Just What Is It With The BBC?

Last May in the USA a brave lady called Tami Canal started a movement called March Against Monsanto, because it had proved impossible to have food containing genetically modified ingredients labelled as such in California. Initially she hoped for support from perhaps 3000 people. In the event, on the Saturday in question it was estimated that two million people in 436 cities in 52 countries turned out with banners to express their support, first of all for the principle that GM food should be so labelled, but also for the campaign against the use of GMOs in our food chain.

I would have thought that was a pretty major event! But try as I might, I was unable to find any reference to it in any of the BBC’s news coverage anywhere!

The event is being planned again for October 12th. I wonder if it will make the news this time.

Like most disappointments, I allowed this one to fade from my thoughts.

In June Owen Paterson, Environment Secretary, (an avowed climate change sceptic, by the way) gave a memorable speech to Rothamsted Research Centre in which he expressed enthusiastic support for GM crops, basing his enthusiasm on a selection of ‘facts’ which even his most loyal supporters would have had difficulty swallowing. This speech, however, received copious BBC coverage; as did the Prime Minister’s endorsement of the process.

In August, Dara O Briain’s Science Club programme went out with a ‘fun’ piece about using genetic modification to combat malaria. Now whatever you may think about the principle, this particular process is not without pitfalls and is far, far from fool-proof. And yet the programme was screened in such a way as to leave the viewer with the impression that genetic modification was ‘it’, ‘the answer’, problem solved. No room for doubt!

On September 18th, the BBC ran the first episode of Science Britannica with Professor Brian Cox, who is a particle physicist (O Briain studied maths and physics) as well as being a rather ubiquitous media star. I was watching it idly with half an eye, it not being on my list of things I must not miss, when Prof. Cox started talking about GM crops. By the time I was fully awake, the 5 minute section was long gone. I was away from home at the time, so my feeling of unease at the spin being put on GMOs by Cox was put on hold until I got home.

Then I was trawling through iPlayer and decided to run the programme again. This time the spin made me not just uneasy but angry!

Here is the letter I have written to the BBC.


BBC Complaints
PO Box 1922
Darlington
DL3 0UR


Dear Sirs

Science Britannica episode 1
Broadcast on 18th September at 9 pm

I have recently watched, for the second time, the first episode of Science Britannica, and was very concerned at the evident bias of the programme regarding GM crops, about 40 minutes in to the programme. It was probably the most prejudicial five minutes of television I have seen in many years. This bias has appeared before in a previous program, Dara O Briain’s Science Club. It is becoming clear that the BBC, along with certain politicians, is keen to portray the anti GMO lobby as either nonexistent, or ignorant, fearful, and anti-science.

It is certainly the case that on the subject of climate change, the BBC have been criticised for giving disproportionate air time and credibility to climate change ‘deniers’ and I would echo that criticism, because there is no longer a scientific rationale for their position. But to imply, as Brian Cox does, that there is no scientific rationale for the position of the anti GMO lobby is to misunderstand the situation completely, and I would expect a more balanced approach from him and from a BBC science-based programme.

As with the ‘Science Club’ programme before it, the case for GM crops was made in a way which suggested that no credible opposing view exists. Professor Cox appeared to regret that scientists ‘have not always been able to control the debate’, but these programmes make it clear that they are trying to do just that. Cox suggests that ‘public opinion has been led by a vigorous anti GM campaign that started in the 1990s, which left many people dead set against GM crops’. This statement was accompanied by a film of white-suited figures jumping up and down in a field. That was as close as we have come to hearing a view from anyone who is against GM food, although today’s concerns arise not from those 1990s protests but from substantial research into the effects of GM food on both agriculture and animals, not just in a laboratory, but also in the field.

Cox continues, ’There are fears that the crops may contaminate the environment or that they may be unsafe to eat, and underlying it all is a feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong about meddling with life at such a basic level.’ It is clear that Cox has not taken the time to listen to any of the premises which give rise to the opposition to GMOs. In the Americas the environment has already been irretrievably contaminated. Many ill patients in the USA have been prescribed an organic diet by their doctors, to escape the effect of the GM ingredients in almost all American food; this prescription proving successful.

