Re: lawns?
Charles Dills wrote:
>
> Nothing like throwing a amtch into a dynamite warehouse!!!
Dear Charles
I will try to disagree with you on a few points, in the light of your
tailpiece' without being disagreeable !!
I also have a scientific background, but in botany, agriculture and
horticulture, rather than in chemistry.
>
> Lawns, a problem. I agree with most of what I've heard. But I'm a
> little concerned with people who will knowingly join an association with
> published rules and then decide for themselves that they don't want those
> rules. Why did they join?
I certainly agree.
>
>
> But when you get right down to the nub of it, these are very small
> problems. There is only one real problem in the world and it causes all
> the rest. Population. I don't know any acceptable way to change it
> other than education and that may not be fast enough! Why do we have a
> problem with water? People! Why do we have a problem with food?
> People Why do we have to invade pristine areas with "civilization"?
> People. Why do we have air, ocean, land, grond water pollution? People.
Unfortunately, it is not just the simple problem of too many of us, but
is compounded by the greed and manipulation of big business, which
prevents a reasonably equitable distribution of resources and, in the
person of the World Bank and similar organizations, so loads up the
Third World with unfair debt that the Governments there are unable to
use even the resources they have for the good of their own populations.
In all probability there IS enough food and the resources to provide
such amenities as proper water supplies for the present population of
the World if they were to be fairly distributed.
>
> I'm a chemist. When you rail against chemicals you forget what
> things were like without them. Do you really yearn for the times when small
> pox could nearly wipe out a small town?
This example of yours is not really a good one, as smallpox was
eradicated by a vaccine and not a chemical remedy but I do get your
general point that we owe a good deal to modern scientific knowledge and
we would have been much less comfortable in the dark ages (or even the
last century, for that matter).
HOWEVER I am one of those who feel that on the whole chemical remedies
are in the nature of Band Aids and the real breakthrough has been in the
biological field in elucidating the actual workings of the body, leading
to more basic "fixes" like properly balanced diets, clean air and water
etc etc.
While a large part of this successful research has been biological, your
discipline has undoubtedly played an important part in it by elucidating
the chemical basis of the mechanisms and products which keep living
things running. One of the big breakthroughs for instance would be the
discovery of vitamins and the way they act to protect the body and
service its various systems. Another valuable contribution has been in
the realm of hormones. I have reason myself to be thankful for this
aspect, as I have an inefficient thyroid gland and have depended on a
thyroxin supplement for my good health and vigour for the last fifty
years.
Moreover, so many of the chemicals invented in modern times have
extremely bad for the environment and cause malaises both in the general
ecosystem and in ourselves. I think there is no doubt that many of the
modern problems with allergies, birth defects and varous cancers can be
directly traced to the pollution of our environment by a variety of
agricultural and industrial chemicals which because they do not occur in
nature are difficult or impossible for nature to deal with.
Living things have developed a variety of strategies to deal with the
built-in hazards of the natural world, but there has been such a giant
flow of new chemicals into the world over the last 50 years or so that
no living system can adapt fast enough to cope.
Do you you really yearn for the
> times when a man had to use three wives to get the twelve children he
> needed to run the farm? Several of these children wouldn't make it.
Well actually, things are still not much better than this in some part
of the world. I support a Mission in a part of South India which is
really about at rock-bottom and had a letter only this morning
mentioning a particular family which has already had five children die
and is desperately hoping to raise the current baby beyond the toddler
stage. I am afraid chemical aids are not for them, they scarcely have
the money or resources to get a bit of seed when the monsoons come. Many
people in the area in fact may have parts of the year when they get only
three or four meals a WEEK. It is little wonder that children die.
I think it can be very misleading to think of world progress in terms of
a very advanced and successful area like the USA. In fact, did you
realize that in the view of many countries, the USA takes far more than
its fair share of the World's resources and can be indirectly considered
responsible for quite a lot of the worst problems of the Third World.
How much food would be on your table if there wasn't the pest and
disease
> discouragement that chemicals bring? Is this good? I don't know. But I do
> know we have gotten ourselves out on a limb that is going to be difficult
> to back off of.
Well, I belong to the organic movement and regularly put food on MY
table using almost no chemicals at all, but working with the environment
to achieve a pest/predator balance and keep my soil in high health so
the plants growing in it are able to largely resist and overcome disease
without continual dosing. We have just finished a meal of vegetable
curry and citrus for dessert in which the only ingredients we did not
grow were the rice, spices and a few dates which finished off the meal
(none of which will grow in our climate).
As to reducing the world occurrence of pests by means of chemicals, this
is very doubtful, as the tonnage of chemicals applied goes up yearly at
a steady rate. It looks as if the pests are still winning! Moreover, in
some cases it has been possible to show a better result from
non-chemical treatment, not just in a tiny garden like mine but on a
commercial scale. I quote from a Californian experiment. It seems that
even with regular spraying peach orchardists expect to lose around 23%
of their fruit each year to Brown Rot. However an alternative treatment,
covering the ground under the trees with a layer of compost achieved ONE
HUNDRED PERCENT clean fruit (and this result was replicated the
following year). Surrounding properties using the conventional spraying
technique lost their usual percentage.
The cause of this remarkable result was considered to be a yeast which
originated from the compost and which covered the surface of the
developing fruitlets preventing the pathogen from getting a hold.
Why do we do research to improve yields and nutritonal value of crops
to feed the hungry when they will just breed more to get back into the
same pinch? Hunger cannot be cured until population is limited in some
acceptable way.
Now this is something on which most thinking people would agree with
you. Expanding the food supply seems inevitably to expand the
population. However there is perhaps a lesson to be learned from the
shrinking families in the world's privileged areas. Once people have not
just enough but plenty, they become very much less preoccupied with
reproducing themselves. One can envisage the answer to the problem as
embracing many aspects such as a fairer distribution of the world's
resources (not just food) coupled with education and some way of
discouraging further population growth. However, I think this is going
to take a lot of hard work and good thinking to achieve.
>
> I'm 77 in April. That wasn't unheard of in olden days. I had a
> great grandmother that died in 1913 at the age of 95. But in those days not
> too many people saw 77 much less 95. There was a lot of infant mortality
> and women dying after childbirth. We have through medical techiques and
> "chemicals" managed to expand enormously the number of people that can
> reach such ages. And I for one am grateful! I wish it were not needed but
> the fact is, it is needed. Ask the person on chemotherapy if they are glad
> these chemicals exist.
However, some of us think that chemotherapy is only so necessary because
of the cancer-causing chemical pollution of our modern world.
Incidently, I am 72 and my husband 76 and we both enjoy excellent
health, which we ascribe largely to our lifestyle, which avoids chemical
pollution as far as possible.
> Chemists find the structure of things like morphine. And then they
> tinker with it trying to find out what part of that structure does the good
> things (pain relief) and what part does the bad things (addiction etc).
> Then they try to make similar molecules that emphasize the good parts and
> minimize the bad parts. Is this bad? I don't think so. There probably is a
> lot of "bad" research that is not advancing mankind but catering to its
> weaknesses. I'm sorry about that. I guess it comes with being HUMAN!!
There are undoubtedly a lot of good things done in the chemical field,
but unfortunately an incrasing number of them are only necessary due to
chemical pollution in the first place.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand
