When Ideas Have Sex

In his 1776 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith identified the cause in a single variable: “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Today we call this free trade or market capitalism, and since the recession it has become de rigueur to dis the system as corrupt, rotten or deeply flawed.

If we pull back and take a long-horizon perspective, however, the free exchange between people of goods, services and especially ideas leads to trust between strangers and prosperity for more people. Think of it as ideas having sex. That is what zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley calls it in his book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (HarperCollins, 2010). Ridley is optimistic that “the world will pull out of the current crisis because of the way that markets in goods, services and ideas allow human beings to exchange and specialize honestly for the betterment of all.”

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Short-Chain Chlorinated Paraffins Draw EPA Scrutiny–After 70 Years

An obscure family of chemicals – important to the metalworking industry but virtually unknown to the public – is suddenly the subject of scrutiny from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. [More]

Troubled Waters: U.S. Sets Up Task force to Tackle Ocean Overfishing and Pollution

Dear EarthTalk: Oceans are in big trouble and I understand President Obama is creating a high-level ocean council to address them. What are the major issues? –Steve Sullivan, Bothell, Wash.

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How Long Will the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Last?

More than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez foundered off the coast of Alaska, puddles of oil can still be found in Prince William Sound. Nearly 25 years after a storage tank ruptured, spilling oil into the mangrove swamps and coral reefs of Bahia Las Minas in Panama , oil slicks can still be found on the water. And more than 40 years after the barge Florida grounded off Cape Cod, dumping fuel oil, the muck beneath the marsh grasses still smells like a gas station. [More]

Exxon Valdez – Alaska – Prince William Sound – Oil spill – Gulf of Mexico

A Spin on Efficiency: Generating Tomorrow’s Electricity from Better Turbines

At the spinning heart of the modern electric grid lies what used to be called the dynamo–a generator composed of stacks of copper rotating in an electromagnetic field. But it’s a turbine that spins the dynamo–and efforts to squeeze more efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution from a smart grid may rest on improving this core technology. [More]

E.U. orders Finland to protect critically endangered seals

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Breeding Cassava to Feed the Poor (preview)

The diet of more than 800 million people revolves around neither wheat, nor corn, nor rice. Instead in many countries the main staple consists of the starchy roots of a plant variously called cassava, tapioca, manioc or yuca (not to be confused with the succulent plant yucca). Indeed, cassava contributes more to the world’s calorie budget than any other food except rice and wheat, which makes it a virtually irreplaceable resource against hunger. Throughout the tropics, families typically cultivate it for their own consumption on small parcels of land, although in Asia and in parts of Latin America the plant is also grown commercially for use in animal feed and starch-based products. The root’s nutritional value, however, is poor: it contains little protein, vitamins or other nutrients such as iron. Better varieties of cassava could thus effectively alleviate malnutrition in much of the developing world.

Because of that promise, the two of us and our colleagues at the University of Brasilia and others are devoted to creating hardier, more productive and more nutritious varieties and making them widely available to farmers in developing countries. Our team focuses largely on applying traditional breeding techniques to form hybrids between cassava and its wild relatives, taking advantage of traits that have evolved in the wild plants over millions of years. This approach is less costly than genetic engineering and does not raise the safety concerns that make some people wary of genetically modified crops. Meanwhile researchers and nonprofit organizations in the developed world have begun to take an interest and have produced genetically modified cassava varieties for the same purposes. The recent completion of a draft genome sequencing of cassava may open the way to further improvements.

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