426
this study adequately assess the carbon biomass in downed forest, which can exceed
50% of the deadwood even 7 years after a tree has been cut.
30
And this can be presumed to be two powers of ten short of accounting for all
species yet to be extrapolated, thereby greatly increasing the 550 Gt C as a baseline
for assessing pain per pound, pain per ounce, pain per gram, quintile, and milliliter.
31
All of these factors must come into our purview when we review the nature of
famine and its corollaries in human behavior.
Ultimately, we must ask the basic question: If there is a conscience at large
among our species, how can we stand by idly while others suffer from hunger?
This is one of the hotly contested areas where human ethics and biotechnology
urgently challenge our thinking. Our goal is to see effective ways to delimit and
substantially diminish human dominion over Nature; to step back and front the
moral compass, not to re-engineer the planet, which has been our species’ modus
operandi to date. Hence, the whole alarming question of directed evolution, the
recent vogue of chemical engineering and xenobiology, that endeavor to engender a
new diversity of genes and a new library of mutations and mutagenesis: a metaeugenics that screens and amplifies selection largely within a laboratory. Its goal, in
so many ways, is to accelerate and create new mutational efficiencies beyond natural heredity and selection; fashioning, to date, hundreds of new amino acids, a retweaking of the evolution for customized, hyperefficient proteins and enzymes, and
genetic firewalls. All of this would, in essence, recombine synthetic components of
the evolutionary process at the molecular level so as to (allegedly) better facilitate
human progress. If applied expressly to the amelioration of suffering, would such
technologic arrogance be acceptable?
30 See “Deadwood biomass: an underestimated carbon stock in degraded tropical forests?” by
Marion Pfeifer, Veronique Lefebvre, Edgar Turner, Jeremy Cusack, MinSheng Khoo, Vun K Chey,
Maria Peni and Robert M Ewers, IOP Publishing Ltd., IOP Science, Environmental Research
Letters, April 28, 2015, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044019; See
also, “From Models to Measurements: Comparing Downed Dead Wood Carbon Stock Estimates
in the U.S. Forest Inventory,” by Grant M. Domke, Christopher W. Woodall, Brian F. Walters, and
James E. Smith, NCBI, PMC PLOS/ONE, 2013: 8(3); e59949, Published online 2013 Mar 27. doi:
10-1371/journal.pone.0059949, PMCID: PMC3609740; PMID. 23544112, https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609740/. Accessed April 28, 2020.
31 See “All life on Earth, in one staggering chart,” by Brian Resnick and Javier Zarracina, August
15, 2019, VOX, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earthchart-weight-plants-animals-pnas, Accessed April 27, 2020, and sourced from the landmark biomass (biosequestration and biogeochemical cycle) quantitative assessment paper, including
reflections on abundance, distribution, “broad patterns over taxonomic categories” and “trophic
modes” including “global marine biomass pyramid” data that accounts for consumers versus producers: “The biomass distribution on Earth,” by Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo,
PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,
PNAS June 19, 2018 115 (25) 6506–6511; first published May 21, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1073/
pnas.1711842115, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506, Accessed April 27, 2020.
46 Famine in Bangladesh
this study adequately assess the carbon biomass in downed forest, which can exceed
50% of the deadwood even 7 years after a tree has been cut.
30
And this can be presumed to be two powers of ten short of accounting for all
species yet to be extrapolated, thereby greatly increasing the 550 Gt C as a baseline
for assessing pain per pound, pain per ounce, pain per gram, quintile, and milliliter.
31
All of these factors must come into our purview when we review the nature of
famine and its corollaries in human behavior.
Ultimately, we must ask the basic question: If there is a conscience at large
among our species, how can we stand by idly while others suffer from hunger?
This is one of the hotly contested areas where human ethics and biotechnology
urgently challenge our thinking. Our goal is to see effective ways to delimit and
substantially diminish human dominion over Nature; to step back and front the
moral compass, not to re-engineer the planet, which has been our species’ modus
operandi to date. Hence, the whole alarming question of directed evolution, the
recent vogue of chemical engineering and xenobiology, that endeavor to engender a
new diversity of genes and a new library of mutations and mutagenesis: a metaeugenics that screens and amplifies selection largely within a laboratory. Its goal, in
so many ways, is to accelerate and create new mutational efficiencies beyond natural heredity and selection; fashioning, to date, hundreds of new amino acids, a retweaking of the evolution for customized, hyperefficient proteins and enzymes, and
genetic firewalls. All of this would, in essence, recombine synthetic components of
the evolutionary process at the molecular level so as to (allegedly) better facilitate
human progress. If applied expressly to the amelioration of suffering, would such
technologic arrogance be acceptable?
30 See “Deadwood biomass: an underestimated carbon stock in degraded tropical forests?” by
Marion Pfeifer, Veronique Lefebvre, Edgar Turner, Jeremy Cusack, MinSheng Khoo, Vun K Chey,
Maria Peni and Robert M Ewers, IOP Publishing Ltd., IOP Science, Environmental Research
Letters, April 28, 2015, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044019; See
also, “From Models to Measurements: Comparing Downed Dead Wood Carbon Stock Estimates
in the U.S. Forest Inventory,” by Grant M. Domke, Christopher W. Woodall, Brian F. Walters, and
James E. Smith, NCBI, PMC PLOS/ONE, 2013: 8(3); e59949, Published online 2013 Mar 27. doi:
10-1371/journal.pone.0059949, PMCID: PMC3609740; PMID. 23544112, https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609740/. Accessed April 28, 2020.
31 See “All life on Earth, in one staggering chart,” by Brian Resnick and Javier Zarracina, August
15, 2019, VOX, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earthchart-weight-plants-animals-pnas, Accessed April 27, 2020, and sourced from the landmark biomass (biosequestration and biogeochemical cycle) quantitative assessment paper, including
reflections on abundance, distribution, “broad patterns over taxonomic categories” and “trophic
modes” including “global marine biomass pyramid” data that accounts for consumers versus producers: “The biomass distribution on Earth,” by Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo,
PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,
PNAS June 19, 2018 115 (25) 6506–6511; first published May 21, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1073/
pnas.1711842115, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506, Accessed April 27, 2020.
46 Famine in Bangladesh