Sir, - I feel I must respond to Mr Kevin Myers's latest diatribe against we "Knew Age knownothings" as he delights in calling us - meaning all who sometimes question the wisdom of believing everything scientists tell us (An Irishman's Diary, October 6th).
It was a little unfortunate for his argument that he chose DDT for his example of how we Greenies put human needs second to those of (for example) honey buzzards. I happened to be living in India at the time when the government of that country decided to ban DDT, although hitherto it had been dousing the country with it. The Indians were not the slightest bit concerned about honey buzzards. They were concerned that a large proportion of the human population was beginning to suffer from acute liver damage because of DDT. This was just one of the many roads which science has pointed out to us down which humanity found it better not to go.
Another such road was the nuclear one. No doubt Mr Myers was gung-ho about that too: he probably believed the physicists when they told him that their magic was going to make electricity meters redundant. Electricity was to be free. It has not turned out that way, and when the final bill is presented - the bill for decommissioning thousands of old nuclear power stations and for dumping thousands of tons of nuclear waste - that road will prove to be the most costly humanity has ever tried going down.
And now we have GM (genetic mutilation). This is the next great remedy. As though the Good Lord (or natural selection if you like) had not placed enough species of plants and animals on this earth to satisfy the needs of humanity without our having to play God and invent a whole lot more! It must be evident to everybody that we don't know anything like enough about the fantastically complex balance of nature to start monkeying with it at this stage. We can grow plenty of food for everybody by using sound, tried farming practices with what we have got without making these fantastically dangerous experiments.
But of course Mr Myers despises "peasants", by which he means small family farmers. Presumably he is aware that the oil and natural gas will run out one day, and when it does he will rapidly discover that it is the small mixed farm which will feed him and not the huge agribusinesses that have no alternative to huge inputs of fixed nitrogen on their land every year!
Oh well, I must go and sacrifice a honey buzzard to the Great God Ceres, mustn't I? - Yours, etc.,
John Seymour, Killowen, New Ross, Co Wexford.