“If waste like this were not chiefly thoughtless, it might well be characterized as the deliberate destruction of the Nation’s future.” (Pinchot, 1907)

While we are governed by policies and immersed in civil unrest, physics, chemistry, and biology (the omnipotent triad of scientific vectors I like to call “Mother Nature’s boomerang”) are revolting against us. At the same time, they are giving us all the clues into how we can adopt systems to survive. The Boomer generation rang in an era of ubiquitous, excessive consumption, and thoughtless destruction. The next generation answered their calls, to which they said “hang up the phone!”

In this critical moment, our efforts should be “spent less on long-term priorities questions and more on action — like political efforts to reverse course on dangerous human activities, and research on how to mitigate the immediate dangers of present threats.” (Piper, 2019)

For the first time in 45 million centuries, we are facing existential threats that have human handprints written all over them. While Earth has endured its fair share of natural disasters, this is the only point in history where the entire planet is threatened not by forces beyond its control, but by its inhabitants. Like a horror movie, the call from the killer is coming from inside the house.

While the powers that be can stymie progress towards an equitable future, they cannot easily halt the pace of technological and philosophical advancement. Our circle of life, in turn, revolves around educational, environmental, and economic ecosystems, all of which are inextricably linked.

In the midst of all the misinformation, vitriol, useless content, and wrongheaded directions, there’s a beacon of hope in the next generation of technology and talent. It is our young people who will take ownership for our ancestors' recklessness, aided by the most advanced, multifaceted innovations. With so much to learn and so much to fix, it will be impossible to make enough progress before our deadline hits unless we adopt a new approach to learning about and integrating sustainability into our communities’ everyday lives.

We have the well-established blueprint of Star Trek: The Next Generation to serve as a tried-and-true teaching tool for holistic learning. This report goes through the key concepts, implementation progress, and actionable policy proposals behind a continuing mission of bringing The Next Generation of clean technology to the next generation of talent in order to spurn new economies and build community resilience.

Glossary

Before we begin, we must be aware of several terms that set the stage and dictate the direction the planet is going in and how to chart a new course to navigate our many challenges.

Paradigm-shift: A term coined by American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a pivotal change in the fundamental concepts and methods of a scientific discipline. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time.

Perhaps the most important line is found on the second to last page in “The Response to Crisis” chapter-- “Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.” (Kuhn, 1962) He goes on to say to “reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself." The paradigm I reject is that students, scientists, and community leaders aren’t required to work together in building context-specific service-learning programs.

Wise-use: A term coined by American conservationist in 1907 and first head of the Forest Service Gifford Pinchot, championing an approach to federal land management that curbed exploitation and promoted equity. It has found new life as the “Wise-use movement” founded in 1988 by the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Pinchot movingly writes about the importance of this approach, and extended into the educational realm saying “The use and growth of body, mind, and spirit, must all be found in any effective system of education.” (Pinchot, 1907)

Service-learning: An educational approach that combines classroom work with real-life experience in serving the community. In a letter from the late Senator/fighter pilot/astronaut John Glenn, Chair of The National Commission on Service-Learning, says in their report “Let us embrace it at this moment in history when we have remembered what makes our country great, and when we require the civic responsibility of the next generation to sustain that greatness.”

These three terms are the primary vectors of inspiration. Supplement by a collection of acronyms contextualizing our approach that lay the foundation for creating a communication channel we can all participate in and collectively spell out our paradigm-shift to wise-use and service-learning process.

It begins by defining goals that are inherently SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely). SMART goals are needed to make measurable progress in the SDGs (sustainable development goals). SDGs can be attained faster if more communities picked up the PACE (platform accelerating circular economies). PACE is based on the design and innovation principles of MESs (microbial electrochemical systems). MESs provides a multidisciplinary methodology to teach STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math). STEAM education requires a well-rounded SHAPE (social sciences, humanities, the arts, people, and economy). SHAPE education bridges the gap between current practices and possibilities of TNG (The Next Generation). TNG provides an exciting entry point to onboard general audiences with a holistic approach to existential problem-solving.

