Sure, mammoths, why not?

"Well well well...looks who needs our help..."

-some mammoth who's never 

going to let us hear the end of it

A genetics professor is this close--sorry, you can't see my fingers, but trust me when I say I'm holding them a scant distance apart. Anyway, he says he's very close to being able to use genetic sequencing and gene splicing to re-create woolly mammoths. And get this, he teaches at Harvard, so he's probably not a nutter. Oh, and also get, he wants to do it because he believes that herds of genetically resurrected woolly mammoths will actually help fight climate change. Amazing? Sure. Unbelievable? Maybe. In need of some context and qualifications? Absolutely. It's science, so let's walk it back a bit.

"Actually it started pretty mad-scientist-y,
the fact that African elephants were better
surrogates was just a happy coincidence."

-Greg Church, PHD

What George Church, head of the Wyss Institute at Harvard, wants to do through his company, Colossal, isn't cloning. Instead, they call it de-extinction (which, I think they made up) and the idea is to splice preserved mammoth genes into the species' extant relative, the Asian elephant and create a kind of elephant/mammoth hybrid. Which, to be extra complicated, will be carried to term by African elephants. And that's not like some arbitrary mad scientist, just for the hell of it kind of thing, it happens that African elephants are larger and can more easily carry the Asian elephant/mammoth hybrids to term. 

Yeah, it...it was us. We're basically the
worst thing to ever happen to this planet.

Ok, but what, you might reasonably ask, the hell is the point? According to Colossal's website, the result will be "a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological trains of the Woolly Mammoth." Yeah, you persist, but why? Settle down, we're getting there. These mammoths, when they died out uh...somehow, left a void in the ecosystem of the Steppe. The grasslands were replaced by marshes and wetlands which aren't as good at absorbing carbon and now the permafrost is melting and we're pretty screwed. Ecologically speaking. Colossal's sorta mammoths would, in theory, fill that niche. 

Confirmed: old people still exist.
Better luck next time Peter...

Cool, where's the catch? There almost certainly isn't one as far as the science goes. I mean, sure, the tundra now isn't anything like the tundra thousands of years ago, but I'm sure re-introducing mammoths into a climate that's like way warmer won't have disastrous consequences. But what's giving me pause is who's backing this endeavor: venture capitalists. Ugh. The Winklevoss twins are involved along with Peter Diamandis who, a few years ago tried to cure aging by throwing money at it. I...I don't think that panned out. Oh, and Tim Draper. Remember Tim Draper? He was the guy who tried to break California up into a bunch of smaller states.

How come? Who can say why any of these rich d-bags do any of the things they do. My first thought was that he didn't want his taxes going to the poorer regions of the state, but then it occurred to me that he probably doesn't pay taxes to begin with. I guess he just wanted to carve out some kind of gross, libertarian, venture capitalist utopia where he and the other riches could invest in start ups and write their dumb books about how to get super rich without working a real job. 

Step one: have a shitload of money.
Step two: invest in a bunch of bullshit until something pays off.
No, I didn't read his book, but I stand by my summary.

The solution to a lot of problems
is tax the shit out of billionaires.

Anyway, I don't know, as suspicious as I am of anything so tainted with venture capitalist interest, maybe Church is on to something. Maybe mammoths will trample down the moss or whatever he thinks they'll do and save the planet. But there's a part of me that can't shake the feeling that maybe instead of chasing after these crazy sci-fi, Jurassic Park solutions to climate change, we shouldn't just tax the shit out of some billionaires and use the money to plant trees and put up solar panels.