Let’s not remain in the dark ages
Let’s not remain in the dark ages
One can easily identify with protesters who want to ban genetically engineered crops. Organic is the way it has always been until recently.
Climate change, however, presents diminishing returns on crop yields. A 2 degree increase in global temperatures stifles plant growth. Water becomes scarcer as increased heat leaves the Earth parched and aquifers empty. Deforestation of the world’s major sources of recycling carbon dioxide emissions — Brazil and the Congo — increases the acidity of the oceans and the solar overheating of our atmosphere. Future wars will still be fought over religion or politics, but more global conflicts will arise over drinking water and its access.
The world’s human population increases by 90 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization. To feed these masses, the normal societal response is to increase fertilizers to grow more crops. Increased phosphates leach into our oceans and destroy our coral reefs. The fish population around shorelines decreases. Also, to increase green harvests we traditionally increase insecticides.
Pumping more petroleum-based insecticides into our atmosphere will pollute our drinking water, contaminate our poultry and meats and turn our breathable air into filtered or unfiltered commodities.
We have had GMO crops for decades. Baron Goto, former chancellor of the East-West Center, developed the “miracle” rice of Asia, which resulted in bountiful yields of rice for the growing populations around the Pacific.
Our papaya industry, long the beneficiary of GMO research, will disappear if the current species are banned. Almost all of our farm products in Hawaii have benefited from GMOs, either through becoming more resistant to insects or thriving on less water.
We can remain in the dark ages about agriculture, but who will be here to answer your great-grandchildren when they decry the criminal neglect of Mother Earth?
H. Hakoda
Honolulu