DIY Research: trees and mortality rates

Interesting to see your hometown mentioned in the first lines of a national magazine.

As I'm a bit pressed for time, here's a "see for yourself" bit of comparison to try that may suggest or affirm the research reported.

( see here for the full academic paper: http://www.ajpmonline.org/webfiles/images/journals/amepre/AMEPRE_3662-stamped_Jan_8.pdf ).

1)  Read and take a look at the map on counties afflicted by the Emerald Ash Borer (which killed off many ash trees in our region) on this page:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/when-trees-die-people-die/267322/

[Side note: UM SNREds will/should recognize the Kaplan power couple in this article!  The Kaplans do a lot about the effects of exposure to nature and health, note this article (likely cited in the Atlantic article above): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/30542/0000175.pdf;jsessionid=BD88BC9D74A27630675D7FABA20F7556?sequence=1 ]

The study notes that researchers claim to have isolated all other possible variables, let's see if there's a good correlation with your area.

2)  Check out this map and enter your zip code:
http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2011/10/toxic-air/#4.00/39.00/-84.00

3)  Note the ranking of air quality from local [stationary AKA "point"] sources (1 being good, 5 being very poor).

Did you find any similarities between the air quality where you live and the counties afflicted by the Emerald Ash Borer?

If so, we can ask the people who conducted the research questions like "why was air quality from point sources not as strong a correlation for health in comparison to the presence of trees?"
Also, is it possible that many of these places are in close proximity to heavy traffic (highways, etc.)?

I wonder...

"Comic book poetry with high schoolers..."

Status from A:
Comic book poetry with high schoolers tomorrow! Osborn High School, I can't wait. Also, I love that you are named for a fabulous Detroit suffragist.

Laura Freele Osborn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Laura A. Freele Osborn (1866 - 1955) was a suffragist, campaigner for school reform, and long-serving member of the School Board for Detroit Public Schools in Detroit, Michigan during the early half of the 20th century.

A haiku of mine written in reply:

A tale of heroes

in a land of darkness--POW!!!

Is that the answer?!?

Breathing into alternative measures of life

What if we used breathing like a measure of time?

"It'll take you about 4 good breaths before you'll feel settled in."

"After three breaths, turn right at the next corner."

Life and the Life Sciences Orchestra

Hi Sharon,

There's one more thread of thought I'd like to share about the program and my experience with the LSO and how it can relate to audiences. Even if the article will be printed tomorrow without it, I think it's important to share as it adds some depth to what I was trying to capture in our conversation yesterday.

In essence: we're privileged to discover glimpses of what drives the nexus of art and science, and we have the opportunity to experience profound reminders about the nature of life as part of the symphony.

I vividly remember one of the French Horn players rushed out of rehearsal to attend to one of his patients during rehearsal this season. Last year in the summer, our piccolo/flutist passed away after a long grapple with breast cancer and chemo therapy shortly after performing in the spring concert. Our director, Oriol Sans, sent the following letter to members of the symphony:

"At this moment I want to share a few words with you. Last week I went tosee Lisa at the hospital, and it was an experience that I will neverforget. The open and honest way she talked about her cancer and what wasgoing to happen to her, made a deep impression on me. Among other things,she told me that for the last year music made her forget about all thehealth problems she was going through. Music didn't cure her, she said, butit helped her to get through that.
I told her what a great example she was for all of us. She came to ourrehearsals with a crutch, without it, with a wig, without a wig, with longhair, with short hair... But she was always there, and I never heard asingle complaint from her. Until the very end, the illness never stoppedher to do one of the things that she most loved: making music. The sameweek of our last concert she didn't agree to a last round of chemo untilthe doctors promised her that she would be ready to play for our dressrehearsal and the concert.
I think that I can speak from all of us when I say that seeing her examplewas truly a gift. I am glad that my last words to her before I left herroom at the hospital were thank you."

