Category: Environmental Impacts

  • Food Made from Scratch By Eric Hoffman

    Reposted from GENEWATCH March 29, 2013″ “Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. …We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature.”   – J. Craig Venter1 A (very) short history of agriculture For ten thousand years humans have been manipulating plants for food production. This began at a very basic level, […]

  • WATCH: When Green Tech Isn’t Clean Tech,  ETC Group’s technology watchdog Jim Thomas and Fibershed Founder Rebecca Burgess in Dialog with Gopal Dayeneni

    WATCH: When Green Tech Isn’t Clean Tech, ETC Group’s technology watchdog Jim Thomas and Fibershed Founder Rebecca Burgess in Dialog with Gopal Dayeneni

    Watch an archived broadcast of East Bay Conversations: When Green Tech Isn’t Clean Tech (3/21/2013) Synthetic biology includes creating novel life forms using DNA not found in nature, promising “green” fuel, cosmetics, cures, and more. Geoengineering promises techno fixes for climate change, including limiting sunlight and removing CO2 from the air. ETC Group’s technology watchdog Jim Thomas and Fibershed Founder Rebecca Burgess tell us what we’re not hearing from promoters about these “false solutions” — their land grabs, environmental and safety risks, and threats to “real green” technology solutions.

  • University of California Joins Monsanto in Fight Against Farmer

    by Jeff Conant, for synbiowatch Last week, the Supreme Court heard testimonies in the Bowman vs. Monsanto case, wherein the agribusiness giant is fighting an appeal by farmer Vernon Bowman, who the company claims infringed its patent rights by replanting seeds he purchased beyond the bounds of the company’s licensing agreement. The farmer’s claim is […]

  • Video: The Bay Area Bio Lab & Synthetic Biology, False Solutions

    Video: The Bay Area Bio Lab & Synthetic Biology, False Solutions

    A Risky Development: The University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the US Department of Energy have unveiled plans to build a high profile biotech laboratory in the East Bay. The lab and associated commercial activity will focus on developing biofuels and other products using synthetic biology: an extreme form of genetic engineering that […]