Book Review: Whole Earth Discipline An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
by Stewart Brand
Atlantic Books 2009 316pp
“Civilization is at risk, but civilization is the problem”.
Stewart Brand is one of the iconic founders of the environmental movement, an original old hippy whose influence on the boomer generation should not be understated. With his latest book Whole Earth Discipline he takes that same movement to task for rejecting science and getting sidetracked by ideology at the very time when the practical application of science through engineering and technology may be the only way to save ourselves.
I came across an early copy of The Whole Earth Catalog, founded by Brand in 1968, on an early visit to a small “back to the land” commune about 25 years ago. It was a thrilling introduction to the possibilities of the burgeoning “alternative” lifestyle of organic gardening and renewable energy I was joining at the time.
Over the coming years, I read about his early involvement in LSD in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and currently have a copy of his 1999 book The Clock of the Long Now on my bookshelf.
In a recent interview, I heard Brand take on the environmental movement’s anti-science stance on various issues. I have been grappling with this issue myself for some time now, particularly in the credulous acceptance by most green organisations of “alternative medicine” for which there is no evidence, and the anti-science diatribes that are inevitably summoned up in defense.
More recently I have discovered for myself how little science there is behind the health claims of organic food, and how organisations such as the Soil Association are often pseudo-scientific in their claims and their treatment of evidence.
Whole Earth Discipline challenges the greens on four more holy cows: population, urbanisation, nuclear power and Genetically Engineered crops, and in reading this compelling and fascinating book I have had to do some serious re-thinking around these issues myself.
Of those four issues the one I have been most concerned about myself has been population: what use our hard-won per capita reductions in carbon emissions if this is to be always canceled out by more people? What chance of eco-system restoration if a growing population is constantly increasing the pressure?
In contrast to Brand- who had Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich as one of his early tutors- I do not see population really as a big environmentalist cause, rather it seems to be the elephant in the room that no-one wants to talk about, perhaps because of connections with oppressive regimes, racism and the sheer intractability of the problem.
Brand claims however that world population will most likely peak within another generation at around 9 billion, far less than was being predicted in the 70s and 80s, and that there is one major reason for this: urbanization. Most of humanity now live in cities and as the rural poor move there they reduce their numbers of offspring, so much so that far from a population crash, we are facing a crisis of an aging population.
Brand paints a very different picture of this process of the move to town than that of the conventional environmentalist. The move to the city Brand claims is liberating on the whole, and especially for women. Rural village life tends to be parochial and oppressive, offering little by way of opportunity. Peasant subsistence agriculture is far from the romantic view of the back-to-the-land movement for most, but back breaking toil subject to the vagaries of the weather with no back-up in case of crop failure.
The mega-slums of the developing world may appear to be hellish and grossly over-crowded polluted and destitute to the affluent western greenie, but Brand argues that in fact they are preferable to squalid farming because they offer opportunities to escape poverty. One way this is happening is by the ubiquitous spread of the cell phone: even the poorest of the poor have one, with incoming calls often free.
Not only that, but growing cities mean an emptying countryside which is good for forest regeneration. The point is made clearly: if you want to be green, than the compact life in the city id for you, while those in wealthy countries who set up their small-holdings in remote rural locations are likely to have a larger footprint, subsidised as they are by car transport and long supply lines. (I would be a classic example of this last category.)
Surprising though Brand’s analysis is on cities, his more controversial chapters are likely to be the ones on nuclear and GE crops.
While I attended anti-nuclear demos in my youth- CND was at its height in the late 1970s when I was leaving school- more recently I have been swayed by James Lovelock’s position on nuclear, that which ever way you look at it, coal is the real dirty fuel and if your concern is over future generations, addressing climate change by decarbonising the economy is your first priority.
It does indeed seem that fears over the dangers of nuclear waste have been exaggerated. The total per capita waste from a lifetime of using nuclear fuel for one family would fit into a soda can. France runs 80% of its electricity from nuclear, but while many die every day in car crashes, nuclear seems to be very safe these days. Not only that, but there are new generations of nuclear power stations which are relatively small and which can be deployed anywhere. One scheme is to produce small power stations which contain their entire lifetimes worth of fuel, are buried for the duration of the fuel and simply switched off when that is spent, with no waste extracted.
Brand also points out that all the existing nuclear powers developed weapons technology first, which then gave rise to civil energy uses, rather than the other way round; since Iran actually does need nuclear power, the international community would be in a very strong place to insist how this is developed safely. In the west meanwhile, large numbers of nukes are being used as a source of fuel for power generation.
What Brand skips over in his book with barely a mention is peak oil. He clearly thinks new technologies and fuel sources can fill the gap somehow; uranium can be extracted from sea water, and if that runs out, we can use thorium instead.