Medicine and health care are intimately connected tied to the life and environmental sciences. Given that the causes of cancer are an interconnected mix between genetics, diet, and environmental factors ( http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/materials/cancer_and_the_environment_508.pdf ), the past experiences are a reminder to me about some of the people and things we love and strive to creatively improve about the world we live in.

One last note: Curiosity and experience drive the arts and sciences alike: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." - Albert Eistein

As mentioned in the program notes written by Oriol for our upcoming concert, the Mahler symphony was deeply influenced by themes from nature and our relationship with it--it features bird calls (of a cuckoo) in its opening movements, and the story of a hunter's funeral--attended by animals. Shostakovich's Festival Overture was performed as a fanfare for the 2009 nobel prize. The LSO presents an opportunity for audiences and participants alike to entice a shared sense of wonder.

Thank you again for sharing your time to consider my thoughts, I hope I was able to share this in time with you.

All the best,
Ian D. Tran

---
B.S. Environmental Science, Political Science Minor Class of 2012 The University of Michigan-Dearborn

Plan to Overcome

"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence." -Dr. Martin Luther King

"It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men." - Karl Popper

I think Dr. Martin Luther King Day (which I learned is not his birthday! That happened January 15th) is an appropriate opportunity to reflect upon and reinvigorate our commitment to the timeless legacy and vision of justice exemplified by Dr. King instead of giving deference to him as an idol of noble aspirations.

More than that, I think we foremost benefit from recognizing our ability to empower ourselves and each other (all people, of course not just men).

Another quote, this time from the living Bill Moyers, shares this belief that action is up to you: 
“What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called ‘hocma’—the science of the heart. . . the capacity to see. . . to feel. . . and then to act. . . as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.”

In that regard, all of us are capable of discovering greatness in ourselves and one another.  Among their accomplishments, civil rights proponents like King succeeded in empowering people by promoting awareness and opportunity to engage in justice through democracy with disciplined planning and steadfast implementation. I recently met the Reverend Dr. James Lawson, who worked closely with Dr. King, in the autumn of 2012 after he gave a speech about non-violence. By miraculous coincidence, I met him one day after I tasted the gunpowder from a gunshot meant to kill a person less than 8 feet away.

At first blush, non-violence can seem like a fairly simple, even vague if not hollow, term.  If someone draws a gun with malicious intent, what other choices do we have?  Guns, much like nuclear weapons, can almost guarantee mutual destruction.  Yet if we ask why one would draw a gun to potentially kill extended family, or even carry one in the first place, the answer had to revolve around personal security and insecurity when you boil the situation down it to its essence.

Security is a sophisticated need.  It’s inherently dependent upon complex systems which are beyond the full control of an individual.  Even one’s perception can skew our judgment of an already shifting reality.

I suspect an answer to dealing with potentially absolute violence lies in interventions that meet the following condition: overcome our human tendency to engage in rules that necessitate the reciprocal escalation of powers.  Undermine or reshape the entire premise of our value system for fighting—the “rules of the game”—by changing the perceptions and paradigms which shape how and why we think about combative engagement in the first place.

People are complex; fortunately, science helps us find ways to effectively work with complexity, including social codes and personal beliefs.  Complex systems scientists recognize tangible behaviors as necessary for persuading peoples’ values, paradigms and worldviews  (see the list of 12 leverage points for intervening in a complex system here: http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf ).

When appropriate, non-violence may need to employ the use of non-lethal protective use of force (check out Marshall Rosenberg's well-earned wisdom: http://youtu.be/21g1S7stoQI ), but no matter what, non-violence is exercised without malice in our actions.  The way we communicate ideas, or even notions, in language (can we speak without engaging in abuse or instigating escalation?) usually becomes the first symptom for a potential intervention. To astute observers, it may be expressed visually in our physical posturing and gestures (can you assert your presence without resorting to making it threatening to others?) as well, and of course in how we physically interact with one another (can you embrace and redirect a person's attack rather than impose force onto them? That's what the martial art Aikido focuses on).

Adding Popper’s contention about the notion of “great men”, I gleaned another note for non-violence from Dr. Lawson:  Non-violence operates via empowerment as its primary principle.

