Andrew Revkin

He's one of the Pope's kind of posse.

He gave one of the initial speeches, and he said, nowadays, mankind looks like a technical giant and an ethical child.

meaning our technological wizardry is unbelievable, but it's way out in front of our ability to step back and kind of like consider in the full dimensions we need to, is it helping everybody?

What are the consequences of CRISPR, you know, genetics technology?

And there's no single answer to that.

If I'm in the African Union, I'm just using this as an example.

CRISPR has emerged so fast, it can do so much by changing the nature of nature

in a kind of a programming way, building genes, not just transferring them from one organism to another.

We've only just begun to taste the fruits of that, literally.

And it can wipe out a mosquito species.

We know how to do that now.

You can like literally,

take out the dengue-causing mosquito.

The scientists have done the work, and you think, okay, cool, well, that's great.

Now there's this big fight over whether that should happen.

African Union, and I'm with their view, says, hey, if we can take out a mosquito species that's causing horrific, chronic loss through dengue, which I had once in Indonesia, it's not fun.

And we should do it.

What's the other side of the argument?

The European Union, they're saying, using their capital P precautionary principle, says, no, we can't meddle with nature.

Right.