Climate Crisis, Designer Babies and Pandemics: Challenging the Techno-Utopianism of the Genetically Engineered Age

Author and activist Bill McKibben, evolutionary biologist Stuart Newman, and social theorist Marsha Darling consider the common threads between COVID-19, the looming climate crisis, centuries of race-based oppression, and proposals for "designer babies.” Each demonstrates how misguided scientific theory and experimentation can create inequalities and disproportionately harm vulnerable populations.

In a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Pat Thomas of the Organic Consumers Association, the panel grappled with an ambitious agenda: to explore the limitations of “techno-utopianism,” how social movements can redirect science and technology toward a just and sustainable future, and how we can preserve our humanity – and diversity – in a genetically engineered age.