“Non-violence is premised on the idea that all people have power to act beyond the influence of their circumstance.”  But in this, there's a challenge: unlike violence, which can quickly and easily interfere with the integrity of an ideal like peace, trust, or love, non-violence requires discipline, careful planning, and patient dedication.

We must act from a hope to overcome, we must plan to overcome.

Which leads us to another nuance of non-violence from Reverend Lawson: 
“Non-violence is the moral equivalent to war.  It requires organization and discipline.” 

Consider the planning and commitment that went into what we now see as watershed events:  Coordinated planning took place for the sit-ins from 1959-1964.  The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially began on December 1st of 1955, some of us heard that in the history books or on television programs, but few of us realize the tenacity of the cause: the boycott was sustained for over a year—381 days.

An ideal is a lot like other life-processes: education, communication and the arts, design, even ethics.
All of these activities involve intentions, actions, and consequences.

Among seasoned practitioners like Reverend Lawson, the term "non-violence" actually isn't representative of what people really strive for. Non-anything implies reaction and work that runs directly against something. If anything, I suspect people really strive to love--create it and do it. It's a noun, but most importantly a verb.

Love exists as a plausible ideal. We may bear compassionate and loving intentions. Caring actions may manifest loving intentions, and perhaps the desired consequence of compassion and love creates a legacy that reaffirms the intention and fosters more love.

Yet as an ideal, it becomes so expansive to act upon that many find--and take--temptation in believing ideals cannot happen in reality.  Furthermore, it's possible, potentially even reasonable [using the word in a very strict sense, link goes to various definitions] though never justifiable, that a person can love the person whom they abuse. Their intentions may be true, but the actions they know or choose to express care through compromise the dignity and autonomy of another being.

This remains the challenge of Dr. King and many other notable living visionaries of our time: to truly validate worthy ideals such as peace, justice, and love all three aspects of the ideal must be good and present. That takes visionary planning to manifest dreams from ideal to real. When society-shaping, you need to do so with people, not just on behalf of them, and certainly not independent of them.

Keep it up, we shall overcome someday, but let’s discover the someday together, every day in our actions with one another.


.  .  .


Notes about music in the video above:

Minor variations and improvisations on the Civil Rights song "We Shall Overcome" recorded in the University of Michigan-Dearborn Wellness Center on January 21st 2013.

A few weeks ago I played it spur of the moment and it was a profound rendition if I say so myself, but I don't remember what I did and I didn't have anything to record it with at the time.  There's some irony to the notion of playing a social justice song, solo, to no one but yourself on MLK day.  I was somewhat disappointed that I missed a few opportunities including a symposium on social justice that day, so as I practiced other tunes, I decided to give the song another try in observation of the day as well.

I suspect playing a song used for civil rights alone doesn't quite contribute to making the dream manifest, but hopefully sharing it here might be worth your while. I'm drawing memory from a rendition I heard on a cd by Peter Paul and Mary when I was in second grade-fifth grade, and hadn't really prepared my playing as much as I now think I should have. Ongoing process...

Discipline is [the path to] freedom

"Discipline is [the path to] freedom."
-See:
http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/self-discipline/
http://www.mindperk.com/articles/discipline-the-path-to-freedom/
http://www.coachcharrise.com/discipline-is-freedom/
http://www.randygage.com/blog/discipline-creates-freedom/

By this maxim, we may better examine the second amendment's assertion that we have the right to bear arms under purview of a "well-regulated militia".  But what constitutes a militia?  What happens when much of the civilian population is armed?

Perhaps we could pursue detailed legal answers to those questions, but the point I'm raising has everything to do with recognizing responsibility, discipline, and regulation as analogous requisites for our freedoms.

