How the UN's anti-biotech policies worsen global warming
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Henry I. Miller is a physician and molecular biologist, and was at the FDA from 1979 to 1994, where he served in a number of posts. Since 1994, he has been a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where his research focuses on the relationship between science and regulation and the costs and benefits of government regulation. He is the author of six books and many articles in scholarly and popular publications. His most recent book, The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (co-authored with Gregory Conko), was selected by Barron’s as one the 25 Best Books of 2004.
Abstract Numerous United Nations policies and programmes inhibit the development and use of important tools that could help both to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to conserve water, especially in poorer regions of the world. A prime example is the UN’s unscientific, anti-innovative approach to regulating recombinant DNA-modified (or gene-spliced, or ‘genetically modified (GM)’) plants that could both lessen agriculture’s ‘carbon footprint’ and help farmers adapt to droughts and water shortages (a predicted outcome of warming). Like much of what transpires within UN agencies and programmes, the regulation of GM organisms and food derived from them defies scientific consensus and common sense. The result is vastly inflated research and development costs, less innovation, and diminished exploitation of superior techniques and products that could promote adaptation to environmental and public health challenges.
Journal of Commercial Biotechnology (2008) 14, 17–19. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jcb.3050072 Keywords: GM, genetic modification, recombinant DNA technology, United Nations, regulation, global warming
Catastrophes are not democratic. When the Titanic sank, a disproportionate number of passengers lost were from the decks below the waterline, the cheaper accommodations. And according to an apocalyptic report from the United Nations, the same phenomenon will occur as global temperatures continue to rise: Food and water shortages, fires and floods,
Correspondence: Henry I. Miller, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010, USA Tel: + 1 650 725 0185 Fax: + 1 650 723 0576 E-mail: [email protected]
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and the extinction of millions of species will affect most the poorest regions of the world. The key to coping with the inexorable increase in temperatures is resilience – the ability to recover from or adapt to adversity – rather than focusing primarily on mitigation or prevention. Significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions will be too expensive, too little and too late. Reductions in the burning of fossil fuels sufficient to have even a modest impact would stifle economic growth and plunge the world into chaos. As MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen has said, ‘The alleged solutions have more
JO U RNA L O F C O M M E RC I A L B I OTE C H NO L O G Y. VOL 14. NO 1. 17–19 JANUARY 2008
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