Professor Cox’s interview with Professor Jones starts with an inane question about the label ‘Frankenfood’, inane because this was a journalist’s term, not one espoused by those concerned about the process, and Jones’ response was as predictable as it was banal. Cox raises the spectre of the ‘unnatural’ process, again prompting a predictable response from Jones – a response I might have used myself!

Jones rhetorically asks the obvious question, ‘What is the least bad way of protecting our crops from disease and pests, or reducing the losses caused by weeds?’ and the viewer is left to conclude that GMOs must be that least bad way.

Then Cox baldly states that Professor Jones’ view ‘is also backed up by a vast body of research that shows it to be safe and effective.’

I challenge Professor Cox to find any of that vast body of evidence. (Substantial Equivalence testing doesn’t prove anything!) I used to share Brian Cox’s willing acceptance of the GMO philosophy, until I discovered that there is no substantial research which shows that GM food is safe, and that there are many reputable and peer-reviewed scientists who say that it is not, with the evidence from tests on animals to substantiate their view. As to the effectiveness of the process, there is overwhelming evidence throughout the Americas and India which shows that the emerging disadvantages of GM crops outweigh the advantages, and that alternative less invasive science-based agricultural methods are more productive.

Professor Cox expresses himself baffled as he feels that simply presenting the evidence should be sufficient to convince us laymen. A more productive dialogue might emerge if he was to present all the evidence. He calls for effective public engagement. Does he mean that? There are plenty of scientists with credentials as worthy as his who would be happy to ‘engage’ with him and with Professor Jones.

I hope that you will be able to investigate the one-sided approach to this matter exemplified in this programme, with a view to re-establishing the reputation for fairness which used to be the hallmark of BBC programming.

I look forward to your early reply

In the past I have ignored suggestions that the BBC’s impartiality is a myth. But now I am beginning to wonder. It is crystal clear that the unscientific Mr Paterson has formed his views based on the scientific opinions he is given by his establishment advisers. It is certainly the case that those opinions are coloured by the GM industry, or at least their extremely well funded propaganda machine. It can be proved that as soon as a study emerges that finds fault with any aspect of GM crops, that propaganda machine will take steps to discredit it. The same tactics were used by the tobacco industry for years, and are still being used by the oil industry in respect of global warming. Happily both the politicians and the BBC have realised that the positions taken by those industries have been discredited some time ago.

All the same, when it is increasingly clear that the policies of this Government are guided by the demands of Big Business (just listen to David Cameron’s conference speech!) it is disconcerting to think that the policies of the BBC are increasingly influenced by the Government.

The Staff of Life

I Googled ‘The Staff of Life’. I used Google, although it isn’t my default search engine (which is Ecosia), because I wanted to get an idea about how many entries there were. I got 1.4 billion. I didn’t check them all! Most of the entries seemed to relate to pubs and hotels; a few were about churches, and a few were about food, mostly bread.

About five years ago I read an article in Resurgence Magazine about ‘Slow Sunday’, which put forward the idea of using a leisurely Sunday to bake bread, good bread being produced slowly. There was a recipe in the magazine contributed by Andrew Whitley which I used, and that whetted my appetite. I bought Andrew Whitley’s book, Bread Matters, and read it from cover to cover, and I must admit that it put me off factory bread for life, as well as getting me started on a journey which even now becomes more interesting month by month.

I suppose that now, five years on from that first Slow Sunday, and there have been many since, if someone asked me what my hobbies were, I would have to include bread making. The only time I have bought bread during those five years was when I was refurbishing my kitchen and had to disconnect the cooker. Unfortunately I can’t eat the bread quickly enough to allow me to bake as often as I would like to, particularly as I am trying to lose weight! Bread has become more to me than just something to support the marmalade. Making bread is therapeutic. Taking it hot out of the oven is intensely satisfying. Eating a chunk of carefully baked bread is an infinitely more pleasurable experience than popping a piece of factory sliced white out of the toaster. And if you are making sourdough bread – well, you can double all of the above.

And that’s why I was Googling ‘the staff of life’; because that’s how I think of my bread!

