As the developed world becomes more removed from science and health, it is easier to embrace beliefs that science and medicine are not needed at all, with some claiming that vaccines and pesticides are not really needed, the natural world can do it without modern tools.
Companies will cater to that also. If enough people mobilized by politicians and activists insist they don't want some harmless food coloring or BPA, companies will remove those and simply charge more. The products won't be healthier, just more costly. Yet sometimes mimicking the natural world can be beneficial, like with neonicotinoid seed treatments based on natural pesticide effects and have reduced mass spraying and off-target effects so well that bees have rebounded and now exist in record numbers.
Yet since evolution is a random walk, and balance of nature a bizarre Frederic Clements neo-Lamarckian myth, the natural world may develop a way to defend itself that is very bad other aspects of the world.
Isoprene is a good example. It creates a hormonal defense in plants, a
jasmonic acid which gives insects a stomachache while stunting the growth of predatory worms. Environmentalists don't hire scientists so they insist that is a natural - 'oak trees produce it!' - way to replace modern chemicals, but they ignore that used in quantity it will be bad for air pollution. Not PM2.5 virtual pollution hysteria invented in the 1990s either, actual air quality is impacted by isoprene.
Discovery of two intact isoprene synthase genes in soybeans provided fodder for the same groups that once advocated corn ethanol as better for the environment to lobby for changes to agriculture. And with EPA being micro-managed by former NRDC lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., it could happen.
That would be bad.
Credit: Raimo Lantelankallio/Unsplash
Natural or not, isoprene is a hydrocarbon like coal or polystyrene so activists saying it is a natural alternative might as well be promoting covering plants in plastic. Only methane is more prevalent. The only benefit isoprene has a lower persistence than methane, which is far lower persistence in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but with environmentalists successfully duping the US and Europe into high-cost solar panels it would make no sense to add more hydrocarbons into the air and make things worse.
In California, we have numerous invasive species because politicians listened to their allies in environmentalism and mandated things that use less water - without considering the ecosystem. On the other side of that, if a scientist invents something that has no off-target effect, environmental groups will stall it for decades with court challenges.
Given that, this deserves more study but don't listen to any calls that this will be better than modern pesticides because it is a natural effect. It does change plants to make them less palatable to insects, but the cost to the air in high quantities may not be worth it.
