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Stewart Brand on 'Environmental Heresies'
FleaPlus writes "The MIT Technology Review has an article predicting where the mainstream of the environmental movement may likely reverse its collective stance in the next ten years. The four areas discussed are population growth, urbanization, genetically-engineered organisms, and nuclear power. The article is written by Stewart Brand, known for creating the Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL online community, and the Long Now Foundation. Brand also has some interesting comments regarding the sometimes-conflicting interaction between romantics and scientists in the environmental movement. There's an online debate between Brand and former DOE official Joseph Romm on TR Blogs." Frankly, unless humanity decides to undergo a massive collective personality change of not being consumption-focused, I don't see much other way around these particular issues. What we all need is an Arthur to keep us depressed and sleeping in darkened rooms to lower energy consumption.
I think this is part of the environmental religious focus. Man is inheritably evil and unnatural. We are as natural as any other animal. I think our consumption focus leads to progress. There are too many of us to go back to some agrarian past. We will need to use technology to sustain the population levels expected while we minimize our footprint. It won't be the undeveloped countries that to this. It will be the evil high-technology consumerist cultures that will develop the new technologies needed. The stinking hippie mankind-haters have no solutions other than a time machine to take us back to a past that never existed.
The fact he has never studied any of these things is what disqualifies him.
Kind of like how Bush isn't qualified to be commander in chief?
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So the environmentalists can all join VHEMT, and the rest of us can all wait a generation or two. An organism attempting to maximize its survival is about the most "natural" process you can find; why do environmentalists object to humans doing this? All other animals are trying to do the same thing all the time; it's not our fault they can't eliminate predators or affect environmental factors to the extent that we can.
There's no need for GMO crops. There's more than enough food in the world. We've been farming for 5,000 years without GMO crops, you think we're so special now that we REQUIRE GMO? Get over yourself.
I agre with you on nuclear though. That's an imperfect solution, sure, but it's better than greenhouse gases. Look at Japan and France, they're nuke-crazy and I don't see them melting down.
Though, nuclear power might not be able to be done safely in the American model of privatized everything. That is a legitimate concern, but it has nothing to do with nuclear power itself. It's more of a problem with our managerial (public policy) approach.
Similarly, Chernobyl was bad because the Russians just didn't have the money to run a nuclear power plant safely. Sort of like how NASA keeps blowing up shuttles.
Thanks for pulling this lame argument out of your ass, again.
There is a world of difference between combining two closely-related plants and combining a Soy plant with some fish genes.
Selective Breeding, Hybridization have been practices for thousands of years, but have always occured between closely related species. We have a pretty good idea how it works.
However, never before in history have we combined organisms from two entirely different kingdoms. It's a new field of study, the long term effects are largely unknown, and we need to be careful.
I'm not opposed to GMO foods outright. However, every time this discussion comes up some fuckwit tries to water down the argument with tghis 'selective breeding' argument.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
And now for some reality checks:
Introducing natural pesticides that eliminate or reduce the use of man-made chemicals that injure both the environment and the health of the people consuming the food while lowering the cost of the food
Which promptly leads to resistance of the pests to the natural pesticide because it is a monoculture, widely used formula. And pests do evolve. Fast. That is why we have such new wonders as antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But, by all means do fuck with natural balances of things some more. It is not like the farmers of old had any idea what to do! With crop rotations and what not, no?
Making crops more hardy, avoiding massive price spikes (and thus dietary swings for the poor), when weather or disease wipe out a crop.
At the small expense of having no fucking clue about long-term impact of the altered protein combinations in the said food on humans. Stuff that will show up after 10 years of consumption when it will be too late to do anything about it. But then again corporations would never allow something as immediate profit to get in the way of future food chain safety, would they?
Eliminating the need to selectively breed for survivability in cold storage, thus putting the selective breeding weight back on things like taste
This really goes with the next one..
Increasing shelf-life, and therefore the range at which food can be reasonably delivered (this directly impacts the price of food in the third world, as getting food in place before it rots is a huge cost).
In other words to make the fucking mass-produced food in mega-uber-farms be more "economically" viable for long-range transport. Which means that a) fewer people are working at these farms. b) they are all located in top industrialized countires and the food is delivered to the third world which is given no chances to produce its own. c) the entire process, including manufacture of pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers and looong-range transportation consumers inordinate amounts of energy, crude oil particularly. And d) the entire scenario serves to destroy small, inneficient but local farms which end up employing and providing livelyhood for 100-fold more people and do so without dependence on some world agricultural, chemical, genetic-fuckup, intellectual-property and your-black-african-ass-owning superpower. It is hopelessly lost on most technology zealots that maximum "efficiency" means one owner, full automation and zero employees. And 99% unemployment.
Providing nutrients (e.g. iodine) which people in certain parts of the world tend to suffer from the lack of.
The reason they do not have enough iodine and all sorts of other nutrients is because they do not have work and thus cannot afford any other food but the handouts... which merely keep them alive in utter misery. GM foods only address the problem cosmetically over there while rake in profits and strengthen the status quo over here.
If you have any more "benefits" of GM foods in mind, let me know.
What biting wit.
After all, I am strangely colored.