I’m not sure I would characterize tour entire trajectory as “dangerous,” though there are certainly some developments that I’m not comfortable with. On the one hand, we have an enormous and growing array of choices when it comes to the food we eat, though this, of course, places the burden squarely on the consumer to seek out the healthiest choices. On the downside, we continue to offer an enormous range of unhealthy fare, including, in some cases, vast quantities of fat, sugar, salt, chemicals, and assorted undesirable ingredients. As a consequence, we live in a country where bad food continues to be significantly less expensive than good food, a fact that leads directly to the sub-part diets and frequent obesity of low-income Americans.

So it’s kind of a mixed story, with plenty of choice and plenty of opportunity to get it wrong!

Thought some of you might be interested in this news article concerning GM foods in Europe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110322/ts_afp/courtenvironmentfoodfarmbiotechfranceeu

Cheers,

Brian

I do believe the U.S. (and the West in general) suffers from the legacies of our imperialistic days in the sense that we have a strong tendency to offshore much of our risks to other places. It’s a sort-of “out of sight, out of mind” mentality that allows American companies to hide some of the true costs of doing business, be they in the form of unknown risks or well-understood but unpleasant side effects of industrial processes.

As it happens, many Third World countries have lax or nonexistent environmental regulations that allow us to dispose of waste or employ processes that would not be allowed in this country. A great example is the vast amount of electronic waste (old computers, cell phones, TVs, etc.) that get sent to companies in China for final disposal. These companies, in turn, pay employees a pittance to remove all of the toxic substances (at significant personal health risk) that go into the original manufacture of the items.

It’s a systemic problem that’s been around fro many year and which shows no signs of abating. If anything, as the U.S. continues to strengthen its environmental regulations, such offshoring is likely to increase.

The only reading I’ve done recently on urban agriculture is concerning so-called “vertical framing.” This involves building skyscrapers with all glass windows in which crops can be grown in subsequent floors instead of across vast tracts of open land. I think that conceptually this makes a lot of sense, particularly from the perspective of minimizing distances that food has to be shipped to get it today from farm fields to the inner cities where the consumers live. What is less clear to me are the economics of the scheme. There are numerous technical difficulties to be overcome, like, for example, how do you economically pump water up long vertical distances (the greater the height, the more power required), how do you supply adequate sunlight to the plants on floors that have other floors above them (which would be every floor except the top!). In addition, there is the simple problem of whether vertical farming is the most efficient use of such space in an expensive urban setting (as opposed to using it for office buildings, living spaces, etc.

It’s a fascinating but very complex undertaking about which much has been written in recent years. I look forward to hearing what conclusions you come to from your research and writing.

I deliberately chose not to go in the direction of GM effects on the mammals in the story (including humans), partly because I felt it would detract from the main thrust of the narrative (the insects), but also for one specific scientific reason. Insects reproduce much faster than mammals, and the genetic effects of the sort that transpired in the novel would take many generations to manifest themselves. Therefore, what you see happening to the insects in a matter of weeks and months would take years or decades to happen to mammals. Thus, even if useful from a narrative perspective, having these sorts of effects happen to people wouldn’t have been technically plausible.

Thanks for clarifying!

During our Skype conversation on Wednesday, you said that the United States takes their risks on foreign land rather than on their homeland. Do you feel this is a flaw of the United states? I also would like to know if you think we are the most wasteful country in the world even with our attempts at creating programs to recycle and reuse.

Thanks,

Greg

It seemed that industrialized agriculture was looked down upon in your book. For my essay, I was on the side of changing agriculture completely by advocating why urban agriculture should be considered. What is your take on this topic?

I didn’t clarify enough, and i apologize for that. I was referring to the World Hunger universe specifically. Considering as you are the creator and overseer of that world have you thought something like that could happen as a plot twist, etc? Or would that cross the lines of realism you have placed on that universe?

I think Chase is the most complex and interesting character in the story. He is many things at different times in the story, but it is my sincere hope that he is not easy to pin down. At first blush, he is easy to dislike for his greed and aggressiveness. But he also has a human side, which is usually drowned out by his corporate responsibilities. And most unexpected of all, when he faces the insects in the lab and decides, in the end, to “take one for the team!”