Peak oil doomers like myself have long argued against nuclear on the grounds that it will take too long to construct, that the carbon footprint is still high once you have counted the embodied energy in construction and decommissioning;that uranium will peak also before too long should we try to run everything from nuclear. While Brand makes a convincing case for the safety of modern reactors and the promise of new technologies, he is clearly under no illusion about the challenge facing us were we to try to replace existing coal and oil with a range of alternatives, including nuclear, before the climate tipping point. Brand is no techno-fantasist, but a pragmatic and practical engineer.
Perhaps even more of a Holy Cow for environmentalists than nuclear is Genetically Engineered crops. (Brand prefers “GE” to the more common “GM”.) This seems to go right to the heart of what sees as the problem with the ideological position of “romantic” greens who are motivated by a spurious ideological notions of what is “natural”. Tampering with genes, especially crossing the species divide, seems unnatural to many and unholy to some.
But scientists are no more concerned about GE technology than they are about plant breeding and loss of diversity from farming in general, because they know as Brand says that genes are extremely fungible in nature: transgenic mutations, especially on the microbial level, are apparently quite normal, indeed we could hardly have evolved without this process. Although the “strawberry with fish genes” is apparently an urban myth, in fact any given gene may be nearly identical in two very different species so splicing genes from one organism into another may not be nearly as “abnormal” as it may appear.
The problem is not this or that particular kind of farming, but farming in general. Unless you advocate a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles (there are those who do) there is no reason to feel GE crops are uniquely evil or dangerous.
To an ecologist, or to a Gaian for that matter, agriculture is one vast catastrophe. The less of it the better.
Another urban myth which may be partly responsible for the extreme opposition to GE- in common with anti-abortion and anti-vivisection activism, anti-GE sentiment is deemed to justify violence on occasion- is the “terminator gene”, designed to produce sterile genes. This does appear to be unjustifiable, interfering as it does with ancient farming practices of seed-saving, until you read the true story: no “terminator” crops were ever actually produced, in part because of protests, but the real reason for their proposed development was to limit the dangers of the new crops running amok in the wild: in other words, terminator technology was part of the checks and balances that Monsanto were proposing to address some of the environmentalists concerns. Without this, preventing contamination may now be harder.
The absurdity of the opposition to these crops is expressed in the quote given by Vandana Shiva, from her book Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (2000):
“The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that would eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet”- a biological impossibility, since terminator plants would be unable to spread by seeds.
Brand gives a shocking account of how ideologically motivated environmental organizations including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth campaigned extensively against US food aid to Africa during famines in 2001 and 2002 because it contained GE crops, threatening to prevent any African imports to Europe if this badly needed food was accepted. Brand ruefully quotes Brecht: “Grub first, then ethics.”
Starvation was treated as a measure of commitment to the cause. In the service of what was thought to be a higher good, the environmental movement went sociopathic in Africa.
That well funded environmental groups in Europe campaigned so vociferously against food aid that was meant for starving people is surely a shocking indictment that there is something seriously wrong with the movement.
Many of the arguments Brand discusses in favour of GE crops are given here;
-after a decade of real life trials, no evidence suggests any human health implications from eating GE food;
-checks and balances are employed far more diligently in GE than in many other areas;
-GE is already becoming decentralised with many smaller companies and NGOs becoming involved in using the technology appropriately to help the poor and the hungry, with many beneficial effects for the environment including less use of pesticides:
“Developing countries are building their own non -corporate GE programs suited to their unique agricultural needs.” The democratization of the technology may even have been hampered by anti-GE activism: “Only a few big corporate players have survived a period of consolidation, caused partly by excessive anti-GE regulation that drove out small companies”.
And the potential of the technology is impressive: unlike conventional plant breeding, GE can be highly specific and precise in the traits it develops, and has had many successes despite the hampering of environmental protests.
Brand discusses at length how the bogus concept of the “precautionary” principle has been used to scupper development of the technology. In the absence of any clear evidence of danger, the precautionary principle is merely a recipe for social apoplexy. No doubt there were protesters using the same argument when people first discovered fire. In fact there are lots of checks and balances and the scientists who know what they are doing are far more aware of possible dangers than protesters.
Quasi-scientific propaganda against climate change is no different from quasi-scientific propaganda against genetic engineering. Both try to harness science to a political agenda.
In the coming years, GE seems certain to spread and eventually to be accepted: “The fact is that the fastest-moving countries now with GE crops are the developing nations that have the scientific competence and confidence to stand up to excessively cautious environmentalists- China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Argentina, the Philippines. as they go, so goes the world.”
As I write this I am getting forwarded emails asking me to sign the Avaaz petition against the recent decision by the European Council to allow GE potatoes to be grown here. I wont be signing, but I know most of my colleagues- many of whom have pulled up GM crops themselves- will.
