Are
Environmentalists bad for the environment?
Environmentalism grew out of the 1960s “counter-culture”
movement, spearheaded by two well-known organisations, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Whilst many of their objectives and
goals have been thoroughly respectable and well-grounded, they tend to prey on
the fear engendered by ignorance: a fear that can so easily be transmuted to
annual subscription. Their marketing campaigns have been very effective; indeed
in the case of Greenpeace the activity has focused almost entirely on public
relations. It features the derring-do of doughty campaigners scaling waste
incinerator chimneys, or pursuing massive factory whalers on the open sea in
fragile dinghies, and even being attacked by a ruthless French secret service.
All this combines to form an effective image of the little man taking on the
Grinch.
I have no argument with anyone who may try to remind
intensive farmers and industrialists of the deleterious consequences of their
actions on the surrounding environment. But environmentalism has taken a wrong
turn. It is now quite frankly anti-scientific. It picks on scientifically based
activities far removed from everyday experience, like nuclear power or genetic modification, safe in the knowledge
that only a small fraction of the population has any formal understanding of
the processes involved.
Perhaps the most insidious development of the
environmentalist movement’s anti-science agenda has been the sustained campaign of vilification,
aided and abetted by the media, against genetic modification. “Frankenstein
food!” they cry, creating the notion of mutant food-stuffs stalking the
landscape, unloved and terrifying to all good men and women.
What is the risk that people take when they eat food
derived from a GM crop? We do not, after all, eat genes. We eat
the DNA that expresses genes, along with proteins, fat
and carbohydrates. All these are digested into their constituent parts and then
re-assimilated into our own, individual DNA, proteins, etc. The common or
garden pea, for example, is a modified plant, bred not to release its seed. It
relies on humans for its propagation and was modified genetically thousands of
years ago by our ancestors, who somehow had an intuitive understanding of artificial
selection. GM crops have been grown and consumed around the world for well over
ten years with no reports of any harm done to people or “contamination” of the
environment.
When the Climate Change levy was introduced in the mid
1990s, the environmentalists forced the British government to make nuclear
power stations pay it, alongside the fossil-fuel
generators. Whatever problems nuclear power stations may present, the emission
of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and CFCs, or indeed acid
gases, is not one of them. Nuclear power does not emit climate-changing gases
and so should not have to pay the levy. But of course the environmentalists in
this respect are not really interested in the environment, but in maintaining
their own dogma and established media position. As far as they are concerned,
there is nothing good about nuclear power. The dice must be loaded economically
against it, so that it can be seen to fail. We spend huge amounts of money on
intermittent energy sources like wind power, which have to be backed up by the
only reliable sources we possess: fossil fuel and nuclear fission. This is
unreasonable.
We have burnt far more coal, oil and gas in power
stations than we would have if we had built more nuclear power stations. Our
farmers use more fertiliser and pesticide than they would if they were allowed
to grow GM crops. This is why environmentalists are bad for the environment.
Environmentalists enjoy powerful support in the media,
invariably receiving sympathetic coverage, even when their facts are wrong and
their opinions dubious. It can be quite difficult to engage with them, for
example by pointing out that cars present a far greater pollution load on the
planet than nuclear power stations. Campaigning against car ownership
might affect subscriptions, after all. Where were they during the fuel protests
in September 2000? None of them came to the defence of the fuel duty escalator,
which was beginning to bite. If we are to move towards electric vehicles, where
is the power going to come from?
What is so worrying about the environmentalists’
ascendancy is not only their assault on technology, but also the diversion of government’s
attention from real innovative work in new sciences, like microbial bioremediation,
which can be exploited to treat all forms of pollution and waste.
My plea to the environmentalists is
to move on, to leave anti-science behind and pursue an active
ecological approach. Above all, if they are to exercise political influence,
they must be accountable and held responsible for the consequences of their
influence. Conducting entirely negative campaigns against new science and technology
begins to make environmentalists look medieval and dangerous. There is a sense
of the hair-shirt, of a false asceticism, a sanctimonious self-righteousness
and intellectual obduracy surrounding their pronouncements. Above all, their anti-science
betrays a failure of imagination, often manifested by an insouciant disregard
for the welfare of their fellow human beings. We all benefit from reasonably
priced power and food.
This is not about progress for the sake of progress: it is
about directed progress, advances that benefit us all. It is time for the
people to take control of scientific advance, and thereby control of their
destiny. That is what environmentalism should be all about.