The Catastrophe Already Happened
Learning from Biosphere 2 about fear, techno-optimism, and the lure of the future
An Update: I’m taking the month of July off from publishing this newsletter so I can give my full attention to finishing my zine. I’ll be back to the regular schedule in August. Consider preordering my zine — all the money I make from online orders goes to the Arizona Muslim Alliance’s Gaza Efforts.
I was seventeen and a community college student when I went to Oracle, AZ, to visit Biosphere 2 with classmates. A group of brilliant misfits (funded by an ecologically-minded billionaire) completed the 3.14-acre geodesic structure in 1991 to see how people could live on other planets when Earth became uninhabitable. A great fear – will my home stop supporting my life? – was manifested in the experiment of eight people isolated inside the biosphere for two years. The original mission was co-opted by the media and power-hungry people, but I couldn't tell. When I arrived, the entire project felt more like an amusement park than the site of innovative research into catastrophe.
My memories of the visit are patchy, and any photos I took on my Blackberry are long gone. It was a field trip with my honors class, and the mood in the van was light. As our professor drove us, no doubt sharing fun facts about the history of the place, those of us in the back of the van bullshitted away the hour-and-a-half drive southeast. If I had been listening closely, I would have learned about the Synergists – the group of people who had been working on various projects together for over twenty-five years by the time they came to helm the Biosphere 2, with the money of Edward P. Bass, "maverick son of the multibilliondollar Texas oil family."
Reading Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia by Natalie Koch reminded me of Biosphere 2 after years of the memory lying dormant. (Note: The book is excellent and was recommended by someone in the comments who I've lost track of – thank you!) Koch writes about the rise of catastrophism in popular culture connected to the science fiction boom after World War II but points out, "For diverse Indigenous communities, 'the' apocalypse is both past and present." Who gets to live in the US and not fear for the safety and security of their home? Those with enough money, class standing, and social safety net to weather the ups and downs. Those who "belong" because white settlers came west at the beckon of the government that wanted more white faces in their newly acquired (by theft and force) land. Looking to the future for catastrophe allows past atrocities to slither away unnoticed by those unaffected, a crime of willful ignorance.
Oliver Burkeman quoted psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott in his newsletter The Imperfectionist, "The catastrophe you fear will happen has already happened." Winnicott was speaking about it at a personal level – the fears for the future we all harbor – but it can be true in the broader sense, too. Many are afraid that society as they know it is collapsing. But what if my society was built upon bringing apocalypse to Indigenous communities? Catastrophe is the structure on which my privilege rests. It only makes sense that more of it is coming.
I watched Spaceship Earth (2020), which gives the people responsible for Biosphere 2 space to explain themselves twenty-five years after the media firestorm that surrounded them subsided. The documentary borrows its name from Buckminster Fuller's book Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, a very influential text for the Synergists, which tells me a lot: They wanted something different and saw (some) of the problems with society. They came from various geographic and class backgrounds, but as far as I could tell, they were all white, though touted as ethnically diverse, and some of the folks that joined later were not from the US. Oh, and there's a charismatic and handsome "genius" of a man as their leader. It does seem culty.
But something I'll give to the Synergists is that they held their fears about the future tight and went to work. Fear, hope, and joy powered their projects for years before they started to plan the earth-in-miniature experiment. They knew the planet was warming, and people weren't caring for animals and plants. They wanted to show how deeply connected every single organism in an ecosystem is. They planned to do it repeatedly until they could get it perfect. But that open-ended line of thinking was lost in the hubbub of spectacle. The public demanded all or nothing, so the storyline went that Biosphere 2 was fully sealed, entirely separate. An impossibility. The lies and deception to keep that all-or-nothing story going followed.
Biosphere 2, at the beginning, was a project that gave sustained attention and respect to one of our biggest fears: What happens when Earth becomes uninhabitable? A lot of times those fears are laughed off or ignored. It's uncomfortable to talk about, to admit the possibility. But the Synergists didn't look away and tried to prepare for what is impossible to prepare for, which – with all their human failings included – is a bold, courageous, and possibly noble aim.
But what about the people for whom life as they knew it ended with white settlers taking ownership of Indigenous land? Koch writes, "Defining when and where the apocalypse occurs is an act of power. In the hands of techno-optimists and visioneers, nightmares of environmental crisis become a valuable commodity and an opportunity. That is, if they could define the apocalypse, they could more easily sell their own solutions to engineer Earth and humanity out of its predicament."
As sympathetic as I find most people interviewed in the documentary, they still fall squarely into this powerful category. They capitalized on the future crisis. Yes, they intended to raise awareness, study closed ecosystems, and do good, but in the end, the whole project hinged on the whims of a billionaire. The original folks who had a mission were sent packing and Steve Bannon came in to save the day (dollar). The Synergists were had. In an uncanny moment, the documentary shows Bannon talking, convincingly, about the importance of studying climate change.
If I close my eyes and concentrate, I see the dome and pyramid shapes shining white against blue and brown. Once inside, I walked along a narrow metal walkway, an expanse of lush green to my right. I felt cramped and claustrophobic, climbing a steep stairway barely wide enough to fit. There was also a large black room with a vent in the middle. But wait, that's not right. In the documentary, there's a scene where the Biospherians are running around a room called The Lung after fresh oxygen is pumped in, and they can breathe freely again. In a second, I realized that my memory painted black the walls that were white. There's one sense-memory I'm sure of: The humidity was ever-present and made my baby hairs frame my face in frizz and my skin slick with sweat.
Visiting Biosphere 2 is an experience that can feel fictional. I have no physical proof of visiting besides this essay. Like Apoorva Sripathi writes in shelf offering, "I guess memory is like that — malleable putty to help reconstruct the past but not concrete enough to render it reliable." On the drive home, my professor took the class to an Italian restaurant for dinner—or was it Mexican? I can't remember the food, just the pastoral murals on the wall, the shiny red plastic tablecloths, and the ubiquitous Saltillo tile floor.
As time hurtles past, I wonder what I’ll remember about Earth as I die. So much, probably, that I’ll lose details — like what I ate at that restaurant. I don’t need to list each memory to have it live within me. Also: Will I think of a future I’m no longer part of as I die? I don’t know. But I do hope more and more people believe the faraway future isn’t the only place we can make better.
The Good Enough Weekly comes out every Friday, alternating an essay with Of the Week. I also take on freelance editing and writing projects. Reach out if you’re looking for help in those departments — I’ve worked on everything from zines to textbooks. More info here. My zine of adapted Irish fairytales, Desert Pookas, is available for preorder now!
I loved this, and I'm so glad you picked up Koch's Arid Empire and found it resonant! This reminded me a lot of Indigenous philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte's writing on how discourse on the Anthropocene and dystopian/post-apocalyptic narratives of climate change erase Indigenous peoples histories of colonial violence. (He has a great article called "Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises" and other related writing if you're interested!)
It also reminded me of something Amitav Ghosh said in that Between the Covers interview: "I think in the West, the planetary crisis has come to be thought of very much in relation to the future. It’s thought of as doing something to fix problems that might arise in the future. Whereas in many other parts of the world, especially in the Global South, the planetary crisis is completely seen as being rooted in the past." Been thinking about this a lot.
Awaiting Part 2: Arcosanti, that other weird and failed experiment…
On a fictional note, have you read The Water Knife?