Speculating suicide and swingin' the night

A jam-packed day, but I'll start with the evening's events:

Into the evening, I received a text message from a friend who had reached out for help.  He was fighting long-standing suicidal desires and a on Sunday evening/Monday morning I reached him as I suspected and realized it was severe.  We hadn't spoken or seen each other possibly since elementary school-he was the older brother of a classmate of mine, but he reached out to me sometime during college and I accepted his invitation for the opportunity to touch base, and then between late in December and mid January I finally communicated with him.

On Monday morning (as in 03:00-06:00), he mentioned his frustration with life and his ongoing turmoil between severe anger, angst and depression.  He was, sometimes maybe is still, feeling  despondent--so much that he wondered if he should "take a mouthful of sleeping pills" to end his life.  Yet he also expressed to me that he knew it wasn't good, knew there were people who love him, and he actually wanted to live.  With a few exceptions to my circumstances, I had recently gotten over that sense of despondence.  This winter, I was surprised and rather glad to realize that one who endures--and possibly the privileged few who overcome--prolonged suffering earns more than a sense of pride that comes from enduring hardship.  Eventually, some find themselves endowed with a new caliber of empathy and humanity that allows them to work with others who have suffered similarly.

Today I briefly sent him a message after realizing he tended to stay up very late: I recommended ways for him to sleep earlier (research points to less severe/reduced frequency of depression for those who sleep well and earlier at night).  I lost contact with my friend for approximately 6 hours, and realized he had written a confusing statement on his social network profile.

After attempting to reach him and his brother by every means I could find between phones and the internet, I finally called 911.  When I called 911 to request for the police to check on him, I was asked by the dispatcher if my friend had mentioned anything about how he might have planned to commit suicide.  The police do this for several reasons, part of it involves safety--for the officers to prepare appropriately--and part of it is probably to screen the severity of a case.  I knew and gave a likely means: a potential overdose on sleeping pills.  My friend later (around 11:30 pm) sent me a message to inform me that he was well and that he appreciated my concern and initiative.  Ironically, he told me he was sleeping--early during all of the commotion until the police came to his house!

Had anyone asked me in December through March of 2012 where or what I would do a year from then, meaningfully empathizing with people who'd trust me enough to express their concerns and anguish was far from my imagination.



I also wouldn't have thought I'd be fit to participate in swing and blues dancing either.

.   .   .

As another poetic loop, I realized that the elements of the earliest ballroom dances I had ever learned trace their steps to Lindy Hop (dancing with my mum at Eastern University when I was in second grade) and the Tango (dancing with a South American friend at a time that I had never been so close to a female before, not to mention in a situation where I was attempting to learn dance steps from a very competent dancer).

From performing with Amanda Palmer as part of the Grand Theft Orchestra, I learned a valuable nuance about professional rock stars:  they know and live all-out at the times that it matters most.  In other words, they recognize their "greatness", and can tap into it in relatively short order so that they operate at their best by burning through any anxieties almost right away.  The music they (professional celebrity musicians in general) play might not be the most intricate or thoughtfully crafted, but they know how to "maintain the energy" throughout the performance (as articulated by the ladies of the phenomenal Norwegian band Katzenjammer in some interview seen online).

With blues/early swing dance, it's very similar.  Even though I was brand new and was content to hang out at the edge of the dance floor to watch and learn the history of the dances, I was pleasantly--warmly--greeted and asked to dance by many people, several of whom were outstanding dancers in their own right.  In many cases I had long since lost track of the steps and made up my own motions.  Because I've long appreciated the goofy and exaggerated swinging motions and bounce of dances like Lindy Hop and Charleston (there exists a more subtle form of Charleston), I had some exciting moments doing things that seemed like they would make sense.  That said, I suspect it's similar to the principle gleaned from the Amanda Palmer gig I played at St. Andrews hall this past November.  Within reason, I remained rather energetic throughout and probably spent over 4 hours doing dance related things.

At the same time, I realized that I occasionally had no conception of what I could/should/wanted to do next with many of my motions.  This can be scary--I recall realizing that the biggest differences between those on the politically conservative/liberal identity spectrum was their degree of exposure and emphasis of value to possibilities--when we refer to a conservative disposition, it sometimes happens because we really have no way of imagining/conceiving the possibility of an alternative opportunity and/or reality.

