This was a very illuminating interview! I am about 90 percent vegetarian and of that percent, I am about 10 percent vegan. I've a long way to go, but I really like the idea and reality of alternative meats. That beef rice from Korea is a brilliant idea!
“You killed people!” is exactly what all the libertarians and the like are now saying about Rachel Carson. Be very careful about the human entitlement of life against all trade offs.
I understood the dangers of GMOs very well in the 1990s (never had a problem with golden rice, did find it annoying to have fish genes in tomatoes), and what you failed to mention was that engineered canola and corn became fiat accompli across North America without consumer consultation or advisement, and these modifications and legal frameworks were to bake in pesticide use and a permanent market (or a permanent vanquishing of all pests, knock-on effects be damned). Non-client farmers were successfully sued for receiving the benefit of having such GMO farms in proximity, not so much for “well you have fewer pests now because they’re all dead” but for scattered 2nd generation plants from cross-pollination. Even since then, there are people who assert that organic farms are just free-riding on the proximity of conventional farms. Yes, you use less RoundUp overall when you’ve got a crop engineered to withstand the RoundUp. One way or another, the pests and their predators don’t stand a chance, and banks get used to their finance cycle, the farmers to their obligatory purchase and use, and the consumers to the products and prices of a monocrop world. Zero externalities were given any worth or value here. Consumer desire to adjudicate what to eat, and consumer’s desire to have a reasonably healthy concept of farming, was the only thing that got this problem onto the USDA and FDA radar — who both seemed or actually were entirely unconcerned with preservation of the natural world when I was coming up.
As for human health, in the 1990s we didn’t know how it would affect us, but that was also (I was there, I assure you this is absolutely the case) the only metric that was up for discussion, point finale. From local and regional newspapers (that, before they were decimated by today’s complete alteration of the media landscape, were de facto megaphones of their Chambers of Commerce) to metropolitan and national newspapers to *even student newspapers, I kid you not* was the following: “will organic produce cost you more? YES!!! Will it bring you any health benefits? NO! Ergo: Organic produce is a luxury good at best, and a scam for the rest of us.” Grocery stores put all non-GMO, organic food in its own special aisle so that it wouldn’t offend the choice sensibilities of all your average folks looking only for convenience and the lowest price. “Special” people with “special” needs could find it on their own. (And you know which chain, after Whole Foods, broke with that model? Walmart.)
Too often I see all old arguments trotted out (with greater sophistication and persuasion) as to why it’s even more important now that we continue with or else resume doing dodgy things that have brought us to this impasse (because, to the techno-utopian, it’s not an impasse! Who cares about continuity of the past, we want transformation!). But in places other than this newsletter, I fail to see any mention or much concern for the 70% of biota that we’ve wiped out in my lifetime, and the estimated 85% from the beginning of last century. All trade-offs benefitting human life have come at their expense.
Until about 2009 or so, every single business press article that was about any purportedly green technology came with an obligatory “tree hugger” sneer: a statement of skepticism and derogation of either the problem addressed by the new offering, or its ability to have any effect at all. It took a lot of collective will to rid us of this cultural tendency, which will always remain in muted form, as skepticism is part of the job of journalism and science. But this very newsletter would simply not at all have been possible without the earnest “idealism” and value-shift that let common people think bigger than their wallets and their stomachs.
I’m glad to see that there is a concern and interest in preserving what un-converted land we have left by making converted land more efficient, but governments don’t care about whose land and which parcel: conversions aren’t locked in stone until they’ve paved over with asphalt (while municipalities have a vested interest in making sure that happens!). Pretty much all land that’s not desert or rocky or a National Park is up for roll-over, if a populace can be persuaded it’s either a necessity or a foregone conclusion. Still, even people who are unsophisticated at forming arguments and have a hard time motivating themselves that if they stand up for something, it might have a bigger benefit than cost – which means most of us, really – even they can see issues as bigger and more holistic than the talk and the power moves that define the issue for them. Those people buying non-GMO or planting trees in New Orleans are expressing a need we all have: to preserve something recognizable to our antecedents. To put back what was obliterated. To only throw out the bath water, not the baby.
