Which do you love more, organic food or green energy? Because you may have to choose.
Oregon is the site of a conflict between food and energy, though it is a state that claims it loves both - but the people who love each primarily do so because it makes them money. You really can't love both anyway, because environmental activists are in a never-ending war against the bulk of society and its bad habits, and also in a war with each other. They not only love Gaia more than you do, they love Gaia more than other environmentalists.
Willamette Valley, which surrounds the Willamette River just east of the Coast Range and extends from south of Eugene to north of Salem, is a nice area to grow lots of crops, including those vegetables known as brassicas, like cabbage and cauliflower and other foods I won't touch. Organic stuff, of course, because it's Oregon, which is culturally like California, just with fewer people.
Like California, the conversation about right and wrong is dominated by social authoritarians. They love to ban stuff. California, which used to be the home of freedom and independence, leads America in banning things now but Oregon is not far behind. One thing they ban is a particular brassica, canola.
Yet green energy proponents would like for canola not to be banned. In watching that discussion you get to witness the dirty underbelly of both kooky anti-science activism and organic food. Organic cabbage growers say canola brings pests and that it will cross-pollinate with their absolutely pure plants that have apparently been untouched by outside forces for millenia. They invoke, of course, genetic modification as the creepy monster hiding under the organic bed. "This is an existential threat," farmer Frank Morton, told the Jonathan Cooper of the Associated Press. "If canola comes here, it's the beginning of the end of this industry."
Ummm, why again? Right now, wheat farmers have to burn their fields to interrupt pest and disease cycles. Doesn't that cause global warming? Sure it does and therefore burning is...wait for it, wait for it...banned. Planting canola as an alternate crop would accomplish the same result - naturally - and also provide more green energy.
Bureaucrats in Oregon agree, since the only other solution to curbing pests is evil pesticides but wealthy organic farmers, who, like rich progressives on the coast that see a proposal for windmills in the water and get a case of NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard), are against canola. Green energy is great but it should be where poor people are, not where it works best, because it might interfere with yachting and the view.
Organic cabbage growers have one more argument they invoke as often as possible - every other farmer is dumb. Basically, they believe wheat and rapeseed growers who also want canola are too stupid to control the stuff they produce. Why isn't the entire area overrun with wild organic cabbage if these seeds spread so easily and take over entire regions? Are organic plants just not robust enough to spread like wildfire the way activists think GMO canola will?
That sounds like evolution at work.
Oregon is the site of a conflict between food and energy, though it is a state that claims it loves both - but the people who love each primarily do so because it makes them money. You really can't love both anyway, because environmental activists are in a never-ending war against the bulk of society and its bad habits, and also in a war with each other. They not only love Gaia more than you do, they love Gaia more than other environmentalists.
Willamette Valley, which surrounds the Willamette River just east of the Coast Range and extends from south of Eugene to north of Salem, is a nice area to grow lots of crops, including those vegetables known as brassicas, like cabbage and cauliflower and other foods I won't touch. Organic stuff, of course, because it's Oregon, which is culturally like California, just with fewer people.
Like California, the conversation about right and wrong is dominated by social authoritarians. They love to ban stuff. California, which used to be the home of freedom and independence, leads America in banning things now but Oregon is not far behind. One thing they ban is a particular brassica, canola.
Yet green energy proponents would like for canola not to be banned. In watching that discussion you get to witness the dirty underbelly of both kooky anti-science activism and organic food. Organic cabbage growers say canola brings pests and that it will cross-pollinate with their absolutely pure plants that have apparently been untouched by outside forces for millenia. They invoke, of course, genetic modification as the creepy monster hiding under the organic bed. "This is an existential threat," farmer Frank Morton, told the Jonathan Cooper of the Associated Press. "If canola comes here, it's the beginning of the end of this industry."
Ummm, why again? Right now, wheat farmers have to burn their fields to interrupt pest and disease cycles. Doesn't that cause global warming? Sure it does and therefore burning is...wait for it, wait for it...banned. Planting canola as an alternate crop would accomplish the same result - naturally - and also provide more green energy.
Bureaucrats in Oregon agree, since the only other solution to curbing pests is evil pesticides but wealthy organic farmers, who, like rich progressives on the coast that see a proposal for windmills in the water and get a case of NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard), are against canola. Green energy is great but it should be where poor people are, not where it works best, because it might interfere with yachting and the view.
Organic cabbage growers have one more argument they invoke as often as possible - every other farmer is dumb. Basically, they believe wheat and rapeseed growers who also want canola are too stupid to control the stuff they produce. Why isn't the entire area overrun with wild organic cabbage if these seeds spread so easily and take over entire regions? Are organic plants just not robust enough to spread like wildfire the way activists think GMO canola will?
That sounds like evolution at work.
"Canola, by contrast, is uncommon in Oregon, where farmers planted just 6,500 acres of it this year, most of it in Eastern Oregon, across a mountain range from the brassica seed fields.
Seed farmers here describe the expansion of canola as a Pandora's Box that, once opened, will destroy their industry.
Wind can carry pollen up to five miles. Seed farmers worry that genetically modified canola plants will pollinate with organic brassicas, producing seeds with no value. They're especially concerned that canola would become a weed that takes root far and wide, producing pollen even inside the canola-free zone."
Note "seed farmers", "...pollen up to five miles" and "canola is rare in Eastern Oregon". Dismissing their concerns with the trite "...have apparently been untouched by outside forces for millenia" disregards the substance of the problem. The existing farmers are growing genetically pure seeds. Wait, here's the quote "Specialty seed farmers grow vegetables not for the food but for their seeds. They're shipped to farmers around the world, especially in Asia and Europe where there's higher demand for foods that aren't genetically modified. This region produces nearly all of the world's European cabbage, Brussels sprouts, rutabaga and turnip seeds, according to a 2010 study by Oregon State University."
This is an economic struggle. Established GM-free seed farmers want to protect their stock from cross-pollination which will destroy the economic value of their crop. Europeans (anti-science kooks?) prefer the non-GMO seed stock and are willing to pay Oregon farmers for that. Other farmers want to raise rapeseed in the same area because conditions are physically good for that crop. Portraying the dispute as a conclave of anti-science environmentalist kooks is quite dramatic.
Pity the facts are glossed over - exactly like the anti-science kooks do - to make an emotional point.