We are gods

“It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations,” Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told a freezing audience of world dignitaries, including the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. The occasion was the opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in February 2008, a vault constructed to secure the world’s food crops against climate change, wars, and environmental disasters. The Vault was to be a safe deposit box for the world’s genetic material, secured in eternal permafrost high above the coastline to protect against climate-change-induced sea level rise. In this icy arctic facility, national seed banks from all over the world could deposit their genetic heritage under Norwegian protection. After unlocking the Vault, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya made the first deposit: a box of her nation’s rice seeds. “Doomsday Seed Vault” and “Noah’s Seed Ark” were the nicknames suggested to the press by the Norwegian government. They were told that Norway had financed and built the Vault simply “as a service to the world community.” The opening ceremony became a major news item in media outlets around the world, often as front-page news, with Norwegians portrayed as virtuous guardians of the world’s biological heritage. These articles had a Biblical ring to them: The oceans were rising and Stoltenberg was depicted as the world’s Noah securing at least two seeds of every