The Next Generation of Education

"Students in the 21st century must be open to the amazing diversity of possibilities available to them in further education and careers when they leave school. And, while every student will create their own unique path, a solid and common grounding that embraces creativity is essential." -Dr. Tim Patston

The next generation of education is outlined in the aptly titled “Next Generation Learning Standards”, with specific benchmarks for the arts and sciences. What is notably absent is an interdisciplinary, hands-on service-learning approach. Recent revelations that are perhaps obvious in hindsight is that a holistic approach to education is pivotal in ensuring a well-prepared workforce for the rising green economy.

The newly amended STEM acronym, STEAM, has been gaining momentum recently and is widely accepted to be the suite of necessary subjects to gain competency in. London School of Economics established a corollary curriculum of SHAPE to match STEAM’s influence— including the areas of study too often overlooked in the STEAM realm.

Together, they can go full-steam ahead as a well-defined education curriculum and provide the necessary access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking. While standardizing these many different topics is a challenge, imbuing existing programs with an engaging way to teach these concepts is within our grasp-- it is through The Next Generation.

The Next Generation (Star Trek)

"The Star Trek series are the only science fiction series crafted with such respect for real science and intelligent writing. That's why it's the only science fiction series that many scientists watch regularly . . . like me.” -former NASA technologist David Batcholer.

The enduring power of Star Trek is everywhere -- even in the Trump administration, with a Space Force logo ripped straight from The United Federation of Planet’s style guide and a public-private partnership pandemic-response “Operation Warp Speed” to accelerate COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

While it’s clear that they don’t espouse the noble values embodied by the Star Trek franchise, politicians from the other side do. The “Trek the vote” event on behalf of the Biden campaign that brought together 19 stars across multiple franchises and Democratic superstars like Stacey Abrams and Pete Buttigieg to discuss what it will take to make the future Star Trek depicted for us a reality. Andrew Yang was there too.

The idea of teaching the next generation about the most important lessons through Star Trek has been around for decades, with a rich “repository of instructional materials for a variety of subject areas” (Winegarden, 1993). In a 1994 survey of 30,000 Indiana and Chicago secondary school students asking who or what most influenced their interest in science, the top answer was Star Trek: The Next Generation (second place went to the original series). (Dubeck, 1998). I wonder where the TNG majority of those 30,000 millennials are today, and how we can mobilize them to help build out an education and service program inspired by the myriad of resources and tools we have at our disposal today to make an engaging, enrichening extracurricular that bridges the gap between scientists on the cutting-edge of advancements and students who have the enthusiasm and curiosity needed to allow a new paradigm to emerge so we can deploy the most promising methods of climate mitigation efforts and resiliency protocols to the front-lines.

In the decades since TNG ended in 1994, numerous education initiatives and resources and think pieces have taken hold on the internet extrapolating on the powers of the world’s longest-running sci-fi franchise. What was missing in those days was the internet as a learning tool. Now that we have interactive, dynamic learning methods available, we can leverage these remote technologies to bring the lessons to life, and actually create solutions.

All-hands-on-holodeck: An Episodic Lesson

There is one episode in particular that explores the promise of technology, the importance of inclusion, and the embrace of good old-fashioned fun. “Fistful of Datas” is a holodeck-centric episode that finds the crew in a bind on their downtime due to chief engineer Geordi LaForge’s and commander Data’s project to use Data’s processors as a fallback in the event of main computer failure. It is unique in its direct homage to the Western genre, with a final hat tip with the shot of the Enterprise flying towards a star partially covered by a nearby celestial body, akin to the “riding off into the sunset” motif.

Be it a standoff between cops and robbers, natives and U.S Calvary settlers, the semi-nomadic wanderer and fearful locals, federal and local governments, Westerns provide an ideal setting for xenophobic conflict, cleverly contextualized in the rapidly changing, migratory backdrop of the American Old West. Replete with divergent visions and values, competing interests, and initiatives, these stories explore complex conflicts, and maneuver through thematically pregnant subplots with audience accessibility.

If Westerns examine human nature in a constant state of threat and dishevelment, then The Next Generation instructs humans how to overcome that.

Making Sense of The Wild West of Clean MESs

Despite the wonders of TNG technology, they still needed to prepare for events of power outage-- systems were always being rerouted or resonated or decoupled or whatever they needed to make sure their isolinear chips kept things running smoothly. What we know today that the scientists only first discovered in the 1980s was that there’s one manufacturing methodology that rises above all the rest which holds the power to transform universal processes--- and it begins with MESs (Microbial Electrochemical Systems). By embracing the raw power of living matter, conductive materials, and design ingenuity, we can immediately and significantly reduce costs, emissions, and grow food, fuel, and bolster a bright green economy.

