My response is that GM crops are highly unlikely to be a useful tool in fighting hunger, even in a world with a growing population and a changing climate. Here are a few reasons why.

The first reason is that hunger today is caused primarily by economic factors. There is more than enough food to feed the world’s population. However, the world’s poor do not have access to their fair share of it. Furthermore, in many poor countries the best agricultural land is dedicated to cash crops such as opium, tobacco, or coffee rather than to actual edible foods. Therefore, the most effective way to ensure that everybody gets enough food is to deal with economic inequality and use the prime agricultural land to grow food, and this factor will not change with a growing world population and changes in climate.

A variation on this theme is the issue of meat. It takes several times more land to produce meat and dairy products than it does to produce the equivalent amount of nutrition in other foods. Now, obviously not all the land used for animal grazing is suitable for growing crops but we could feed considerably more people if we reduced the amount of meat in our diet.

The second reason is that there are many effective ways of increasing food yields by simply changing agricultural methods. Programmes such as Foundations for Farming (previously known as “Farming God’s Way”) have massively increased both crop yields and sustainability in the areas where they have been tried (in this case, Southern Africa), and haven’t needed any new crop varieties. By using better crop management techniques such as this one, you can feed far more people without the need for expensive research.

The third reason is that GM crops are heavily tied into conventional Western agricultural methods. The model of having massive fields filled with a single variety of a single crop (the technical term is a monoculture) is very efficient in terms of manpower (as you can mechanise more of the process). However, it is not a very efficient use of land. Multicropping and approaches have been shown to produce greater yields than monocultures. They also have the advantages of needing less fertiliser, and being more resistant to diseases, requiring fewer pesticides. And small farms tend to produce greater yields per acre than large ones.

GM technology also runs the risk of reducing our ability to keep up with a changing climate. By replacing local seed varieties with seeds from a single source, we reduce biodiversity and lose varieties of crops which might actually be better suited to changed conditions without the need for expensive bioengineering techniques.

In addition to this, there is still no actual evidence that GM crops offer increased yields, despite claims by GM companies and advocates that it can “feed the world”. Now, I’m open to the possibility that this is because of the way the technology has been used by biotech companies, rather than being something inherent to the technology. But until evidence for increased yields emerges, claims that GM crops can play any role in feeding an increasing population, or in adapting to a changed climate remains speculative at best.

Finally, if it turns out that I’m wrong and that GM crops can be used as part of the solution, some things need to change. In particular, the technology needs to be in the hands of governments or charities who are intent on creating varieties that meet the needs of poor farmers, rather than in the hands of big businesses, for whom meeting those needs is simply not profitable. Current uses of GM crops require farmers to buy a new set of seeds every year, whilst poor farmers – who are an essential part of feeding the hungry – need to be able to keep back some of their harvest and sow it in the following year. Producing crop varieties like this would be suicidal for a business.

Of course, even if the technology does end up in the right hands, it is at best an expensive and uncertain way to help farmers, and should be a far lower priority than proven methods of better agricultural techniques and attempts to ensure that the best agricultural land is used for food rather than cash crops.

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Instead, I’ll just point you to a few other great blog posts.

Andy D’Agorne points out that phone boxes can become electric car recharging points. Sounds like a very good idea to me.

The Church Mouse asks the very good question of why there isn’t a unified climate change campaign in the run-up to Copehagen. As the Green Party, and/or as Christians, we should definitely try to work towards sending a unified message on this one.

The Green Room highlights a humanist who is being deported to Afghanistan for apostasy, where he faces the death penalty for apostasy – having publicly renounced Islam. A world where somebody is not free to abandon the faith they grew up with is not one I, as a Christian or as a Green, want to live in. If you don’t believe in a religion or an ideology you should be free to walk away from it whenever you want, without fear of being murdered for doing so. That our own government should be willing to send somebody to a country which is trying to murder him for changing his faith is utterly appalling.

act now to stop this travesty of “justice” now

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Meanwhile, the government claims that they are working to ensure that they are aiming to build a competitive advantage in ultra-low carbon vehicles. Living in a city which still contains several car factories, I would like to believe that this is more than just talk. Sadly, however, the government’s lack of commitment to the Vestas wind turbine factory suggests otherwise.

And France looks set to take some action against climate change by introducing a carbon tax. Unfortunately, the industries where it might make the most difference seem to be exempt.

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Geo-engineering, if you haven’t come across the term before, means dealing with climate change in ways that don’t involve cutting carbon emissions. The report examines a whole range of technologies which are said to be able to counteract the increase in the number of greenhouse gases, all of which require further research to be feasible.

The report takes the rather sensible line that these options should not become a diversion from efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It also points out that the technologies all have serious risks and uncertainties. But it does outline which options look the most practical should we come to that point.

My own conclusion from reading the summary is that the use of geo-engineering techniques would indicate that the human race has failed to take seriously our duty to care for the planet we live on. However, if we fail to take appropriate action now, then these more risky and costly alternatives may prove a necessary evil.