I believe that with the prospect of a changing climate as a result of, amongst other things, a destructive system of agriculture and food preparation; and with the rising cost of fossil fuel (which in my opinion continues to be inevitable) we should all be reviewing what we eat and how we prepare our own food. Holding that belief, I continue to adjust what food I buy, and what food I grow in my own garden. The result, which should not surprise me, is that I am healthier than I have been for years, and my food bills are very much lower. Certainly I am now in the position of being able to spend more time on all this than someone in full employment, and so people with full time jobs who want to follow the same path would need to compromise to some degree. But that should not alter the basic premise.

So if you do nothing else, think about the staff of life.

GM crops - I am not in favour!

A few days ago I listened to Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, being interviewed on the Today programme. Subsequently I read a transcript of his speech in which he sought to both open and close the debate on GM food.

It’s safe! We just need to reassure the public that it is completely safe. Job done!

This from the man who is from the Nigel Lawson school of thought on climate change! (Last I heard, Nigel Lawson’s anti-climate change think tank was being investigated for peddling misleading information to the public!)

I have been keeping an eye on the GM debate for some time now and I must say that in this context I find Owen Paterson really scary! Some of his facts are just plain wrong, and others are based on very questionable research. And now the EU President’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof. Anne Glover, has declared that there is no substantiated case of adverse impact etc etc. David Cameron has also decided he is in favour of introducing us all to GM farming.

The difficulty is that no one has even attempted to substantiate any one of the numerous cases of adverse impact!

Poor old Professor Seralini got into really hot water by finding that a particular GM maize produced massive tumours in rats. Monsanto declared that the research was invalid because he used the wrong species of rat, with too few of them to provide a meaningful statistical sample. With Monsanto money behind the anti Seralini campaign, it isn’t surprising that his research was widely regarded as discredited. So most people didn’t get to hear that Prof. Seralini used the same type and number of rats that Monsanto used in their original tests on the same maize, but he did it for longer (hence the tumours). But it is the same Monsanto test results which the US Food and Drug Agency use when authorising the product for human consumption.

There is a lot of material out there on the internet which would cause the average person to think twice before welcoming GM food into his home. Some of it strongly suggests that the actual GM process itself can cause serious health problems. Some of it indicates the harmful effects of the weed killer used. A lot of it documents the contamination of normal crops by GM crops even at a considerable distance. None of it, of course, is substantiated to the satisfaction of Prof. Anne Glover!

Personally I cannot prove that GM food is bad for you. I haven’t yet heard from anyone who can prove it is not; they would need another decade of tests at least to do that. Meanwhile – watch what you eat! Most supermarkets will no longer guarantee that their poultry products (including eggs) have not been fed on GM feed. They claim that the problem is that non GM feed is too difficult to source! In Europe, something labelled as GM free may have a little bit of GM stuff in it (I can’t remember the permissible threshold). Happily most European countries are saying ‘non’, which I consider to be the first good reason I have heard recently for staying in Europe!

Here is the letter I have sent to my MP Sarah Newton, a devout Tory, Deputy Party Chair, who will toe the party line and do nothing to rock the boat:


21 June 2013

Mrs Sarah Newton MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Sarah

GM Food
During the past few weeks, culminating in Mr. Owen Paterson’s speech, there has clearly been an orchestrated move towards ‘reassuring’ the public about GM food. I find this deeply worrying and I would be grateful if you could pass my concerns to Mr. Paterson, so that we can be reassured that Mr. Paterson has acquainted himself with all the scientific opinion on the subject, as well as where it is lacking, and not just that promulgated by the industry and the US Food and Drug Agency.

My concerns rest on the following facts.

First; the assumption appears to be that the GM crops being grown in the USA have been adequately tested. But the FDA bases its approval of GM products on tests carried out by the manufacturers of the product, with no independent verification. (There is evidence that these tests are sometimes inadequate and sometimes misrepresented.)

Second; while Prof. Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the EU President, has said that there is ‘no substantiated case of adverse impact’ on health (clearly discounting all the numerous health issues which have arisen in the USA during the last ten to fifteen years or so), it is equally true that there is no evidence to show that GM food does NOT do harm. Since GM food does not require to be labelled as such in the US, evidence in either direction would be hard to substantiate.

