟。顶端是被钢铁和玻璃封起来的。底端是被一堆铁封闭的。关键的是这是完全封闭的。所以我们有我们自己的迷你雨林，带珊瑚礁的私人海滩。我们有一个热带稀树草原，一个沼泽，一个沙漠。我们有一个半英亩大的农场，足以生产任何产品。当然，我们也有自己的栖息地，我们就住在那。

当我们在80年代中期设计生态圈2的时候，我们不得不问自己很多基本的问题。我指的是，什么是一个生态圈。在那个年代，是的，现在我想我们都知道那是一个在地球上提供生命关键元素的圈子，对吗？嗯，如果我们要造一个的话，就必须得比那定义得再明确一点。 所以我们决定了，最重要的就是必须完全封闭，意味着，无进无出，无材料以及能源的使用与开发，就像那也是地球不可缺少的一部分一样。

这是一个只有生态圈2的1/400大小的密室。我们把这个叫做我们的实验模型。就在那第一天，这位同志，乔阿伦，走了进去，在那和我们放进去的植物，动物，细菌一起住了几天，这样做是希望能保住他的性命。医生十分担心他会感染上一些十分致命的病毒，也许他的肺会被细菌或别的东西呛到，比如说菌类植物。当然这些都没发生。

在接下来的几年里，有着不少关于生态圈2设计的传奇。但是在1991年我们终于建成了这个东西。同时也到了我们进入的时间，去尝试一下。我们想知道，生命是可延续的吗？ 你能把这个生态圈放大成一个星球大小，或是压缩成一个瓶子大小，它还能存活吗？最大的问题是，我们想知道这能不能在宇宙其他地方建成。比如，我们要去火星的时候，我们可以带上生态圈在里面生活吗？我们也想知道我们可以更了解所赖以生存的地球。好吧，在1991年，我们终于住了进去，去体验一下我们工作的结晶。让我们进行一次旅行。这能成功吗？会不会有我们还不了解或不能修复的事情发生，从而导致人造生态圈的计划由此报废？

所以我们8个人进去了，4男4女，以后会更多。（笑）这就是我们生活的世界。在上层，我们有美丽的雨林和海洋。在下面，我们有我们所称的科学空间，在那里进行着所有的抽水，储水，空气循环以及相关活动，其中的一个生态圈建筑被叫做“在空气储存器上的伊甸园”。当然我们也有原住民，也有实验室，诸如此类。这是我们的农业空间。实际上就是一个有机农场。

我走进生态圈2的那一天，我第一次呼吸着除了另外和我同行的7人以外，和世界所有人都不一样的大气，从那一时刻开始我成了那个生态圈的一部分。我这可不是抽象地说说而已，而是要十分具体地描述一下。当我呼出空气时，二氧化碳供养着我种植的红薯，而且我们吃了无数的红薯。（笑）而且那些红薯又变成了我身体的一部分。实际上，我们吃了如此多的红薯，以致我都变成了和红薯一样的橘黄色。我实际上在一次又一次的吃着同样的碳水化合物。说得奇怪点，我在不停地吃我自己。

但从长远看来，这个问题在生态圈中提出的时候，无论无何可不仅仅是个笑话。问题是，我们在失去氧气，数量可观的氧气。而且我们也知道，我们在失去二氧化碳。所以我们努力固碳。感谢上帝，我们现在知道了这个术语。我们像疯了一样种植。我们把那些生物肥料移到地下室，分类储存，不停地种植植物，不停地种，争取把生态圈里多余的碳化物排出去。 我们同时也阻止碳化物进入这个生态圈。我们尽可能地灌溉我们的土壤，我们停止翻土，从而我们可能预防温室气体进入空气。但我们却以比增加二氧化碳的速度更快地失去氧气，这可不是预料中的。因为我们在测试模型里可没这样。这就像和原子在躲猫猫一样。我们已经失去了7吨的氧气，而且我们一点都不清楚藏哪了。

