Which is better for the
environment, hybrid corn (with biotech traits) or hybrid cars? Which is most
easily adaptable and consumable on a scale large enough to have any meaningful
impact on the environment? Which can be achieved most easily through social
cooperation vs. manipulation and coercion?
I’ll answer these questions and more below.
According to research from PG
Economics, in 2009 alone, greenhouse gas reductions associated with
biotechnology were equivalent to removing 7.8 million cars from the
road. I like to contrast this with the stats related to the much beloved hybrid
car. Worldwide there have been only about 1.6 million hybrid cars sold
as of 2009. As far as cars on the road, the US and Japan have about 600,000.
And, I understand that the Obama Administration is calling for 1
million plug in hybrids on the highway by 2015.
So with hybrids we are
talking a few million cars at most, that are still on the road,
and still one way or another require electricity, coal, or gasoline,
which still creates pollution. And there is all of this hype and
interest in government setting mandates or creating subsidies to coerce consumers
into buying hybrids.
Of course, if we all drove
hybrids the impact might dwarf the 7.8 million figure above, but we would still
have to net out the effects of driving hybrids. It would take more than
7.8 million hybrids to match the green impact of biotech! And it might
take a lot of coercion and incentivization by government. We don't have to make a huge change in our lifestyle to consume biotech foods!
That's not counting the
positive impact of biotech and pharmaceutical technologies in beef and dairy production.
" the carbon footprint for a gallon of
milk produced in 2007 was only 37 percent of that produced in 1944. Improved
efficiency has enabled the U.S. dairy industry to produce 186 billion pounds of
milk from 9.2 million cows in 2007, compared to only 117 billion pounds of milk
from 25.6 million cows in 1944. This has resulted in a 41 percent decrease in
the total carbon footprint for U.S. milk production."
And
“Grain feeding combined with growth
promotants also results in a nearly 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gases
(GHGs) per pound of beef compared to grass feeding (excluding nitrous oxides),
with growth promotants accounting for fully 25 percent of the emissions
reductions”
References:
GM crops: global socio-economicand environmental impacts 1996-2009. Brookes and Barfoot.
The Environmental Safety and Benefits of Growth Enhancing
Pharmaceutical Technologies in Beef Production. By Alex Avery and Dennis
Avery, Hudson Institute, Centre for Global Food Issues.
Organic, Natural and Grass-Fed Beef: Profitability and constraints to Production in the Midwestern U.S. Nicolas Acevedo John D. Lawrence Margaret Smith August, 2006. Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture)
The environmental impact of dairy production: 1944
compared with 2007. Journal of Animal Science,Capper, J. L., Cady, R. A.,
Bauman, D. E. 2009; 87 (6): 2160 DOI: 10.2527/jas.2009-1781
