Greetings Economists, On Apr 26, 2008, at 2:23 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
I'd also guess that introducing non-native species (which have survived in one area) into another, similar, area is more likely to be damaging.
Ecological systems approach to genetic engineering differs from the current business model to modify cash crops or animals. In an ecological system various animals and plants are in relation to each other in using resources in common. Not in the sense of calculated balance, but long term multi community interactions. A niche is occupied in the system that circulates the life pattern. Circulation of species is part of the process in which we don't know what is happening because much of the scale of time is not in our methods of activity. Introduction of cane toads happens by accident as well as design. One can't say this is bad except in the framework of a large global system functioning.
Aside from the shear use of matter to live on, all these things produce information, i.e. genetic information. Which relates all the system to each other. I would assume this ecological system is more than agriculture. It is a sense of the total life engine regulated by a variety of global and local factors. So for example some birds can go across continents, but most plants and animals have much smaller geographic ranges. So information processing would build a sense of the relations by blanketing landscapes with cheap sensors, and assessing large scale balancing humans can regulate or participate in.
If one sees this as out of reach, global warming is an aspect of taking responsibility for a global system.
I don't think we can see everything chained to human success. Partly because what humans are now will certainly change as we better know human body science. But that a whole system seems to me to demand more of a planet than human centered activity can encompass. To put in perspective does human activity span decades or millions of years? Are our plans up to the challenge of systemic survival?
thanks, Doyle Saylor _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
