FOR A FREE READING COPY OF THE ENTIRE NOVEL via PDF sent by email by the author, just ask him for your copy by writing to him at
thomas.faunce@anu.edu.au
Tom Faunce is a Professor with a joint position in the Australian National
University Law School and Medical School. Before becoming an aca-
demic he practised for many years as a barrister and solicitor and subse-
quently as an intensive care physician. His PhD on normative coherence
in regulation of the Human Genome Project was awarded the Crawford
Prize in 2001. In 2010 was awarded an Australian Research Council
Future Fellowship to study the capacity of nanotechnology to resolve
some of the great public health and environmental challenges of our time.
This book is an outcome under an Australian Research Council Discovery
grant to develop the ethical and legal framework for a Global Project on
Artificial Photosynthesis. Tom Faunce lives in Canberra with his family
and his main recreations are reading, supporting the Essendon Australian
Rules Football club and watching his son play cricket. He is a Class A
(non-alcoholic) trustee on the General Services Board of Alcoholics
Anonymous Australia. At his university, Tom sits on the central Human
Research Ethics Committee and the Council of Burgmann College. He
attends Wesley Uniting Church in Forrest and utilises a Buddhist tech-
nique to meditate each morning.
This book draws upon the intimate knowledge of artificial photosynthesis
research around the world he acquired in the years 2011–2017 under the
auspices of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and a
subsequent Discovery Grant in which many leaders in the field were his
partner investigators. In this period, he coordinated three international
conferences dedicated to the idea of creating a Global Artificial
Photosynthesis Project (GAPP) (at Lord Howe Island in 2011 and 2016,
as well as at Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire with the assistance of the
Royal Society in 2014).
Thomas Faunce
PROFESSOR
BA LLB (Hons) (ANU). BMed (Newcastle) PhD (ANU; JG Crawford Prize)
ANU College of Law
ANU College of Lawresearch around the world I acquired in the years 2011–2017 under the
auspices of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and a
subsequent Discovery Grant in which many leaders in the field were my
partner investigators. In this period, I coordinated three international
conferences dedicated to the idea of creating a Global Artificial
Photosynthesis Project (GAPP) (at Lord Howe Island in 2011 and 2016,
as well as at Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire with the assistance of the
Royal Society in 2014).
During that time, I also inspected artificial photosynthesis research labs, met
and published with some of their most senior experts and gave plenary talks
at meetings and conferences in places that included the US Joint Center on
Artificial Photosynthesis at California Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley,
Uppsala, Umea, the Korean Center on Artificial Photosynthesis, the Dalian
Institute of Physics in China, Nanyang University in Singapore, Imperial
College London, The Solar Fuels Institute of Northwestern University at
Telluride, Barga in Tuscany (Gordon Conference on Solar Fuels),
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b3113 Split by Sun: The Tragic History of the Sustainocene “9x6” 398 Postscript
Edinburgh University, Obergurgl Austria (Nanotechnology for Renewable
Energy Conference), Monash University, Sydney University, Wollongong
University and my own Australian National University.
Artificial photosynthesis is a multidisciplinary field comprising large
groups of researchers in many developed nations in university-based
research groups focused on, for instance, enhanced characterisation of the
natural photosynthetic process, light capture, nanotechnology, semi-
conductors, quantum coherence in electron transport, catalysis for water-
splitting into H2
and O2
, as well as atmospheric CO2
and N2
reduction.
On some definitions, research into artificial photosynthesis includes bio-
logical processes and even synthetic biology, as for example, bacteria
genetically modified to produce high-density lipids for fuel. At its core is
the quest to design a stable, inexpensive, efficient oxygen-evolving photo-
anode and an equally efficient, durable and cost-effective photocathode
for hydrogen evolution that integrates reduction of atmospheric nitrogen
and carbon dioxide within a system with good global life cycle analysis.
My contributions to this field were only indirectly scientific (perhaps
through some collaborations I assisted). Rather, they involved attempts to
link an ethical vision to this research field; a vision which extended to a
Global Project on Artificial Photosynthesis dedicated to universally appli-
cable ethical principles. As my academic books, chapters and articles have
argued, such a global project might have arisen as the culmination of
coordination amongst the contemporary proliferation of national projects
on artificial photosynthesis, by creation of a large research fund from pri-
vate philanthropic, government, corporate and crowd-sourcing initiatives,
from acceptance amongst the field of governance principles and structures,
as well as widespread global public support for the narrative of engineer-
ing all our roads and buildings so they made clean fuel, food and fertiliser
just from water, sun and air.
The terminological shift in this work from ‘artificial’ to ‘synthetic’ photo-
synthesis is designed to highlight the necessary linkage of ethics and
science if this field is to achieve its potential. The term ‘synthetic’ denotes
artificial simulation of a natural product, but it also refers to a process of
reasoning by applying general principles; to a compounding of thoughts,
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“9x6” b3113 Split by Sun: The Tragic History of the Sustainocene
Postscript 399
words or chemicals; or, perhaps most interestingly, to the capacity of our
consciousness to mesh sensory impressions with pre-existing ethical ideals
or intuitions. The physicist Richard Feynman was referring to synthesis
when wrote of colleagues attempting to solve accumulated paradoxes by
scheming ‘think of symmetry laws,’ ‘put the information in mathematical
form,’ or ‘guess equations,’ till finally they realise that the next scheme, the
new discovery is going to be made in a completely different way. So was
the philosopher Immanuel Kant when he stated that the ‘moral law’ was
within us as the freedom to develop virtue by consistently applying prin-
ciples that lead to the flourishing of all. Synthesis underpins the science-
based natural law approach reflected in the proposition that global
synthetic photosynthesis should be termed the ‘moral culmination of
nanotechnology.’ Synthesis also captures the idea that ethics education
must extend to focus not only on teaching universally applicable princi-
ples, but developing virtue through their consistent application in order
that the mind be stilled so in contemplation it reveals its true nature.
∞
The novel includes incidents that take place on the lands of the Warlpiri
people in the Tanamai and the Palawa in Lutruwita, tribes of the oldest
continuous civilisation on the Earth’s surface. I pay my respects to their
elders past and present. These scenes are based on my own personal expe-
riences in these regions and reading of the cited public domain references.
I take responsibility and apologise to those elders for any unintentional
misunderstandings I’ve expressed.
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