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<\/a>\r\nRisk management or mitigation may work for localized harm,\r\nbut GMOs risk widespread systemic damage, which is ruin, and to prevent that\r\nthe precautionary principal is needed:\r\n\r\n\r\nif an action or policy has a suspected risk\r\nof causing severe harm to the public domain (such as\r\ngeneral health or the environment), and in the absence\r\nof scientific near-certainty about the safety of the action,\r\nthe burden of proof about absence of harm falls on those\r\nproposing the action.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nA paper by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and co-authors lays out\r\n\r\n a formal\r\nstatisticial and risk-analyis theory of what is sufficient risk of ruin\r\nto apply the precautionary principle, using GMOs as their prime example.\r\n
\r\n\r\nIn contrast to nuclear energy (which, as discussed in section 10.1\r\nabove, may or may not fall under the PP, depending on how and where\r\n(how widely) it is implemented), Genetically Modified Organisms,\r\nGMOs, fall squarely under the PP because of their systemic risk. The\r\n\r\nunderstanding of the risks is very limited and the scope of the\r\nimpacts are global both due to engineering approach replacing an\r\nevolutionary approach, and due to the use of monoculture.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nIf you don’t know the risk of ruin of monoculture,\r\nread up on the boll weevil, for example in this 2003 USDA writeup:\r\n\r\nWe Don’t Cotton to Boll Weevil ‘Round Here Anymore<\/a>,\r\n
\r\n\r\nThe year before boll weevils marched into Georgia in 1915, the state\r\nproduced 2.8 million bales of cotton. Less than 10 years later,\r\nGeorgia’s annual cotton production had fallen to 600,000 bales. By\r\n1983, Georgia cotton production was down to 112,000 bales harvested\r\nfrom 115,000 acres.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nFarther west, cotton monoculture and the weevil led to the dust bowl\r\nand sped on the Great Depression.\r\n
\r\nUnfortunately, eventual eradication of the boll weevil opened\r\nfields for Monsanto’s GMO cotton seeds, which are another monoculture,\r\nalready breeding disaster in mutant glyphosate-resistant weeds such\r\nas pigweed.\r\n
\r\nTaleb’s paper continues:\r\n
\r\n\r\nLabeling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very\r\npoor—indeed warped—understanding of probabilistic\r\npayoffs and risk management. A lack of observations of explicit harm\r\ndoes not show absence of hidden risks. Current models of complex\r\nsystems only contain the subset of reality that is accessible to the\r\nscientist. Nature is much richer than any model of it. To expose an\r\nentire system to something whose potential harm is not understood\r\nbecause extant models do not predict a negative outcome is not\r\njustifiable; the relevant variables may not have been adequately\r\nidentified.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nThis is the same point made in Cosmos Episode 11 that\r\n\r\nNeil deGrasse Tyson read but apparently didn’t understand<\/a>,\r\nof short-term profit misusing technical know-how beyond understanding of nature.\r\n
\r\nBack to the Taleb paper:\r\n
\r\n\r\nGiven the limited oversight that is taking place on GMO\r\nintroductions in the US, and the global impact of those\r\nintroductions, we are precisely in the regime of the ruin problem. A\r\nrational consumer should say: We do not wish to pay—or have\r\nour descendants pay— for errors made by executives of\r\nMonsanto, who are financially incentivized to focus on quarterly\r\nprofits rather than long term global impacts. We should exert the\r\nprecautionary principle—our non-naive version— simply\r\nbecause we otherwise will discover errors with large impacts only\r\nafter considerable damage.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nLarge effects such as irrigation-residue salt poisoning ancient Mesopotamian\r\nagriculture, as mentioned in\r\n\r\nthat Cosmos episode<\/a>.\r\nOr the global effects of lead poisoning from leaded gasoline\r\ndescribed in\r\n\r\nCosmos Episode 7<\/a>.\r\n