Re: SOC/BIO: Rifkin's "worldwide moratorium"

From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Wed Aug 02 2000 - 13:31:44 MDT


From: CurtAdams@aol.com

>Not at all; in the wild monarch caterpillars will eat nothing but
>milkweed. They don't eat corn at all, of any type. In any case,
>insects have so far proved resistant to elimination by poisoning;
>we've yet to exterminate one species with pesticides. And, god
>knows, we've tried.

Yes, as I pointed out already adult Monarchs only consume nectar,
so it is the adults who are affected by this GM corn. I wasn't
aware corn was a good source for nectar, but apparently it is.
Maybe Bonnie our resident green thumb can enlighten us.

>If every plant in the world were a cultivated one, monarchs (and
>many, many, other things) would go extinct. This is why improving
>the efficiency of our crop production is so important. Better
>corn yields result in more of the Great Plains being returned to
>the "natural" state.

Actually we don't know this for a fact, that's part of the problem.
We do know things like not having vast herds of buffalo turned the
california condor into a lab animal.

Brian

Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Adler Planetarium www.adlerplanetarium.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Mars Society, www.marssociety.org
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:30:17 MST