Wired together into one megaloop, the world of the made slips steadily toward the world of the born. Imagine, Tibbs suggests, that we push grimy workaday industrial processes toward the character of biological processes. If this were true of industrial metabolism, there could be significant gains in plant operating safety. Hot is fast, furious, and efficient. Cool is slow, safe, and flexible.
Life is cool.
Pharmaceutical companies are undergoing a revolution as bioengineered yeast cells replace toxic, solvent-intense chemicals to create medicinal drugs. While the pharmaceutical factory's hi-tech plumbing remains, genes spliced into a living yeasty soup take over as the engine. Although life is built upon carbon, it is not powered by it. But carbon has fueled industrial development, as well as its accompanying atmospheric shock. CO2 and other pollutants burn off into the air in direct proportion to the presence of complex hydrocarbons in fuel.