This is almost certainly going to be an unpopular title to the left, but hear me out. I am not suggesting that our schools should teach children that intelligent design is true. I fully understand the argument that intelligent design is not founded in evidence based science. Intelligent design is a religious position on evolution, and if you look at it purely from that point of view, it makes sense to suggest that perhaps public schools are not an appropriate place to teach it. Let me ask you, though, is the purpose of public schools exclusively to teach science with a solid foundation in evidence? Because I was under the impression that we also teach things like art, reading, and history, which many people think are very important for good development and decision making skills, but which are too subjective to really call science.
Public schools were not created to teach science. They were created to give U.S. citizens a well rounded education that would prepare them for jobs that pay decent wages. Unfortunately, the most important part of this purpose was lost long ago, and now they are viewed primarily as preparation for college, but the well rounded education part never went away. According to some more modern education experts, the purpose of public school is to make people into productive and functional members of society, and while this rings of socialized schooling, it makes the following point just as effectively. (When I was young, I was told that some countries, possibly including North Korea, actually took children from their parents at a certain age, to "socialize" them, which consisted of training them to adhere to the culture and be loyal to the government over family. We call this "brain washing".)
We should teach intelligent design in schools so that our children will have a better understanding of a variety of different points of view. Being able to look at things from the point of view of another person is an extremely rare skill in our society, and it is also a critical skill in participation in a democratic government. Being aware of and understanding other points of view is essential in compromise, and it is an essential skill in just getting along in the first place. It is a travesty that our supposedly democratic country is full of people who don't believe that they can be friends with anyone that does not have the same beliefs and opinions as they do (if you don't believe this, people have actually unfriended people on Facebook for not agreeing with some political position). And a large part of the problem is keeping unpopular opinions out of schools. I want to be clear here: This is not a problem of religion and state. The belief that homosexual acts are not sinful is just as religious as the belief that they are, but schools are allowed to teach it, because it is not as unpopular. This is not a problem of teaching religion in schools, because we are already doing that wherever it is popular!
I am not suggesting that we teach any religious belief as if it was scientifically proven truth. In fact, I want to do the exact opposite. Any belief or theory that is not absolutely proven should not be taught as truth. This includes intelligent design as well as evolution itself. Yes, large scale evolution is not proven. It is widely accepted, because it is internally consistent, and we don't have any evidence for any other explanation. Sometimes this is good enough, but we should teach it that way, not as if it was absolutely proven. Honestly, it is a weakly supported theory that is full of holes, but it is also the best and most logical theory we have. So we can tell students this! Evolution is not some religion that we want to brainwash kids into believing. Give them the evidence, show them the flaws, and explain the logic. If you fear that they won't believe it, then it is clear that you are more concerned about the religious aspects than the science. If the evidence is not strong enough for a vast majority of students to believe, then perhaps there is not enough evidence that anyone should believe it. That said, I don't think that is the case with evolution. It is a sound theory. The main problem is holes in the evidence, but without any alternative with better evidence, it is the best we have.
Here are the important points in teaching something religiously motivated, like intelligent design. First, treating it respectfully is essential. Disrespect for the views of others is a plague in our society, and it is the foundation of our radical partisanship. It is a major part of the reason there was so much resistance to gay marriage (hint: it was not the conservatives who were the most disrespectful; it was the gay marriage proponents who waged a war on religion and who are still trying to get the government to force people to violate their religious beliefs). If we cannot respect each other's views, even when we disagree, then we cannot reasonably call ourselves civilized! Second, teaching beliefs as fact is wrong. This includes intelligent design and the theory of evolution. From an ethical point of view, we should not be using schools as a place to teach opinions as fact. That is not what they are for. From a scientific point of view, when we teach opinions and beliefs as fact, we limit how we think. For example, how long has it been since anyone thought about the origin of man outside of religious creation or the theory of evolution? What if evolution is wrong, but we are never going to figure it out, because teaching it as proven fact eliminates the motivation to search for alternative explanations? Real science does not just come up with a logical, internally consistent theory with some weak evidence and this walk away from everything else (thus string theory is not real science either). If it cannot find strong evidence, it keeps looking until it can, even if it has to look somewhere else. Third, teachers should be allowed to tell students what their own personal beliefs are. I can see some people ready to jump out of their chairs shouting at me. Read my second point again. I did not just say teachers should be allowed to teach their personal views as fact, and I also did not say they should be allowed to push or encourage students to adopt those views. They should be allowed to share those views though! Why? Point of view! If we don't expose children to a variety of points of view, then we cannot expect them to have even half decent reasoning skills! Fourth, teachers should strongly encourage students to ask their parents and friends what they believe and why. If anyone should encourage children to adopt certain beliefs, it should be their parents. Many parents find it difficult to be engaged in this though, especially in a society that mocks any beliefs that are unusual in any way. If kids come home from school and ask their parents questions like, "Where do you think man came from?", it will give parents a starting point in being engaged in their kids beliefs and learning.