With both events said and examined, I think it's really important to know the people in your community--especially those whom might consider you a friend--well enough that you can help

I started this day at 06:28, had a brief but powerful nap, and it's now 02:15.  Easy day, onward to the next!

Mandatory Compassion

What's the difference between compassion and love? When does compassion become mandatory for good character? I started exploring those questions through this tune and the stories behind it. [Edited: 19 IX 2013]

Willie (in reply to a complement about him as a tremendously compassionate person): "Ian, I appreciate that.  I'll humbly accept that, but in some ways I didn't have a choice--you know how my life's been..."

Some people become notably extraordinary in response to or as a product of extraordinary circumstance and exposure.  He had gone to prison three times, and started turning his life around through his determination to be who he knew he was capable of becoming--a better person and an artist.

If you get a chance to hear to his story there several key moments during his final time in prison:
1) choosing not to eat meat (at a time when vegetarian options were almost non-existent) while in prison as a way to prove he had control over something in his life
2) one night, a neighboring cell mate who had a reputation for drawing passed one of his pieces over to one of Willie's cellmates, and from then forward he knew he could draw and started sketching
3) seeing the sense of peace that painting brought to one of the inmates
4) a moment where another inmate noticed he was drawing and sat down to show him how to draw with three dimensions for about 5 minutes

He ended his addiction to drugs and later earned his GED, then a college degree, ran 3 Detroit Free Press marathons, and worked at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Wellness Center for a little over 20 years before retiring early to live the wisdom he preaches and pursue his art with greater focus.

It's important to acknowledge that his addiction had negative impacts for other people beyond himself--and that's at the core of his statement "but in some ways, I didn't have a choice--you know how my life's been..." He'll be one of the first to acknowledge and warn people about addiction and the realities of prison and its role in criminal justice. At the same time, he also understands that many of the events which led up to addiction could have been circumvented in many ways--whether it was through the attitudes instilled in him by others as a child to having an earlier exposure to healthier and creative means for expression.

Willie has been a mentor and a champion for my own efforts.  I learned so much about compassion and artistry from sporadic visits with him in the past year as he Worked at the Wellness Center--sometimes just from watching him sketch as he told some of the stories I shared above. Or by the way he remained relentless about encouraging me and finding opportunities that could advance my musicianship even as I focused on other kinds of work.

Willie attributes the magnitude of his compassion in large part to his experiences, though I could say there's a fair amount of credit due to his character and commitment too.  His life story's tremendous, and I wish more people have met him or can spend time with him to learn about it firsthand.

However, through his reply to my appreciation for what he does and how he lives, I realized he noted a distinction in gauging one's character: there's more to being and becoming a great person than just meeting circumstance with magnanimous compassion.  Perhaps actively seeking opportunity to help others becomes the next distinguishing gradation in our humanity.  While it's something both Willie and I do, the extent of which that it happens as a regular basis is something new for me to focus on.  Not necessarily because I didn't care about or didn't do it before, but because I hadn't seen life with this degree of clarity until I meditated over Willie's reply.

Another question arises about actively helping others: at what point do we let another person be as they are?

Perhaps it behooves us to examine a maxim of life:  be as you are unless you yourself find compelling reason to change.   I suspect many try to live by it, yet what does this maxim say about our relationship with other people?  A distinction and balance exists between seeking--active, and intentional form of aid--to help and helping as an outcome of a reactive/passive or perhaps something simply receptive to opportunity.

I'm still exploring this concept, and I've also titled a new piece "Mandatory Compassion" based on this conversation.

Start 9 I 2013, # 12:24 pm 18 I 2013

.  .  .

