Posted 31st July 2001

Drowning In The Knowledge Wave
by Alan Marston

That smile on the face of GE Commissioners and Labour party Ministers reflects not joy, but fear. Fear of the machine. It's my observation that the ruling ethos of our time is the ethos of the machine, more, bigger, faster, cheaper, lose that race and you go straight to dump.

Undoubtedly only a minority of people are able and ready to out-stare the machine and live by older rules and values, but does that make the minority wrong? Coming from me that's a rhetorical question of course. Also asked and answered is any expectation that those who live by the machine will listen to those who don't. Putting on the Hegelian philosophy as history hat, one must conclude that like the vast majority of civilisations that have gone before, this one will learn by its mistakes. However unlike previous civilisations, the mistakes are somewhat more catastrophic than they used to be and there is the possibility... I'll leave the rest to the corner doomsayer.

Meanwhile, appealing to reason, Greenpeace's comments on the Royal Commission in GE in NZ report:

ìMore and more cases around the world are showing that field trials cannot be contained and GE contamination is inevitable. The Commission has expressed the desire to have GE, conventional, Integrated Pest Management and organic systems together. That is simply not possible,î said Annette Cotter, Greenpeace campaigner. ìThe report has also failed to reflect tangata whenua concerns, or strong public sentiment towards a GE free NZ,î said Ms Cotter. Ninety two percent of the 11 000 public submissions to the Commission were opposed to GE in the environment. ìWhile the Commission has recognised the scientific uncertainties of GE, Greenpeace believes the Commission has failed to adequately apply the precautionary principle which is at the core of the issue. This means that their assessment of GE is fundamentally flawed.

ìThis may go some way to explaining why, in the body of their report they say that ìLittle is yet known about the environmental impacts of genetically modified organisms, and in particular in New Zealand ëon the potential adverse effects, or risks of such effects, on the indigenous biotaíî (Ch 6, p 142), yet their recommendations do not fully reflect these concerns. ìThe release of GE into the environment is now a political decision, and the Labour Government will have to make that decision with public opinion front of mind,î said Ms Cotter...