Monday 8 September 2008

A Damascene Conversion?

Hot on the heels of his assessment of over-ambitious EU renewable energy targets, Sir David King has come up with another corker:

Greenies' anti-science superstitions are causing unnecessary suffering in Africa. King blames "anti-poverty" campaigners, aid agencies and environmental activists for keeping modern farming techniques and bio-technology out of Africa.


For instance:

For example, Friends of the Earth continues to argue that modern seed technologies should not be used to make agriculture easier and more productive for poor farmers - even when this causes more ecological damage than the new technology. FoE's most recent campaign against biotech means that subsistence farmers must continue to use seeds that require more fertiliser than GM varieties, and which need environmentally-destructive tilling.

Whatever it is that motivates these self-styled "Greens", it isn't a concern for the environment. Nor, despite claims to the contrary, is there any valid concern of "over-population". The UN estimates global population growth to peak in the 2040s at 7.87m, then decline, assuming modest development is permitted to continue. Not only does economic development mean fewer people, but it means less suffering: those fewer people are much happier.

Clearly, we can easily generate enough food to feed everyone on the planet and we have the means to ensure there's less human suffering. Some people want that to happen - and some don't. You'll find many nursing their Malthusian or Eugenics prejudices under the banner of Greenery in the former camp - but it's a refreshing surprise to find King in the latter camp, or at least edging away from the Greens' death cult.


Something must be in the air, because these eminently sensible observations come from a man who sold his soul to the Labour party, promoting the government's line that "we're all going to die" and that mass slaughter of healthy animals was a better option than anything else in the Foot and Mouth scare.

Is he getting ready to sell his soul to a new master?

2 comments:

IanPJ said...

I suggest that he has already sold is soul.

There is good reason why the Greenies (who I usually detest with a passion) are trying desperately to keep the GM companies out of Africa.

Its about control, its about money, its about using food as a weapon.

As yourself why, earlier this year there was such a panic over Rice supplies.
There was no problems in the traditional Rice growing countries, no natural disasters to stop production, only the repayments to the World Bank who had effectively tied these poor farmers to their paddy fields, and the price that the GM seed companies were demanding for this years seed rice.

http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2008/6/20/3754398.html

Have a read (and I would beg your indulgence to read it all) and then decide whether this man who presided over the deliberate murdering of our beef supplies to satisfy EU aims is genuine in his desires for Africa, or whether he has already taken his pieces of silver.

Obnoxio The Clown said...

Hm.