GM, not organic, is industry's future

KENNETH Clark, former Tory Chancellor, believes a nation can survive anything except loss of self confidence. Defeat in battle, losing a war, hyper inflation of its currency or massive natural disasters can all be overcome by a nation confident of its abilities but it takes little to disconcert one filled with self-doubt .

It is difficult to pinpoint when the tide of our national self-confidence turned and began to ebb away but for many it was 22 January 1972 when we forsook Churchill’s open seas in favour of the sclerotic, bureaucratic labyrinth of the European Economic Community.

Big systems die hard and decay can be well advanced before anything shows on the surface. Even then it may not be recognised for what it is because often it is most visible in areas of little importance. When rapping is accepted as music rather than an indication that stronger therapy is needed, then confidence in our cultural judgement has reached a serious low. When we no longer have the confidence to regard an unmade bed as a sign of slovenliness rather than a work of art it is probably terminal.

But however important popular music and modern art might be to their aficionados they have little impact on most people. It is when the erosion of self confidence causes us to doubt the scientific rationale which underlies our society that serious, lasting harm ensues. It is then that we lose confidence in our ability to deal with the future and begin to pretend that it is the past repackaged.

The evolutionary tree of our technology has both failed and successful branches. Successful ones such as the wheel extend far back into our past and can be confidently projected into our future. They undergo changes in materials of construction and methods of manufacture but they are not superseded. Failures die and survive only in museums.

It is on just such a dead branch that our lack of self confidence has persuaded us hangs the future answer to our energy requirements: the windmill. But the reason the windmill was abandoned in favour of water power is as true today as it was then - wind is an unreliable energy source and all the new materials and methods of construction do not alter that. Windmills did not evolve because they do not work.

The evolution of energy technology was closely matched by the evolutionary change which has been the predominant characteristic of agriculture since its earliest days. By selection and rejection, by crossing and hybridisation, we have adapted nature to our needs. Failures ended up as rare breeds and botanical curiosities and no longer feature in agricultural evolution.

But now our nerve has failed us and instead of welcoming the next logical step in the process of adaptation - genetic modification - we have chosen instead to promote the superseded methods and 19th century productivity levels of organic farming; ostensibly to save the planet but really because we have run out of bottle.

To conceal it from ourselves we call this loss of nerve by many different names. It masquerades as prudence or as concern for the environment, it appears in the guise of sustainability or the Precautionary Principle which permits no changes whose outcomes are not completely known but it paralyses our present and will blight our future.

I believe our future energy requirements can only be met by nuclear generation and our food requirements by genetically modified crops and livestock; no other rational course offers itself.

It probably does not matter much if we in Scotland follow failed branches, we are already moribund and our inability to face the future will serve only to hasten the inevitable but it is hard to imagine that the UK, a nation which was once pre eminent in every sphere, will so tamely become a living museum.

The great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes believed that a man "should share the action and passion of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived". I do not think he meant by that a journey down memory lane.