This is also a more democratic system. Imagine you go to the polls to vote for the next President, and the ballot has a single name with a single check box. There is no write-in line. Your options are to vote for the candidate or not vote at all. When we don't teach different points of view, this is what we are doing to our children. So next time you want to say that we should not teach something in schools, ask yourself whether you have some real, valid concern or if you are just trying to rig to vote in favor of your own opinion by eliminating all other options. (Because at least the right is willing to let both evolution and intelligent design be taught. The left does not even want there to be a choice!)
What it all comes down to is, we should teach unpopular views in schools right next to the popular ones, so that our schools can produce more civilized graduates with better critical thinking skills. We should certainly be careful not to usurp the role of parents in shaping the beliefs of their children, but we should also not shy away from exposing them to a variety of view points. Most critically, we should teach them to respect, and even try to understand, the views of others even when they don't agree. Intelligent design is a great place to start with this, because it is not terribly controversial (teaching it in public schools is, mostly because the left has no respect for any views besides it own and would prefer public schools to teach its agenda over teaching people to think for themselves).
13 July 2017
Why You Shouldn't Eat Organic
I have written about organic and GMO foods a few times, dispelling some common myths and misconceptions. As a result, I have thought long and hard about some of the consequences of people being fooled into this fad.
The population of the world is steadily increasing. It is true that in some countries, including the U.S. and China, birthrates have dipped below sustainable levels, which will result in population decline as certain groups start passing away. The rest of the world is making up for this though, and the estimated world population growth over the next 20 or 30 years is enormous. Now, contrary to the claims of overpopulation activists from the middle of last century onward, there is still plenty of unused arable land (land that can support crop growth). In fact, the U.S. government is actually paying some people who own farmland not to farm it, to avoid economic problems related to overproduction. The U.S. produces 5 times the food that it eats, with 3 parts of that being exported and one part just being wasted. More population dense areas like China and India are certainly more vulnerable to resource problems related to overpopulation, but there is no sign they are even approaching that, and China is already starting to see a declining population due to regulations on reproduction and certain traditions that have synergized to create a very male-heavy population. What all of this means is that there is enough land to produce orders of magnitude more food than the current human population consumes. In short, world overpopulation is unlikely to be an issue any time soon.
That said, there are still problems with food production, and the primary one is getting food where it is needed. There are places in the world with localized resource problems, notably in Africa, where people live in or near deserts, where conditions are not favorable for traditional food crops. The dry heat in some areas makes large yield farming almost impossible, and even some of the more humid areas just don't have good enough soil to grow sufficient food to support a significant population. In some of these areas, we mitigate this by shipping food. This is incredibly expensive and inefficient. It would be much better to grow the food locally than to ship it thousands of miles. Unfortunately, traditional food crops just cannot handle the conditions.
In addition to this, most farming techniques, including both organic farming and industrial farming are environmentally damaging. Industrial farming tends to put chemicals into the environment in ways that are destructive. Farm runoff can cause all sorts of disruptions to local environments, and it can even contaminate water tables. Many people who understand this turn to organic foods, which are fertilized with manure and other natural products and thus don't contribute to this chemical runoff. This carries its own problems though. Organic farming still tears up the soil, disrupting surface ground ecosystems for many organisms, and they do it worse than industrial farming, because traditional organic farming requires a lower crop density, which means more land must be damaged to grow the same amounts of food. Organic farming also tends to be much more labor intensive, which ultimately consumes more energy, and there is still potential for diseased organic fertilizers to contaminate ground water when not composted correctly before use. The lower yield density of organic farming also means that it is significantly harder and requires much more land to produce enough food for everyone. There are alternative organic farming techniques with some potential to compete with industrial farming, but they are not mainstream enough to see the necessary automation to actually make it compete. Even it we did get it to this point though, industrial farming has more room for progress than organic farming. (I should express my opinion here that the best solution would be to mix the best of industrial farming and organic farming to create a type of farming superior to both in nearly every way.)
