Anything the Archbishop of Canterbury is for, is invariably a bad thing. A more politicised AoC you will never find.
So it was reassuring to hear him on Radio 4’s Today this morning espousing environmentalist socialism.
And then Margaret Beckett dropped the bomb-shell: There are things more important than the environment — like the economy for example. Airports should be expanded to ensure we don’t damage the economy.
Some obvious questions come out of this:
- Where is the line between being environmentally responsible and styming society’s prosperity?
- Should India and China use this same justification for destroying the short-term environment?
- If airports are important to foreign investment, is it not fair to say that corporate car-use is also important? If so, why would we allow the obstruction of car-use but not the obstruction of flyers?
Maybe someone will say that there is no alternative to aeroplanes? What about trains? The Channel Tunnel is wasted if people continue to use the air to visit Paris (which you would — it’s cheaper and faster).
The Government should decide. Either it is an irresponsible green party; socialist and using the environment as an excuse; or it is centrist. I’ll assume it’s the second of these.
Update: I forgot to mention that the environment will only be damaged in the very short term by our actions now. There’s no reason to assume it will ever reach a Venus-type situation. In the long-term (in geological time) the Earth will recover.
March 28th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
If so, why would we allow the obstruction of car-use but not the obstruction of flyers?
Could it be the amount of revenue the Exchequer would gain from each act?
Paymasters-General being not too bright in the first place probably ignore fuel duty compared to airport tax.
March 28th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
They’re certainly not too bright. And apparently Cameron’s policies are also going the same way. I surely hope we can have some Conservative opposition to this environmental socialism before the political debate assumes that this lost debate was won.
March 29th, 2006 at 2:52 am
I take a really dim view of the climate change thing.
While there remains ANY possibility of global thermonuclear war, I’m not worried about a few degrees here or there. I can move to avoid that.
March 30th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Hmm,
Perhaps we should present Iranian containment as an environmental issue, lest our climate suffers collateral damage from the otherwise harmless anihilation of infidels…
March 30th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
And burning of oil wells in the first gulf war proves it!
Anyway, that supposes that they are consistent in their convictions. Consider the people who protest about human rights and then complain when we criticise Mugabe…
March 30th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Any Goverment will always have to balance Earth vs Commerce. We could all be forced to live off what we grow in our gardens, not use cars and only use recyclable energy. Alternatively we can open everything up to the market producing cheap polluting cars, cheap pesticide-ridden vegetables and we could sell the cheapest cigarettes to children.
Obviously we need to be somewhere in the middle. As we live on a large island surely we should be focussing on all we can to make this place free from genetic modification and pesticides, encourage utilising wave and wind power, reaching self-sufficiency as a nation, rather than relying on imports. We must also make sure that people can still operate their businesses and live in a free as possible way.
Creating regulation that will do all these things is a hard task and I can’t see the balance being achieved any time soon, and probably until its too late.
March 30th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
The question, though, is: Too late for what? It will get slightly warmer, there may be more need to build sea defences (though not much) and we may have to grow different vegetables. I think we can live with that.
Darwin did not say, as we often think, that it is the survival of the fittest. He said it was the survival of those species most able to change.
Even if we did absolutely nothing to damage the environment, the global temperature would still change. It always has and will again. What we are debating is whether it is worth wasting good money on building wave-powered electricity generators when there are people literally dying because there’s too little food to go around. Personally I would rather all money spent on reducing fossil fuels went into third-world schools or irrigation projects…
But then we get onto another subject. I am not in favour of government supporting charities. Charity is a personal thing and I would much rather give what I thought was right than have it taken by force and then given to charities which I may not feel have as much merit as others.
Finally, on genetic modification: It is not bad in and of itself any more than the internet is. Genetic modification, if done sensibly, is not more serious or Frankenstein’s monster-esque than is selective breeding. Just take a brief look at the change brought about by selective breeding over the long-term of sweetcorn. That we are reducing the time doesn’t increase the danger unless we start adding herbicide resistance…
March 31st, 2006 at 10:38 pm
There’s two problems with GM crops. One is that it’s hard to get rid of them if you don’t want them anymore. And as some of them are stronger than normal crops they may soon replace the natural ones. Just like the Grey Squirrel problem. The UK would have a great unique selling point if all our food was GM free. We could export it all over the world. I’m thinking business, not just environment.
Secondly, lots of GM crops are being sold to the third world that cannot produce fertile seeds. The farmer is then stuck with buying that crop year after year, where as before he was self sufficient. It’s another type of rent that some of the poorest people of the world will have to pay.
But from what I know, temperature and sea-level rises are only a part of the global warming problem. Weather will become more erratic creating bigger storms and longer droughts. The damage from this will probably cost a lot of money in the long term.
We look back 200 years and see some of the mistakes that we made in creating the British Empire as if we were superior beings. In 200 years time people will look back at what we have done to the environment and feel the same way. They’ll know that we knew this was bad for the environment but we continued regardless as if it was of no significance.
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:05 pm
As I say, I don’t really see the difference between GM and selective breeding… You say “if you don’t want them anymore” as if there’s some reason you may wish to remove them all, you may as well say “if you don’t want sweetcorn anymore”. The problem’s no different.
On the sale of infertile GM crops to the third world I cannot disagree but I also cannot see any solution. First, it is not necessary for crops to be GM for them to be made infertile (I don’t believe, anyway); and second we do not have control over what companies do in other countries. If we did then we would be living in a very strange world.
The solution is probably regulation in those third world countries which, we both know and regret, cannot be done. I am afraid great leadership as well as genuinely big-hearted companies is the only solution for the third world and, I am afraid, that is totally beyond our control.
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 am
Quick points:
1. I say “If you dont want them anymore” to mean “if we want the old ones back”. How long have we known about Omega 3 in fish? Not that long. I’m sure we’ll find a thousand things like that in the future and some of it may not be contained in new GM produce.
2. My main argument is purely financial for keeping the UK GM free. Growers of organic crops get much more money for their produce. If we plant GM crops in this country then they will ‘escape’ into the natural environment. I think that in the future (10 years+) we can make a huge amount of money by being able to say that all UK food is GM free. Think how many vegetarians and health freaks they’ll be then. They’ll all want British food and we’ll export it all around the world. £££!
3. I still think it’s wrong for UK companies to exploit the third world for profit. I’m not saying we shouldn’t make a profit, but not at the detrement of people living in poverty.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:42 pm
I’m not saying we shouldn’t make a profit, but not at the detrement of people living in poverty.
I think we should look at the services that are available to people living in poverty thanks to the profit motive.
The third world is the third world because, among other things, of corrupt governments. For many of these governments there is no impetus for providing the goods and services that multinational companies can and do provide to people living in poverty, thanks to the fact that they can make money. True, there are times when this position of trust can be abused, but I would bet the abuse is less extreme than when third world governments are doing the providing of goods and services.
(Also, I agree, the infertile seed issue is ethically questionable, unfortunately, not legally questionable.)