Q. WHEN YOU GAVE A RECENT SPEECH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ADVOCATING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS, SOMEONE SITTING NEAR ME SAID, “OH GREAT, OUR STATE DEPARTMENT IS PUSHING G.M. FOOD. SHE’S THE AMBASSADOR FROM MONSANTO.” WHAT’S YOUR RESPONSE?
A. How do I answer him? My answer is: There’s almost no food that isn’t genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution.
Things change because our planet is subjected to a lot of radiation, which causes DNA damage, which gets repaired, but results in mutations, which create a ready mixture of plants that people can choose from to improve agriculture.
In the last century, as we learned more about genes, we were able to devise ways of accelerating evolution.
So a lot of modern plant strains were created by applying chemicals or radiation to cause mutations that improved the crop. That’s how plant breeding was done in the 20th century. The paradox is that now that we’ve invented techniques that introduce just one gene without disturbing the rest, some people think that’s terrible.
Q. YOU BELIEVE THAT ENVIRONMENTALISTS SHOULD BE EMBRACING GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS. WHAT’S YOUR ARGUMENT?
A. If we put more land under cultivation to feed the world’s growing population, we’re going to pull down the remaining forests.
And if that happens, it will contribute tremendously to desertification. The more we can grow on already cultivated land, the better. Europe, North America, Australia, Japan — we’ve been extremely successful in applying science to agriculture and we can afford to say, “Let’s go natural.” But there’s collateral damage.
When I went to Rwanda, you saw farmers with holdings of less than an acre.
If their population doubles again, we’re looking at more strife. Arguably, Darfur isn’t about politics, it’s about water. Many of the conflicts in the poorest countries are about too many people chasing too few resources. Do we have time to transition something that looks like Rwanda to a more efficient agriculture and to do it wisely enough to absorb the people?
Q. WHY DOES THE SECRETARY OF STATE NEED A SCIENCE ADVISER?
A. Because science and technology are the drivers of the 21st century’s most successful economies.
There are more than six billion of us, and the problems of a crowded planet are everyone’s: food, water, energy, climate change, environmental degradation. Other nations, even those that have lost respect for our culture and politics, still welcome collaboration on scientific and technological issues.
