Quote

There are plenty of publicly-funded organizations and nonprofits that are trying to develop GMO crops that could help feed people in developing nations by producing disease-resistant or drought-resistant strains of staple crops like cassava or bananas.

Annalee Newitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Annalee Newitz
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 9
Blogger
Journalist
Novelist
Irvine
California
Disease
Organizations
Strains
Nations
Strain
Resistant
Help
Producing
Staples
Helping
Feed
Funded
Trying
Developing
Drought
Like
Plenty
Bananas
People
Develop
Publicly
Staple
Organization
Crops
Gmos

More quotes by Annalee Newitz

Image
I disagree that we need to contemplate eliminating ourselves in order to move forward. Sure, I think a good dystopian story can serve to steer us on the right path toward a better world. But we also need stories that offer solutions to our problems that are realistic, and workable today.
Annalee Newitz
Image
The fact that we have been able to perturb the carbon cycle with our industrial revolution is evidence of how vulnerable we are - because when we destroy our environments, we destroy our food and energy supplies. In short, we destroy ourselves.
Annalee Newitz
Image
It's only a slight exaggeration to say we haven't progressed much beyond the invention of agriculture when it comes to our view of the natural world.
Annalee Newitz
Image
We are headed to a radically new Earth, at least from our perspective. But from the planet's perspective, this is nothing new. As the geologist Peter Ward is fond of pointing out, we are actually heading back to a time kind of like the Miocene. The Miocene ended about 5.5 million years ago, and it was the last time that the planet had no icecaps.
Annalee Newitz
Image
I try to be realistic and pragmatic. I have a lot of hope for humanity as a species, but obviously as individuals we can be extremely flawed. We may have to go through some very terrible times in the near future, even if we ultimately survive as Homo sapiens.
Annalee Newitz
Image
Part of what I wanted to do in my book was point out that we have almost reached the point where we can prevent a mass extinction with the science and technology we have today. We can build carbon neutral cities.
Annalee Newitz
Image
Using virtual world, a scientist in Japan can conduct an experiment using a special facility in California, watching the entire thing via a live stream - and possibly controlling the experimental equipment remotely. We can use that same kind of technology to control a robot on Mars.
Annalee Newitz
Image
Eventually, humans invented agriculture, which could be understood as a way of turning the natural world into a tool for our use. There's evidence that we have been domesticating crops and animals for at least 15,000 years, adapting ecosystems to our preferred way of life.
Annalee Newitz
Image
Survivor species tend to have huge populations, so they can afford to lose many individuals and still survive as a species. They also tend to be small. If you're small, you need less food - which is great in a situation where famine is everywhere.
Annalee Newitz
Image
Sometimes it's hard to take everyday concerns seriously when you think about vanished ecosystems that existed 300 million years ago and were eradicated by giant explosions. My goals haven't changed, because my goal has always been to save the world!
Annalee Newitz
Image
The fact is that humans have been shaping the genetics of what they eat for thousands of years. Genetic engineering simply speeds up the process that used to take generations. Preventing people from getting things like golden rice or disease-resistant cassava destroys human life, and does not spare the environment in any way.
Annalee Newitz
Image
I think in the long run, it will be better for us if we solve our problems without suffering through some terrible disaster. I like the idea of change without Apocalypse.
Annalee Newitz
Image
think we're still stuck in that agricultural mindset, where we imagine that we can shape the Earth. Sure, we can do that. But the Earth has the power to shape us much more powerfully. To survive climate change, we'll have to realize how dependent we are on our ecosystems for our own survival.
Annalee Newitz
Image
Obviously it depends on how you define a word like evolution, because of course we have been evolving - both biologically and culturally - in relation to the natural world for hundreds of thousands of years.
Annalee Newitz
Image
It's only been in the past two generations that we truly understood the impact our civilization has had on the natural world. To our credit as a species, we have turned this obscure scientific fact about carbon cycles into one of the most important political issues of the 21st century.
Annalee Newitz
Image
In terms of fiction, there are a number of writers who are thinking about the future of the environment whose work complements mine. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 is a great example, as is Tobias Buckell's novel Arctic Rising.
Annalee Newitz
Image
I would want us to start our quest to survive mass extinction by rethinking how we build cities. Cities should be commonplaces of production, rather than consumption - they should be producing food, and fuel.
Annalee Newitz
Image
We have converted huge swaths of land and ocean into human habitats where we live and grow food and harvest energy. But there's been a sea change in the past century.
Annalee Newitz
Image
In fact, the early demographer Thomas Malthus believes that the only way the human population would ever check itself was by running headlong into a disaster, like a pandemic or famine. Sometimes we get so frustrated with the slowness of human political processes that we wish a giant flaming rock would solve the problem for us.
Annalee Newitz
Image
GMO agriculture will probably save the world in this century. But in the developed world, where few people are haunted by the specter of famine, people are free to fetishize heirloom tomatoes and worry about the provenance of what sits on their dinner tables.
Annalee Newitz