A few days ago we posted news about interesting developments in science, holding promise for non-fossil fuels and other climate related issues. There was one eye-catching word that we worried about: bio-engineering, particularly when self-reproduction of bio-engineered organisms was involved. Others share our concern: Andrew Paul Gutierrez, a 67-year-old professor of ecosystems science in UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources.
[In an] interview with The [S.F.] Chronicle, he returned again and again to the theme that natural systems are all about limits. Modern human systems, on the other hand, are all about consumption. So there’s a battle.
Gutierrez does not bet on technology to win the battle. He says biological systems will strain to reach equilibrium and frustrate the cleverest of the cornucopians trying to adjust them to benefit humans’ insatiable consumption.
“What do you know about all the pest problems that are going to be created when you start producing these plants that are going to be different?” he asked. “Pretty soon you start making a system that starts out with good intentions but becomes more complicated.
“That’s what happened with bioengineered crops. In some areas it simplifies the system. But in others it makes it so complicated.”
The biofuels push has been compared with putting a man on the moon. Gutierrez doesn’t see the connection.
“As a scientific adventure and quest of man and all that good stuff, it’s wonderful,” he said, “and I recall exactly where I was when they stepped off onto the moon. This is different. We’re messing with the whole environment.”
The vision of rolling Midwestern fields of bioengineered fuel crops is, Gutierrez thinks, “nonsense.”
He thinks of south-central Brazil, with its sugar-cane plantations in place of what had been a mix of forests and diverse croplands. The cane is harvested to make ethanol, a substitute for fossil fuels in transportation. “It’s sugar cane as far as the eye can see,” he said. “The rivers run red with the runoff.”
Today’s follow up article, but Rick DelVechhio of the Chronicle, recounts a raucous UC Faculty meeting about the proposed British Petroleum — UC consortium, and the potential effect on research independence.