| sethnintendo said: Sure all forms of mining can cause pollution or potentially earthquakes. Probably the worst for water pollution would be mountain top removal. I believe the jury is still out on what kind of damage fracking really causes. Sure in some instances it probably affects very little. However, I'm sure in other areas they have suffered from leaching chemicals and other problems. GMO crops destroy biodiversity because the company that is selling the crop only sells one type of seed. Farmers used to save their best seeds but now companies like Monsanto would rather sell you their seed every year. This is what happens when you industrialize farming though. We only grow one type of banana even though there used to be several types of bananas. There is great concern of tree fungus that could take out the entire banana crop ("In the 1950s, Panama disease, a wilt caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, wiped out vast tracts of ‘Gros Michel’ plantations in South America and Africa, but the cultivar survived in Thailand. By 1960, the major importers of Gros Michel bananas were nearly bankrupt, and had waited to deal with the financial and environmental crisis. The Cavendish was cultivated so consumers would still be able to obtain bananas.") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana If you have different types of bananas then at least one type would not be susceptible to the fungus. There is danger in only growing one type of apple, banana, corn, etc... Monsanto has over 90% market share of corn right now in USA. If there was a bug (that adapted to round up), fungus, parasite, etc that started going after their corn then most the corn crop could be wiped out. I also don't believe in over use of pesticides and don't believe in the overall increased yields of GMOs because over time your soil turns to crap if you constantly use pesticides. The world is starting to wake up to GMOs. Japan and Europe banned a huge shipment of wheat because they don't want any GMOs ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/business/global/japan-and-south-korea-bar-us-wheat-imports.html?_r=0 ). "Although none of the wheat, developed by Monsanto Company, was found in any grain shipments — and the Department of Agriculture said there would be no health risk if any was shipped — governments in Asia and Europe acted quickly to limit their risk." So the shipment supposedly didn't even have Monsanto GMO wheat but they decided to limit all risks. Soon U.S. farmers might not have that much of a market to sell to because the rest of the world doesn't want our crops. Even farmers that aren't growing GMOs suffer due to other countries thinking that the shipment could still be contaminated with GMOs. Factory farms have cattle, chickens, pigs etc in close spaces or stuck standing up all day long. Would you rather eat something that has been standing around doing nothing all day pumped full of antibiotics and eating food that really isn't in their diet (cows are supposed to eat grass not corn)? You know there is a reason why deer, buffalo or any other game meat taste better than factory farmed animals? Because they actually move around and eat what they are supposed to eat. Sure the companies want to save space and drive down costs. However, animals that are allowed to graze in a field will always produce better meat than ones stuffed into a pin and forced fed questionable food. |
There was actually a really good study posted earlier last year that looked at the harms the oldest US wells have caused and it was concluded that the technology is fairly safe, but it was quite a while ago no, and I can no longer find it to check, but I'm sure that there are a lot of studies taking place right now looking into it, so I can't imagine it being too long till we have a final answere. Personally I'm in favour of fracking, it's a fantastic way to get cheap fuel, and I think it's unlikely we're ever going to stop needing Oil and Gass due to the other products they can make.
Ok, so is it biodiversity in general, or just for crop production? As I fail to see how only having one type of each crop that we produce is going to destroy biodiversity in the untamed lands. And yes I am aware about the situation with the banana's, but couldn't genetic modification not save the banana by making the cavendish banana immune to the new form of the fungus that's currently starting to kill banana grows? Also for this couldn't you just have a constant chain of new varients on the say, apple genome, if you're concerned with disease causing mass crop failure?
No, our current use of pesticides is woefully inneficient, but this comes from poorly educated farmers who were told to use these chemicals as they improve yeilds, but the problem with this is that the farmers have no knowladge of soil science (i.e. how chemicals in soils move and interact), and neither do they often know the composition of their own soil, in terms of chemicals, so what's happening is that farmers aren't using anywhere near the right combination of techniques to keep their land healthy, and it's almost always leading to overuse of the pesticides and all the other stuff they put on crops.
Oh of course I love to eat higher quality of meat, but that doesn't mean that factory farms are a bad thing (certainly, if we can learn to do prawn farming better then we may be able to improve the situation being caused by overfishing at the moment, as learning to farm a certain type of sea creature (are prawns fish?) should lead to being able to farm others), as long as people have the choice to choose, and it is indicated which is which, then I really don't see the problem, as some people can't afford non farmed meat, or if they can it's not as often as they would like to eat meat, so surely factory farms still have a place?