Our response to this report should be to increase our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, in order to ensure that such methods do not become necessary.

The strategies they suggest are viable fall into two categories.

Carbon Removal Techniques

These are ways of taking the carbon out of the atmosphere, solving the problem at its root cause. It identified three with the most useful potential.

• The report said that three are currently no cost-effective ways of capturing carbon directly from the air, although this would be the best possible option.
• Enhanced weathering – using naturally occurring reactions of CO2 with rocks and minerals – may have wider environmental implications, but may prove a long-term option.
• Land use and planting forests. The report said that this could play a small but significant role. However, there are issues regarding other priorities with regard to the use of land.

I don’t think that use of any of these methods, in conjunction with reducing emissions, would be disastrous. In particular, the problems regarding land use are probably the easiest to overcome. Archaeology and historical accounts tell us that the Amazon rainforest supported a fairly large population before Europeans arrived on the continent. Apparently large chunks of it were effectively an orchard. Creative use of land could enable us to combine human needs with the need to preserve forest areas.

Solar Radiation Management

These strategies involve trying to tinker with the radiation we receive from the sun. These methods are rather more drastic, but have the advantage that they could make an impact more quickly.

• Stratospheric aerosols, which mimic the effects of major volcanic eruptions, appear to have much potential as a short-term solution. However, they would also have plenty of adverse effects. In particular, they would deplete the amount of atmospheric ozone.
• Space-based methods (reflecting solar radiation away) would be slow to implement, expensive, and complex. Their main up-point is that they may provide a long-term effect.
• Cloud albedo approaches – creating clouds, or increasing their ability to reflect solar energy away from the Earth – could have specific localised effects, but has big question marks over their feasibility, effectiveness, and environmental impact.

Techniques of little worth

The report also identified three approaches which have less potential.

• Biochar – essentially creating a charcoal-like substance to lock carbon into the soil. The report was sceptical about its scope, effectiveness, and safety.
• Ocean fertilisation – dumping large amounts of iron into the sea, in order to increase the number of plankton, thus enabling the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide. The report concludes that it is unproven and has a very high potential for unintended negative side-effects.
• Surface albedo approaches – basically making the Earth more reflective. These were found to be ineffective, expensive, and likely to have negative effects on local weather patterns.

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I’ve not been thinking about the ethics of illegal filesharing (it’s morally equivalent to taping songs off the radio), its impact on the music industry (good for obscure artists, bad for the big labels), or the futility of trying to stop it from happening.

No, what I’ve been thinking about is how politicians form their opinions when it comes to science and technology.

The fact of the matter is that very few politicians understand technology. Mandelson’s suggestion showed phenomenal ignorance about how the internet and filesharing works, and gave the impression that he was just trying to tell the big record labels what they want to hear. Anybody familiar with the technology could have told him in great detail how this (and all the other half-baked schemes to punish those who fileshare illegally) was a completely unworkable proposal. And yet he still went ahead and made a fool of himself.

Mandelson is far from unique in his ignorance of science and technology. Given the kind of technology-driven society we live in there are remarkably few top politicians with a scientific or technology background. But that alone doesn’t explain why politicians often sound clueless to those who do understand it. They could, if they chose to, ensure that they consulted with experts before pronouncing judgement. But in this case, as with plenty of others, they clearly chose not to.

So why do they do so? Some of it may be a desire to grab a headline, even at the expense of alienating clued-up voters. Some of it may be a desire to please big business – in this case, the big music labels. But I think that there may be a deeper issue within political culture. I think that it may come from the way that the mass media portrays science and technology.

Read almost any newspaper on almost any day of the week, and you’ll come across an article which portrays a recent piece of scientific research in a misleading way. At best, this is simply dumbing it down to ensure that everybody can get the gist, but often it distorts the findings in order to make it interesting or sensational.

Most of the time, this approach is fairly harmless. But when it provides support to climate-change deniers, or persuades parents that MMR will give their child Autism when all the evidence says that it won’t, then it becomes very dangerous.

If politicians have caught this dumbed-down approach to science from the media, then it would explain why filesharing (often dubbed “pirating” – presumably to make it glamorous and sensational) has become seen as a dangerous menace that has to be stamped out at all costs, and why public statements rarely note that filesharing is often done within the law, and that the nature of technology makes it impossible to prevent.

If more politicians listened to those who know how science and technology works rather than filtering it through a media-style distorted lens, then perhaps we’d have sensible policy proposals on science and technology. Perhaps the responses to issues like BSE, Foot and Mouth, Swine Flu, and filesharing would be in proper proportion to the evidence.

That doesn’t mean that the experts should call all the shots. Having technical knowledge doesn’t mean that you understand the wider social implications which policymakers should take into account. But a policy proposal that isn’t based on good technical evidence isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

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