What's For Dinner?

Tonight's Guests: John Cobb Jr. and Wes Jackson (Part 2) John Cobb wanted Wes Jacksoon as final plenary speaker at Seizing the Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization, because "getting agriculture right", while insufficient for living sustainably, is where to start. Both are concerned with continued currency of 17th century philosophical views about the relationship between subjects (humans) and objects (nature). They contrast a holistic pre-Enlightenment utopia with Francis Bacon's, which aimed to understand and conquer nature, and thus to accomplish "all things possible". Jackson faults all agriculture for ecological harm but believes the consequences of reductive science - exemplified by GM crops - can be avoided. Perennial grain in polycultures is an example, an ecological approach guarding against harm by taking emergent possibilities among ecosystems into account.