[BRIEF NOTE] Greenpeace and Me
Jul. 10th, 2004 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom The Early Days of a Better Nation:
I joined Greenpeace Tuesday, did I mention? Paul, standing on the west side of Yonge street below College, recruited me into filling a membership form, and the day after that I gave him my credit card number so that Greenpeace could deduct ten dollars Canadian a month from my account.
Why did I join? I admit that I read Tech Central Station, though with a jaundiced and decidedly skeptical eye. More seriously, I'm generally in favour of the spread of an ecologically sensible high-technology high-energy civilization, and I think that GMOs, properly deployed, are capable of very good things indeed and aren't very different from organismsproduced through selective breeding.
The single most important factor pushing me to sign that from Tuesday, though, was the aggressiveness of Greenpeace's opponents. I'm in favour of being an informed consumer, at least in theory. I think that labelling products which make use of GMOs is a good thing, allowing consumers to decide whether or not they want to consume them. Assuming that GMOs are, in fact, better, sooner or later the GMO products should beat out non-GMO products in the marketplace. That's a simple and classical example of capitalism. Proponents of GMOs too often want to deny consumers the right to make informed decisions about the products which they consumer, denying them the ability to choose and--as the general pervasive backlash against GMOs in Europe demonstrates--ultimately wrecking the reputation of GMOs.
We need Greenpeace to keep them honest. Classical Hegelian stuff, really--all we need to do is wait for the formation of the synthesis.
[T]he environmental campaign Greenpiss has admitted that illustrating a warning about declining male fertility with a picture of the minute genitals of a cherub from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel 'may have been a little over the top'. Its earlier claim that 'Humanity is a plague species that will with any luck be wiped from the face of the Earth in the cleansing fire of nuclear holocaust' is still under review.
I joined Greenpeace Tuesday, did I mention? Paul, standing on the west side of Yonge street below College, recruited me into filling a membership form, and the day after that I gave him my credit card number so that Greenpeace could deduct ten dollars Canadian a month from my account.
Why did I join? I admit that I read Tech Central Station, though with a jaundiced and decidedly skeptical eye. More seriously, I'm generally in favour of the spread of an ecologically sensible high-technology high-energy civilization, and I think that GMOs, properly deployed, are capable of very good things indeed and aren't very different from organismsproduced through selective breeding.
The single most important factor pushing me to sign that from Tuesday, though, was the aggressiveness of Greenpeace's opponents. I'm in favour of being an informed consumer, at least in theory. I think that labelling products which make use of GMOs is a good thing, allowing consumers to decide whether or not they want to consume them. Assuming that GMOs are, in fact, better, sooner or later the GMO products should beat out non-GMO products in the marketplace. That's a simple and classical example of capitalism. Proponents of GMOs too often want to deny consumers the right to make informed decisions about the products which they consumer, denying them the ability to choose and--as the general pervasive backlash against GMOs in Europe demonstrates--ultimately wrecking the reputation of GMOs.
We need Greenpeace to keep them honest. Classical Hegelian stuff, really--all we need to do is wait for the formation of the synthesis.