Third; despite Mr. Paterson’s assurances, I have not been able to discover any evidence that crop yields have been significantly improved over time by the use of GM seed, indeed in some cases rather the opposite. As against that, agroecology, as suggested in 2010 by Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, has been shown to be capable of improving yields significantly in many different contexts.

Fourth; Mr. Paterson believes that growing GM crops would be good for the environment. Up until now this has been shown to be not the case in several different situations from the US to South America to India. One purpose of GM crops is that they can be grown in large areas of monocrop cultivation. This method of agriculture requires that quantities of weed control chemicals need to be used. Experience in the US has shown that after a few years, in order to control poison-resistant weeds, on Monsanto’s recommendation, extra chemicals need to be mixed in to make a more poisonous cocktail. Thus the land, which has already been stripped of nutrients, is drenched in ever increasing amounts of chemicals. Tests already show that in 18 European countries there is significant Glyphosate in the population’s urine, and there is plenty of evidence that Glyphosate is harmful to humans. This can only have come from food which has been sprayed with the chemical, and growing poison-resistant GM crops in Europe can only aggravate that situation.

In the US it is now clear that contamination of a crop in one area from GM crops in another area can be carried hundreds of miles by wild life or wind, which makes a nonsense of buffer zones. (See farmer interviews in the video clip linked below.)

I was greatly relieved to hear that Mr. Paterson is against the patenting of seed. The possibility that we in Europe might fall into the traps set by Monsanto and their like in the US and India is frightening. I would also hope that should we be in the position of allowing GM produce into our food chain, it would be adequately and prominently labelled as such, so that unlike our American cousins we would be able to choose whether or not to buy.

I know that a significant number of farmers polled in the UK by the Farmers’ Guardian said that they would like to grow GM crops. I hope that they, as well as Mr. Paterson, will watch the video clip (link below) of Michael Hart, a Cornish farmer who went to North America specifically to get first hand advice on GMOs from American farmers. It is interesting that the poll of UK farmers also discovered that only 15% would be prepared to eat the product themselves! It is interesting also that there is a growing movement in the US for food producers, where they can, to label their food ‘Certified Non-GMO’ as a result of pressure from the general public. Unfortunately many of those producers have difficulty in sourcing non-GMO ingredients. Furthermore, it is reported that many patients are being prescribed an organic diet by their doctors, specifically to avoid GMOs.

There are a number of studies which indicate adverse effects both from the process of genetic modification and from the chemicals which go with it. Even if we believe that these publications are not conclusive, they should not be dismissed without further study.

Although I am concerned about the effects of GM food on the nation’s health I am far more concerned, given adequate labelling of food products, about the potential harm to our environment, our biodiversity, our wild life and our pollinating insects. It is already evident in this country that large areas of monocrop farming are having a serious effect. (Ironically, the bee population in conurbations such as London is flourishing away from our chemical based agriculture.) The introduction of GM farming, with its sophisticated chemical controls, would inevitably mean an increased assault on our environment.

Mr. Paterson has suggested that he wishes to reassure the public that GM crops are safe and beneficial. But stating it does not make it so, nor will it reassure us. There needs to be proper independent, substantial and robust peer reviewed research, on the crops, and the chemicals that go with them including the degree of their continued use. This research should include the effect on human health, and particularly on the beneficial gut flora which is within all of us.

You will recall the efforts made by the tobacco industry to discredit the evidence that smoking is harmful to health. Equally I am sure you have been aware of similar tactics (often using the very same 'experts'), used by the oil industry to discredit the proponents of the encroaching climate crisis. It has become clear to me in my reading that the GM industry in America has been taking a similar approach. We need to be more certain than we can be at this time that the introduction of GM crops would be beneficial and safe before allowing it or encouraging it to be grown in our fields, because this is a genie which cannot be put back in the bottle.

Yours faithfully

Tim Thomson

Cc Shadow Environment Secretary


Below are details of only a small selection of the available published material, much of it from neutral and peer reviewed sources.


