Thinking, intelligent people can reasonably disagree on whether the post-industrial human race has anything to do with it, but that the earth is warmer now than it was even very recently isn’t a particularly controversial assertion. So global warming might eventually be a big problem. Still got quite a few of those–um, whaddyacallem, oh yeah–nuclear warheads sitting around too. And if an asteroid of the killed-the-dinosaurs variety decides to come for us, we’ll know it for years beforehand, but it’s unlikely we’ll be able to prevent the impact. And…
…you get the idea. We’re able to imagine several plausible scenarios that would result in anything from an environment inhospitable to conventional agriculture to the near-total elimination of the human race (hopefully, only near-total).
So, a science consortium and the Norwegian government decided that it would be a good idea to collect all of our staple crop seeds in one very safe place: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
It’s a cool idea, methinks (literally; it’s roughly halfway between the Arctic Circle and the North Pole). Even if we manage to leave our technological adolescence without destroying ourselves, it’s got that time-capsule appeal to it.
But here’s the part I’m having trouble getting my brain around. How many is “all of our staple crop seeds,” do you think? Would you believe 1.5 million? As in 1,500,000? Different kinds of seeds? Even considering all of the subtle varieties of fruits, vegetables, grains, textile crops, and so forth, I never would have imagined the number was any higher than 25,000 or so, much less 60 times that many.
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