In the future however, the strategy is likely to be to aim the benefits of the produce at the consumer: if the technology is good enough, people will simply prefer the better product. The proof will be in the pudding.
Brand returns to the issue of the dysfunction of Greens in his next chapter, Romantics, Scientist and Engineers
Here he suggests that one of the driving forces of green movements has been the romantic notion of decline. As a peak -oiler myself a lot of bells rang as I read through the book and I found myself stopping to question how much of my beliefs about the inevitability of collapse and “the long descent” are ideological rather than based on real evidence.
Clearly the potential for collapse is very real, and perhaps an over-optimistic world view based on “positive thinking” has contributed to the recent financial collapse, as Barbara Ehrenreich has argued in her book Smile or Die.
Without discussing the ins and outs of the collapse theory- he has already outlined some of the worst scenarios of climate change in the opening chapter- Brand explores the idea that romantic greens are ideologically opposed to finding solutions, whereas engineers believe there must be a solution to everything.
A new set of environmental players is shifting the balance. Engineers are arriving who see environmental problems neither as a romantic tragedy nor as a a scientific puzzle but simply as something to fix.
I myself used to buy into the still prevalent myth of the Fall from an idyllic past: for thousands of years,so this particular myth goes- humans lived in harmony with Nature, responsive to Her (usually feminine) deepest energies and understandings.
At a certain unspecified point in our history, we lost our way, separating from Nature and playing God by manipulating natural laws. It is because this myth is still so powerful that anti-GE and anti-nuclear sentiment remains so strong and vitriolic- Thou Shalt Not meddle with the Deeper Law.
In reality, there never was such an idyllic harmonious past; Rousseau’s Noble Savage never was.
Nature does not care about us, nor does it have plans or desires; rather, any species that were to evolve the adaptive advantages of opposable thumbs and the neo-cortex would have come to dominate our predators and competitors in the same way we have.
Being close to nature has always meant short life-span, high infant mortality and constant resource wars. It has only ever been our technology- starting with fire- that has allowed us to escape such an existence.
As Brand outlines so succinctly in his opening pages, the fundamental problem of humanity is not separation from nature, but existential: everything we do has a footprint; yet we want our children to survive and prosper.
Brand takes a brief look at how these retro-romantic views have been associated with, and are not incompatible with, Nazism: yearning for a purity in nature not found in culture; and an elitism only possible in the well fed to moralize to the hungry.
But the engineer’s approach is very different from any kind of deluded new age pseudo-therapy, rooted as it is in science and practical experience. There is surely no guarantee that we will be able to pull off the kind of techno-fixes Brand describes in his last chapters- which includes such things as giant sunshades in space and the sequestration of carbon through biochar on a massive scale- but the worst aspects of the romantic’s world view should not hinder these attempts which may be our last chance.
Every environmentalist should read this life-changing – and maybe even planet-changing book.
The long-evolved Green agenda is suddenly outdated- too negative, too tradition-bound, too specialized, too politically one-sided for the scale of the climate problem. Far from taking a new dominant role,environmentalists risk being marginalized more than ever, with many of their deep goals and well-honed strategies irrelevant to the new tasks. Accustomed to saving natural systems from civilization, Greens now have the unfamiliar task of saving civilization from a natural system- climate dynamics.
Thanks for the review Graham to be honest I probably wouldn’t have bought the book without it. I have some issues being lecture by 60s counterculture boomer heroes but this sounds worth the read.
I guess I already have issues with some of the arguments but it’s always nice to be challenged. For example around GM, I’ve never bought the Frankenstein food hysteria but the Intellectual property argument worries me just as it does in my own industry. Business (have to legally) operate to protect or grow their profits and/or market share. One way of doing this is to erect barriers to entry, IP is a useful tool for this and is used as such. Having said that we now have at least one world power with limited respect for legal niceties around patents so perhaps we the argument will be killed dead if the Chinese enter this game.
I also don’t buy “the fall” any more than I buy “progress” these are just stories we tell ourselves to explain the how clever or dumb we are. Stories are important to explain where we are but unfortunately I see some evidence of magical thinking in the environmental movement which assumes if we tell ourselves a different story somehow the world will be changed. Our approach to the world may change but the reality that underlies our perceptions remains fixed no matter which gods we appeal to those of technology or those of my blue painted ancestors. This is one of the pieces of muddled thinking that comes from some of those counterculture heroes I have issues with and I worry a little that this book may just be another bedtime story to excuse the last forty years of wasted opportunities.
Just for information although I never considered it particularly relevant I’m an engineer, twenty years of solving problems but none as big as the one we collectively face today.
