There has always been two wings to the “green movement” – dark green and light green or fundamentalists / green consumers. A classic example – fabric conditioner. Do you use Ecover fabric conditier or do you not use any?

REduce, reuse, recycle

tthe only green answer IMO is to consume less

molgrips – Member

Any sensible person could see that GM could have massive environmental benefits.

Really? So far it has been exactyly the opposite. roundup ready maize requires more pesticides. GM is about profits for biotech companies – nothing else. There is absolutly no “green advantage” from it at all- the opposite infact – more pesticides and more fertiliser needed

Nuclear? Please tell me what the solution to the waste is? When you answer that then you can build more stations. Nucler also produces significant co2 in building the plants and extracting and refining the fuel

Spend the money that one nuclear power staion costs on energy efficiency then you save more energy that the nuclear power station produces.

base load can be provided – wave and tidal and burning coppiced woodland so long as planting is done. varius methods have been worked out for evening out power demand fluctuations such as local hot water thermal storage, pump storage and so on.

Again it comes down to “consume less” and “consumer smarter”

Again it comes down to “consume less” and “consumer smarter”

Totally agree. Unfortunately, we lack the political will to do this.

There has always been two wings to the “green movement” – dark green and light green or fundamentalists / green consumers

I’d say there’s a third wing – green with purple sparkly bits sprinkled with fairy dust.

Any sensible person could see that GM could have massive environmental benefits.

Really? So far it has been exactyly the opposite.

I said COULD, and it’s a big COULD.

GM is a technique to get plants to do what you want. The question is, what is it that you want them to do? It might be making tomatoes last longer on a supermarket shelf to help profitability, or it might be making crops grow well in drought conditions to help starving people in marginal farming areas.

It’s just a tool. You can use it for ‘good’ or ‘bad’, doesn’t matter. There are some risks associated with it though, many of which we may not know about. The sooner people realise that it’s not simply big evil plot and let scientists get on with the research, the better we can increase our understanding and put it to good use.

Nuclear? Please tell me what the solution to the waste is?

What am I, a nuclear scientist? (which backs up another of my favourite points – that there’s no point in us lot fannying on about things we don’t really understand). Last thing I heard, vitrification was looking promising. It’s a lot better than pumping it into the air like coal fired power stations do.

And you should know by now that I advocate huge reductions in energy consumption exactly as you advocate – I mention it near enough every thread. However we can’t realistically get to zero consumption, and until we get down to the point when we can meet all our needs with renewables, nuclear seems to be the only option.

I watched the programme and the debate afterwards. You can see where the greens went wrong when you see people like Monbiot trying to espouse their cause – he seemed to be totally devoid of facts or information but insisted on talking over people with a load of waffle knowing that the gullible have already made up their minds. FoE and Greenpeace seemed to manage to come up with reasonably sane people in comparison but the overall impression many will have come away with is “bunch of nutters”.

Remember that C4 have been pulled up several times for editing people’s comments for the sake of dramatic telly at the expense of their actual meaning.

Monbiot usually has well reasoned and well backed up arguments all the way up to the point where he thinks we don’t need big business and consumerism in any way.

It’d take a century to restructure the world economy, even if we all wanted to.

The debate was live, so I doubt if editing was the issue. Monbiot just comes across as someone who isn’t prepared to listen or let the other side have their say because in his mind he is so obviously right. Now that may not be how he is (although I personally suspect it’s pretty close to the truth) but that’s how he came across.

Edit: And in a debate where the prime accusation is that Greens don’t listen and aren’t prepared to change their minds that’s an unfortunate attitude to take.

I hate driving and do negligible miles now, but i’m sure my carbon footprint is huge compared to someone living in the third world.

Yes it is, you’ve electricity, a computer, a …

Do you want to live like the average person in the third world, I know I don’t.

Fair enough, I did not see the show or the debate 🙂

I do think he needs to try and work with the system we have though, not against it.

monbiot came accross as biggoted and unrealistic as he claimed the programme makers to be, it would be nice to end all wars in Africa but helping farmers grow their own crops is probably a more realistic approach

and TJ you are talking bobbins about GM ignoring golden rice, flood resistant rice etc
youre emotive, irrational dislike of GM crops should be seperated from your dislike of big agribusiness, they are not the same, several of the GM crops in the programme were from public funded institutions

crop development whether carried out by crossbreeding or GM is just part of modern farming
the illusion that historical farmers were motivated by some come kind of altruistic good will to teh hungry rather than profit is just that.

as pointed out 30%? of USAs soya and maize is GM and the sky has not fallen in

Unfortunately, we lack the political will to do this.

