231–240 of 342 posts
If I ever get rich enough to do so, I'm going to buy some land somewhere - perhaps old farming land that's no longer profitable, and just let it return to nature. Let the trees and bushes grow, let the insects, birds and whatever else breed there. I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.
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Not that we do nothing. We can ban pesticides, return back to heuristic based agriculture where mistakes are localized and inventions are robust and of limited scale. Pesticides are mostly used for crops that humans do not eat directly. Food safety was never about beans or sweet potato or other efficient plant sources of protein and calories, it was about wheat, soybean and corn. Their introduction, just like the int…
Ban all pesticides? Every single one of them, synthetic and organic alike? That would be interesting. Pretending that biotic stresses simply don't exist is....umm..novel.
If I ever get rich enough to do so, I'm going to buy some land somewhere - perhaps old farming land that's no longer profitable, and just let it return to nature. Let the trees and bushes grow, let the insects, birds and whatever else breed there. I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.
Ecosystem and habitat restoration involves more than just letting the land go fallow. If you just let it go, you could end up breeding a ton of invasive species which will choke off beneficial natives. If you’ve ever been to the Pacific Northwest, you’ll see Himalayan Blackberry everywhere , smothering all other plants and trees. The healthy middle ground is something like the native Americans maintained - a kind of…
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Tell this to my husband's brother, who has probably-terminal cancer of a type that's got a strong statistical link to the chemicals he worked with as a lawncare professional.
"Chemicals", not Roundup. Guilt by association?
There's also that class-action suit for Roundup users who are also cancer-havers that I keep seeing ads for lately...
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Actually, wheat has been the staple for peoples living near the Mediterranean for thousands of years.
Interestingly, they have raised it without pesticides for that many years too.
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If you compare 340 billion to the net worth of the median person the mind boggles.
Then you're comparing the sum total of the wealth of many of the richest families to that of one individual person. The fact that rich people have a lot of money is not really a recent development. But it's the focus on the super rich which is missing the thread. If housing prices go up, people at the 25th percentile lose and people at the 75th percentile gain. We see the loss for the people at the 25th percentile an…
I'm part of a group developing RNAi-based pesticides which are topically applied (so non-GM). They are extremely species specific; when designed properly they can avoid even close relatives of the target insect, and the by-product of the active ingredient is degraded RNA, which is harmless. The OECD had a meeting on it recently to help develop a regulatory framework - link here if interested ( https://www.oecd.org/ch…
Specifically, is there anything that stops the technology from being used against ethnicities, say by targeting the RNA of Jews (id guess very specific due to matrilineal inheritance of Judaism)?
If I ever get rich enough to do so, I'm going to buy some land somewhere - perhaps old farming land that's no longer profitable, and just let it return to nature. Let the trees and bushes grow, let the insects, birds and whatever else breed there. I'm beginning to think that's one of the best things one could do for the planet right now.
The wonderful thing about the system that's already in place is that you can contribute to it without being wealthy, just by visiting any of them for a day and paying the entrance fee. As an additional perk, you get to visit all of that protected wilderness, while other people have maintained it for you, and you get to increase the total visitation numbers which in turns helps to keep this and other protected wilderness secure for the future.
Go out and enjoy your local public lands.
I'm part of a group developing RNAi-based pesticides which are topically applied (so non-GM). They are extremely species specific; when designed properly they can avoid even close relatives of the target insect, and the by-product of the active ingredient is degraded RNA, which is harmless. The OECD had a meeting on it recently to help develop a regulatory framework - link here if interested ( https://www.oecd.org/ch…
Being cynical about human nature this technology scares me. Specifically, is there anything that stops the technology from being used against ethnicities, say by targeting the RNA of Jews (id guess very specific due to matrilineal inheritance of Judaism)?
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What do you mean “my” money? When you spend it, it’s no longer yours. You have land now in this line of reasoning.
Can I sell this land to someone else if I need money? Is the use of that land for the new owner restricted or can it be repurposed for agriculture or other uses?