Thanks for your comment Dode. The myth of continual progress is one I have been mainly concerned with to the past many years. I think the key word from Brand is “Pragmatism” as opposed to ideology. He discusses at length the issues around intellectual property. It does raise the issue in my mind though, are enviros against GE because they think it is dangerous or because they want the (initially very expensive to develop) technology for free? Look forward to hearing what you think when you have read the book!
I haven’t read the book though I think I shall. New perspectives broaden and Brand has shown himself a creative thinker par excellence.
It’ll give me a broader story. Having multiple perspectives or stories enable us to arrange a more resilient mental map, one that addresses reality better. Dode might disagree, but I think that broadening my mental map is one of the most pragmatic things I can do, Of course there really is a world out there, but what I can do is very much determined by the capacity for action my story about it allows. Am I powerless or a free agent who can shape the world to my ends?
My favorite book of Stewart Brand’s is “How Buildings Learn,” which is about evolution –how malleable even our most seemingly permanent creations end up being. The same might be said for our cultural stories. Consensus reality seems to be breaking up a bit. I agree with Andrew about preferring a story that allows free agency –which is what I don’t like about having to buy seeds from a heartless, placeless, multinational corporation, sterile or not. I’m surprised a permaculturist, Graham, can say the seeds are good because less pesticides are needed. Pesticides are not in my story at all. Nor industrial, catastrophic agriculture. Permaculture is a story about another way of going about life.
Engineers use numbers and science to fix things, yes. But they are very detail-oriented. The larger questions of what to fix, why, and to what end are not their specialty. Those questions can only be answered by discovering what people care the most about, what they think is morally decent and desireable.
To submit to ever-increasing industrialization, (which is based on ever-increasing centralization of dominance/submission power relations), which is what nukes and GM food are fairly ultimate expressions of, because that’s our only hope of survival? I don’t think so.
Graham likes science. Permaculture is science! Just like science, it’s based on observation and trying things! We are learning to harness ecological effects while gradually restoring, not harming, ecosystems and biodiversity. Read “The Power of Duck,” for an excellent example of this in Japan discovered by Mollison. We can now go far beyond ancient peasant cultures into the capacity for more abundance, more agency, than has existed at any time in those romanticized indigenous cultures, while enjoying the robust health, the connectedness that we so envy in those lifeways.
That’s what I care about.
“I’m surprised a permaculturist, Graham, can say the seeds are good because less pesticides are needed. Pesticides are not in my story at all. Nor industrial, catastrophic agriculture.”
Im afraid Susan that pesticides are not that easy to avoid: some pesticides which are considered “organic” (copper sulphate eg) might be worse than others which are not permitted under “organic” standards; and even organic food has pesticide residues. Contamination from “organic” manures etc may be more harmful than many synthetic chemicals; as a pragmatic permaculturalist I see nothing inherently evil about pesticides used wisely. A problem with organics for example is tilling the soil too often- is that “part of your story” ? but the wider point is, again, we simply cannot easily, any time soon, feed the world with organics alone. It is all very well for us in the rich world with fossil fuel back-ups in case of crop failure to make judgments about these things, but we need to wake up and understand the bigger story about how the world is currently fed. Its not “industrial agriculture” which is catastrophic, but agriculture itself, if you want to take that line. Both are about feeding people.
No, of course tilling the soil is not part of my, or permaculture’s, story (which is about no-till methods),nor are copper sulfates nor huge piles of tainted manures –these are all part of “organic,” but still giant, centralized, industrial agriculture. I think the world can reorganize to feed its people using new, ecology-enhancing methods.
“Peasant subsistence agriculture is far from the romantic view of the back-to-the-land movement for most, but back breaking toil subject to the vagaries of the weather with no back-up in case of crop failure”.
…”but Brand argues that in fact they (cities) are preferable to squalid farming because they offer opportunities to escape poverty”.
Of course subsistence agriculture can be grim. But I do feel compelled to ask how, as a teacher of permaculture, informed about the work of people like Geoff Lawton, tropical agroforestry, duck/rice polycultures, and with studies like the IAASTD report which show that smaller farmers have higher yields than big ones, especially in the Tropics, etc, etc, you find yourself arguing that we need broadscale GM agriculture in order to feed expanded urban populations because agriculture and rural communities can never be anything other than “back breaking” and “squalid”? Come on Graham….
Following the same logic, our permaculture courses now need only teach how to drive huge tractors, and apply fertiliser guided by satellites. No need to teach how to make furniture, IKEA can do it far more effectively, no need to teach green building, Kingspan could build you a kit home much more efficiently…. Given that you have clearly decided that organic farming has no chance of feeding the world (something you announce as fact, but much disputed elsewhere), it would be good to hear your thoughts on permaculture. What does it actually have to offer the world in your post-Brand opinion, ?
