A landmark issue.

• Author: Ayres, Ed
• Position: Note From a Worldwatcher - Brief Article

It may be "the single greatest battle environmentalists have ever fought," writes Bill McKibben in the concluding pages of this issue. He's referring to the approaching storm of scientific and bioethical controversy which is the subject of our provocatively blue-eyed cover. It's a battle over a field so new that we still aren't sure what to name it: experts variously use the terms "human genetic engineering," "germline engineering," and "inheritable genetic modification." The ongoing controversies over stem cell harvesting and human cloning, it appears, are only the opening shots in this battle.

For many of us, McKibben's comment represents a sharp turn of events; I'd guess that not many months ago, he might have said that the "single greatest" battle is the one that is continuing to escalate over global climate change. Indeed, the prospect of rising sea level, flooded coastal cities, and spreading ecological disruption has not abated, and has probably worsened in the face of the U.S. government's institutional blindness to what the real threats to human security are. But now we face something new.

McKibben has been one of the world's most careful chroniclers of humanity's environmental impacts, and of the related impacts of human population growth. His book Maybe One was a reflection on the experience of choosing to be a parent of just one child, and on the connections he has found between personal lifestyles and global sustainability. That may help to explain his current interest in human biotechnology, because the advent of inheritable genetic modification (treatment that doesn't just involve a person's own body but alters the genetic instructions passed on to his or her children) could change the meaning of "parent" as we have always thought of it--and bring to an end our once universal connection between each generation and its successors.

We began work on this landmark issue at a time when our magazine staff itself was undergoing some momentous changes. We lost our senior editor, Chris Bright, who is moving into full-time work (albeit still with Worldwatch) as a senior researcher on biodiversity issues. Chris wrote some memorable articles during his years with the magazine, but perhaps his greatest contribution was in the...