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When We Seed Millions Of Acres Of Land With These Plants, What Happens To Foraging Birds, To Insects, To Microbes, To The Other Animals, When They Come In Contact And Digest Plants That Are Producing Materials Ranging From Plastics To Vaccines To Pharmaceutical Products?

-Jeremy Rifkin

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When We Seed Millions

Jeremy Rifkin

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When We Seed Millions Of Acres Of Land With These Plants, What Happens To Foraging Birds, To Insects, To Microbes, To The Other Animals, When They Come In Contact And Digest Plants That Are Producing Materials Ranging From Plastics To Vaccines To Pharmaceutical Products?

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What I'm Suggesting To You Is That This Could Be A Renaissance. We May Be On The Cusp Of A Future Which Could Provide A Tremendous Leap Forward For Humanity.

T Century, Hundreds Of Millions - And Eventually Billions - Of Human Beings Will Transform Their Buildings Into Power Plants To Harvest Renewable Energies On Site, Store Those Energies In The Form Of Hydrogen And Share Electricity, Peer-to-peer, Across Local, Regional, National And Continental Inter-grids That Act Much Like The Internet.

The Industry's Not Stupid. The Industry Knows That If Those Foods Are Labeled "genetically Engineered," The Public Will Shy Away And Won't Take Them.

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The Eu Constitution Is Something New In Human History. Though It Is Not As Eloquent As The French And U.s. Constitutions, It Is The First Governing Document Of Its Kind To Expand The Human Franchise To The Level Of Global Consciousness. The Language Throughout The Draft Constitution Speaks Of Universalism, Making It Clear That Its Focus Is Not A People, Or A Territory, Or A Nation, But Rather The Human Race And The Planet We Inhabit.

The Transition Of World Agriculture From Food Grain To Feed Grains Represents An...evil Whose Consequences May Be Far Greater And Longer Lasting Than Any Past Examples Of Violence Inflicted By Men Against Thier Fellow Human Beings.

We Were Making The First Step Out Of The Age Of Chemistry And Physics, And Into The Age Of Biology.

It Seems Disingenuous For The Intellectual Elite Of The First World To Dwell On The Subject Of Too Many Babies Being Born In The Second- And Third-world Nations While Virtually Ignoring The Over-population Of Cattle And The Realities Of A Food Chain That Robs The Poor Of Sustenance To Feed The Rich A Steady Diet Of Grain-fed Meat.

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The Greenhouse Crisis Is The Bill Coming Due For The Industrial Revolution. It's Not An Accident. It's The Logical Outcome Of Our World View - The Idea That We Can Control The Forces Of Nature, That We Can Have Short-term Expedient Gains Without Paying For Them, That There Are No Limits To Exploitation Of The Environment, That We Can Produce And Consume Faster Than Nature's Ability To Replenish.

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What's Really Clear To All Of Us In The Business Community Is That Gdp Is Slowing Everywhere. And The Reason Is Productivity Has Been Declining Now For 15 Or 20 Years All Over The World. So We've Got Very High Unemployment, And It's Structural. And It's Compounded By Real-time Climate Change - That's Really A Game Changer.

Wikipedia Is An Amazing Construct. It's A Commons That Works. I Don't Know How Jimmy Wales Came Up With It. I'm Sure All Of Us Would Have Said, "this Is The Stupidest Thing We've Ever Heard Of. That'll Never Work In A Million Years."

Now In Wikipedia It's Really Interesting. If You Put Something Incorrect Up On Wikipedia Within Minutes There Are People Crawling All Over That Sentence Saying, "this Is Wrong" Or "i Want To Change This" Or "you've Got To Include An Amplification," Et Cetera. So There's This Massive Checks And Balances That Actually Makes That Accuracy Work. This Is The Kind Of Model That We - And I'm Not Sure Why No One's Discussing This - That We Now Have To Begin To Apply To Fake News.

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Many Of The Genetically Modified Foods Will Be Safe, I'm Sure. Will Most Of Them Be Safe? Nobody Knows.

The Public Should Know That The Liability Issues Here Have Yet To Be Resolved, Or Even Raised. If You're A Farmer And You're Growing A Genetically Engineering Food Crop, Those Genes Are Going To Flow To The Other Farm.

Back In 1983, The United States Government Approved The Release Of The First Genetically Modified Organism. In This Case, It Was A Bacteria That Prevents Frost On Food Crops.

If Your Corn Has A Herbicide-tolerant Gene, It Means You Can Pray Your Herbicides And Kill The Weeds; You Won't Kill Your Corn.

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A Refuge Is Supposed To Prevent What? The Genes From Flowing Out Of Sight? This Refuge Idea Won't Stop Insects From Moving Across Boundaries. That's Absurd.

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When We Seed Millions Of Acres Of Land With These Plants, What Happens To Foraging Birds, To Insects, To Microbes, To The Other Animals, When They Come In Contact And Digest Plants That Are Producing Materials Ranging From Plastics To Vaccines To Pharmaceutical Products?

The Position I Took At The Time Was That We Hadn't Really Examined Any Of The Potential Environmental Consequences Of Introducing Genetically Modified Organisms.

The Electronic Media Introduced This Idea To The Larger Audience Very, Very Quickly. We Spent Years And Years And Years Meeting With Activists All Over Europe To Lay The Groundwork For A Political Response, As We Did Here.

The 10 Largest Antitrust Law Firms In The United States Have Gone Into The Federal Courts Charging Monsanto With Creating A Global Conspiracy In Violation Of The Antitrust Laws, To Control The Global Market In Seeds.

Today We Are Raised With The Notion That To Be Secure Is To Be Financially Autonomous. Amassing Wealth Is Viewed As The Primary Rite Of Passage To A Secure, Autonomous Existence.

The Empathic Civilization Is Emerging. A Younger Generation Is Fast Extending Its Empathic Embrace Beyond Religious Affiliations And National Identification To Include The Whole Of Humanity And The Vast Project Of Life That Envelops The Earth.

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James Watt Patented His Steam Engine On The Eve Of The American Revolution, Consummating A Relationship Between Coal And The New Promethean Spirit Of The Age, And Humanity Made Its First Tentative Steps Into An Industrial Way Of Life That Would, Over The Next Two Centuries, Forever Change The World.

I Wanted To Make Sure That This Be The First Scientific And Technology Revolution In History In Which The Public Thoroughly Discussed All The Potential Benefits And All The Potential Harms, In Advance Of The Technology Coming Online And Running Its Course.

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They're Now Turning Those Seeds Into Intellectual Property, So They Have A Virtual Lock On The Seeds Upon Which We All Depend For Our Food And Survival.

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The Very Notion That Millions Of Workers Displaced By The Re-engineering And Automation Of The Agricultural, Manufacturing, And Service Sectors Can Be Retrained To Be Scientists, Engineers, Technicians, Executives, Consultants, Teachers, Lawyers And The Like, And Then Somehow Find The Appropriate Number Of Job Openings In The Very Narrow High-tech Sector, Seems At Best A Pipe Dream, And At Worst A Delusion.

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I Know Quite A Few Farmers All Over The United States Who Have Tried This And Have Said The Opposite, That They Have To Use More Herbicides, Not Less. The Same Holds True With Bt.

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