Rob- I dont see any argument here worth answering. Why dont you address the points Ive actually made in the review, instead of making new ones up, or the issues re misguided opposition to GM that Brand makes? What about the elitism of environmentalists who claim to know what the billions of poor in the world should be doing? There is a subtle difference between Ikea furniture and food: in latter case, people die or suffer if they dont get enough, today and everyday. The key word is “pragamtism”- which in my view is the key definition of permaculture, not ideology. How about discussing the terrible destructiveness of elitist western ideologies like “nature knows best (and by extension we know what that is)” ? Funny you should mention Ikea though- my neighbour has just bought a beautiful Ikea kitchen unit, I might go and check them out!
Here is a response from Syngenta, the GE company, who, along with Monsanto, walked awayf from the IAASTD process: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=syngenta+IAASTD The author says: “I finally felt forced to resign my IAASTD authorship because the draft put forward claims not supported by the evidence. Too often it treated fears and prejudices against technology and business as fact, and its style drew heavily on innuendo – the assumption that corporate means bad. The result is a document most scientists would find hard to support, and one it would be dishonest and counterproductive for me to endorse. Instead, I recommend readers look at reports such as the 2007 World Development Report by the World Bank, which highlights the key role of technology in achieving a productivity revolution, especially for smallholders.” Scientific process is so poorly understood, so commonly disregarded and even dismissed on principle by those in the environmental movement that I find this comment from the Syngenta rep entirely credible.
Graham’s link took me to a google search result page. I clicked the first result (http://www.bioscienceresource.org/commentaries/article.php?id=18) which was a very readable and grounded-sounding commentary on the unique values of the IAASTD (about which I confess I knew nothing!) and what it imagines are more credible reasons for Syngenta and Monsanto’s withdrawal than the ones given. Essentially the commentary claimed that the companies’ GE goals were not being met there and they could get better mileage by delegitamizing the IAASTD process.
The companies (or was it just one of the two?) gave middle-management frustration as a reason. I don’t find it credible that middle management dissatisfaction is a serious concern for companies like this.
I do take Graham’s point, if I understood it correctly, that demonizing corporate agendas, and being blind to what’s good in them, is very common, for the “left” and “greens;” imo there’s an important shadow here worth looking at.
For me as a curious onlooker this isn’t one of those cases. I’m valuing the thrust of the IAASTD (“the IPCC of agriculture”) more than I’m mussed about Syngenta and Monsanto pulling out.
[
Response Thanks Andrew but I didnt find the Bioscience Resource Project (BRP) site you linked to very impressive. It smacks of pseudoscience and unsubstantiaited rhetoric. Of course, corporations are making money out of GM. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the technology does actually work at least to some extent and farmers, however misguided, do want it. Let’s also assume for the sake of argument that it is in fact safe. In this scenario, the companies who have spent billions developing it will still want to safeguard their product and make profits. This tells us nothing about the efficacy of the technology in itself; for that we must look at credible, verifiable studies. The BRP site for example has an article on Ermakova’s study on rats, one that is repeatedly quoted in support of the claim of negative health effects of GM foods: http://www.bioscienceresource.org/news/article.php?id=22 but I dont see any critical analysis of the study, or references to any other studies; rather, it seems to be a rhetorical stream of innuendo and suppositions, with no actual quotations or references, aiming to discredit the journal “Nature Biotechnology”. If you have spent any time reading the turgid pages of pro-homeopathy sites you will be familiar with this kind of technique. Compare BRP to this paper:
http://pubresreg.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=62
“A visit in the website of Dr. Ermakova (Ermakova, 2001 – 2008) reveals, that she has a clearly negative agenda on GM crops: In a rather strange mix she advocates a GM free Europe, on her page “my publications” there is not a single paper cited which has been published in a peer reviewed journal and you can discover weird interviews she recently gave in an obscure Russian internet site “MK” such as “Russians threatened by GM Genocide” (Ermakova & Pichugina, 2007). It is therefore not very credible, when Dr. Ermakova wants to make believe in her reply in Nature Biotechnology, that she is neutral in her view on GMO….”
See also: http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/agbio-articles/myths.html
“Below is a (non-comprehensive) bibliography of 57 publications regarding the safety of GM food crops… The activists dismiss this list of published data with a wave of the hand and say that none of this research can be trusted because it has been done by company scientists or scientists funded by companies. Well this is a serious accusation. The activists are essentially accusing hundreds of scientists of fraud. Many of the studies below are done at independent labs with funds provided by the companies. But how else do you expect such research to be funded? Should the tax-payer pay to test the safety of this food so that the companies can make a profit from them? No. Would the activists fund the research? Would it be independent then?
The only practical way to test this is food is to use the model currently in place — the company developing the product must pay for testing it and the data must be reviewed by an independent regulatory authority. This is the only feasible way. When asked for another feasible model the activists are suddenly silent.