Popular opinion says that there is no magical combination to reverse the damage of the unnatural disasters made by our myopic penchant for overly-industrialized manufacturing processes. Bill Gates, a man who made a software company and now has a pastime of speaking with expert-level authority on a variety of complex topics, says renewable energy isn’t ready. Amazon is willfully airing commercials starring their sustainability researchers (and their offspring) saying “we don’t know how we are going to reduce our carbon footprint” and their logistics specialists say “data will guide us”. Meanwhile, there’s an exponentially growing body of evidence and innovation that is happening all over the world, but its message gets scrambled by the bevy of inscrutable jargon that takes a concerted effort for corporations to adopt.

Amazon’s research initiatives have been woefully subpar, but there’s an exponentially growing community of circular economy experts who can help them transform their business model so it improves the planet and their profit margin. It is our collective responsibility to support them in their self-proclaimed mission to achieve sustainability.

Despite the fact that “plants have already solved the two key problems associated with all” (Masters, 2013 ) renewable technologies— how to collect and store energy through their carbon emission-free photosynthetic process, and the numerous industries that would benefit from incorporating biological systems, it is brushed over in less than a single page of a 536 page “Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems. Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems” a textbook used by many universities (including City College).

The problem is that it’s not quite mature enough yet and is still in its pioneering stage. The mission we now face is how to make MESs mainstream so it can clean up the mess we’ve made.

It’s The Economy, SMART

Back in the heyday of Gold Rush days, it was all local. Frontier towns were outfitted with all the essentials to operate- you had your blacksmith, your saloon, your doctor. Perhaps many of them shared the same office with single providers of many services. Then globalization changed it all. We operate under the guise of truly needing a decentralized manufacturing and supply chain when we in fact have space, supplies, and systems needed to make what we need regionally. The problem is that it isn’t easy to set up, but it is possible, and it is essential.

In order to get the ball rolling on making circular economies around the world, we must start small, and identify one thing we can achieve— a proof-of-concept in action showing the capabilities of what can be done regionally for transformative renewable technology. We have experienced the failings of linear economies. It’s definitively stupid to continue on our current trajectory. It’s smart to establish a model that others can build off of, mold into their own communities that adhere to their limitations, and speak to their challenges.

Given the ability to affordably generate clean electricity, food, feed, filter water, extract metals, and absorb carbon emissions onsite, an overwhelming majority of people would opt-in without hesitation. This is just a sneak peek into the many things MESs can do for us, but it’s not mature enough to be manufactured and distributed in a traditional sense. If we build it, others can make it so.

Matchmaking Mankind and Microbes

Another key lesson from Star Trek was the importance of diverse collaboration- not just between humanoids and androids but entire other species as well. We have inscrutable allies in our midst spanning billions of years before we have come to exist, teaching us lessons about how not to go extinct. Now that we are privy to their mysterious powers in the presence of conductive materials and magnetic fields, we can remake the world in Gene Roddenberry's image.

The original series featured their cephalopod navigation control unit, and contemporary reboots use the famous microanimal tardigrade “water bear” aka “moss piglet” as the being that breathes life into their new warp drive, jump-started by an interstellar network of mycelium mushroom spores. While warp drive should be so far down our priorities that it doesn’t even deserve mentioning, as we do not have time to dabble in novelty technologies, the organisms the writers decided to highlight are important ones. Tardigrades are the only microanimal known to exhibit cryptobiosis, and mycelium has a bevy of magical medicinal prosperities, material applications….so fantastic is the fungi.

At the end of the day, what separates our race from every other one we have discovered to date is our ability to organize and communicate disparate knowledge that results in the creation of new technologies and ideologies that dictate society. The time for tinkering with low-impact ways to change the trajectory of our planet is past its prime— we are neck-deep in high-stakes terrain.

Opt-in Participation Policy Proposal

“The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves, in a sense, responsible for that future.” (Pinchot, 1907)

I initially thought of amending the current next generation of education standards to include service-learning in service of circular economies but the thought of inevitable pushback haunted me. A more attainable goal would be to require that every school provide students with the opportunity to participate in an extracurricular program that embodies the pursuit of long-life and prosperity.

