It would be very efficient to research these things by cataloging the species in question as we clear their habitats, taking both live and dead samples and placing the live ones in appropriate containment areas where they can be bred as captive populations for medicinal purposes if useful. Naturally the useful plant populations can serve to create the structure of such containment areas.innerbrat wrote:Now, of course, we're talking about destruction of vast amounts of land and ecologies. Bearing in mind how important biome like the rainforest are for things like drug research.
The idea of the rainforests being the "lung" of the Earth is ridiculous - Algae does that.
The simple fact is that humanity has all the resources it needs to feed the populace that will soon be on this planet, if we just focus on applying those resources to the projects necessary to exploit the maximum possible land to agriculture. I'd clear-cut a thousand acres of rainforest to sate the hunger of a starving village in the Congo; there's simply no comparison.
The problem with "fight hunger" efforts today is that they involve the redistribution of wealth and resources from the First World to the Third World. This is not going to world--we need to create entirely new infrastructure to support the populations growing in the third world, not just stretch the infrastructure of the First World thin. To be honest of it, what needs to happen is that the leadership of countries in the Third World need to start on projects which they are quite capable of and which will begin to enrich their nations and provide for their people. I provide Nasser's Aswan High Dam as an example of this. For instance, now Ethiopia is going ahead with its own plans to dam the Nile, and that can only improve and enrich that nation.
Vegetarianism is hardly going to solve anything. Many people in the First World are lazy and have the opportunity for such an unhealthy luxury, but in the Third World everything is at the touch-and-go, and the nutrients thus provide are really needed. We are omnivorous and meat is an inherent part of the diet since we first existed. So it must remain, and especially for those who shall continue to struggle to survive until they have reached our level of advance.
And reaching it can only be done through the efforts I propose.
The simple fact is that things like the Three Gorges Dam, and the three Yellow-Yangtze Canals, that China has embarked upon to solve the massive and pressing problems of water shortage, or agriculture--and even then shall need more to overcome the strain of a massive populace, but more is not beyond the redoubtable resources of that nation--are what are also needed for the rest of the world.
That is the example to be followed in every developing nation. Egypt has an even more grandiose plan to create an entire second Nile valley by diverting water from Lake Nasser along a path through the western desert, opening huge stretches of currently unuseable land for farming. It might not go through, but things like that are what could solve our insatiable hungers in the 21st century.
The human race has gotten where it has principally by building. At the beginning of recorded history we tirelessly built levies against the floodwaters of the Mesopotamian valley, and threw up walls against the ingress of barbarian tribes. Civilization progressed and through war and peace alike humanity's solution was to turn to the earth and labour. There is no other way to do things, none at all. From the construction of the great dams that tamed the western United States once and for all, to the desperate action of a man digging a trench in war--it is our best artifice.
So, we have a crisis, and what should we do? What has always worked in the past: build our way out of it! There are still many resources to be exploited on this planet--Africa, in particular, has vast untouched resources--and there are already processes underway which may produce synthetic fossil fuels cheaply. We have a known upper limit of where our population will peak, and so we simply must meet the demands of that level of populace for resources. The globe is our clay and our life alike, and now we must finish melding it to provide for us. Any other solution would be silly or unrealistic, and I expect that this is inevitable. People react to reality. Slowly, and in some areas of the world many probably will die of famine and disease. But the drive of those who remain is inevitable.
