Michael Meacher MP

This article first appeared in The Guardian.
Only a world environment court can curb capitalism’s excesses
Unseen by most, our world is being transformed at an exponential rate. It is a process driven by unfettered industrial exploitation, growing technological control, soaring population growth and now climate change, the effects of which open up an apocalyptic scenario for the human race.
Man’s ecological footprint is now outpacing many of the natural phenomena that govern our world. Indeed, we have almost become our own geophysical cycle. Our biological carbon productivity is now exceeded only by the krill in the oceans. Our civil engineering works shift more soil each year than all the world’s rivers bring to the seas. Our industrial emissions eclipse the total emissions from all the world’s volcanoes. We are bringing about species loss on a scale of some of the massive natural extinctions of palaeohistory. We are altering the nitrogen cycle. Even in the remotest parts of the world, contaminants like lead and DDT appear in the food chain.
The ravages are there for all to see. Some 420 million people live in countries that no longer have enough crop land to grow their own food. Half a billion people live in regions prone to chronic drought. By 2025 that number is likely to have increased fivefold. Deserts are likely to become hotter. Marine ecosystems are at risk, including salt-water marshes, mangroves, coastal wetlands and coral reefs. In 1998, the hottest year on record, large areas of forest burned down after prolonged drought. By 2050 it is projected that the Amazon will have died back.
Shifts away from equilibrium unlock other changes that interact with the original shifts and grossly magnify their effects until the whole process spirals out of control and makes our planet uninhabitable.

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Six years ago when I was appointed Minister for the Environment, I had never heard of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Today it has come close to taking over my life and some argue has already cost me my job as Minister.
I first became interested in this as the sheer magnitude of what the GM project meant for the nation’s food supply gradually dawned on me. At first we were assured by officials in MAFF (before it became DEFRA as it now is) that this was an interesting and important new technology which would solve some of agriculture’s challenges by reducing the use of herbicides (chemical weedkillers) and helping to feed the world.
However, several problems began to emerge. First, when the issue started hitting the headlines in 1998, the public was clearly deeply sceptical, even hostile, and for very good reason. They remembered BSE. The Government, the scientists and officialdom all assured them in 1990 that it could never cross the species barrier and infect humans. Then in 1994 it was found that it had done exactly that, and several dozen people have now died very unpleasantly of new variant CJD. Before that there were other food scares too – salmonella and e-coli. And more recently of course we have been through the trauma of foot and mouth.
The net effect of all this was to leave the Government with a huge credibility problem, and I felt drawn to try to get to the bottom of what appeared to be an unfolding environmental crisis. Were GM foods a genuine breakthrough or a ‘frankenstein foods’ nightmare?

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