It all makes sense.

Can you do math?

Ooo! Don’t leave Seattle out just because they have fluorine in their water!

Good considerations, but I still think it’s misleading.

ONE: I hadn’t considered that possibility, but here’s why I don’t think it’s right. I think Smith is comparing between burned / not burned. If he is comparing between burned w/ Keystone / burned without Keystone, then the impact of Keystone should be negative since a pipeline is a more HC-efficient form of transport than rail or truck.

TWO: OK, perhaps 40K jobs is precision jargon. But the piece is aimed at a general audience so jargon should be clarified and put into the context of every-day language. Not doing that is misleading. OK, politicians do it all the time. But that doesn’t make it right or useful or honest.

First off… there are multiple “technologies” being used to produce higher food yields with less water than traditional farming. GMO can’t even compete with aquaponics… which can produce greater yields (with INCREASING annual yields because those systems gain strength over time) on about 10% of the water of traditional farming. Some aquaponic systems can easily (on the low end!) produce more than 5,000 TIMES the “edible flesh” per acre when compared to your average cow farms. I know this because I build aquaponic systems as a hobby. I can confirm much greater results than I ever found with regular gardening with very little water use. Systems like this are being set up all over the world… especially in places where there is no access to clean water. This is just one newschool method of farming being used that can clearly outdo GMOs (which can’t always yield higher anyway)…

So the next question… and then my epic conclusion. Why do farmers in other countries burn GMO seeds? I mean. Monsanto CLAIMS that they can solve world hunger with GMOs, right?! You’d think people who are literally starving would be all over that. Those farmers realize that GMO seeds are actually a trap (insert Admiral Ackbar voice here!). GMO seeds are built to not reproduce, and are more expensive than traditional seeds. Farmers must buy these seeds every year from Monsanto in order to continue growing them. It puts them in debt to GMO creators. The idea is to CONTROL those organisms. That’s why Monsanto lobbied so hard to make it legal to patent a life form (another issue entirely). Also… if you plant GMO seeds… some of them will cross pollinate with like-species and essentially take over. Monsanto is already well known for suing farmers found to be “illegally” growing their GMO crops… when they had no intention of doing so in the first place.

The question, to me, is more about control. Why should some giant company create and control our food? When did we become so disconnected from all this? It’s nature! We’re part of it. We can’t possibly expect to improve on billions of years of natural progress in a few years by literally shooting it (in a very sloppy fashion) with viral genes… and supposing we could, there’s no point!

People don’t want GMOs. It’s practically unanimous. Farmers are burning these seeds by the ton. Study after study shows potential health threats associated with BT crops. And BT crops can’t stand up against true organic farming or aquaponics to begin with. I mean, even Monsanto’s “round up ready” crops have been shown to not work… as insects have ALREADY grown immune. It’s nonsense! They’re trying to sell us a solution for something that THEY (read: “big-ag”) made into a problem. It’s the agroindustrial, monoculture method of farming that is broken. GMOs are just another failed product attempting to control the market. The pro GMO camp doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If Monsanto wanted to end world hunger, they wouldn’t be selling TERMINATOR seeds. Seriously. That’s what they’re called.

Distilled point: There are better solutions already available, and GMOs are an expensive and unwanted proprietary failure.

I have much less patience with those that also believe on faith but are too obtuse to realize this. The fact that many of these folks believe they are mentally superior beings simply because they don’t subscribe to religious faith makes them that much more irritating. Portland is a city full of these irritating people………….