Also you lack a public mandate.

It’s just a tool. You can use it for ‘good’ or ‘bad’, doesn’t matter. There are some risks associated with it though, many of which we may not know about.

And there’s the problem with every form of new technology. Genetic Engineering will be only ever as good as the Genetic Engineers. And do they think 50, 100, 500 years in the future? I doubt it.

The optimists always think ‘look how clever we are, somebody will find a solution’. The pessimists look at past performance and extrapolate.

I do wonder sometimes if science creates new problems faster than it solves the old ones.

Surely ending wars in Africa is a prerequisite to helping them feed themselves?

I do wonder sometimes if science creates new problems faster than it solves the old ones.

Of course not. Modern farming and medicine have solved a lot of pretty damn big problems in a lot of the world. Not enough, granted. Remember, all the world was once like the third world.

And do they think 50, 100, 500 years in the future? I doubt it.

Of course they do. Scientists, contrary to popular belief, are not stupid.

kimbers – Member

and TJ you are talking bobbins about GM ignoring golden rice, flood resistant rice etc
youre emotive, irrational dislike of GM crops should be seperated from your dislike of big agribusiness, they are not the same, several of the GM crops in the programme were from public funded institutions

Green advantage?

Golden rice has advantages but it is not a green advantage. It does not reduce energy consumption which is the key thing is this debate

Classic muddy thinking from the exponents of GM crops 😉

Kimbers – monsanto deliberately contaminated the worlds soya – there is no GM free soya left now.

Hmmm. Molgrips I imagine you are one of those who thinks it’s been nothing but human misery up until the 20th century?

Perhaps you are still waiting for your jetcar & hoverboots?

Yes modern farming & medecine has done some clever things. But it’s given us a population level dependent on energy from under the ground, which is finite. So fun while it lasts but not necessarly sustainable. We didn’t have the capability to radically affect the climate or end the world in a nuclear winter back then either.

Of course they do. Scientists, contrary to popular belief, are not stupid.

Of course they aren’t stupid. But they are hardly altruistic either. How do they balance tomorow’s share price against the effects on someone 20 generations down the line?

I hate driving and do negligible miles now, but i’m sure my carbon footprint is huge compared to someone living in the third world.

Im sure it is, personal car use only accounts for around 5% of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions anyway, although more like 10% in Britain, all transport combined accounts for around 14% of greenhouse gas emissions, generally climatologists dont consider transport to be the main problem, the power generated for heating our homes produces around 40% of emissions and ruminants about 21%, so put on a jumper and eat less beef and lamb if you want to reduce your carbon footprint.

There are some risks associated with it though, many of which we may not know about. The sooner people realise that it’s not simply big evil plot and let scientists get on with the research, the better we can increase our understanding and put it to good use.

I dont get this conculsion.You accept there are risks that we dont know about – presumably with the potential to be massive -yet you want to let people get on with it- WHY? Surely we need to be able to assess the risks – which we cant really- to make an informed decision.
Kimbers you are correct re GM but people are emotive but that does not make it wrong. To not experiment on humans [Mengle style] is an emotive decision we could learn tons from this- you could leanr a lot giving people cancer but choose not to do for emotive [moral] reasons I assume. We feel like we are playing God and we just do not, nor can we in principle, know what the consequences of our actions will be in the long run. There are other solutions to food shortages that do not require GM food – say less obese westeners and food more evenly distributed for example

GM crops looks like the last thing we should be worrying about now (I’ll still sit on the fence with this one – I can see their potential but I am not a fan of messing with ‘nature’). The synthetic biology and geo-engineering bit at the end looked far bigger issues to worry about. One such example being setting off a Pinotubo sized volcano each year to keep the climate cool. Now that is proper mental, it’s difficult enough keeping control of a river once we have ‘played’ with it but a volcano.