让我告诉你，当你丢失了很多氧气时——就像我们失去了很多氧气一样，从21%降到14.2%——天哪，感觉就像死了一样。我指的是，当我们在这个生态圈里时，我们睡觉时会窒息。因为你的血液的化学结构已经改变了，所以当你很可能会喘息着醒来，当你真的变成那样的时候，你停止呼吸，然后你--(喘息)--吸一口气，就会惊醒，这十分讨厌。外面的人以为你快死了。我是说，媒体让这看起来像死了一样。我不得不每天打电话给我母亲说：“没有，妈妈，没问题。我们没有死，我们很好，我们很好。”而且医生实际上也检查我们身体以保证我们没有事。但实际上他才是几乎缺氧的那个人。有一天，他几乎不能做简单的算术。那也就到了我们放氧气进来的时候。你也许会在想，看吧，同学们，你们懂得生命支持系统在杀掉你，在杀掉你。那不可怕吗？是的，某种意义上讲，那很可怕。除非事情很糟糕时，我仍知道，如何可以走出那扇门。不过，谁会说“我不行了！”？显然不会是我。

但是另一方面，这又是黄金般的科学实验。因为我们真的可能像一个科学难题一样把这攻破，看看我们能否找到那七吨氧气到底去哪了，而且我们如愿所偿。不过我们是在水泥里找到的。十分简单，我们以堆肥的模式在土壤里存储了太多碳。它分解了，把空气中的氧气带走了，把二氧化碳放在空气中，然后它又混入了水泥里。其实十分简单。

所以在这两年即将结束，我们出去的时候，我们都十分高兴。因为实际上，尽管你会说我们只发现了一个无关紧要的问题，当你们的氧气下降，停止了工作，关键是，在你的生存系统里，那是十分失败的。只有我们知道是怎么一回事，以及如何修复。而且再没别的问题，那么严重的问题发生过。我们多多少少证明了这个构思可行。人类在另一方面，就是另外一回事了。我们--我就不知道我们是不是可修复的。我会说我们都变得有点傻了。

当我们从生态圈2中走出来后，我十分害怕去见我的家人和朋友。两年来，我都是通过玻璃来看人。而且所有的人都朝我涌来。我被吓了一跳，他们臭死了！人类臭死了！我们发臭是因为我们喷了发胶和腋下除臭剂，以及其他所有的产品。我们在生态圈2里有东西保持我们干净，不过不是用香水。而且我们在那也不发臭。不仅仅是这样，而且我不知道食物从哪里来的。我一直在种植我们自己的粮食。我现在不知道在我的食物里有什么，从哪里来的。 我几乎不能认出我吃的一半食物是什么。实际上，我会在商店里站一个来小时，读着商品上事物的名字。人们一定以为我傻了。这实在是令人震惊的。我渐渐地在大生态圈中，这个大家生活的生态圈中迷失了。我在生态圈2中完全懂得我每一天都对我的生态圈产生的巨大影响，同时我也被影响着，联系非常紧密，同时又非常具体。

所以我开办了自己的公司，模范空间发展合作社，一个我在生态圈2中和其他人所开办的小公司，因为我没别的事可做。其中的一件事情就是搞清楚我们可以把生态圈做多小，以及我们可以怎么做。所以我们向穆里空间站发送了一个，一个在飞船里，还有一个在国际空间站里，16个月来，在那里我们可以生产第一个在太空的有机产物，一个可以循环多种生命的产物链。这对理解我们生命系统的可塑性又迈进了一大步。

现在我自豪地宣布，你们将提前知道——在星期五我们将宣布，我们要组建一个小组去开发月球上的植物种植系统。那将是十分有趣的。我们设计系统的一个前景是：在火星上建立一个完全封闭能栽培植物的系统。其中我们必须建立的，是一个通过这个植物系统能十分迅速循环二氧化碳、氧气和水的模型。