This was a very illuminating interview! I am about 90 percent vegetarian and of that percent, I am about 10 percent vegan. I've a long way to go, but I really like the idea and reality of alternative meats. That beef rice from Korea is a brilliant idea!
This is a field I'm really personally excited about!
“You killed people!” is exactly what all the libertarians and the like are now saying about Rachel Carson. Be very careful about the human entitlement of life against all trade offs.
I understood the dangers of GMOs very well in the 1990s (never had a problem with golden rice, did find it annoying to have fish genes in tomatoes), and what you failed to mention was that engineered canola and corn became fiat accompli across North America without consumer consultation or advisement, and these modifications and legal frameworks were to bake in pesticide use and a permanent market (or a permanent vanquishing of all pests, knock-on effects be damned). Non-client farmers were successfully sued for receiving the benefit of having such GMO farms in proximity, not so much for “well you have fewer pests now because they’re all dead” but for scattered 2nd generation plants from cross-pollination. Even since then, there are people who assert that organic farms are just free-riding on the proximity of conventional farms. Yes, you use less RoundUp overall when you’ve got a crop engineered to withstand the RoundUp. One way or another, the pests and their predators don’t stand a chance, and banks get used to their finance cycle, the farmers to their obligatory purchase and use, and the consumers to the products and prices of a monocrop world. Zero externalities were given any worth or value here. Consumer desire to adjudicate what to eat, and consumer’s desire to have a reasonably healthy concept of farming, was the only thing that got this problem onto the USDA and FDA radar — who both seemed or actually were entirely unconcerned with preservation of the natural world when I was coming up.
As for human health, in the 1990s we didn’t know how it would affect us, but that was also (I was there, I assure you this is absolutely the case) the only metric that was up for discussion, point finale. From local and regional newspapers (that, before they were decimated by today’s complete alteration of the media landscape, were de facto megaphones of their Chambers of Commerce) to metropolitan and national newspapers to *even student newspapers, I kid you not* was the following: “will organic produce cost you more? YES!!! Will it bring you any health benefits? NO! Ergo: Organic produce is a luxury good at best, and a scam for the rest of us.” Grocery stores put all non-GMO, organic food in its own special aisle so that it wouldn’t offend the choice sensibilities of all your average folks looking only for convenience and the lowest price. “Special” people with “special” needs could find it on their own. (And you know which chain, after Whole Foods, broke with that model? Walmart.)
Too often I see all old arguments trotted out (with greater sophistication and persuasion) as to why it’s even more important now that we continue with or else resume doing dodgy things that have brought us to this impasse (because, to the techno-utopian, it’s not an impasse! Who cares about continuity of the past, we want transformation!). But in places other than this newsletter, I fail to see any mention or much concern for the 70% of biota that we’ve wiped out in my lifetime, and the estimated 85% from the beginning of last century. All trade-offs benefitting human life have come at their expense.
Until about 2009 or so, every single business press article that was about any purportedly green technology came with an obligatory “tree hugger” sneer: a statement of skepticism and derogation of either the problem addressed by the new offering, or its ability to have any effect at all. It took a lot of collective will to rid us of this cultural tendency, which will always remain in muted form, as skepticism is part of the job of journalism and science. But this very newsletter would simply not at all have been possible without the earnest “idealism” and value-shift that let common people think bigger than their wallets and their stomachs.
I’m glad to see that there is a concern and interest in preserving what un-converted land we have left by making converted land more efficient, but governments don’t care about whose land and which parcel: conversions aren’t locked in stone until they’ve paved over with asphalt (while municipalities have a vested interest in making sure that happens!). Pretty much all land that’s not desert or rocky or a National Park is up for roll-over, if a populace can be persuaded it’s either a necessity or a foregone conclusion. Still, even people who are unsophisticated at forming arguments and have a hard time motivating themselves that if they stand up for something, it might have a bigger benefit than cost – which means most of us, really – even they can see issues as bigger and more holistic than the talk and the power moves that define the issue for them. Those people buying non-GMO or planting trees in New Orleans are expressing a need we all have: to preserve something recognizable to our antecedents. To put back what was obliterated. To only throw out the bath water, not the baby.