I've since realized the difference between love and compassion.  Love is a proactive endeavor which exists in the interest of helping others be at their best.  Compassion tends to be reactive and circumstantial.  We may help others upon recognizing some need that can be met, but if not, we might empathize for a moment and move on. I also attribute some of this to sharing lunch with a homeless man, Mr. Westberry, at a time when I just happened to have enough extra food to share a hot meal during a very cold December day in Ann Arbor.  That event ran through my head as I started playing the opening notes of the piece, and Willie's conversation versus my encounter with Mr. Westberry galvanized concept behind this title.  [#edited 19 IX 2013]

Blues lexicon | industrious but not so luminous

I just realized that blues music has its own lexicon.  A singer isn't necessarily limited to these words, but hearing words like "rollin'", "crossroads", and "river" is a lot more comforting in familiarity than words like "transcend".  Yet if you do it right, you can slip a few words that we don't always find among the usual company of words.

Keep on rollin'
You know that we can all transcend time.

If only I knew solfège or the chords to what's in my head well enough to convey the tune in writing...

.   .   .

Also, again "Industry does not behoove humanity..."  I had a remarkably productive day, but if asked whether I enjoyed it, I know I barely settled in enough to savor its many bright moments.  That's disappointing, you can say to yourself: look at all of these things I've checked off a list!  How industrious of me!  Yet at day's end, when you've calmed yourself just enough to start to appreciate the day, you realized you've lost something.  It's the humane side of things that warms the memory of a day.

.   .   .

Being "completely wrong about GMOs": Scaling responsibility with technological escalation

In reply to this blog post by Torie Bosch of Slate about an advocate's change of heart toward Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) for meeting world hunger: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/03/mark_lynas_environmentalist_who_opposed_gmos_admits_he_was_wrong.html

Bosch's post was irresponsibly framed.  It misleads the public into thinking the challenges behind GMO practices are settled.  Maybe* (I'm very, very skeptical but will remain open minded.) there's a case for GMO methods in genetic/medical research and such in very controlled spaces, but when it comes to claiming they're necessary for world hunger, it's like trying to justify nuclear energy for meeting global energy demand when we have yet to guarantee a safe legacy of fuel extraction and waste disposal that doesn't compromise the health of others.  Alternative strategies and technologies exist that have fewer negative legacies.  Granted, a lot of it can be harmless, but we're operating on a level that's so profound that it can cheat the defenses of our evolutionary protections in ways that we're incapable of knowing until we've met its consequences.  It transcends our known responsibility to a point that we don't know how we're ethically accountable.

As acknowledged in the article, a fair share of anti-GMO advocates don't appreciate the monopolization of large chemical companies and their strategic business models.

Consider common approaches to Monsanto's GMO business:

1) Develop pesticide/herbicide/fungicide resistant crops so that farmers can use a lot of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides on their plots--as a chemical company that pioneers GMO techniques and patents cultivars/dna for pesticide/herbicide/fungicide resistant crops, it wins in two ways: people buy their seeds, and people use more of their chemicals.

2) Patent genetic sequences, allow the DNA to spread into the wild/neighboring non-GMO crop farmer land (this is a kind of negligence that the every day person has yet to find legal redress for),  let the crop cross-pollinate with untainted crops/wild plants, sue any cross-contaminated farmers.

3) Develop self-terminating "suicide" gene that creates infertile crops like corn,  allow the DNA to spread into the wild/neighboring non-GMO crop farmer land, once it's cross-pollinated, hybridized GMO plants (including those tainted in the wild or owned by non GMO using farmers) self-terminate after a season, create absolute dependency on the supplying GMO seed company in the region.

A prevailing concern with GMO work that isn't addressed is the uncertainty of outcomes when integrated back into the environment and living systems like a person's body.  If there are people willing to take the risk, fine, but it never ought to be done at the expense of those who cannot voice or choose to opt out.  GMO in food gambles with our evolutionary abilities.

Other things people might want to note about this "confession":

1)  An activist, while many are worthy of respect in their own right, isn't necessarily a scientist (which Mark Lymas acknowledged).

Just because an outspoken person changes stance on a complicated issue (this one's the kind that gets a technical classification as a wicked problem from complex system scientists), it doesn't mean the problems of the issue are no longer valid.  In stating he was "completely wrong" about GMOs denies many ethical problems that have yet to be understood and resolved.

