Changing face of green power

Why not line wild country ridgelines with wind turbines in an attempt to avoid acidifying oceans? Photo/File

A recent article in UK newspaper The Times about wind farms in Britain said that conservationists were pitted against environmentalists on the issue.

These words are synonyms for each other. But in this context conservationists are defined as people who want things to remain unchanged in their immediate surroundings, and environmentalists as those who consider the bigger picture and will accept changes that minimise disruption of the biosphere.

The world is in a state of constant, inevitable change and our best bet as a species is to roll with the punches and adapt as best we can. If this involves lining wild country ridgelines with wind turbines in an attempt to avoid acidifying oceans by generating electricity with fossil fuels, this seems a reasonable compromise. If we succeed in harnessing some of the free energy sloshing around in oceans, the turbines can come down and views will be restored. Returning ocean chemistry to a state that is healthy for all its present occupants would require effort of a whole different magnitude.

Similarly, if tinkering with plant DNA to develop cereal crops that can handle floods, droughts and increased salinity will help feed our burgeoning population, perhaps genetic modification is the fastest way to achieve that.

Consider rice. Having spent years getting nowhere with traditional plant-breeding methods, scientists went from identifying the genetic sequence that makes a few old-fashioned varieties of rice flood-tolerant, to producing flood-resistant seeds in four years. Five years after the first field trials, 5 million farmers across the world are planting more than a dozen varieties with flood-resistant genes. (The Economist , May 10, 2014).

Agriculture seems to be facing major changes that both the business as usual and the organic farming advocates will find difficult to embrace. A company called Green Sense Farms in Indiana has moved market gardening indoors, and is producing lettuce, kale, basil and chives under blue and red LEDs which provide precisely the wavelengths these crops crave. They grow 22 hours a day (apparently, plants need a sleep equivalent), 365 days a year in 25-foot towers and are untroubled by seasons, weather or pests. Their website claims they use 0.1 of the water, land and fertiliser of field farming and no pesticides, herbicides or preservatives. They also claim to capture 2 tons of CO2 a month and have 26 harvests per year. This feels pretty cutting-edge at the moment, but with the world's population flocking to cities, it could be a way to efficiently provide fresh and locally grown leafy greens and other high-value crops all year. Even without the LEDs, naturally lit greenhouses using hydroponics are playing an increasingly important part in food supply.

Presently, meat causes the lion's share of environmental impact in food production, but that is a whole column in itself. A lot can be done to make meat-eating less bad for the planet, but change here is slow. Roll on laboratory-produced meat.

Lorna Sutherland is strongly in favour of adaptive change, and flying her flag under the Conservation Comment heading makes her feel like a bit of an imposter.