Hello green concrete, goodbye wildlife

[nosmokes]

original-independent

Michael McCarthy: Hello green concrete, goodbye wildlife

Thursday, 19 June 2008


The argument against allowing genetically modified crops to be grown commercially in Britain can be summed up in two words: green concrete.

It means a landscape in which fields have a crop growing in them but nothing else. No wild plants or flowers of any sort, no butterflies or moths, no smaller insects on which birds and their chicks can feed, and so no birds. Green concrete means a countryside that still may be called the countryside, and may still appear green, but apart from the crop, it will be entirely sterile and lifeless.

That is what would happen if the GM crops previously proposed, including maize, beet and oilseed rape, were allowed to be grown on a commercial scale. For they were all genetically engineered to be able to survive the application of increasingly powerful weedkillers, known as "broad spectrum" herbicides, which would kill everything else in the field.

The best known of these chemicals is glyphosate, made by Monsanto under the trade name Roundup. Why is it called Roundup? Because nothing escapes.


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complete article here

[LiberalEsto]

1. You mean MonSatan

I'm calling them MonSatan from now on

[jeff30997]

2. Very appropriate.

Gee I hate those bastards!

[izquierdista]

3. Despite Monsanto's best efforts

To yell "intellectual property" and sue everyone who steals the gene for glyphosate resistance, bacteria and bees are busy distributing these genes out into nature and soon many plants will develop roundup resistant strains.

Those who love the idea of 100% pure monoculture (like Monsanto) and those who hate it (environmentalists) both buy into the idea as a possibility, when it really isn't. It's a freak of nature waiting to be exploited by some enterprising organism. It may be a plant pathogen, an insect, a vertebrate or a fungus, but when something gets a hold of acres of pure sustenance, it will take off like wildfire. Nature has spent billions of years teaching all its living things to seize an opportunity, and along comes man, thinking he can have strict monoculture all to enjoy by himself.

No, there is no such thing as "green concrete".

[DCKit]

4. They need to play up the animal studies of glyphosate...

the ones MonSatan DIDN'T release.

Do we really have to wait until human children are born inter-sexed before we say "no more"? 'Cause once that shit's in the water table, it's forever.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Yes, but what about chemtrails?

The ones made by the evil Boeing corporation?