[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Sumeragi

Genetic modification is actually even harder than plant breeding, with the large amount of possible things to go wrong given we still do not have the complete information of how different genetics work. Basically, GMO is about as safe as regular breeding, taking both the best and worst cases together.

If we're talking about the here and now, you're right. We still don't have a full understanding of genetic modification, and so a lot of what we do is just trial and error.

However, I have high hopes that in the future we'll have a good enough understanding of Genetics that genetic modification will be no more difficult then computer programming. That's a really long way away though.

Originally Posted by Ledgem

That's the beauty of it, but also the problem. It is only when we're united that we can accomplish some really amazing feats. Otherwise you have various groups expending energy fighting one another, either for resources or to outright stop what they're doing. "Progress" means different things to different people, and I suspect that this desire to unite everyone is partly why people get so worked up and argue with one another, trying to change people's minds yet stubbornly clinging to their own ideas.

I don't see why we need to be absolutely united. I think it's fine so long as we aren't lobbing bombs at each other. In terms of efficiency, I think we're a lot more efficient then any previous civilization in human history, but we're still no where near as being efficient as we could be. But I think we're getting there.

Why?

Being efficient saves money!

Are we really good enough to manage ourselves? Almost everything about our current society is based around an expectation of growth and unlimited resources. The resources aren't unlimited. Many fisheries are becoming exhausted, and oceanic life diversity is decreasing. "Easy access" oil supplies have been exhausted, and now we're forced to go on to the more difficult ones. Climate change is occurring, and we're not adjusting because people are hung up over whether Man or nature is to blame. Deforestation has been occurring at an alarming rate.

Is this sustainable? I don't think so.

If we mismanage ourselves, that's our own fault. It means we have to deal with our own problems. The minute we give up our self determination, we're giving up our own responsibility as well, we basically become adult children. Now with our current state of things some of us will be irresponsible, and other won't be. That's just the way of the world.

It's not that we don't have options, though. We could change our energy sources, and we could more efficiently manage our natural resources (fisheries, forests, etc.). Yet these things cost money and take effort. It's the "smart" thing to do, something that will likely be deemed critical as time goes on, yet it seems to get the absolute lowest priority that society could give it. There are even some people who are against such initiatives.

It seems to be a problem of short-sightedness. It isn't a pressing problem today, and it may not even be a pressing problem in your lifetime. So, why should you care? That sort of attitude - the here-and-now, all-about-me thinking - is rather befitting of being termed "dumb monkeys willfully destroying everything." We may be building some impressive things, but if we're crapping up our fish tank to the point that we'll ruin ourselves and everything that we've built, how smart is that?

Your worries are not without merit, but I also think you're being unrealistically pessimistic about it. I've spent a lot of time being educated in the world of Engineering, and almost every Engineer I've ever met is well aware of our limited resources, and everyone's very keen on doing what we can to solve these problems. But we're also aware (as environmentalists often are not) that there aren't any easy solutions. Engineers are always thinking in the long term. If our society was so concerned with only short term stuff, how come most bridges are still standing long after they were built? It's because Engineers did their best to design them to last. And when Engineers design products they design them to last as long as necessary. They could design them to last longer, but that might cause waste of another kind. For instance, if you want a particular metal part to last a long time it's going to need to be larger, and hence heavier. That's not very good if you want to design an aircraft or car and you need it to be as light as possible in order to be fuel efficient. So you need to design them instead to last a specific amount of time, and then have the part be replaced at specific intervals.

We are becoming more sustainable (we have a lot more wind turbines today then just 5 years ago, just drive through the countryside, I don't know about in the US, but in Ireland they're now everywhere), but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in the day, and neither can a new sustainable energy infrastructure. We'll also need to make hard choices that the public may not like. For instance, if you want to absolutely replace fossil fuels, the only real alternative is Nuclear...

But you don't often hear guys like Peter Joseph talk about these hard choices, he thinks that if we sign on to some kind of radical new thinking and purge ourselves of greed we can get rid of all these problems, frankly he's wrong, these issues are not rooted in human greed, they're rooted in more mundane problems. Unfortunately you don't hear politicians do much either. I think we in the Science and Technology community need to do more to engage with and educate the wider public about the issues involved if we want to see real change.