The PBS Newshour again reported on the fight over Kauai’s GMO legislation on Monday (“GMO seeds grow into big fight on Kauai“). It’s another round of high profile exposure for the significant local resistance to the GMO corporations.
The report was a replay of a report that originally aired in October, but added an update on the Kauai mayor’s veto and the council’s veto override.
The link above includes both the video package that was broadcast and a transcript of the segment.
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It wasn’t so long ago that everyone was getting excited about ‘biotech’ in Hawaii, about mouse cloning and glow-in-the-dark mice, etc. Didn’t the state spend hundreds of millions of dollars building biotech facilities in Manoa and on prime ocean-front property in Kakaako (which seems an unusual place for that).
But was that really realistic? How many jobs would be created with biotech? Hundreds of thousands of jobs for locals, just like with tourism? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? No jobs?
(And isn’t secret military research similar in its fruitlessness? The main point of subsidizing natural science research is for commercial application. The UH has always held up U of Wisconsin at Madison as a model; the gel cap was invented there, supposedly bringing in royalties of over $1 billion to Wisconsin. But secret research cannot be patented or discussed, so it doesn’t help local businesses. So the only jobs created by secret military research are temporary construction jobs, and jobs for maintenance workers. But does even open research benefit Hawaii? In Silicon Valley, engineers keep an eye on what is being developed at UC Berkeley and Stanford. In Hawaii, this is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.)
But another word for biotech is ‘GMO’. And it seems like suddenly everyone is panicking over genetically altered papayas. But how realistic is that panic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSNMvxVNJXA
Similarly, on Kauai, the utility wants to switch to smart meters, which transmit data wirelessly like a cell phone, in order to measure and coordinate household energy consumption and production. Some folks are afraid of this, but their fears seem irrational.
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/05/09/15792-new-electric-meters-spark-privacy-health-fears/
One of the community leaders on Kauai opposed to smart meters was asked by a scientist for the scientific basis of his claims.
His response was to quote the Bible.
Pinocchio reminds me, when you are shopping at Walmart in China, don’t buy the donkey meat.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303870704579295570378526270?mod=trending_now_10