Surely it is obvious that a company selling a food product will want an accurate assessment of whether it is safe or not — especially in these highly litigatous times. A company’s desire to be able to protect itself from law-suits ensures that the data collected by these animal studies is not fraudulent.
This food has been tested and it is a lie to suggest it has not. If the activists wish to say that the food has been tested but there has been a massive cover up of the negative results then let them try and sustain this claim. ..”
Conspiracy theories work both ways. It seems to me, the more I read around this topic, that GM foods are subject to a far more rigorous testing procedure than most other foods, and it may actually therefore be safer than these other foods.
<
p>Personally I smell a pseudo -scientific ideologically fed rat, and a very sick one at that.
I was shocked when I first heard about Stewart Brand’s new book, with its support for nukes and GM food. I could only understand it by reflecting that Brand has been spending his time for many years now on lucrative consulting contracts via his Global Business Network with large, multinational corporations on his scenario planning technique, an interesting method detailed in his “The Clock of the Long Now;” and he can be assumed to have absorbed thereby many of the values the very wealthy and priviledged tend to hold, forgetting about ordinary people and the biosphere.
I was dismayed by Graham’s support for these technologies, evident in the review above, since he is supposed to be a permaculturist. His taking Vandana Shiva’s words out of context in order to make her look foolish was a low trick. Maybe Graham should go get a job as a stockbroker in The City. Or go for a liver/gallbladder cleanse! Not a happy camper!
I have watched Graham’s passionate defense of the scientific point of view as opposed to the woo-woo (or unscientifically mythical way of seeing the world –witches, dousing and the like –which has become popular in progressive, “green” circles) with great interest and sympathy, since it is a position I find important also. Especially now I live in Northern California where mythical views tend to proliferate among some alternative, progressive-type people, I too have been alarmed by the potential consequences of this dreamy, ungrounded point of view for what I consider a balanced, pragmatic, responsibly informed view of reality.
But now, presumably in reaction to what in the UK may be even more extreme examples of this sort of thing, Graham seems to have over-balanced in the other direction, using scientific studies to call into question cherished causes of environmentalists, or the “green” side of things, also the source of the woo-woo views. An example is the recent disparaging of organic food on Zone5, which was not just questioning poor practices allowed under the organic label, but the whole idea. Now Zone5′s promoting nukes and GM, as necessary choices in a bad situation, is something I feel I must protest. I am all for open-mindedness. Beliefs should always be held as open to question rather than as orthodoxy. This is how science works. Still, there are values to be upheld and defended. Especially as a leading permaculturist, I think Graham is faltering in the task of supporting what is good over what is not good. I am thinking of young people, who already have a hard task to figure out what is real, what is worth valuing, without having leaders of a distinctly empowering, solutions-oriented movement, Permaculture, (which invented the idea of a “Zone 5″) turning all strange on basic values.
Nukes and GM are sophisticated, complex technologies which are the extreme expressions of a world view which has recently (with multiple dire crises impending) been overwhelmingly revealed to be morally, and pragmatically bankrupt and dysfunctional. This is the view that we can forcibly control the natural (and the human) world. These technologies both require, to make them safe, expert, top-down, supervision for many centuries to come. Where does this leave ordinary people and the biosphere? Dependent and exploited. Right where they largely are now. To claim that industrial agricultural and energy-generating methods which have drained our rivers, poisoned our people, killed off biodiversity over most of the planet, and grown our numbers to absurdly unsustainable levels, are inevitable if we want to “feed people” is simply using the same fear tactics the powers-that-be routinely use to justify their narrowly self-interested agendas. This message is confusing to young minds. It’s erosive of the excellent work so many of my generation have devoted themselves to in order to defend life on the planet.
<
p>{RESPONSE: What a load of nonsense Susan. You are simply spouting a confused ideology. The question of whether GE crops are a good or bad thing is a question of evidence, not ideology. I wont post any more of your comments unless they actually address the evidence and engage in a critical analysis of the issues. Your attempts to discredit me personally and plaintive appeals to “young minds” merely provide another example of the irrationality inherent in the environmental movement.}
Getting a little heated in here again Graham. Challenging someones reality as ideology, opinion or belief always seems to have predictable results.
@ Graham I agree on the point of pragmatism, as I said I’m an engineer and I think it goes with the territory, life and by extension technology and systems are never perfect you have to work with what you have. Otherwise you achieve nothing.
Personally so far I’m against GE as I see it as an opportunity for some companies to stitch up another part of the commons. With some reasonable checks and balances in place to limit the time for recovery on investment (five to ten years?) as well as no ownership of second generation seeds bred through conventional methods I’d reconsider. Again my issue isn’t so much based on belief but on concern based on the patterns of behaviour I see (quite close up) in multinational companies.
@ Andrew I agree 100% on broadening your mental map and on the importance of stories in this sorry if perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment.
