Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds Audiobook (Free)

Life on earth is facing unprecedented difficulties from global warming, battle, and mass extinctions. The plight of seeds is a less visible but believe it or not fundamental threat to our survival. Seeds are in the heart from the planet’s life-support systems. Their power to regenerate and adapt are crucial to maintaining our food supply and our ability to cope with a changing climate.

In Uncertain Peril, environmental journalist Claire Hope Cummings exposes the tales behind the rise of commercial about Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the continuing future of Seeds agriculture and seed biotechnology, nov public interest science, as well as the folly of patenting seed products. She examines how farming neighborhoods are dealing with declining drinking water, ground, and fossil fuels, as well as with new commercial technologies. Will genetically built and ‘terminator’ seeds lead to certain promise, as some have hoped, or are we getting into a route of uncertain peril? Will the ‘doomsday vault’ under building in the Arctic, made to store millions of seed products, save the hereditary diversity from the world’s agriculture?

To answer these questions and others, Cummings calls for readers through the Fertile Crescent in Iraq to the island of Kaua’i in Hawai’i; from Oaxaca, Mexico, to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. She examines the plight of farmers who’ve planted transgenic seeds and scientists who’ve been persecuted for uncovering the risks of customized genes.

At each change, Cummings appears deeply into the relationship between people and plants. She examines the possibilities for both scarcity and abundance and tells the stories of local neighborhoods that are generating food and fuel sustainably and providing for the future. The choices we make about how we give food to ourselves now will determine whether or not seed products will continue being a generous source of sustenance and stay the common history of all mankind. It boils down to this: whoever settings the continuing future of seeds controls the continuing future of lifestyle on earth.

Uncertain Peril is a powerful reminder that what’s on the line right now is nothing significantly less than the nature of the future.