Re: the Gaia Revenge hypothesis

To: Retort
From: IC
File under: quirky corn

[Ignacio, our mycologist currently in Tromso, Norway, responds to Lovelock. IB]

Without having read the entire Lovelock interview, a quick note on Quorn:

Lovelock is wrong - again - in making people believe that Quorn is
synthetic food.  It is not.  Quorn wanted to be the Soylent Green of
the 80s, and was sold to us in mycology as another "inevitable
technology": the "synthetic" food for the masses.  The thing is as
synthetic as beer inasmuch as it is produced in a vat, a fermentor
where the fungus Fusarium venenatum grows using glucose derived from
the world's glut of corn.  Expensively, in both financial as well as
ecological terms.  No corn, no synthesis; no fungus, no synthesis -
not exactly the image of white-coat-engineered synthesis to which
Lovelock would like us to surrender.  But these are days when our
techno-leaders also desperately need us to believe against all reason
that we can fly A380 Airbuses not only on beer, but on its distillate
spirits, so why not have in-flight meals from the same pipe-dream?

People in Mesoamerica have had for thousands of years many much better
- and more enjoyable - ways of obtaining, out of corn, protein-rich
foodstuffs that are much less toxic than Quorn, for example, the
fermented 'pozol' which you can buy in Oaxacan markets.

F venenatum was as mysterious a choice for this product as it would be
deciding to start producing burgers from processed ants (a good source
of protein, too, but like quorn full of other things that need to be
cleared before humans can eat it). It is a close relative of
soil-inhabiting plant pathogens. Quorn continues to exist as a marginal
quirk in supermarket freezers only thanks to Lord Sainsbury, who
decided to bankroll it.

Chewing on salted reindeer I will keep an eye out for the lucky
breeding pair of Arctic survivors.  Lovelock must be right on that
count, if I am any judge of the breeding frenzy going on here in
Northern Norway.

Ignacio


On 3/8/08, Retort <retort0> wrote:
> To: Retort
> From: RP
>
> Vis-a-vis the Lovelockian hypothesis, Robert Proctor, our historian of
> tobacco, notes a sombre fact:
>
> Of course even if the climate doesn't change, "billions will die this
> century": probably about two billion, with about half of these from
> smoking.  That's if everything goes well, climate change excluded.
>
> Robert
>
>
> To: Retort
> Via: EY
> File under: Eco-paralysis
>
> [An interview with James 'Gaia' Lovelock, who believes that billions
> will die this century, with a "few breeding pairs" left near the
> Arctic. We must expect plenty more of this kind of thing; it's the
> other face of Gore-style moralizing. IB]
>
> 'Enjoy life while you can'
> Decca Aitkenhead
> March 1 2008
>
> .....
> Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing
> can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or
> sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics.
> Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland
> Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to
> start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The
> sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by
> going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from
> less technology, but more.
> ...
> Nuclear power, he argues, can solve our energy problem - the bigger
> challenge will be food. "Maybe they'll synthesise food. I don't know.
> Synthesising food is not some mad visionary idea; you can buy it in
> Tesco's, in the form of Quorn. It's not that good, but people buy it.
> You can live on it." But he fears we won't invent the necessary
> technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population
> to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon
> since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."