New at Reason

David Weigel | September 1, 2006

Some people see genetically modified trees and ask, "Why?" Ronald Bailey sees genetically modified trees and asks, "Why not?"

Comments

|9.1.06 @ 8:02AM|#

There's a fascinating article Johann Hari about a Muslim female stand-up facing jihadist death-threats after ridiculing fundamentalists at www.johannhari.com

Thought you guys might want to link!

|9.1.06 @ 8:17AM|#

Someone that doesn't understand something can't imagine that someone else can. We limit others by our own limitations. Progress drags a heavy tail.

All science is pure and natural evolution.

thoreau|9.1.06 @ 8:26AM|#

That's an interesting point about how GM trees for paper would not thrive in the wild, so if their pollen did spread the effect would be self-limiting.

In general, I agree: Anything that boosts agricultural yields is likely to reduce the demand for putting more land under cultivation, which is a good thing if one wants more land to remain in (or return to) a natural state.

|9.1.06 @ 8:35AM|#

Surely if they invented a tree with money growing on it then everyone in the world would be rich!!

And I've definitely heard of one before. My Dad always tells me about how he hasn't got one round about christmas time.

Hhhmmmmmm

|9.1.06 @ 9:36AM|#

Hey, I'm turning forty in a couple of weeks. The way I see it, if I want to make it to two thousand, I'm going to need awesome advances in genetic engineering and cool cyborg implants. In the not-too-distant future. So all this anti-GM talk and anything else like it should be stopped. If God didn't want us playing with DNA, why did he make it work like Tinker Toys?

|9.1.06 @ 10:01AM|#

which is a good thing if one wants more land to remain in (or return to) a natural state.

oh, thoreau. You just had to go there, didn't you?

I'll put it to the Reasonistas to decide. When thoreau says "natural", what does this mean, exactly?

The way I see it, there's just no such thing. Untouched by human hands? Impossible! People say "nature preserves" are natural, but how? They require fences and guards and human property lines to define...according to most, that's not "natural".

My argument? Stop using natural, since, as linguist put it "humanity and its artifacts" deserve to be in the natural rubric as well.

|9.1.06 @ 10:07AM|#

Also, aren't they trying to create trees that soak up more carbon dioxide in order to combat global warming?

I, for one, welcome our genetically modified tree overlords.

|9.1.06 @ 10:16AM|#

Ayn_Randian,

"Natural" is a thoreau codeword for "naked". Read "land" as "large tracts of land". You have to watch him--he gets peckish at times :)

I agree with thoreau's point that the GM flora that need help pollinating are unlikely to compete effectively in the wild. That whole breeding descendants thing is a bit of a necessity in taking over a niche. Unless we breed immortal tomatoes or something. Or walking trees.

|9.1.06 @ 10:37AM|#

PL, if you watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you would know that not only are there already walking trees, but they have sophisticated legal systems and "wood cameras".

|9.1.06 @ 10:41AM|#

Ayn R: Is "natural" a libertarian hot button? Or is that your thing?

|9.1.06 @ 10:49AM|#

I think it's just a personal crusade, Coyote. I have discussed it at significant length before, but people seem to prefer "natural" as a normative evaluation, and I find it to be a generally meaningless, emotions-based term, is all. People have an emotional sense (like, you know, sunshine and bambi and stuff) of the word natural, but can't tell me why a beaver dam is somehow more natural than a human dam.

|9.1.06 @ 10:53AM|#

Walking trees? Why not?

In your Congress and our Parliament, we've already got talking vegetables.

|9.1.06 @ 10:54AM|#

Sorry, but the only walking trees that I recognize are the Ents.

|9.1.06 @ 11:29AM|#

I've got a thing for inventing glow-in-the-dark hedges to line our highways.

|9.1.06 @ 11:45AM|#

Ayn R.: Might be because god made the animals then man? Paul added that we are gods (a christian one upmanship that leads to who knows?). It is a wonder humans can think clearly at all with all the stuff jamed in their ears. I don't even know if this is clear?

I started out thinking how humans might have separated themselves from "nature" (your beavers). This is all I can come up with for now.

|9.1.06 @ 12:11PM|#

I made animals, plants and men.

I take no responsibility for Ralph Nader, however.

