GMOs Archives - Achieving Sustainability

Don’t be seduced by “No Fundamentalism”

August 30, 2015 by Aaron Redman

No! Ban this! No compromise! All too many people think these nagging scolds are what Sustainability is all about, even though there are many positive messages out there.1)One example is Carbonnation: “An optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, big tent film…” But it is not principally Sustainability’s image problem that concerns me, rather it is the prevalence in … Read more…

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ =Me on GMOs and Achieving Sustainability

July 20, 2015July 19, 2015 by Aaron Redman

It is with great trepidation that I dip my toe into discussing GMOs but I hope that I can contribute just a bit more sanity against the great weight of vitriol out there. Unfortunately the extreme polarization on GMOs has made it hard to find balanced perspectives and it is frustrating that so many who … Read more…

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SustainabLINKS September 8, 2014

September 8, 2014September 8, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Food news: Christie Wilcox covers in more depth what I wrote about briefly, how concerned should we be about pesticide residue on food? “To date, there is no scientific evidence that eating an organic diet leads to better health.” Two interesting graphics-how the world wastes food and a fun set of glimpses of what a … Read more…

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SustainabLINKS September 1, 2014

August 31, 2014September 1, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Climate change news:

Study out of MIT suggests that cutting carbon emissions will virtually pay for itself with health savings…
Which is good because the World Bank is more forcefully concerned about how climate change will impact agriculture, particularly in Africa…
And yet even clearly communicating the issues is probably not enough to motivate the public to the necessary change.
Interesting discussion (if somewhat academic in tone) of how individuals responses to a changing climate needs to be taken into account when modeling the future.

Dr. Shiva’s response to last week’s New Yorker piece. While correcting some errors and oversights, she does not make a very convincing case for her all-out war against GMOs (and her belief in a conspiracy against her shines through).
Even massive reforestation efforts in China are falling short. Fixing our mistakes is much harder and more expensive than avoiding them.
Quick review of the startling high extinction rate humans are driving (ignore the silly title and questions about how this links to human extinction-seems to have been thrown in to generate clicks). An issue worth reflecting about on the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon.
Great visual with which you can explore Louisiana’s disappearing coast.

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SustainabLINKS August 26, 2014

August 25, 2014August 25, 2014 by Aaron Redman

On our global food system:
- “Just 55% of the world’s crop calories are consumed directly by humans”, sounds like some room for improvement.
- “The biggest problem facing modern day manure management: farmers and stockmen often work in separate geographic areas.” Sustainability will require bringing them back together.
- In depth, well-informed and critical look at Vandana Shiva’s knee-jerk and extreme anti-GMO stance.
- Glad to hear that this project has only grown since I got a chance to check it out some years ago. Inspiration!
Good news in continuing setbacks for coal in the Midwest and their aspirations to export it out of Oregon.
Stephen Bocking contends that universities divesting from fossil fuels is mostly window dressing–divest from parking lots instead!
A long, wandering account of a voyage to sample plastic pollution in the South Atlantic, interspersed with somewhat sensational claims about it’s impact.
Feeling disillusioned about hopes for conservation? Joern Fischer suggests that connecting to colleagues and focusing inwards can help propel you forward.
“Giving people an opportunity to have fun while doing “good” is far more effective than asking people to make a sacrifice for an abstract notion of the common good. If water agencies throughout the state could come up with a water conservation equivalent of the Ice Bucket Challenge the results could be pretty powerful.” and more good stuff like that.
The incentives to produce and publicize “surprising” study results (regardless of their validity, robustness or repeatability) are powerful. All consumers of news must be more aware and those knowledgeable enough must publicly provide critique and counterpoint.

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SustainabLINKS August 11, 2014

August 13, 2014August 11, 2014 by Aaron Redman

Seems to be a lot of discussion about food system sustainability recently:

The “evidence” which shows the harmfulness of GMOs to human health doesn’t stand up well to critique.
Irradiation of seeds is one method used in traditional crop breeding. Not so traditional? “Traditions” usually are not.
It is not surprising that the number of farmer’s markets are no longer increasing so fast, but the more interesting information would be whether the number of vendors and shoppers per market is increasing.
The author of this post asks: why do most people (including conservationists) persist with diets that are so clearly damaging to the environment? This is a question we all need to be asking.
A non-food article! Ontario has made incredible progress on eliminating the use of coal, some reasons are unique to it’s situation, but there are many lessons to learn.
Bets on new technologies are risky and don’t payout right away but its looking like another one of those infamous Department of Energy loans is going to work out pretty well. We need more of this!!

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