People talk of the multitude of environmental skeptics who insist that the earth's atmosphere, weather, biodiversity and living things are not affected by human activity, but it's easy to reason that these skeptics are the outlyers. As a society, we are surrounded by mounds of scientific evidence detailing the affects of our petroleum burning cars, mining, or deforestation. How could there still be skeptics? Moreover, it's easy to suss out that many of those who remain "skeptical" are on industry payrolls. Their profit motives and corporate affiliations are no secret. So how could people not suspect their rhetoric? How could they find the speil of a chemical or oil company public relations executive, more compelling then a scientific publication?
Nevertheless, flying in the face of apparent reason, the influence of the naysayers persists and is propagated in the media. Even those who have no transparent industrial agenda loudly deny that man induces harmful environmental change. A Financial Times editor recently wrote in "The Boom in Organic Food Sales Defies Science and Sense" (May 18, 2005) that organic food was a waste of money. He says that he drinks tapwater because it's tastes the same as bottled water. (OK, but surely his tap water can't taste like that in some cities, which may as well be ladled from a city pool overflowing with kids and plastic balls on a hot summer day- and chlorinated liberally for the challenge to boot.) He then extends similiar logic to his choice of non-organic food.
He questions his readers: why spend money on organic food when there is no evidence to prove it's more healthy? He talks about his own choice to eshew organic food:
"There is absolutely no evidence organic food is better for you - as I was startled to learn when the Financial Times published an interview recently with Sir John Krebs, chairman of the Food Standards Agency.
Looking into the matter, I was slightly ashamed of how long it took me to discover this, given that Sir John has been saying it for years...So when he says that scientific evidence does not show organic food is safer or more nutritious, I am inclined to believe him -- particularly as the French and Swedish food agencies say the same.
The UK agency says there is nothing wrong with pesticides or veterinary medicines, provided the levels are low, which they are...
Organic food is no better and no worse for you. It is just more expensive"
Granted John Sir Krebs doesn't happen to be the most neutral judge and the Financial Times is of course a business paper, business paper are generally reluctant to criticize industry. One could argue that the author either chose to ignore conflicting evidence because of his own bias or that he wasn't necessarily qualified to assess the evidence opposing his assertions. Michael Skapinker's area of journalistic expertise after all is employee management, not science. However the article is typical of a genre of science coverage that attracts fervent followers. Certainly some letters to the editor the following week echoed the same saucy and uncritical decision making process. And the article probably served to assuage some budget minded readers that all their food and water sources were healthy. Yet since there are choices, it's baffling that people capitulate to the pressure of anti-environmental reason, especially in light of reports like this:
A study published today in Science magazine, reported that researchers at Washington State University at Pullman found that two fertilizer compounds permanently affect the germline. Vinclozolin; an anti-androgenic compound, and methoxychlor; an estrogenic compound, used to make pesticides and fungicides were found to affect fertility in male offspring born to exposed females. Rats in the study were exposed to the toxicant during the period of embryogenesis when sex determination occurs. It was found that; "The male offspring had lower sperm counts and abnormal sperm production. 10% of the animals were completely infertile".
The males passed these lower fertility traits to their offspring, who then passed them on to their successive offspring and so on. 90% of the trans-generational males were affected. The authors postulate that the trans-generational changes are epigenetic and caused by abnormal methylation of the DNA, since they know of no known DNA sequences that cause such a trans-generational pattern.
This is not the first study to show the effects of pesticides on health. A government clinical trials site lists studies that are recruiting volunteers to participate in infertility trials involving lead, PCB's, mercury, cadium, and a variety of pesticides, all established environmental toxicants.
Many people balk at compelling evidence from scientists who write books like Jared Diamond's "Collapse", or Red Sky in The Morning, by James Seth, Dean of Yale U. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, or One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future, by Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich. These same people revel in the fiction of novelists instead.
Are the media and their approving readers too entrenched in cozy plastic lifesyles to question the fictional assurances? Or perhaps fiction is appealing precisely because it's fiction. Our jobs are stressful, taxes are high, the news is depressing, our cars break down, and the kids are sick. Maybe it's just easier to eschew facts and frame our belief systems in the non-challenging happy or at least forgetable endings of fiction, footnotes or not. If it's agreeable entertainment encapsulated into a one and a half hour movie then all the better.
