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.)

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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…

Perhaps we should present Iranian containment as an environmental issue, lest our climate suffers collateral damage from the otherwise harmless anihilation of infidels…

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.