When will Monsanto's Roundup be banned?
Our continent is the world’s most unproductive, with our soils having the lowest nutrient levels and the lowest plant growth rates.
By Clive Blazey, Founder of The Diggers Club.
“Are we part of nature or master of it?” That was the question Rachel Carson posed in her epic environmental fable titled Silent Spring in 1962.
DDT, which had been successful in fighting malaria, was a potent and persistent chemical. Used indiscriminately, it killed birds and bees, wildlife, domestic pests and even humans. Carson, who worked as a marine biologist for the Fisheries Department, brought the unexplained mysteries of the biological interconnected systems, used so effectively by DDT into sharp focus with her poetic writing style.
The birth of environmentalism
Aged 56, Carson testified so effectively before a US Senate committee on pesticides that she carried the day, which eventually led to the banning of DDT in the US in 1972. Silent Spring was the book that inspired the environmental movement which gained momentum in the 1970s.
Australia has done more damage to its fragile environment than any other advanced western country and we don’t even know it.
Over-grazing, salination, soil erosion, water shortages and man-made droughts are the sort of problems you would expect from a country like Italy, with thousands of years of settlement, rather than the newly-settled country of Australia.
Our continent is the world’s most unproductive, with our soils having the lowest nutrient levels and the lowest plant growth rates, explains Jared Diamond (author of Collapse).
Monsanto’s Roundup accelerates our declining soil fertility. In the last 20 years, the overuse of the carcinogen* Roundup to control weeds on our farms and in our cities has further reduced our precious soil carbon.
Unbridled capitalism
Isn’t this a short term subsidy for corporate profit whilst the next generation has to repair our climate and our decline in soil fertility? When will we learn to live in ecological equilibrium?
* A carcinogen is a substance that promotes the formation of cancer, e.g. asbestos, dioxin, tobacco smoke.
Clive Blazey (04/01/2019)