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Margaret Atwood is a
talented writer to who doesn’t mind working
amongst considerable chaos. In Australia to
promote her latest novel, Oryx and Crake,
which she describes as a ‘what if’ novel, the
Friends of the Earth International patron
spared some time to talk to Stephanie Long
for
Friends
of Earth Australia
's Chain Reaction,
about organic food, germs, technology and
consumer awareness.
Margaret believes the greatest
contemporary environmental threat we are
facing is that of an ever increasing
population which is gobbling up the world’s
natural resources at an unsustainable
rate.
“No society can survive the destruction of
its natural resources,” she said, pointing to
the demise of the Sumarian and Mayan
societies due to over-irrigation. Margaret
furthered this comment by stating that
habitat depletion and the like are well
published, well known issues and a tempting
solution would be to make new resources.
This leads us into the murky territory of
genetic engineering, which many claim is
going to save the day. In Margaret’s opinion,
genetic engineering is a tool and as such is
value neutral. “I can’t make a pronouncement
about genetic engineering, any more than I
could do about hammers – it is what you do
with it.” The good or bad values of such
tools are derived from our behaviour and how
we use our tools.
The fear with genetic engineering is that
we have the capability to change human nature
– which means essentially introducing new
species and we should be very careful about
the outcomes of what we are doing. We should
beware “the doctrine of unintentional
consequences,” said Margaret, using the
introduction of cane toads and rabbits into
Australia and possums into New Zealand as
examples.
According to Margaret, effective change
can be gained from educating consumers to
consume in different ways, such as replacing
fossil fuels with solar energy and purchasing
organic food over ‘conventional’ foods. Take
for example the growth in the organic
industry of 10% in one year – understandable
considering that organic food tastes better
(Margaret professed to have previously given
up on broccoli and apples).
The contemporary response to environmental
issues is consumer choice, awareness,
labelling, understanding what we are eating,
and the subsequent interest that the market
has in consumer awareness.
In skipping to the issue of race relations
between indigenous and non-indigenous
peoples, Margaret describes a pattern of what
happens when technology A meets technology B,
and technology A can kill you faster. In
colonial history, “technology B has not done
so well, and technology A has not behaved so
well.”
Germs however are of particular interest,
as germs caused the initial weakening of
indigenous peoples across the Americas. The
Asian and European germ bank travelled faster
than the technological frontier or the
dispossession by force of guns.
Margaret believes that we are a smart
species and can turn things around. It is a
matter of will, which does exist, as
organisations like Friends of the Earth are
testimony to this desire for a different
future. She bases her support of Friends of
the Earth on the limitations to what
individuals can achieve alone, which
increases the importance of contributing to
organisations that can address larger issues.
Given that achieving sustainability in
smaller spheres is easier to achieve than in
larger spheres, Margaret still prefers the
slogan ‘think globally and act locally.’
Her parting suggestion in this interview
was that we should convince Cosmo that the
‘o’ in organic means orgasm, definitely an
interesting marketing idea!
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