The reason you should not eat organic, at least for now, is that it takes away potential research funding from the more promising industrial farming. Think about people in India, where populations are still growing rapidly, in 20 or 30 years. Will organic farming even be able to support the population? What about in Africa, where this is already a problem, due to poor farming conditions? Purely organic techniques are not going to be able keep up with need in some places where food is already hard to grow. I agree that modern industrial farming needs reform, but going to pure organic farming is going to make the most pressing problems worse sooner. The environment can handle a bit more damage at the hands of poor industrial farming techniques. People are already dying due to lack of food, and industrial farming has better promise for fixing that than organic, at least right now.
I want to add non-GMO foods to that though, and I honestly think this is more pressing. In certain parts of Africa, there is only so much you can do to improve crop yields. There are places that are just plain hostile to nearly all known food crops. There is one exception: Certain GMO foods have been engineered to be able to grow well there. Now, there is a whole political problem surrounding this, where companies like Monsanto are essentially holding African farmers hostage through gene patents, with a great deal of deliberate help from the U.S. government. This definitely needs to be fixed. This article is not about the politics though. It is about necessity. Genetic engineering carries great potential for solving most, if not all, of our food problems, at far lower risk than selective breeding methods that have been used for thousands of years to engineer all of the plants that we currently consume. In theory, we could use selective breeding to create crop varieties that can handle certain harsh conditions. This would likely take between fifty and hundreds of years. Honestly, the risk in doing this is already extremely low, but the process is far less predictable and controllable than genetic engineering, which means the risk is still higher, and the process is much slower. In other words, the risk involved with selective breeding and GMO are both negligible, with the first being slightly higher. The real question is, how can we produce enough food where it is needed? Organic farming is not the answer. In some ways it can help, but if the crop is not suited to the environment, the only solution is to change the environment, and we are talking about places where air conditioned greenhouses are just not feasible right now. We need crops that are suited to certain harsh environments, and if we wait fifty to a hundred years, tens of thousands of people will starve to death in the mean time. We don't have time for that!
The solution is genetically engineered food crops that are better suited to harsh conditions. Genetic engineering does some pretty cool things for us, starting with being able to grow foods in climates that most plants can't survive in and being able to grow food crops in poor soil. We already have varieties that can grow in some of the harsher African climates and soils. They are currently being used to create a dependency on imports from Western civilization, but they do exist. There are also colder climates that could benefit from this though. While very few plants can grow on tundra, it should not be terribly difficult to genetically engineer crops that can take advantage of the longer days in the Alaskan summer to produce yields many times faster than in more temperate climates, which is important because Alaskan summers are also shorter. This also applies to southern Canada, the Nordic countries, and the northern parts of Russia. Otherwise stated, this could dramatically increase the amount of farmable land in the world, as well as allowing more food to be grown locally. If this does not sound like a great plan, also consider that more locally grown food means less transportation, which currently means lower CO2 emissions from trucks, boats, and planes used in transport, and more sustainable energy usage over the long term. And this is totally ignoring the potential of using genetic engineering to improve flavor of fruits and vegetables, improve their nutritional value, and so on (Monsanto is already working on these), which could reduce the amount of food needed, further optimizing food production. It is also ignoring the potential of genetic engineering to create more efficient crops that reduce the need for techniques and chemicals that are environmentally harmful.
The fact is, we need GMO, and we need the high crop densities of industrial farming. Yeah, there are parts of organic farming that we should integrate into industrial farming, but funding organic farming is not going to encourage the progress we need. Instead, it will encourage more industrial farmers to convert more efficient lands into lower efficiency organic farms to benefit from the higher prices they can charge, and it will encourage organic farming to stagnate (which it largely has been doing since its inception). In other words, it will make things worse and encourage regression into less efficient and more harmful farming techniques. And funding non-GMO food producers will reduce the funding going into improving crops to require less damaging farming techniques and producing the larger yields we need where we need them.
The only valid justification for buying organic and non-GMO is to avoid giving money to manipulative and unethical companies like Monsanto. When we do that though, we are being environmentally irresponsible and withholding funding needed to improve the ability of agriculture to feed everyone who needs it in the most efficient and sustainable way. The solution to Monsanto and similar companies is not to buy products from companies that are using inferior farming techniques with no desire for progress. The solution to the political problems associated with food production is through political means. If you find Monsanto's business practices to be unethical, vote for representatives that will make them illegal. Write your current representatives and share your concerns. Share your position with others, and encourage them to do the same. People have been buying organic and non-GMO foods for decades now, and it has not made any difference. Instead it is just trading one evil for another, and it is not even actually getting rid of the first evil.