Or for the server squirrel.

thoreau|9.1.06 @ 12:13PM|#

Ayn Randian-

Don't read too much into my statement. I was mostly using a shorthand to refer to whatever the stated goals of GM opponents might be. If one believes that agricultural land is "unnatural" (whatever that means) while land left alone and not used by humans is "natural" (whatever that means), then anything that increases agricultural efficiency means that there will be less demand for land, more land will be left alone, and it will presumably be in whatever certain activists might regard as a "natural" state (whatever that means).

If that wasn't enough to satisfy your pedantry, well, I don't give a rat's excretory organ.

|9.1.06 @ 12:45PM|#

It's not really an "organ," Thoreau, but perhaps that's a discussion best saved for the Pedant's Ball. If they were any libertarians on the Titanic, I am sure they died a watery death by spending arguing about "force" with the deckhands rather than getting in the damn lifeboats.

I'm with you, by the way. If we can get wood and wood products through smaller plantations of GM trees, great. Setting aside the "natural" quibbling, I think greater efficiency and productivity have specific economic benefits. What has proven true with farming wheat should be equally true for farming trees... and I don't mean the part where we screw 3rd world farmers by ag subsidies.

|9.1.06 @ 1:14PM|#

Jeez, thoreau, I wish you'd be more precise. What do you mean by "shorthand"? Pitman, Gregg, Teeline, what?

Chortle.

|9.1.06 @ 1:14PM|#

Much of the US problem with the world is that we tell them not to do the stuff we did to get to where we are.

We are just sharing our lessons learned and showing others a better way. And on most days, off in the distace, you can hear a faint cry, "fuuuuuuck yooou!"

thoreau|9.1.06 @ 1:43PM|#

So, I finally have something unambiguously nice to say about a Ron Bailey post, and then a pedant shows up to argue with me.

Isn't it ironic? Don't ya think?

Larry A|9.1.06 @ 1:51PM|#

The only sensible conclusion is that imposing a United Nations' moratorium on GM trees risks serious and irreversible harm to the earth's wild forests.

Well, yes. But you're using "sensible" and "United Nations" in the same sentence.

Environmental Philosophy 101: If humans do it, it's wrong.

Don't know about Thoreau, but personally "natural" is where there isn't any pavement, the plants aren't in straight lines, and the critter crap isn't cleaned up.

|9.1.06 @ 2:21PM|#

After reading the article, and remembering somethings, are GM Trees really the answer to our puply product needs?
consider:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/optimal_treefre.php
and
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/01/top_five_bamboo.php

and what does Ron B. mean by Genetically Modified? Plants often already have a wide library of traits to use for whatever they need if they can adapt fast enough. Using genetic markers to identify needed traits without waiting for the plant to grow is cropping up to be the next greatest thing in bioengineering; and it doesn't come with the baggage of patents.

I'd post a link to that, but the server squirrels...

For a relevant article, just do a google search for:
genetic markers wired

|9.1.06 @ 4:54PM|#

That log Fred Flintstone drove around Bedrock was a GM tree.

|9.1.06 @ 5:33PM|#

"However, trees with this bioengineered trait would have great difficulty surviving in the wild, so it is very unlikely to spread to native trees."

this seems like a reasonable hypothesis that could be tested before allowing full use of GM trees without restriction

"Opponents dismiss tree plantations as "green deserts" devoid of the natural biodiversity of wild forests."

yeah, probably mostly to counteract claims of people like Rush Limbaugh who once claimed that there was more area of forest in US that at the time of the founding of the US. not all forests are created equal. spotted owls and red-cockaded woodpeckers need forests with older trees. age structure of a tree population will tend to increase the biodiversity of the forest in and of itself. tree farms tend to have trees of all the same age.

"�Many ecological criticisms of GM trees appear to be overstated,� concludes a recent study by silviculturalists at Oregon State University."

good to know in advance. would the study have been conducted without objections from anti-GM activists, or would it have been assumed that no harm could possibly result?

"Recall that under the precautionary approach favored by anti-biotech activists the absence of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing decisions where there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm."

there's rarely such a thing as full scientific certainty

|9.2.06 @ 7:32AM|#

Is it just me, or do the rest of you want to run out and buy some eggs after looking at Reason's magazine cover, "Ova for sale"? And I don't even like eggs.