@ Susan You say engineers are detail oriented and larger questions are not our speciality but in this case I have to defend my profession. I work in the scope of a problem defined, if this is fixing and problem with a hinge I look at the hinge, if it is a product system I look at that, if it is a factory or business I look at that, If it is a garden or home the approach is the same. You draw the scope, define the requirements and limits, find the controls and feedbacks and work from there. It’s not so far from Permaculture. Most people in the UK or America only come across engineers who work in a limited role because our business tend to have a very functional structure.
Dode: I agree with you that engineers and permaculturalists probably have a lot in common: permaculture has never been about ideology as far as I can see, but is a pragmatic, solutions-based practical approach. I personally am not “for” or “against” GE per se; but I am for rational, evidence-based approach to the issue, and I am opposed to ideologies, especially when they pose as being “scientific”.
The concerns about ownership of the commons and the role of corporations are important; Brand discusses these issues at length; he feels that the technology is already becoming rapidly decentralized, and he is also critical of Monsanto’s secrecy.
None of this tells us anything about the value or otherwise of the technology itself. These issues are relevant to all technologies- think of the all-pervasive presence of oil in our lives- they are not unique to GE.
I agree with Brand when he argues that the way to address these issue is to engage with the technology and with the issues. The opposition to GE is completely discredited by association with pseudo-science and ideologies; I find Brand convincing when he says that GE is best regulated from within the industry.
I have not yet seen any response from the anti-GE side on the issue of the US sending GE crops to feed the starving in Africa in 2001:
http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/737.cfm
This is a serious ethical issue; it would be good to see some reasoned debate around it.
For me it is simply inexcusable. If in America the agricultural industry accepts GM then there is really no reason that the products produced should be restricted in delivery to Africa. My only concern is that the products should be clearly identified as containing GE substances to allow those receiving the aid with ethical objections to GE to starve themselves.
Graham, excellent review. Couldn’t agree more, on all four central premises. The ‘green agenda’ is defunct as civilisation is now circling the ecological drain. If climate change doesn’t deliver the coup de grace, then peak oil will have gotten there first. Uncomfortable facts, yes, but facts nonetheless.
It’s getting hard to escape the conclusion that civilisation (at least in its current multi-billion person manifestation) has run its course, and no amount of eco-tweaking is going to alter the trajectory our actions (however unintentional) have already determined.
If “going green” makes you feel better, fine, it’s a harmless, if irrelevant pursuit, and morally has much to commend it.
Graham, hope you’ll consider dual-posting over on Climatechange.ie on pieces like this (am currently reading ‘Climate Wars’ by Gwynne Dyer. So far, it’s a terrific read, and hope to post a review of same when completed).
p.s. That should have read ‘ThinkOrSwim.ie – the blog part of Climatechange.ie…
Hi Graham,
On the GE food aid. My knowledge isn’t perfect but it is something I’ll be looking into more, to get a clearer picture – During the Southern African food crisis of 2001, it wasn’t as black and white as “these governments (encouraged by international NGOs) stopped GE food aid entering their countries and therefore may have killed their own citizens”. All countries involved, excluding Zambia, came to a reasonable compromise agreement whereby the GE grain would be milled to prevent sowing, and thus distributed solely as a food crop. These governments had what would seem to them to be legitimate concerns for not allowing the crops in, primarily the long-term viability of their agricultural sectors were their domestic varieties to become contaminated by GE (it’s not a simple dichotomy of grub first, then ethics). Besides, supposed pressure placed on the governments by NGOs is surely only comparable to the pressure put on the same governments to accept the in-kind GM food aid. This is a bigger debate than can be carried out here but the GE aid should have been a non-starter anyway due to the potential for local procurement. Once again, USAID was unabashedly used as a political tool and to subsidise US farmers and enact corporate policy objectives, whatever the democratic rights may be of overseas states. Discussion of this food crisis misses the broader question of whether GE is necessary in the first place. The case of Southern Africa at the turn of the century is a prime example of where, instead of buying into the much publicised “need” for GE, less risky and contentious alternatives were subsequently explored such as diversifying crops and going back to varieties displaced by colonialism, which were much better suited than the omnipresent corn in terms of drought resistance etc. This, as well as the aforementioned local procurement. It could be a good idea to get your facts right on this issue if you are to attempt to assert that NGOs discouraging GE food aid had a role in increasing mortality in the afflicted countries. There is no evidence for this (seeing as your obsession is with rationality and evidence), and the country that actually did ultimately hold out against the GE corn (due to possibly justified fears, not just for its agricultural sector but also for the health of its undernourished populace) ended up receiving GM-free aid anyway.
To make it clear, towards the end of the above comment is not to disagree that the emphasis shouldn’t be on rationality and evidence, as far as obtainable!