做这个模型，我最终找到一个叫厄立特里亚省的地方，在非洲之角那里。厄立特里亚省，前埃塞俄比亚的一部分，是一个惊人美丽，光彩四射的地方，但我完全不知道那里的人是怎样生活的。那里是那样的干燥。这是我看到的，但同时我也看到了这个。我看到一个公司用海水和沙去灌溉。一种庄稼，一种能成长在可以不经处理的纯咸水里的庄稼。而且这将生产出一种食物，那就是油籽。太神奇了！他们同时也在一个人工林里生产红树林，而且红树林会提供木材、蜂蜜和供给动物的树叶，所以他们可以生产牛奶和诸如此类的产品，就和我们在生态圈2中一样。

除此之外，所有的资源都来自这个养虾场。坦白地从一个环境的角度来讲，养虾场是地球的一个祸害。他们往海洋里排放大量的污染，同时也污染邻近的庄稼，所以他们就在对方的池塘里排泄。但是这个项目所做的，是把这些影响全部转化为食物。他们实际上是把污染转化为资源给沙漠居民。他们创造了一种环保工业系统。

我在那里是因为我其实在为联合国京都条约系统下的一个碳化物信用项目的红树林部分建模。就当我在建立红树林沼泽时，我也在思考：“你如何在周围加个盒子？”当我在一个盒子里建造植物时，实际上，我知道在哪里画上一个界线。但就像这样的红树林，我则完全没有概念。不错，当然你也可以把整个地球当一个界线。然后在这个界线里与整个地球互动，然后把你的项目放在那里。

我们今天正在全球看到一个惊人的变化。我这里会叫它生态化物种，一个无论是故意还是无意设计的去消灭生命的系统，在很多时间里是这样。这看起来是一个美丽的照片，是在亚马逊河上面照的。这里的浅绿色代表着大量的森林退化。而这里美丽的细细云彩则是，火，人造大火。我们在转变的过程中，这个--我会把它叫做一个生态社会，一个我们学会培育的社会。现在看起来还不怎么像，但的确是这样的。这就在全世界发生着，在所有活着的生命中，在我们能想象到的所有事业和工业中，而且我常常认为人们会在那迷失掉。他们说到：“但是我如何才能在那找到我自己的方法？”那是一个很大的话题。但我会说小事情也会有影响，真的。

这是我后花园一个耙子的故事。这是我的后花园，很早以前我买下来的。在亚利桑那州，大家会理所当然地铺上碎石子。他们喜欢把所有的地方修葺得十分美丽，而且一直保持着。 每当星期天早上邻居的树叶清理器响起时，我就想向他们施展锁喉大法。这是一种审美观， 我们不能容忍不整洁。但是我丢掉了我的钉耙，而且我让房子的所有从树上掉下的树叶都留在那。这一段时间，我做的最关键的事是什么呢？我在培育顶级的土壤。现在鸟飞来了，我还有了老鹰。我有一个绿洲。这就是春天来临的时候，每六个星期一次，大概每六个到八个星期，我就有一个充满绿色的绿洲。这里其实是一个河岸的区域，如果每个人可以做出改变和丢掉钉耙，所有的图森市都可以变成这样。滴水石穿。

工业革命和普罗米修斯，给我们带来了点亮世界的能力。同时也带来了从外太空来看世界的能力。也许和我们所生活的生态圈相比，现在我们都还没有一个去操控另一个生态圈的能力，但是我们可以看着这个世界，尝试着去理解我们在其中所处的位置，以及我们如何和她互动。

如果你在这个生态圈找不到你的位置，或你很难把自己和这个你所存在的生态圈联系起来，我会跟你说：“呼吸”。禅修者是对的。呼吸的确把我们以一个十分具体的方式联系起来。现在深呼吸一下。同时思考一下，你的呼吸里有什么。也许里面含有你邻座所呼出的二氧化碳。也许有从这不远沙滩上的藻类带来的一些氧气。呼吸也将我们从时间上联系起来。也许你呼出的空气中含有从恐龙就存在的碳化物，也许你现在呼出的碳化物，将会出现在你祖祖孙孙的呼吸中。

谢谢！