June 30, 2008

We treat a nutrient value as an asset. It is only an asset if something is moving it. Sitting nitrate isn’t fertility — it’s a leaching event waiting on the next irrigation.

We are spending billions of dollars and no small amount of imagination trying to reach a planet whose air would kill us in minutes. Mars isn’t just a world without plants. It’s a preview of the atmosphere Earth would have if photosynthesis ever stopped.

“The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat the same thing,” said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment.