Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noösphere

What might “planetary intelligence” entail? One aspect of intelligence, at least of our sapient sort, is the capacity to be aware of—and thus to be able to author—our own biographies. We are biographical beings. We learn from our pasts, in order to plan for our futures. In some ways, we can view our species as bequeathing such an aptitude to our planet itself, as it ploughs through deep time and twirls through deep space. Through us, a planet becomes autobiographical: capable of gauging its deepest past and tracking the unfolding complexities of the present, so as to select between possibilities and prospects for tomorrow. Through our globe-girdling array of sensors and simulations, our planet might just be becoming responsible for itself. That is, capable of authoring its own future and avoiding catastrophe. But, sapience always presupposes stupidity: the ability to learn from one’s errors entails having made them. No one is born wise, after all. It is a status earned through demonstrating willingness to correct grave—sometimes catastrophic—mistakes. Accordingly, assuming that we might be living during the prehistory of a planetary sapience, this talk explores the necessary episodes of planetary stupidity requisite for this. It presents a history of grand, often shocking, follies: of proposed geoengineering projects and other ambitious schemes, all of which would have been catastrophic had they been fully implemented. But, ultimately, the message is hopeful: stupidity and intelligence are sides of a coin, and inspecting the errors of the past throws into relief just how far we’ve already come in our quest to coalesce forms of sapience at scales extending far beyond our skulls.