I don't fear genetically modified food, I worry about its unintended consequences in other living things and the rest of the world.  Living things are relatively resilient, but we I don't appreciate a gamble that goes against what my evolutionary background prepared me for.  Most people don't even know about the things that I'd be concerned about.  Unless you've had vigorous scientific environmental and biological exposure and training, the things I would add as important arguments probably aren't heard and appreciated by the lay person on a regular basis.

2)  Science is different from engineering and industrialization.  It's also not the same as advocacy.  

Science is the process of discerning truth.  Advocacy is a change-oriented political act that summons the perceived truths ("facts") found by science to champion a hypothesis/claim (i.e. GMOs are good or bad).  Engineering and industrialization strive to maximize functions--productivity, efficiency.  Aside from science, none of these acts that people try to champion (i.e. we need more free enterprise so that small businesses can compete with the giants)--more doesn't always mean better.  What difference does it make if the majority of the small-scale GMO competitors also maintain unethical practices?  Quantity does not speak to quality.  Furthermore, none of these "civil virtues" (engineering and industry) are wholly accountable to comprehensive reasoning and justification for the sake of humanity.  While they behoove profit for those privileged to leverage them, they don't guarantee that people will respect the dignity of other beings as ends rather a means to their end.  Even people who truly adhere to Ayn Rand's notion of objectivism would find concern in that argument (there's a paradox to her definition of objectivism that I've found, so I see something bigger that's missing to her framework of objectivism).

3)  The world already produces enough food to feed everybody.  

I don't even need to dive into academic peer review literature to back this claim, see here (worldhunger.org), here (oxfam Canada), and here (The UN Chronicle).

If anything, the world's people need to learn how to live better within their means in ways that don't necessitate intensive land use.  Look up your estimated ecological footprint, if everyone lived the way I did, it would need about 4 and a half times the arable (farmable) land that our planet earth currently has to offer.  For an American living in the Metro-Detroit area, this is a fairly efficient footprint considering how much we tend to rely on automobiles and imported foods.  The average American's (footprint stands at 5), and it's really challenging to minimize further unless big changes in housing and infrastructure (i.e. transportation, substantive renewable energy as a primary source) are involved.

The world's people might not be good at figuring out how to innovate or discipline itself in living with, maintaining, and cultivating sustainable environments, but food shortage is best articulated as a local challenge.  I'll dare say food sustainability is inappropriate to reduce into a singular global problem to be solved with a large international monetary fund (even the IMF/Worldbank eventually tries to consider problems at a local scale) and technological wonder crops from exotic places or chemical companies that pioneer GMO methodology.  I might be lacking direct sources at the moment, but read to the bottom and you'll find a few things that give you leads into how I've come to this opinion (hint, college courses in sustainable ecology and agriculture).

4)  Also, let's have the death of environmentalism now.  

We don't defer all of our ethical behavior to ethicists, we let them inform us about better ways of living, but the responsibility remains our own.  Environmental issues don't affect environmentalists only, they matter to everyone, and everyone needs to find ways to exercise ethical actions that contribute to making the world a better place.  Nordhaus and Shellenberger have a better articulation about this in their essay called "The Death of Environmentalism", feel free to read that too.  The world doesn't need to be saved.  People need to save themselves in ways that don't necessitate the compromise of other living things' fundamental well-being.

So what should we do?

I'm short on time to spell out answers, but in the context of this post, I'd recommend getting vigorously acquainted with the principles of sustainable agriculture, ecology, and ethics.

Ask Dr. David Susko at The University of Michigan-Dearborn for his thoughts. teaches an excellent course on plant ecology.  His thesis work found ways for farmers to successfully (environmentally and economically) transition from conventional agriculture to organic practices.  The rest comes down to dialog.

Here's a place to start, though I'm not sure what their contents will cover yet, University of Florida's teaching it online for free:
https://www.coursera.org/course/sustainableag