“In many parts of the world, climate is no longer considered a controlling factor. If a certain plant needed more water and water couldn’t be had, one planted seeds that were engineered to be more drought resistant. If it needed less water, one planted seeds resistant to mold. If there were insects, there was a spray; if the soil was poor, there was a fertilizer, if there were too many weeds, there was a herbicide. All in all, there was a false impression of control and safety, I thought, from my horizontal position in bed. As far as the viewpoint, the fact I was in bed was not important, the fact that the bed was in Tierra del Fuego, however, was. Here, I had plenty of time to think about things, to see them from a very different perspective, and now all the thinking was keeping me up at night. Lack of rain, or not enough. A simple concept and one that technology was at the forefront in a way of bringing new solutions. I knew this. I had invested in some of those companies, knew their CEOs, made money from them and kept track of them over the years. “Simple ideas with straightforward solutions” was the motto, if not the mantra repeated ad nauseam of many of those high-tech companies, and for a time it worked. Only recently, people were discovering that it had enormous consequences as possible outcomes. Consequences no one could predict, and if they did, there were no tools to prevent them: the bugs became resistant to ever more powerful insecticides, the weeds to more powerful herbicides, the modified pollen infected native species, the fertilizer runoff continued polluting lakes and streams, making algae blooms, generating enormous fish kills, creating “dead zones” where none existed before, as well as affecting everything else. The list that was once long was getting longer. Ultimately, it was hard to argue with a tornado, and any tornado could ruin the work of a lifetime in minutes. Of several lifetimes. Coincidence? Who knows? Anymore in the news, the storms were getting stronger, the hurricanes more intense, more frequent, and still, the overall idea persisted that we were in control, safe from Mother Nature. People thinking that way should come to Tierra del Fuego, thought I. Nothing like a good firsthand experience to educate people and correct any misguided fool notions. To me, man seemed more like a passing intruder in this habitat, so natural for many other species.”
From In the land of Fire