Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 231 posts

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#31

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

luigibosco wrote: post #11
Der_Einzige wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is mass starvation.

I don't think that is the only alternative. If the end goal is to preserve life for humans, completely nuking the soil into a wasteland, treating it with carcinogens and then allowing a company to genetically modify seeds and copyright them is a pretty bad and short sighted strategy. Allowing a known carcinogen to make crops "easier to harvest" has to do with profit margin not food supply. People literally use this t…

> If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable.

Yes. That is literally exactly what we're doing. You can't sustain the current human population without fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. Half the people on the planet would die.

If we don't want half the planet to die, we need pesticides. So do you choose a pesticide that's more harmful, or less? If you said "less", then you want glyphosate.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#32

Post by yosamino »

quickthrowman wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #14

As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law. Since 1991, the EPA has held that glyphosate is not carcinogenic; it was (at the time) categorized "Group E", which means that not only is there not evidence for it being carcinogenic, but that there is material evidence that it is not. Later, IARC (i…

> There's a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself (as someone else on this thread pointed out, glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments), but rather with the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops. I still don’t understand why people seem to care about genetically m…

Apart from the health aspect, there is the thing were these GMOs are patented and the business model is one where farmers are not allowed to keep a portion of this years yield to use to seed for next year, but essentially get roped into a subscription model for the crops they plant.

Essentially turning

> You wouldn't download a car

into

> You wouldn't plant your seed for your crop.

Which is obviously absurd.

So while GM has enabled some pretty good things, it also comes with the same sort of intellectual property baggage that plagues many different areas of society, which on the face of it make some sense, but always seem to skew towards concentrating money towards those who already live a comfortable life, squeezing from those who have less to begin with.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#33

Post by tptacek »

yosamino wrote: post #32
quickthrowman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself (as someone else on this thread pointed out, glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments), but rather with the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops. I still don’t understand why people seem to care about genetically m…

Apart from the health aspect, there is the thing were these GMOs are patented and the business model is one where farmers are not allowed to keep a portion of this years yield to use to seed for next year, but essentially get roped into a subscription model for the crops they plant. Essentially turning > You wouldn't download a car into > You wouldn't plant your seed for your crop. Which is obviously absurd. So while…

I don't think the case law supports this argument that farmers got roped into subscription crops. Farmers use this system because it has value, and is economically superior to the systems that preceded it (or they don't use it).

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#36

Post by parineum »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #30
tptacek wrote: post #14

As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law. Since 1991, the EPA has held that glyphosate is not carcinogenic; it was (at the time) categorized "Group E", which means that not only is there not evidence for it being carcinogenic, but that there is material evidence that it is not. Later, IARC (i…

Important to note it's not Glyphosate on trial, it's Roundup. There is a huge gulf between studies and conclusions on Glyphosate, and studies and conclusions on Roundup. Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide known to mankind. Roundup - which includes Glyphosate, in addition to other additives - may be unnecessarily dangerous. Also worth noting that Monsanto could stop selling Roundup entirely, and it…

> you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead.

Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical.

It really seems like you're looking for a reason to justify Roundup as uniquely bad, in the face of evidence, with extremely vague statements.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#37

Post by MostlyStable »

tptacek wrote: post #14

As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law. Since 1991, the EPA has held that glyphosate is not carcinogenic; it was (at the time) categorized "Group E", which means that not only is there not evidence for it being carcinogenic, but that there is material evidence that it is not. Later, IARC (i…

>As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law.

It was mentioned on a podcast recently that in many cases, the SC is not making a decision on what should/shouldn't happen/be the policy/is correct or whatever. They are deciding which layer of government gets to decide a given question. The Executive Branch? Legislation? Constitution? Who is the controlling entity?

Now, in a practical sense, by the time it gets to the SC, making a decision on who gets to decide, is, functionally, picking what the outcome is, since the various layers of government have already made their positions clear.

But the upshot is, if one is upset with what happens with a given policy after a SC decision, in many cases (although not all), the proper target of one's ire should not be the SC; since what they are usually saying is something like "this is something that is controlled by statute. If the statute is dumb/bad/poorly written, that is not our fault nor within our control, take it up with Congress to rewrite the statue", and instead one should be upset with whoever the controlling entity is for doing a bad job (in recent years: most commonly congress, not so much for doing a bad job so much as not doing any job)

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#38

Post by nozzlegear »

bluGill wrote: post #23
yxhuvud wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, mass starvation would not ensue from having to fight weeds using mechanical means. It would take more work and more fuel, but it is eminently doable if the need is there. Especially if the change would be gradual. Making do without artificial fertilizer would be a lot harder.

Increased fuel means a lot more CO2. That is a very significant factor you cannot ignore.

Perhaps if herbicides weren't viable, more work would've gone into developing the mechanical alternatives and we'd have had solar-powered machines removing weeds from fields.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#39

Post by EvanAnderson »

thayne wrote: post #25
chromacity wrote: post #13

It's striking how many of these "product safety" cases are decided in the court of public opinion, independent of actual scientific merit. The case of DDT was pretty interesting. More recently, we have microplastics - no one has really shown they're dangerous to humans, but there's enough hand-waving that "everyone knows" they're killing us. And aspartame, etc... Glyphosate is probably the safest of the things people…

> the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover I also get a lot of morning glory AKA bindweed that kills my grass. But spraying doesn't really help with that anyway, so :shrug:.

Bindweed is evil incarnate in plant form. Wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#40

Post by criddell »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #31
luigibosco wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is the only alternative. If the end goal is to preserve life for humans, completely nuking the soil into a wasteland, treating it with carcinogens and then allowing a company to genetically modify seeds and copyright them is a pretty bad and short sighted strategy. Allowing a known carcinogen to make crops "easier to harvest" has to do with profit margin not food supply. People literally use this t…

> If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable. Yes. That is literally exactly what we're doing. You can't sustain the current human population without fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. Half the people on the planet would die. If we don't want half the planet to die, we need pesticides. So do you choose a pesticide that's more harmful, or less? If you said…

I think you meant to write herbicide rather than pesticide.
Post reply on HN