Link to video by a Cornish farmer, Michael Hart, who went to America to find out farmers’ views on GM farming - ‘GM crops Farmer to Farmer’

Link to UN report on ‘Right to Food’

Influence of soy with the gene EPSPS CP4 on the physiological state and reproductive functions of rats in the first two generations
New Ermakova peer-reviewed paper (2009)
Russian Academy of Natural Sciences "Modern problems of science and education" № 5, 2009 UDC: 612.82, 57.02

The Lancet, Volume 354, Issue 9187, Pages 1353 - 1354, 16 October 1999
Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine
Dr Stanley WB Ewen FRCPath, Arpad Pusztai PhD

Eur J Histochem. 2004 Oct-Dec;48(4):448-54.
Ultrastructural analysis of testes from mice fed on genetically modified soybean.
Vecchio L, Cisterna B, Malatesta M, Martin TE, Biggiogera M.

Holes in the Biotech Safety Net by Doug Gurian-Sherman Ph.D

A month has now gone by and I have not yet had the courtesy of a reply!

Walking The Dogs

I was walking my son’s dogs today. I am not a dog lover, but I like a walk, and he is working all day. I strolled, in sunshine, along the defunct railway track outside Truro, listening to woodpeckers calling and rat-tat-tatting, and admiring the first of the bluebells, while the two dogs did what dogs do, seeking out badger droppings to roll in and so on.

The walk is about twenty minutes out and twenty-five back (on slightly weary legs). The peace is welcome and the occasional bit of wildlife lifts the spirit; and I recall the rural environment of my youth. At that time I used to cycle along a farm track to the village, and as likely as not startle a covey of partridges, a wheatear or a yellow hammer, and I would usually hear a sky lark. The estuary bank would be lively with numerous waders, shelduck and little terns (which I believe are quite rare now). I am well acquainted with the propensity of the old to reminisce and am aware how easy it is to bore the listener, so I try to give nostalgia a miss – but I got to wondering what the next generation of pensioners would look back on with fond memory.

There is a point on the walk when the track crosses a bridge over the main Truro Falmouth road, and the noise of the traffic permeates the air from some distance off. The road is busy with commerce and commuters, often with a tailback from the junction. Even twenty years ago there was not a quarter of the traffic there is now, and although I can’t resist the temptation to lean on the parapet to watch (and smell) the flow, I still feel irritation at the crude intrusion into the quiet day.

But perhaps in 30 years time, a walker like me will be thinking back to these times, with a nostalgic tug, remembering the busy roar of diesel traffic, and wondering where it all went! When the oil industry is effectively dead, when most of the traffic is electric, and when long-distance road traffic is as rare as the little tern, and people no longer commute because they work from home by phone and internet, will this walker regret the passing of all this way of life, as I do the tranquillity of my youth? And will he welcome back the butterflies and the bees which are struggling to survive? Will he curse as a newly invigorated dawn chorus wakes him, when our wild birds find habitats returning under the new environmentally appropriate farming methods?

Or will he simply curse the destruction wrought by the generations before his?

My Tortuous Route to the OU

About ten years ago I realised that climate change was a real and looming problem. I started reading, and occasionally writing, on the subject, linking global warming with peak oil as two sides of the same problematic coin. Our dependence on fossil fuels was and is clearly the overarching problem, and that dependence stems from our addiction to an unsustainable way of life. The unsustainability arises from our love of all things material and luxurious and our complete disregard for either seasonality or geography when it comes to shopping for food.

And it is an unfortunate fact that despite the continuing decline in oil production worldwide, it will be possible to continue to find and use fossil fuel for a long time to come, albeit at incalculable cost both environmentally and financially – until we finally poison our planet with a surfeit of CO2.

No matter how we address these issues, no solution to the greenhouse gas problem can work unless our consumption of fossil fuel is very substantially reduced. We can produce bio fuels and burn wood in our power stations, but we are still adding to the CO2 in our atmosphere, even while persuading ourselves that it is in a more sustainable way. We can invest in true renewable energy sources like solar, wind and tidal power, but without an unswerving determination to dramatically reduce our energy consumption, we will not stop the rise in our global temperature with many resultant disasters.