Organic and non-GMO are not healthier than industrial farming products. They are not less damaging to the environment. Buying them does not make companies like Monsanto improve their ethics. Organic and non-GMO are a step backward in farming technology, and we need to accept that before we can move forward. When people fund these movements by buying organic and non-GMO foods, they deny needed funding for real progress. It is true that there are a lot of problems with how food is currently produced, but the solution is not to fund even worse techniques.
Responsible buying habits don't include spending more money on inferior products to make a political statement that could be made more effectively through voting habits and writing letters to our representatives. The solution is to make sure the funding is available to improve our current best, and then put political pressure on farmers and companies to use that funding to do it!
The population of the world is steadily increasing. It is true that in some countries, including the U.S. and China, birthrates have dipped below sustainable levels, which will result in population decline as certain groups start passing away. The rest of the world is making up for this though, and the estimated world population growth over the next 20 or 30 years is enormous. Now, contrary to the claims of overpopulation activists from the middle of last century onward, there is still plenty of unused arable land (land that can support crop growth). In fact, the U.S. government is actually paying some people who own farmland not to farm it, to avoid economic problems related to overproduction. The U.S. produces 5 times the food that it eats, with 3 parts of that being exported and one part just being wasted. More population dense areas like China and India are certainly more vulnerable to resource problems related to overpopulation, but there is no sign they are even approaching that, and China is already starting to see a declining population due to regulations on reproduction and certain traditions that have synergized to create a very male-heavy population. What all of this means is that there is enough land to produce orders of magnitude more food than the current human population consumes. In short, world overpopulation is unlikely to be an issue any time soon.
That said, there are still problems with food production, and the primary one is getting food where it is needed. There are places in the world with localized resource problems, notably in Africa, where people live in or near deserts, where conditions are not favorable for traditional food crops. The dry heat in some areas makes large yield farming almost impossible, and even some of the more humid areas just don't have good enough soil to grow sufficient food to support a significant population. In some of these areas, we mitigate this by shipping food. This is incredibly expensive and inefficient. It would be much better to grow the food locally than to ship it thousands of miles. Unfortunately, traditional food crops just cannot handle the conditions.
In addition to this, most farming techniques, including both organic farming and industrial farming are environmentally damaging. Industrial farming tends to put chemicals into the environment in ways that are destructive. Farm runoff can cause all sorts of disruptions to local environments, and it can even contaminate water tables. Many people who understand this turn to organic foods, which are fertilized with manure and other natural products and thus don't contribute to this chemical runoff. This carries its own problems though. Organic farming still tears up the soil, disrupting surface ground ecosystems for many organisms, and they do it worse than industrial farming, because traditional organic farming requires a lower crop density, which means more land must be damaged to grow the same amounts of food. Organic farming also tends to be much more labor intensive, which ultimately consumes more energy, and there is still potential for diseased organic fertilizers to contaminate ground water when not composted correctly before use. The lower yield density of organic farming also means that it is significantly harder and requires much more land to produce enough food for everyone. There are alternative organic farming techniques with some potential to compete with industrial farming, but they are not mainstream enough to see the necessary automation to actually make it compete. Even it we did get it to this point though, industrial farming has more room for progress than organic farming. (I should express my opinion here that the best solution would be to mix the best of industrial farming and organic farming to create a type of farming superior to both in nearly every way.)
The reason you should not eat organic, at least for now, is that it takes away potential research funding from the more promising industrial farming. Think about people in India, where populations are still growing rapidly, in 20 or 30 years. Will organic farming even be able to support the population? What about in Africa, where this is already a problem, due to poor farming conditions? Purely organic techniques are not going to be able keep up with need in some places where food is already hard to grow. I agree that modern industrial farming needs reform, but going to pure organic farming is going to make the most pressing problems worse sooner. The environment can handle a bit more damage at the hands of poor industrial farming techniques. People are already dying due to lack of food, and industrial farming has better promise for fixing that than organic, at least right now.