This extracurricular program is what my startup enterprise has identified as the first phase of our continuing mission to boldly go where everyone must go every day before it's too late.

We begin with our pilot project with a team of 13 students working with us on building MESs microchips from household items and upcycled plastic, and tying that in with advanced Microfluidics and materials science research we are doing at the lab to create together a model for building micro-energy/algae harvesting chips that can be connected to power everyday devices and be scaled up and reconfigured to serve industrial uses.

It is a program that is remote, safe, fun, free and results in an actual project that solves a real-world problem. We are building out a curriculum as we go along and believe that an attainable next step after the conclusion of this first pilot this year is to bake into the next generation education standards a next-generation extracurricular education option.

Change begins with C...UNY

CUNY is an institution of many firsts and first places. We are the first university to have established a student government, is ranked #1 by The Chronicle of Higher Education out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States and has more Nobel Prize recipients and McArthur genius fellows than any other public American university. CCNY’s crest means “wisdom, knowledge, and justice” in Latin-- we should embrace that.

In times like these, any research worth funding and doing is worth teaching to the next generation while developing solutions that not only inform how to optimize for the future but actually serve a present-day purpose. Our Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) has a 2020-2024 Strategic Plan that includes “a clear plan for media coverage of publications, awards, and other accomplishments from the ASRC that will support reputation building in identified areas”, identifying “opportunities to support 21st-century, societally relevant policies and decision-making in high-end technology, medicine, and environmental management”, and “outreach activities to educate the local community, particularly middle and high school students, about STEM and continue to build a reputation with the public as an important proponent of STEM research and education”.

What we can do as members of the CUNY community is take these bulleted strategies and turn them into SMART tactics. We should be working in tandem with Sustainable CUNY and the CCNY Sustainability Program to ensure that every research focus area includes.

It’s Time To Pick Up The PACE

What was once a Union Square trademark for its mysterious string of numbers many of us assumed had something to do with stocks has found new life as a climate countdown clock. It gives us no more than 2633 days* until our planet irrevocably changes, where the extreme weather of today will be classified as mild, wildfires will reign over fallen power lines, and life as we know it will be what we hoped it wouldn’t be.

Conclusion

“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.” -Buckminster Fuller

The state of affairs is fraught on all fronts. In these uncertain times, looking for answers in a well-crafted science fiction series isn't beyond belief- it's a logical next step if we take historical evidence, facts and figures into account. We have all come into the possession of a problem so massive there is no single entity or ideology that can tackle it. Despite the resounding cries for more research into what must be done to flatten the curve of CO2 emissions, there is now information far too important to keep siloed for only those privy to lesser-known subjects and resources, information that reveals secrets to ultimate solutions we never thought possible.

If this were written adequately, you will have established are the following truths: 1) we have ample public support and consensus that we must act to combat climate chaos, and 2) the scientific principles and infrastructure exist to build out technology that can significantly mitigate future damage while building resilient systems necessary to ensure survival despite inevitably escalating disasters.

The fundamental question which confronts us now is, given the framework for a future many of us long for and the technology to do it, how will we make it so? The next step is to engage.

References

Pinchot, G. (1907). The conservation of natural resources. Washington: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Staff, S. X. (2020, October 13). Which is more creative, the arts or the sciences? Physorg. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-creative-arts-sciences.html

Piper, K. (2019, September 28). Is this the most important century in human history? Vox. https://www.vox.com/2019/9/26/20880334/is-this-the-most-important-century-in-human-history

van Broekhoven, K., Cropley, D., & Seegers, P. (2020). Differences in creativity across Art and STEM students: We are more alike than unalike. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100707

Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Third ed.). The University of Chicago Press.

Masters, G. M. (2004). Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems. Renewable and Efficient Electric Power Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/0471668826

Fiske, Edward B. (2002) Learning in Deed: The Power of Service-Learning for American Schools. A Report From The National Commission on Service-Learning. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED465829.pdf

Alan D. Winegarden, Marilyn Fuss‐Reineck & Lori J. Charron (1993) Using star trek: The next generation to teach concepts in persuasion, family communication, and communication ethics, Communication Education, 42:2, 179-188, https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529309378924

Sam FronsApril 20, 2021Comment