One of the most significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions is the fossil-fuel-intense way in which our food is produced and distributed. We could be talking about developing countries where vast tracts of land are rendered unproductive by unsophisticated subsistence farming methods, leading to the burning of forest or the draining of precious wetlands to liberate new land for agriculture. Equally we could be talking about major agribusinesses which destroy the soil (releasing CO2) by using heavily mechanised monoculture methods with the over-use of carbon-based fertilisers and pesticides, and the inherent fuel use associated with both farm machinery and crop transport and distribution.

Over the years I have continued to read and learn, and have come to understand that globally our means of food production and distribution are in a very bad way indeed. Recently the fact that horsemeat has been found in cheap ready meals where it was not supposed to be, has only served to reinforce my concerns regarding food production.

The more I learned, the greater was the effect on my own life. I dispensed with prepared meals some years ago. I started to make my own bread (having read about the ‘baking aids’ which are added to factory bread in the interests of a quick bake), I dramatically reduced my consumption of meat and am still edging towards vegetarianism! I started to incorporate different types of beans and pulses into my cooking. And recently, in the interests of saving CO2 emissions, I discovered a source of UK produced dried peas and beans, which should enable me to stop buying imported produce altogether.

A few years ago I stripped my garden of ornamental plants, bought a greenhouse and started to pay serious attention to growing my own food. I watched on-line video clips on all aspects of domestic food production, forest gardens, no-dig gardening, organic food and so on. In the course of conversations with like-minded friends, I discovered the concept of aquaponics as an efficient means of food production. I had finally arrived at a point in my life when I decided to rethink my entire future.

I proceeded to use up my limited savings to renovate my cottage before putting it on the market. I anticipate a time, not many years hence, when food becomes very much more expensive than it is now, through escalating production and transport costs, and I intend to use some of the released equity from the sale of my house to set up an aquaponics greenhouse, with the hope that I can keep my family supplied with the majority of their vegetable requirements, as well as some home-grown fish.

As yet my house has not sold, and I am getting frustrated with the wait! But it has occurred to me that there is a lack of balance in my search for answers. For all my reading about food production and distribution, I have realised that my knowledge on food consumption is pretty sparse. What should we eat? What shouldn’t we eat? How do vegetarians and vegans give themselves a rich, varied and tasty diet? And can they do it without relying on imported staples like soya (which is almost all genetically modified)? I know someone who remains very fit and healthy despite not only being vegan, but not eating any cooked food at all!

I decided I should try to correct these gaps in my knowledge, and so trawled through the Open University website for an appropriate course. Thus I discovered a short 21 week course on nutrition which is about to be conducted for the very last time, due to funding cuts! I spent some weeks thinking about it, taking into account my age at over 70; considering whether I was still up to the studying; whether my noticeably deteriorating memory is an insurmountable problem; whether my two-finger keyboard skills are equal to the task; wondering what happens if I have to move house part way through the course; and wondering if I could justify the expenditure.

Given a very positive level of encouragement from my family, I decided to register for the course and now eagerly await the arrival of the material. And, to occupy my mind in the interim, I have just taken delivery of Andrew Simms’ new book ‘Cancel the Apocalypse’, so that I can continue to search for reasons for optimism about the future of our planet!

Irish Water Supply Crisis (and thoughts arising!)

The weather hasn’t been great these past couple of weeks. Travel has been disrupted, on the roads, the railways and in the air. Northern Ireland has had significant problems with water supplies, with many people being without supply for several days. Urgent calls for blood donors went out to anticipate increased demand. Petrol stations ran out of fuel.

The priority amongst those who administer these facilities has been to get back to normal as soon as possible. The priority amongst everyone else seems to have been to find someone to blame, and to scapegoat them. The result of all this blame is to take the attention of the top managers and officials away from problem solving, in order to provide a public apology, a resignation or a decision not to take a bonus.

Heads must roll!

Small consideration is given to the fact that this level of snow and freezing temperatures at this time of the year is (or has been up until now) a freak occurrence. No manager, administrator or minister worth his salt is going to spend a fortune preparing for freak conditions, thereby risking the wrath of the budget keepers, the accountants and the voters. If those conditions can be shown, later, to fall outside the definition of ‘freak’, and nearer to the definition of ‘normal’, that is the time to spend the money.

