WINNING THE STRIFE FOR LIFE

I was looking at the protesters at Balcombe on TV, few of them I think actual residents of that unremarkable village north of Haywards Heath at which the occasional Brighton train apologetically pauses.  Their faces were etched with rage and in tow they had young children vigorously chanting “frack off!!”

 

Maybe it’s my age but I found the sight rather disturbing. Firstly seeing children being encouraged to mouth near obscenities seemed wrong and secondly the level of the debate seemed approximately at the level of “just do what I say and think as I do or I’ll kick you in the balls and bite your arm”. (Suarez you should be here.)

To feed the next generations and to keep them warm and safe I am prepared to go to some trouble. It’s no longer good enough to deny the potential benefits of GM given the pluses that could give us in cheap food. It’s unfair patronising the poor in a kind of Green Marie Antoinette way saying “let them eat organic”. 

Or as my grandparents called it “not enough to eat”. 

Nor is it acceptable to turn our backs on cheap energy because the form of extraction feels wrong. Funnily enough if we were to send men underground to get the gas I think the protestors would feel better. Don’t ask me if fracking is 100% safe but it seems unlikely to pose any of the dangers painted in blood by the Balcombe Brigade . According to Matt Ridley the five alleged downsides – it pollutes the aquifiers, it produces loads of climate damaging methane, it uses vast amounts of precious water, it releases hundreds of chemicals into the rocks and it creates earthquakes are all plain wrong, not marginally wrong, plain 100% myths.

In the back of my head I hear the enraged protestors chanting “frack off capitalist toff” and wonder if what they call a mad dash for gas isn’t on their part a strangely conservative desire to get back to nature or, as I’d describe it, dying prematurely.

I wonder if they wouldn’t all be happier seeing the demise of supermarkets, cheap clothes from M&S and central heating. 

Nature is not all good – it can be very cruel. Science can allow us to give it a helping hand sometimes. And I wonder if the passionate ideology of the protesters can obscure that.

Life for mankind is generally improving rapidly. We are winning that strife for life. And we should resist the voices that base their arguments on their gut and anger alone.  

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