Me and the Biospheres

The life story of John P. Allen, inventor of the largest laboratory for global ecology ever built and one of the most luminous minds of our time. Contained within a magnificently designed air-tight glass-and-steel-framed setting, Biosphere 2 covered three acres of Arizona desert and included models of seven biomes: an ocean with coral reef, marsh, rainforest, savannah, desert, farm and a micro-city. Eight people lived inside this structure for two years (1991-1993) and set world records in human life support while monitoring their impact on the environment and providing crucial data for future manned missions into outer space. Humorous and reminiscent of Whitman, Me and the Biospheres is a tribute to the ingenuity and dauntlessness of the human mind and a passionate call to reawaken to the beauty of our peerless home, Biosphere 1, the Earth.
Anyone suffering from the global warming blues will cherish this uplifting account of the most ambitious environmental experiments of our time: Biosphere 2, a miniature Earth under glass and the world's largest laboratory for global ecology ever built. John Allen's memoir, Me and the Biospheres, chronicles the singular life of poet, playwright, activist, world-traveler - and inventor of Biosphere 2.
John 'Dolphin' Allen, author, poet, playwright, inventor, conceiver and co-founder of the Biosphere 2 project - the world's largest laboratory for global ecology. Biosphere 2 set a number of world records in closed life system work including, among others, degree of sealing tightness, 100% waste recycle and water recycle, and duration of human residence within a closed system (eight people for two years). Allen has also conceived and co-founded nine other projects around the world, pioneering in sustainable co-evolutionary development. Allen began the first manned Biosphere Test Module exper
"The Biosphere 2 project was surely one of the great scientific and technological enterprises of our time. Building a working model of the Earth's biosphere is essential preparation for the coming era of space travel and manned exploration of other worlds" Ralph Metzner, Ph. D., Author of The Unfold