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Originally posted by Greg
Diversified agriculture to compliment the visitor industry?
Excellent idea; except we don't need GMO, which tends to develop mono crops and profits large agribusiness rather than small farms.
It only seems that way if you believe the anti-science activists' propaganda and ignore most of the real world evidence.
Simply look at the success of the GMO papaya story for a resounding rebuttal. It's almost entirely a small farms story. One researcher, one assistant, a small grant, a collapsed industry with no big bucks behind it. Family farms on the brink of disaster. A small, brilliant adjustment to a snip of genetic code, out of millions, which allows the fruit to activate its own natural immune system. Says Dr. Gonsalves, "It was a papaya before, it's a papaya after." Problem solved, family farms saved, delicious fruit on my breakfast table.
Radical activists have directed much, much more attention to this situation than it actually deserves. They've tied it to Monsanto, when Monsanto was not involved. They've tried to tie it to pesticide use, when the pesticides in use had nothing to do with GMOs, and were already in use before the GMO varieties were developed. And 15 years after introduction there is no credible evidence that ANY problem has resulted, and even the famously scrupulous Japanese approval process has certified them as safe for import and consumption without limits.
So why is a tiny handful of radicals continuing to dominate the public discourse on this? Seriously?
Multiply this humble project by a factor of a thousand and you'll get a truer sense of what GMO technology is capable of, and what it is in fact doing around the world. Lots and lots and lots of small, independent transgenic projects are addressing an unbelievably broad range of scientific intentions.
Let's use it to eradicate malaria, definitely. And Dengue fever. And while we're at it let's use it to save at least some of the 600,000 children a year who die or go blind from chronic dietary Vitamin A deficiency, when a humanitarian project to add the vital nutrient to their normal daily ration of rice has already been developed and is ready for deployment by non-profit organizations. The only thing holding them back, for 6 years now (let's see, 600,000 children X 6 is how many?), is irrational resistance by emotional anti-science activists.
I just saw another small but potentially very useful project documented on PBS, a researcher who is using GMOs to transform unassuming small green houseplants into sophisticated detectors for explosives, toxic elements, and biological agents. And once perfected, you'll be able to grow them at will, anywhere in the world, from a package of seeds. Maybe they could someday be used to detect cancer? Or Vitamin B12 deficiencies?
Go hate on Monsanto all you want, with my blessings, because I do think they are a horribly irresponsible corporation. But stop conflating Monsanto with GMO technology, which they neither created, nor do they own, or even control. The key patents they bought from the USDA 20 years ago have already expired, so the genie is now REALLY out of the bottle. Anybody who wants to can now work in this arena with no connection to Monsanto whatsoever.
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Energy security?
[i]Not exactly improving. Although Geothermal and solar help reduce our dependence on oil; Any energy resource that feeds HELCO's archaic grid distribution system only reinforces their monopolistic stranglehold on Hawaii consumers.
Peeling away the rhetoric, 40% renewable energy sourcing on the way to 50% in two years is DEFINITELY improving. It's actually one of the best performances by a public utility in the world.
I don't see "monopolistic" as necessarily being a bad thing, when that monopoly is not only overseen but blessed by the government in order to foster a stable utility service, which requires very long range investment and maintenance, with shareholder ROI determined by a PUC.
Yes, yes, the entire structure needs revision as technology overtakes the former paradigm, but what doesn't?
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Then there's the added liability of HELCO's monthly outages that affect thousands at a time.
As opposed to, say, recent internet outages that have affected hundreds of millions at a time? Over the last few years I've personally found the latter to be more disruptive than the former. And I can only WISH my cellphone was as reliable as HELCO.
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Investigate the emerging fuel cell technology (Bloom energy box), combined with micro grids. The future is closer than people think.
I'm all for it. For example, anyone can now build their own EV out of a serviceable shell of a dead ICE production car, using off-the-shelf electric motor and fuel cell components. Add your own solar powered hydrogen fuel production from water and I think you'll have achieved real independence!
But, there will always be people who don't want to be bothered with all that, and people who look for the most stable, least controversial solution, and so I'm sure the Public Utility for Electricity will still be a widespread feature of my grandchildren's lifetimes.
Beating up on HELCO is, I think, a waste of time. It never seems to accomplish much, and it seems to just divert attention from simply bringing a new future into existence, which will in turn, according to all that History has to teach us, force change on HELCO and the government. It's always been thus, and it always will be. The old persists until a clearly superior future presents itself.
Namaste, y'all. And aloha!
