Still probably the safest herbicide, mainly because the competition (organophosphates, etc.) is so much worse.

From an environmental perspective you are probably right. One of the nice things is that glyphosate, unlike most herbicides, is broken down quickly by soil bacteria.

The longer term issue is evolved weed resistance due to its over use with "Roundup Ready" crops and for end of the season dry down.

	▲	saalweachter 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the fears about glyphosate resistance owes too much to antibiotic resistance, but I am not really sure it makes sense. I suppose there's some regimen where you carefully monitor every plant sprayed with a weedkiller is monitored for survival and killed with fire if it survives, or some other extreme measure to be sure there are no survivors to develop resistance, but realistically the weeds are going to develop resistances over time. And ... so what? The value of a weedkiller like glyphosate is using it to kill a lot of weeds in wide-scale agriculture. If the weeds develop a resistance to it, and we stop using it because it's no longer effective, we're not really in a worse position than if we never used it at all. It's not like there are some really bad weeds we need to save it to be able to combat.

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philips 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What point are you trying to illuminate with this comment?

A 22 caliber is safer than a 40 caliber. But, I still wouldn’t a hole made in me from either.

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tptacek 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That people would be on the whole less healthy had glyphosate not been on the market, because other herbicides, all of which were and are in common use, are worse.

It's not a complicated argument.

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Der_Einzige 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The alternative is mass starvation.

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yxhuvud 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, mass starvation would not ensue from having to fight weeds using mechanical means. It would take more work and more fuel, but it is eminently doable if the need is there. Especially if the change would be gradual.

Making do without artificial fertilizer would be a lot harder.

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bluGill 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Increased fuel means a lot more CO2. That is a very significant factor you cannot ignore.

	▲	nozzlegear 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Perhaps if herbicides weren't viable, more work would've gone into developing the mechanical alternatives and we'd have had solar-powered machines removing weeds from fields.
	▲	yxhuvud 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		More CO2 compared to what tractors use today, yes. But that is not a lot compared to the rest of the human civilization spend on transportation. So no, it is not a very significant factor.

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gustavus 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Increased work and fuel means increased costs, increased costs means increased prices, increased prices means less food available for purchase by those on the margins, less food means starvation.

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jayd16 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So anything that effects food prices, regardless of magnitude, causes mass starvation?

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victorbjorklund 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, not regardless of magnitude. But anything that have a large impact on food prices will decrease the ability of poor people to pay for it. It’s not rocket science.

	▲	jayd16 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Then it's a discussion about magnitude and jumping to starvation is unfounded.

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HDThoreaun an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Anything that causes food prices to rise a lot causes starvation yea, when prices go up people consume less.

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conductr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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luigibosco 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think that is the only alternative. If the end goal is to preserve life for humans, completely nuking the soil into a wasteland, treating it with carcinogens and then allowing a company to genetically modify seeds and copyright them is a pretty bad and short sighted strategy.

Allowing a known carcinogen to make crops "easier to harvest" has to do with profit margin not food supply. People literally use this to kill dandelions in their yards. I have known many people who have died from cancer. I have eaten dandelions, while bitter, are actually healthy. A good start would be to work with nature instead of trying to out engineer it.

If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable.

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0xbadcafebee 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If roundup is your alternative to starvation you're probably just delaying the inevitable.

Yes. That is literally exactly what we're doing. You can't sustain the current human population without fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. Half the people on the planet would die.

If we don't want half the planet to die, we need pesticides. So do you choose a pesticide that's more harmful, or less? If you said "less", then you want glyphosate.

	▲	criddell 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think you meant to write herbicide rather than pesticide.

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tptacek 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You both have premises that are too far apart to debate productively; what you're really debating is naturalism vs. technology, scale vs. degrowth, humanism vs. environmentalism. All worthwhile philosophical debates, but you won't get anywhere sniping at each other about them.