10/15/2020 / By Ethan Huff
The right-wing media is once again trumpeting its hate for all things natural with a fresh endorsement for biotechnology, which it claims will save the planet from mythological climate change.
WND, republishing an article from Real Clear Science, contends that gene editing – that is, the artificial reprogramming of the natural biosphere – is the only way to stop global warming from taking its toll on Earth and everything in it.
Livestock, trees, food crops and pretty much all living organisms are inherently flawed and require tampering with by “scientists” in order to optimize their impact on the planet. This is the narrative now being spread by the biotechnology lobby, anyway.
“Gene editing is unlocking new ways to enhance natural and agricultural carbon sinks, limit emissions from agriculture and other major GHG-emitting sectors, and improve biofuels,” write Robert Rozansky, L. Val Giddings, and David M. Hart.
“Congress should act now to open this new frontier for climate innovation,” they further declare.
The plan is to use gene-editing enzymes like CRISPR Cas9 to alter the DNA of the world’s organisms, which include every living thing. Livestock, for instance, are slated to be genetically modified in order to limit their gas emissions.
An initiative known as The Trillion Trees has also proposed altering plants to change the way they photosynthesize light. While plants naturally capture carbon, those who claim they know better say the process is inefficient and needs to be enhanced.
“Further progress might enable productivity gains of 50 percent in major crops, slashing emissions radically, raising output per acre, and bolstering farmers’ incomes,” the narrative reads.
Gene editing is already being used in commercial food production. Most of the nation’s soybean oil, for instance, which is already genetically modified at the crop level, is now being gene-edited to maximize its shelf life.
The same goes for potatoes, many of which have been gene-edited to resist bruising – a phenomenon that is also present in commercial apples, the flesh of which rarely turns brown upon exposure to the air like it used to back in the old days.
Gene editors have also set their sights on biofuels, which they want to modify at the crop level to better break down cellulose. The plan is to edit the genes of crops like switchgrass in order to improve their ability to process cellulose.
In addition to cattle farts, the mad scientists behind gene editing are also concerned about cattle burps, which they claim are contributing greenhouse gases to the environment that are warming the planet and causing the polar ice caps to melt.
“Gene editing’s enormous promise for solving societal problems, including climate change, has been slowed by concerns that it is neither natural nor safe,” lament those pushing gene editing. “Those concerns are misplaced,” they claim.
Keep in mind that these are the same folks opposed to things like hemp and cannabis, also known to them as the “Devil’s Weed,” because these natural products – which, by the way, remediate the soils in which they are grown, helping to protect the climate – compete with the synthetic “solutions” to climate damage being pushed by the biotechnology lobby.
It is the typical M.O. of Conservative Inc. to reject the many solutions that nature already has to offer in favor of privatized “science,” which in the case of gene editing seeks to reprogram the entire biosphere of the planet in order to supposedly save it.
“It will be Pandora’s box,” warned one WND commenter, joining a chorus of others in rejecting the article’s faulty premise.
“This will kill us,” wrote another, cutting right to the chase.
If this story piqued your interest, you can find more like it at ClimateScienceNews.com.
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Tagged Under: agriculture, carbon sinks, Cattle, climate change, CRISPR-Cas9, DNA, Emissions, gene editing, genetically modified, global warming, GMO, greenhouse gases, livestock, mad scientists