Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

Moreover, after thirty years of research, a great many of our GE fears have been quieted. Health concerns appear to be a nonstarter. More than a trillion GE meals have been served, and not a single case of GE-induced illness has turned up. Ecological devastation was another worry, but, overall, GE appears to be good for the environment. The seeds don’t require plowing, so soil structure remains intact. This halts erosion, improves carbon sequestration and water filtration, and massively reduces the amount of petrochemical inputs needed to grow our food. Herbicide use is also down, while yield increases are up. “[W]hen farmers in India adopted Bt cotton in 2002,” writes Stewart Brand in the Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, “the nation went from a cotton importer to an exporter, from 17 million bales to 27 million bales. What was the social cost of that? The main event was that Bt cotton increased yields by 50 percent and decreased pesticide use by 50 percent, and the Indian grower’s total income went from $540 million to $1.7 billion.”