Engineering the Evironment
In today’s news I learned of a project to genetically alter cottonwood trees to help clean the environment by taking up mercury from surrounding contaminated soil. As well as contributing an environmental service, if successful this removal method would slash clean-up costs from about $2 million per acre to $200,00 per acre. Trees are also being engineered to remove selenium deposits and boost carbon retention to combat global warming.
While I hope this is effective, it’s impossible not to notice what a PR-savvy move this is for the industry. It will be much harder to raise significant resistance to GM crops as the technology becomes ever more deeply insinuated into necessary/politically popular causes…
