Just in case you were looking for some ideas for your next dystopian novel… in a new feature, the BBC reports on ideas for combating anthropogenic climate change by engineering humans to use less resources.

How about giving people patches that would make them allergic to meat? As someone who is intolerant to alcohol, I can confirm this should dramatically cut people’s meat consumption. Or how about cutting people’s height by 25 percent? That should reduce how much food they eat and how much energy they need to get around.

Nobody is seriously considering these options, but they’re interesting conversation-starters. And anyway, societies have historically implemented “human engineering” to save their resources. The BBC points to China’s one-child policy as an example. (1)

But all serious things start as a joke.
All dark ages begin with a pointless idea.
Darkness is coming.
We are just too dazzled to see it…
The light of science impresses us.
And we are not realizing that it is slowly burning our eyes…

Seek ethics.
Seek goodness.
Seek not… “science”!