Tommacg: Sure USAID is clearly self-serving, but the issue about starving people is that if they dont get food pretty quickly, if it is delayed for any reason, some of them may very well starve to death. There was at least one report of hungry mobs seizing the GE food aid while it was being held. A hungry man is an angry man. Anyone who thinks that some people would choose death by any means over taking their chances with food that well-fed -even over-fed- US citizens are happy to eat – that they would die rather than risk long-term food security for purely hypothetical reasons- should undergo a lengthy fast while they do some inner soul-searching. That doesnt make USAID perfectly moral either, but there are no good reasons for opposing GE. NGOs have been pressuring African countries to follow the European model of restrictions not for scientific reasons, not for health reason, but for ideological and economic reasons, to protect European organic markets. The threat was economic: we will boycott African exports on nebulous grounds of Prior to 2002 shipments of unmilled GE crops had been accepted into Africa without controversy. GE is a tool that should not be opposed because in Africa farmers need all the help they can get. There is nothing “risky” about it any more than any other kind of crop. To treat it as “contaminated” like its toxic chemical waste is absurd. African farms achieve as little as a quarter of the yields in the US even for sorghum, well adapted to the African climate; there are many reason for this but one of the main ones is lack of access to technology. Many NGOs seem to prefer to keep African poor, so long as they remain “organic”.
If you can be bothered, would you please send me a link/newspaper reference or anything indicating hungry mobs seizing food aid? Can’t seem to find anything here..
“if it is delayed for any reason, some of them may very well starve to death.” I repeat, there is no evidence, or good reason to think that mortalities increased in Zambia. It wasn’t even technically a famine (it was a food crisis), despite your misleading images of people “starving” to death. Malnutrition in general across the country rose marginally in the previous year, but Unicef studies showed that malnutrition, in fact, decreased among the worst areas, and increased in the best areas. There was a surplus of certain crops which could have been locally procured. The GE corn was completely unnecessary and we shouldn’t even be having this debate if certain groups weren’t so self-interested.
“That doesnt make USAID perfectly moral either, but there are no good reasons for opposing GE.” There are plenty, but we are discussing the food aid and Africa here, it’s too big a debate and there are far more knowledgeable people than us around to have it.
“GE is a tool that should not be opposed because in Africa farmers need all the help they can get. ” Graham, correct me if I’m wrong but you studied sociology didn’t you? The only good thing I can see coming out of your unquestioning acceptance of the necessities and positives of GE foods is that hopefully you’re causing people whose only previous problem with them was that they’d seen them called Frankenfoods in the Sun to clarify their position. Surely you must get that hunger and malnutrition in Africa is SO much more complicated than just agriculture. By all means, let’s let them use GE if it’s wanted, appropriate, safe and necessary (that last one must be the major fallacy) but if your concern is hunger then please put your primary emphasis in other places than pushing inappropriate centralised technological fixes..
Tommacg From Paalberg, “Starved For Science: How Biotechnology is being kept out of Africa”
“In Aug 2002 the vice president of Zambia provisionally turned down all imports of GM maize, even though nearly 3million of his citizens faced a pressing need. Zambian leaders had been importing GM maize as food aid for a number of years, but now they were refusing it, even in an emergency…. “the head of the local UN World Food Programme (WFP) implored the Zambian government to change its policy, but without success. WFP was thus obliged to begin removing from Zambia the GM food aid supplies it had delivered earlier, and in January 2003 this lead to an embarrassing incident when a mob of villagers in the town of Sizanongwe, 300 kms from the capital, overpowered an armed guard and looted several thousands of bags of food aid before it could be removed (IRIN News 2003)”. http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=32014 “French news agency AFP reported that George Mpombo, the minister for the hard-hit Southern Province, said about 4,600 50kg bags of GM and non-GM staple maize had been stolen in Sizanongwe, 300km from the capital Lusaka. The starving villagers overpowered the lone police officer after word got out that the maize was to be returned to Lusaka, the news agency quoted him as saying.”
I think you are conflating differentissues : this issue is clearly about GE food; there was no opposition to the non-GM food. We would not be having this discussion if the food aid delivered had not been GM.
I am not claiming that direct deaths can be attributed to the refusal of the GM food aid, but there is a clear moral issue here: millions were hungry, possibly some under threat of starving; a complex logistical operation to distribute food aid was made a lot harder by refusing the food aid that was already in the country to people who were already hungry, apparently some of them desperate. You are clearly defending this viz “(it’s not a simple dichotomy of grub first, then ethics).” Since there are no scientific reasons to reject GM food aid (its the same food that American eat) this can only be for ideological reasons, a position I find indefensible and abhorrent.
Ever been hungry Tom? Ever involuntarily missed more than a meal or two, or not known where your next meal might be coming from?