permaculture

["Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>]

If I remember correctly the first patent application for a living organism
was by General Electric for a bacteria that cleaned up oil spills - the
problem was that it didn't stop with oil, so was never really of any
commercial value to GE.

GMO's to my mind have the potential to be extremely dangerous - especially
in the hands of corporations who have no ethical brakes.  At least science
used to have an ethic of "do no harm", but money seems to have corrupted
that too.

I don't believe any GMO's should be released from the laboratory until all
of the ramifications of that release are understood.  It is the story of bt
seed and the cross over to the milkweed plant to the detriment of the
Monarch butterfly that gives me nightmares.

So it might be a tool but so is the hydrogen bomb and to what end?  

Scott Pittman
Director
Permaculture Institute
www.permaculture.org
-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Toby Hemenway
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 8:08 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Oil spill - solutions?

As a former geneticist, I want to point out that nature transfers genes
between species, between families, even between phyla and kingdoms. It was
viruses that taught geneticists how to do it; viruses move genes between the
most distantly related organisms with great frequency and ease, making the
genetically engineered tomato with a fish gene look like child's play.
Nature is far ahead of us in the breeding world, and is doing things we can
barely dream of.

It makes no more sense to condemn genetic engineering itself than it does to
condemn a hammer or a computer. It's a tool. A permaculturist doesn't rule
out a tool simply because of its origin; if we did we wouldn't use hammers,
computers, or anything else that's a product of an unsustainable culture.
The techniques of genetic modification are not evil; it's the godawful
stupid things they do with them that are the evil. If we can talk about
using technical solutions like hair mats and mycelium to clean up oil spills
(with all their pluses and minuses), then we ought to include GMO microbes
that eat oil in the toolkit. None of them is going to solve the oil problem,
but while we work on the technical level, we work on other levels too.

My sense is that activism, even Jensen's violent kind, isn't going to bring
civilization down--and I like Derrick a lot, and I speak as an activist. The
elites are much better at violence than anyone else. I think oil will just
get too scarce, and the crash will solve a lot of those problems. I just
hope it happens soon enough.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



On May 4, 2010, at 4:50 PM, jamesdavid Sneed wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps you can share your research sources  on each statement about the
microbes so each of us can pursue that. Also, even if an organism has NOT
been genetically engineered as in splicing, a few "non-gmo" breeding
techniques would never occur in Nature without humans forcing them to
happen, and thus also bear dangerous potential.
>> Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 19:59:18 -0700
>> From: cory8570@yahoo.com
>> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
>> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Oil spill - solutions?
>> 
>> Oil eating microbes die when the oil is gone. The oil, on the other hand,
sticks around in one form or other and keeps on killing. They are now using
toxic stuff that sinks it to the bottom of the ocean. I guess out of sight,
out of mind... The company I am most familiar with uses only existing
microbes, they are not GM at all. 
>> 
>> Cory
>> 
>> --- On Mon, 5/3/10, jamesdavid Sneed <harvestcircle@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> From: jamesdavid Sneed <harvestcircle@hotmail.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Oil spill - solutions?
>>> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
>>> Date: Monday, May 3, 2010, 2:13 PM
>>> 
>>> Aren't a lot of those oil-eating microbes genetically
>>> modified? That would be cutting off our nose to spite our
>>> face.
>>> 
>>>> Date: Sun, 2 May 2010 20:50:49 -0700
>>>> From: cory8570@yahoo.com
>>>> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Oil spill - solutions?
>>>> 
>>>> I'm checking with a friend of mine who creates microbe
>>> formulas to see if he has one for this problem. Some
>>> microbes do eat oil, just need to assess the entire process
>>> and all waste products, consequences, etc. Tailored,
>>> cultured microbes might be best for this job. Anybody know
>>> of any other organizations that might be able to handle
>>> that?  Application will definitely be something to
>>> solve.
>>>> 
>>>> Cory 
>>>> 

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