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Nature, red in tooth and claw

Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law - Tho' nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed from In Memoriam -- Alfred Lord Tennyson Time once again for Earth Day and Cox and Forkum get into the spirit of things: They also quote from this excellent essay:

The individuals singled out for attack by environmental terrorists -- namely, scientists, inventors and businessmen -- are the creators of industrial civilization. As heirs of Newton, scientists discover truths about the workings of nature. As heirs of Edison, inventors use these truths to create new products which improve human life. As heirs of Ford, businessmen figure out ways to perfect and mass manufacture these products profitably.

These three categories of individuals represent the exploiters of nature, those who transform wilderness to support man's life. They find plains and forests, dangerous jungles and insect-infested swamps, in which man's life is precarious, and they build a human environment by creating houses, electric heaters and chemical pesticides. They teach man his method of survival: using his mind to reshape nature to his needs.

As monstrous as it sounds, it is precisely because these heroes are the sustainers of human life that they are targeted by those who are willing to take up arms for their cause, environmentalism.

This has a personal resonance as terrorists from Earth Liberation Front burned down a wonderful Horticulture Facility in Seattle in 2001 while Jen and I were still living there. Their protest was against the Genetically Engineered Poplar Trees that were "being developed there". Only problem for them was that Dr. H.D. "Toby" Bradshaw was doing selective breeding and not genetic engineering. They had neither the equipment nor the budget for G.E., this was hybridization pure and simple. Dr. Bradshaw did work with some G.E. tissue samples but these were never propagated. The fire also destroyed an amazing library. It also destroyed one fourth of the world's population of an endangered plant species: Showy Stickseed If these people really wanted to do something about the environment, they would put the bong away, go back to school and take Algebra, Calculus, Chemistry (InOrg. and Org.) and then start in on the Hard Sciences. Posted by DaveH at April 20, 2006 9:40 PM