What we have heard, and will hear again, is that well worn phrase, ‘Lessons will be learned.’ My question would be, ‘Which lessons?’

We can safely assume that in Northern Ireland, decades of troubled times, under all shades of Westminster government, has resulted in a considerable under-spend on water infrastructure. It’s pretty pointless then, to look for a token scapegoat.

The problems at our airports arise from the assumption that freak conditions are just that, and are unlikely to occur. To compare the situation at Heathrow with that at better equipped continental airports is invidious – they have always had more snow and lower temperatures than we have, and are more used to it; furthermore, they have not been without their weather related problems. Recent freak conditions in the US have caused similar disruptions, and they, too, are more used to severe winter conditions than we are.

The complaints regarding road travel seem to relate to a lack of communication, and the habit of distressed drivers of blocking the hard shoulder.

Much of our difficulties, and all our complaints, arise from an expectation that someone else should be looking after us. The workings of State and Big Business have contrived, over the years, to deprive us of the ability to fend for ourselves, to prepare for extreme conditions as a matter of course, and to ‘get on with it’ at times of stress.

The people in Ireland who are without water are certainly in a very difficult situation, and don’t need reminding of the circumstances in third world countries which require women and young children to walk 10 or 15 km a day to collect the water supply for the whole family, including the sick and elderly within their communities. The distressed road users, many of whom, despite the forecasts, set out on their journeys completely unprepared, won’t give a thought to the millions of people who aren’t able to afford a bicycle, never mind a car. The stranded Christmas holidaymakers feeling miserable in airport terminals are unlikely to work out what percentage of the world’s population have never left their village (or refugee camp), let alone their country.

No, I fear that the important lessons won’t be learned.

In this country we’re lucky – we are not generally short of water, as long as we are sensible. Irrigation of crops is not as prevalent as it is, for example, in North America: there, without irrigation, food production would decline to an unsustainable level, and yet constant irrigation degrades the soil, necessitating increased use of fossil-gas based fertilisers. At the same time, a growing city-based population is taking an increasing proportion of the available water supply: availability of clean water per capita is decreasing as water tables drop and replenishment can’t keep up with demand. Many parts of the world depend on grain exports from the US; and yet, as it takes 1000 tons of water to produce a ton of grain, there will come a time not too many years hence, when the US will no longer be able to export grain – and the irony is that a proportion of their crop will go to the production of bio fuel.

The most water-hungry grain crop is rice. In North Korea, where a majority of the population is undernourished, there is no longer sufficient fuel to power the irrigation systems upon which their staple crop, rice, depends. To make matters worse, in winter they can no longer heat their hospitals, let alone their homes. They don’t have fuel for their farm machinery, so farmers have to do the work manually – but being seriously undernourished, and living in cold accommodation, the labour is very much less than efficient, leading to increasing food shortage and malnutrition. Ultimately, complete societal breakdown is inevitable without huge help from outside.

In a large proportion of irrigated land in Northern China, the water tables are dropping by a meter a year – rivers and rainfall just can’t keep up with demand. In India, two thirds of the Punjab is losing its water tables at the rate of 20 centimetres a year.

Although there was some controversy over a misguided claim by the IPCC regarding how soon the Himalayan glaciers would disappear, that should not blind us to the established fact that these glaciers are receding at a significant rate (as they are in other parts of the world including Europe). Another fact is that a third of the world’s population is dependent on those glaciers for clean water. Already some of the world’s great rivers are reduced to a trickle, or dry up completely, when the demands of agriculture are at peak – and the periods when this happens are getting longer each year.

So what lessons should our politicians, managers and administrators be learning?

First, it is now clear that current agricultural practices are unsustainable (even without the threat of peak oil). This will become increasingly obvious as fossil-based fuel and fertiliser, and thence food, become more and more expensive. A partial solution to this is for agriculture to become more community based, and organic, with a loosening or abolition of the regulatory constraints which are placed on such things as community composting. This solution might involve some incentive to larger land-owners to allow some of their land to be put to community use (without charge). Small organic community based schemes have been shown elsewhere (Cuba for example) to be several times more productive than standard agricultural practice. As the size of a farmed area increases, the productivity per square meter reduces – so small community based units are the optimum for yield, as well as providing local employment, helping communities to enhance self reliance and resilience.

