{"id":2349,"date":"2014-08-17T14:13:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T18:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2014-08-17T14:31:18","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T18:31:18","slug":"short-term-profit-misusing-technical-know-how-beyond-understanding-of-nature-cosmos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/short-term-profit-misusing-technical-know-how-beyond-understanding-of-nature-cosmos.html","title":{"rendered":"Short-term profit misusing technical know-how beyond understanding of nature –Cosmos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnother Cosmos script Neil deGrasse Tyson read maybe he should have paid\r\nmore attention to regarding the situation with short-sighted\r\ncorporate monopolies misusing cherry-picked science to promote\r\ntheir profits at the expense of all of us and the only planet we’ve got.\r\n

\r\nTalking about the fall of the ancient Mesopotamia civilization,\r\nthe script Dr. Tyson read for\r\n\r\nCosmos Episode 11, The Immortals<\/a>,\r\nsays:\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnother cause of decline was that their technical know-how overran\r\ntheir understanding of nature.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe ingenious irrigation system that was the basis for the great\r\ncivilizations of Mesopotamia had an unintended consequence the water\r\nchanneled into their farmlands every year evaporated and left its\r\nsalt behind.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOver generations, the salt accumulated and began to kill the crops.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMaybe we should be worried about what we’re putting into our soil,\r\nfor example after the French Supreme Court convicted Monsanto of laying for\r\n\r\nfalsely advertising that Roundup was “biodegradable”\r\nand “left the soil clean”<\/a>.\r\nOr even trust that pesticiding crew, which has already\r\nbred mutant weeds that more spraying can’t get rid of<\/a>,\r\nwhile some of those pesticides remain in\r\n\r\nall urine samples tested by a German study<\/a>\r\nand in\r\n\r\nthe urine of school children according to a Canadian study using USDA data<\/a>,\r\nfrom Kansas to Manhattan, where\r\n\r\nTyson works<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nThe script continued:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBut what about civilizations that self-destruct? Our economic\r\nsystems were formed when the planet and its air, rivers, oceans,\r\nlands, all seemed infinite.\r\nThey evolved long before we first saw the Earth as the tiny organism\r\nthat it actually is.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThey’re all alike in one respect they’re profit-driven, and\r\ntherefore, focused on short-term gain.\r\nThe prevailing economic systems, no matter what their ideologies,\r\nhave no built-in mechanisms for protecting our descendants of even\r\n100 years from now, let alone, 100,000.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSo if we trust Monsanto and Syngenta and Bayer and the rest of the\r\nagrochemical companies to do the right thing for the long-term\r\nhealth of the planet, we’re being a bit foolish.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn one respect, we’re ahead of the people of Ancient Mesopotamia.\r\nUnlike them, we understand what’s happening to our world.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nApparently Dr. Tyson doesn’t understand one part of what\r\nwe’re doing to our world.\r\n

\r\nEven though that script explained that, too:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHuman intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen. The ease\r\nwith which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by\r\nother hard-wired tendencies, sometimes themselves disguised as the\r\nlight of reason, is worrisome. But if our intelligence is the only\r\nedge, we must learn to use it better. To sharpen it. To understand\r\nits limitations and deficiencies.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd Dr. Tyson seems to have been subverted by a tendency\r\nto defend science even when it is being misused by agrochemical\r\ncompanies in exactly the same way as gasoline companies misused\r\nit to keep lead in gasoline, as\r\n\r\nthe script he read for Episode 7, The Clean Room, explained in detail<\/a>.\r\nPerhaps Dr. Tyson should talk to scriptwriters Ann Druyan and Steven Soler;\r\nmaybe they understand this connection.\r\n

\r\nEpisode 11’s example of what we do understand was this:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nFor example, we’re pumping greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere at\r\na rate not seen on Earth for a million years. And the scientific\r\nconsensus that we’re destabilizing our climate. Yet our civilization\r\nseems to be in the grip of denial; a kind of paralysis. There’s a\r\ndisconnect between what we know and what we do.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYet the profit-driven oligarchy of half a dozen agro-chemical companies,\r\nled by Monsanto’s monopoly on major crop seeds in the U.S.,\r\nis also a force for climate destabilization, through the destruction of forests for crop lands,\r\nthrough\r\nthe production and burning of corn ethanol instead of switching\r\nto renewable solar and wind energy,\r\nand through the subsidization of corn to feed to animals\r\nin CAFOs that, because they evolved to eat grass, not corn,\r\nthen excrete massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas\r\n20 times worse than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.\r\n

\r\nCarl Sagan, in his last interview, said:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it’s a way of thinking.\r\nA way of sceptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding\r\nof human fallibility.\r\nIf we are not able to ask sceptical questions; to interrogate those who\r\ntell us that something is true; to be sceptical of those in authority,\r\nthen we are up for grabs,\r\nfor the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nDr. Tyson: stop falling for the GMO oligarchy charlatans.\r\n\r\nYou are an authority figure for science to the public.\r\nLike your mentor and Cosmos predecessor Carl Sagan,\r\nyou have a responsibility to listen to sceptical questions\r\nand actually investigate, rather helping Monsanto misuse\r\nthe authority of science for its own profit\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nwhile damaging the public and this blue dot of an Earth.\r\n

\r\nMaybe Tyson would like to sign this petition to\r\n\r\nCharge Monsanto with Crimes Against Humanity<\/a>.\r\nIf he won’t, you can.\r\n

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