I want to add non-GMO foods to that though, and I honestly think this is more pressing. In certain parts of Africa, there is only so much you can do to improve crop yields. There are places that are just plain hostile to nearly all known food crops. There is one exception: Certain GMO foods have been engineered to be able to grow well there. Now, there is a whole political problem surrounding this, where companies like Monsanto are essentially holding African farmers hostage through gene patents, with a great deal of deliberate help from the U.S. government. This definitely needs to be fixed. This article is not about the politics though. It is about necessity. Genetic engineering carries great potential for solving most, if not all, of our food problems, at far lower risk than selective breeding methods that have been used for thousands of years to engineer all of the plants that we currently consume. In theory, we could use selective breeding to create crop varieties that can handle certain harsh conditions. This would likely take between fifty and hundreds of years. Honestly, the risk in doing this is already extremely low, but the process is far less predictable and controllable than genetic engineering, which means the risk is still higher, and the process is much slower. In other words, the risk involved with selective breeding and GMO are both negligible, with the first being slightly higher. The real question is, how can we produce enough food where it is needed? Organic farming is not the answer. In some ways it can help, but if the crop is not suited to the environment, the only solution is to change the environment, and we are talking about places where air conditioned greenhouses are just not feasible right now. We need crops that are suited to certain harsh environments, and if we wait fifty to a hundred years, tens of thousands of people will starve to death in the mean time. We don't have time for that!
The solution is genetically engineered food crops that are better suited to harsh conditions. Genetic engineering does some pretty cool things for us, starting with being able to grow foods in climates that most plants can't survive in and being able to grow food crops in poor soil. We already have varieties that can grow in some of the harsher African climates and soils. They are currently being used to create a dependency on imports from Western civilization, but they do exist. There are also colder climates that could benefit from this though. While very few plants can grow on tundra, it should not be terribly difficult to genetically engineer crops that can take advantage of the longer days in the Alaskan summer to produce yields many times faster than in more temperate climates, which is important because Alaskan summers are also shorter. This also applies to southern Canada, the Nordic countries, and the northern parts of Russia. Otherwise stated, this could dramatically increase the amount of farmable land in the world, as well as allowing more food to be grown locally. If this does not sound like a great plan, also consider that more locally grown food means less transportation, which currently means lower CO2 emissions from trucks, boats, and planes used in transport, and more sustainable energy usage over the long term. And this is totally ignoring the potential of using genetic engineering to improve flavor of fruits and vegetables, improve their nutritional value, and so on (Monsanto is already working on these), which could reduce the amount of food needed, further optimizing food production. It is also ignoring the potential of genetic engineering to create more efficient crops that reduce the need for techniques and chemicals that are environmentally harmful.
The fact is, we need GMO, and we need the high crop densities of industrial farming. Yeah, there are parts of organic farming that we should integrate into industrial farming, but funding organic farming is not going to encourage the progress we need. Instead, it will encourage more industrial farmers to convert more efficient lands into lower efficiency organic farms to benefit from the higher prices they can charge, and it will encourage organic farming to stagnate (which it largely has been doing since its inception). In other words, it will make things worse and encourage regression into less efficient and more harmful farming techniques. And funding non-GMO food producers will reduce the funding going into improving crops to require less damaging farming techniques and producing the larger yields we need where we need them.
The only valid justification for buying organic and non-GMO is to avoid giving money to manipulative and unethical companies like Monsanto. When we do that though, we are being environmentally irresponsible and withholding funding needed to improve the ability of agriculture to feed everyone who needs it in the most efficient and sustainable way. The solution to Monsanto and similar companies is not to buy products from companies that are using inferior farming techniques with no desire for progress. The solution to the political problems associated with food production is through political means. If you find Monsanto's business practices to be unethical, vote for representatives that will make them illegal. Write your current representatives and share your concerns. Share your position with others, and encourage them to do the same. People have been buying organic and non-GMO foods for decades now, and it has not made any difference. Instead it is just trading one evil for another, and it is not even actually getting rid of the first evil.
Organic and non-GMO are not healthier than industrial farming products. They are not less damaging to the environment. Buying them does not make companies like Monsanto improve their ethics. Organic and non-GMO are a step backward in farming technology, and we need to accept that before we can move forward. When people fund these movements by buying organic and non-GMO foods, they deny needed funding for real progress. It is true that there are a lot of problems with how food is currently produced, but the solution is not to fund even worse techniques.
Responsible buying habits don't include spending more money on inferior products to make a political statement that could be made more effectively through voting habits and writing letters to our representatives. The solution is to make sure the funding is available to improve our current best, and then put political pressure on farmers and companies to use that funding to do it!
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