Second, all farming must become less dependent on oil and oil based products very quickly. Instead of cutting budgets on research, more funds should be provided to research and revitalise new farming methods. There are ways of growing crops which take up far less space than current systems, for example, and these should be investigated and perfected as quickly as possible. Lack of oil is not synonymous with ‘back to the stone age’. Properly researched modern organic methods have the ability to increase not only production, but more importantly, nutritional value.

Thirdly, the present rather tired efforts to enhance the value of ‘community’ should be doubled or trebled. This Government is making a few of the right noises in this direction but their actions are working against their sentiments. The more that a local community is stimulated, the more local work becomes available, the more money is generated locally. There was a time when light industry could be found in village high streets, whereas now it is shunted out to industrial ‘parks’, drawing people away from their communities, and engendering a mindset which embraces the long commute, the supermarket, the ‘dormitory town’ and the school with 1500 pupils which produces students who are outside their own communities right from the start.

Fourthly, politicians should be helping to educate the electorate to the fact that life cannot continue as it is. Our lifestyles are going to change whether we like it or not, but at present the Government is doing absolutely nothing to educate us for this. Major changes will occur and our leaders and most people in the ‘developed’ world are walking towards those changes with our eyes shut! The later we leave our preparations the harder it will be to live with those changes and the more chaotic and destructive will be the outcome.

The water crisis in Ireland leads me to wonder, with all the rigorous, so-called environmentally friendly building regulations, why new buildings are not required to capture rainwater for use, at least, in toilets and kitchen sinks. There is no reason why we should feel entitled to use good drinking water for anything other than drinking and cooking.

While we are whining at the Government because they aren’t keeping our roads clear or our trains running, some small island nations are already suffering deeply as a result of rising sea levels. Some African countries are suffering prolonged drought and loss of crops. Others devote their agricultural resources to producing crops for export instead of feeding themselves, mostly through the ‘good’ offices of the IMF and the WTO.

Unless real action is taken to change the way we live, we will soon be whining about failure of road, rail and air travel through lack of economically viable fuel supplies, and while our main sources of groceries (the supermarkets) only keep sufficient stocks to last less than a week without replenishment, we should certainly start to learn how to keep a sensibly stocked store cupboard. Globally we are heading towards shortage of oil, shortage of water and a spiralling global temperature.

The lesson which should be learned by the politicians is not when or how to apologise. It is that there are a number of potential crises up ahead. If these materialise and find us unprepared, it won’t be the odd minister who will have to resign! Meanwhile, those of us who can should incorporate our preparation for the future into our everyday lives, a bit at a time, until it becomes second nature.

What about some Green Agriculture?

I am not sure who is losing touch with reality – is it me or is it them?

I read today that Defra is concentrating too much on the environment and not enough on agriculture!

That’s according to the National Farmers Union. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when I read that. In our present dire straits, how can we possibly think of agriculture and the environment as being separate – in conflict? If ever there was a time when we needed to start being in tune with our environment rather than destroying it in the name of higher productivity, this is it. Surely the NFU of all organisations should see that if we want to stand a chance of surviving the double whammy of Climate Change and Peak Oil, then they have to start working with nature rather than against it?

Our agriculture is totally dependent on the oil industry for its diesel and for its fertiliser. What will they do when they can’t afford either? Just say ‘OK we go out of business’?

If Defra spend money on supporting agriculture in its present form, then all they are doing is hastening the demise of the one industry which, if it adapts to the changing world, could be our salvation.

Already, an increasing number of families are finding ways to produce their own food, whether on allotments, in their gardens or on their window sills. Many people avoid buying ‘organic’ food because the premium is too high. This is the writing that is on the wall.

Our farmers need to move away from mass production and supermarkets, and think small and local. That way they may still have customers in ten years time. If they continue to look for the big industrial markets, then they will be left with egg on their faces – and it won’t be free range!