Stewart Brand, an environmentalist and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog predicts that the environmentalist movement will soon reverse its opinion on population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power, which are currently viewed as the four horsemen of the environmental apocalypse. In fact, he sees technologies such as genetic engineering as a chance to save the environment.

However, since the underlying sentiments within the environmentalist movement (with notable exceptions) seem to be misanthropy, pessimism about the future and/or fear of technology, I predict that, if he’s right, these horsemen will soon be replaced by other menaces. Unless, of course, environmentalism and humanism can finally come together. That is, if those who care about nature stop hating humans and vice versa.

(...)There has yet to be a public debate among environmentalists about genetic engineering. Most of the scare stories that go around (Monarch caterpillars harmed by GM pollen!) have as much substance as urban legends about toxic rat urine on Coke can lids. Solid research is seldom reported widely, partly because no news is not news. A number of leading biologists in the U.S. are also leading environmentalists. I’ve asked them how worried they are about genetically engineered organisms. Their answer is “Not much,” because they know from their own work how robust wild ecologies are in defending against new genes, no matter how exotic. They don’t say so in public because they feel that entering the GM debate would strain relations with allies and would distract from their main focus, which is to research and defend biodiversity.

Complete article...

There’s also an interesting discussion about this article in Tierney Lab, a blog from The New York Times. (via Seed)

Related Articles in ChiliConDarwin:

The Naturalistic Fallacy and Sophie’s Choice

Learning to Repress Your Inner Environmentalist

The New Scientism

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