We need Lab Day to make sure today’s students grow up with both the skills and the passion to continue our scientific discoveries
By Ilan Sobel
As the CEO of a biotech startup recognized by FastCompany for “World Changing ideas,” I care deeply about the environment. As someone who has time contemplating how to make the planet greener, I’m proposing we enlarge our thinking beyond the –recently celebrated Earth Day.
Consider the celebration’s history: Earth Day came to be in 1970, after Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, noticed that decades of rapid industrialization were taking their toll on the planet. Back then, environmental legislation was scant, and awareness even lower, which is why it made a huge difference when 20 million Americans—a full tenth of the population at the time—marched in the streets to demand action right away.
It worked, and, as a result, we got the National Environmental Education Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and a host of other laws that made things much, much better.
Inspired by this rapid success, 140 other countries started observing Earth Day, too, and although the challenges of global warming are still many and daunting, we now have countless organizations worldwide reaching out to hundreds of millions of people and working tirelessly to protect the planet. Earth Day, a classic consciousness-raising endeavor, has served its course in a way.
Which doesn’t mean that our work, when it comes to imagining a greener future, is done. To the contrary: We should take a page from our storied history and inaugurate a new day dedicated to saving the environment: Lab Day.
Don’t think the name is quite as catchy? Consider the following: we all know the story that red wine, consumed every day in moderate doses has considerable cardio-vascular health benefits. We also know that growing grapes takes considerable resources, like land and water and labor, all of which have an impact on the environment. Now, imagine you could take a single grape and isolate the critical cells which produce the bioactive compounds which are important for our health, creating, in effect, a microcosm of nature, a miniature containing all the essence and nourishing nutrients of the original. And imagine you could
put these cells in a Petri dish, and then in massive industrial scale bioreactors, using them to harvest the active ingredients that are found in red wine which are so beneficial, not only without the alcohol and the sugar but also using a fraction of the land and water , no herbicides or insecticides, and no solvents. Finally, imagine doing what nature can do in one year in just three weeks.
This process, sometimes referred to as biofarming, isn’t science fiction. Those of us working at the vanguard of science and technology are busy bringing about precisely such innovations, not merely protecting the earth but using cutting edge tools to unlock its bounties without depleting its resources.
Like medicine: As I write, about 40 percent of all the drugs we take are synthesized from plants, which means that the pharmaceutical industry has considerable room to grow and innovate when it comes to abandoning synthetic (and patentable) creations for natural solutions. The Fentanyl epidemic should be all the prodding we need to do just that, so that we may never again lose a loved one to the gruesome side effects of opioids.
Thankfully, science is on our side. Researchers at Mass General, for example, are currently conducting a clinical trial using a substance made from the plant Cytisinicline to help young patients quit vaping, and natural psychoplastogens like psylocibin, which occur in hundreds of kinds of mushrooms, are proving to be highly effective antidepressants. We are solving the massive greenhouse gas challenges with meat and milk grown in labs and there is so much more we can do.
These breakthroughs, and other like them, shouldn’t just be of interest to investors, physicians, patients, or their families. They should delight us all, suggesting as they do that a host of blessed remedies may soon be available for some of the ailments that plague us most. But they should also inspire us to fundamentally reshape the way we think about the environment. The earth is not a damsel in distress, calling out for brave activists and eco-warriors to save it by standing up to its enemies, real or perceived. Rather, our home planet is a vast and mysterious paradise, and we finally have the technology and tools to unlock
some of its most dazzling—and beneficial—secrets while ensuring that we are able to protect it from any further damage .
And this is why we need Lab Day to save the earth
Just as Earth Day has moved young people from Denver to Djibouti to be more mindful of how they treat land, air, and water, so, too, must we now propel a new generation to think not only about preservation but about innovation. We need Lab Day to make sure today’s grade school students grow up with both the skills and the passion to continue our scientific discoveries. We need Lab Day to convince elected officials and anyone interested in running for office that talking about earth science signifies a commitment to the sort of beneficial solutions voters appreciate. We need Lab Day, in short, to inspire us all to embark on a new journey of discovery.
Earth Day proved that when we harness our wills and our minds to a cause, we can literally change the world. Let’s do it again with Lab Day.
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Ilan Sobel is the CEO of the Vancouver and Rehovot-based company BioHarvest Sciences.
