Nurturing Life on Earth With Appropriate Biotechnologies
September GreenWay article
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by Jim McCue
We need whole new ways of thinking, manufacturing, and working. This moment in history is trying to teach us that our real wealth should be measured in terms of the quantity and variety of life on Earth.
The news is all bad, unless you refuse - as I do - out of faith or general philosophy to take things as all bad. The economy is tanking; prices are rising; our government has - through lying, vote fraud and other corrupt activities - become illegitimate; and the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Many in the world are now inclined to give us in the United States a taste of our own medicine, and we're starting to wonder if we're really the wonderful people we've been telling ourselves we are all these years. Maybe one silver lining is that at least now we are being awakened (by our pain) to all the not-so-ethical things we have been doing in the world. The real history of the United States turns out to be quite different than that which we were taught in grade school. As world citizens we must learn to be patriotic to all people on Earth, and to all life.
Our only choice is to recognize our need for all our fellow beings.
Food is becoming increasingly difficult to grow on the land and harvest in the ocean. It's not any one factor, such as the Earth's average higher temperature. It's that many things are changing: acid rain and ocean acidification; loss of the biological diversity (such as decline in honeybees and other pollinating insects) that makes for stable ecosystems; technologies increasingly destructive or disruptive (such as with electromagnetic changes); cutthroat trade allowing poisoned and diseased agricultural products to be transported across national boundaries; ozone layer thinning and it's effects on crops and livestock exposed to more ultraviolet light; effects on plants and animals of increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the air; and, most importantly, the increased instability of the whole Earth ecosystem caused by the interactions between all these changes.
We have grown up in a culture which gives short shrift to many types of living creatures. We have come to think the way to succeed is to take what we want from the Earth and destroy what ever got in our way. But everything is connected. Now, seeing the consequences of that attitude, some of us are awake enough to the coming perfect storm of troubles to try to forge a more cooperative relationship with the other creatures we share the planet with.
And that includes the "bugs" - all those little animals that we for the most part don't know any use for except they're bothersome in one way or another. The little creatures are a vital part of our farms and gardens, as we're seeing now with the effect of the loss of honeybees on the price of our food. The rising cost of food is due not only to the rise in fossil fuel prices, but also due to the environmental effects of our addiction to them.
Unless we are unafraid to drop all our habitual fears, think creatively, and change, the vast majority of the children alive today are not going to live long enough to see their grandchildren.
We have to transition quickly from fossil fuels and nuclear power. Let's face it and deal with it. Abrupt climate change is now unavoidable. The only question is how abrupt, and that's up to us. We're all downwind of nuclear power plants, building more is not going to fix our global warming problem, and we need to quit subsidizing them. Our government's lack of support for energy conservation and efficiency, and alternative energy, is criminal. And we can't allow it to continue going on it's mad way.
Our food system, part of the Earth's ecosystem, is collapsing. Competition for fish between 6+ billion people with ever more sophisticated harvesting methods, increasing ocean acidity due to carbon dioxide absorption, and other climate change effects are all making for increased cost of fish. Similar changes in soil acidity and fertility are raising other food costs.
I am advocating that we kick-start Pittsburgh's economy by massively ramping up our local production of food, both low-tech in the form of gardens and higher-tech in the form of fermentation bioreactors and living machines. Home and neighborhood gardens have a long history of pulling people through, while enclosed food growing systems are a well established industry - from greenhouses to cheese factories to bakeries and yogurt factories to fermentation facilities which produce yeast and specific nutrients. Now there are those convinced that the efficiency of industrial production of "cultured meat" can ease the world's flagging ability to feed itself. I ask that you consider it as one of the ways we can deal with the problems coming our way.
to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for hazelwoodhomepage.com
by Jim McCue
We need whole new ways of thinking, manufacturing, and working. This moment in history is trying to teach us that our real wealth should be measured in terms of the quantity and variety of life on Earth.
The news is all bad, unless you refuse - as I do - out of faith or general philosophy to take things as all bad. The economy is tanking; prices are rising; our government has - through lying, vote fraud and other corrupt activities - become illegitimate; and the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Many in the world are now inclined to give us in the United States a taste of our own medicine, and we're starting to wonder if we're really the wonderful people we've been telling ourselves we are all these years. Maybe one silver lining is that at least now we are being awakened (by our pain) to all the not-so-ethical things we have been doing in the world. The real history of the United States turns out to be quite different than that which we were taught in grade school. As world citizens we must learn to be patriotic to all people on Earth, and to all life.
Our only choice is to recognize our need for all our fellow beings.
Food is becoming increasingly difficult to grow on the land and harvest in the ocean. It's not any one factor, such as the Earth's average higher temperature. It's that many things are changing: acid rain and ocean acidification; loss of the biological diversity (such as decline in honeybees and other pollinating insects) that makes for stable ecosystems; technologies increasingly destructive or disruptive (such as with electromagnetic changes); cutthroat trade allowing poisoned and diseased agricultural products to be transported across national boundaries; ozone layer thinning and it's effects on crops and livestock exposed to more ultraviolet light; effects on plants and animals of increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the air; and, most importantly, the increased instability of the whole Earth ecosystem caused by the interactions between all these changes.
We have grown up in a culture which gives short shrift to many types of living creatures. We have come to think the way to succeed is to take what we want from the Earth and destroy what ever got in our way. But everything is connected. Now, seeing the consequences of that attitude, some of us are awake enough to the coming perfect storm of troubles to try to forge a more cooperative relationship with the other creatures we share the planet with.
And that includes the "bugs" - all those little animals that we for the most part don't know any use for except they're bothersome in one way or another. The little creatures are a vital part of our farms and gardens, as we're seeing now with the effect of the loss of honeybees on the price of our food. The rising cost of food is due not only to the rise in fossil fuel prices, but also due to the environmental effects of our addiction to them.
Unless we are unafraid to drop all our habitual fears, think creatively, and change, the vast majority of the children alive today are not going to live long enough to see their grandchildren.
We have to transition quickly from fossil fuels and nuclear power. Let's face it and deal with it. Abrupt climate change is now unavoidable. The only question is how abrupt, and that's up to us. We're all downwind of nuclear power plants, building more is not going to fix our global warming problem, and we need to quit subsidizing them. Our government's lack of support for energy conservation and efficiency, and alternative energy, is criminal. And we can't allow it to continue going on it's mad way.
Our food system, part of the Earth's ecosystem, is collapsing. Competition for fish between 6+ billion people with ever more sophisticated harvesting methods, increasing ocean acidity due to carbon dioxide absorption, and other climate change effects are all making for increased cost of fish. Similar changes in soil acidity and fertility are raising other food costs.
I am advocating that we kick-start Pittsburgh's economy by massively ramping up our local production of food, both low-tech in the form of gardens and higher-tech in the form of fermentation bioreactors and living machines. Home and neighborhood gardens have a long history of pulling people through, while enclosed food growing systems are a well established industry - from greenhouses to cheese factories to bakeries and yogurt factories to fermentation facilities which produce yeast and specific nutrients. Now there are those convinced that the efficiency of industrial production of "cultured meat" can ease the world's flagging ability to feed itself. I ask that you consider it as one of the ways we can deal with the problems coming our way.
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 11:28 AM
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