As Stewart Brand put it: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

…. If we are as gods upon this Earth, then we are peculiarly bumbling gods.

… we are more like Chewbacca in Star Wars, pounding the walls of the ship in hopes it will continue to go.

USFWS Pacific, via Flickr

by Rob McDonald, via The Nature Conservancy

The tropical sun rises early over Palmyra Atoll, shining light on a beautiful coral reef, a sliver of an island, and little else. Pamyra is 1,000 miles south of from the nearest major airport and city, a little speck of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Signs of military activity from World War II remain — an airfield, some old buildings — but most days there are less than two dozen people on the whole island, scientific researchers there to study.

Palymra Atoll’s remoteness was what led The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect it in 2000, for it has one of the most ecologically intact coral reef ecosystems in the world, with a diversity of fishes and corals that have been lost from reefs with ...

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