Facing the twin environmental crises of mass extinction and climate change, counterculture legend Stewart Brand proposes a potential pandora’s box for conservation: using biotechnology to resurrect extinct species like the wooly mammoth. It’s a crazy idea, but it’s not surprising coming from Stewart, a futurist and popularizer of some of the most significant cultural and technological movements of our era, including psychedelics, the modern environmental movement, personal computers, long term thinking, and biotechnology. Stewart’s methods are controversial, and his colleagues in the environmental movement believe he is meddling with nature and vow to stand in his way. But we are along for the journey as he travels to Siberia to search for mammoth specimens and explore the resurrection of the Mammoth Steppe in an effort to slow climate change and restore balance to this critical ecosystem.
