Dave Goulson Quotes

I have never grasped why some folk are so desperate to have a perfectly uniform, green lawn, unmarred by pretty flowers. The concept of a ‘weed’ is entirely within our heads; one man’s weed is another’s beautiful wildflower. If we could somehow engineer a shift in attitude, so that ‘weeds’ such as daisies or clovers were seen as desirable additions to a lawn, rather than enemies to be battled against, we would save ourselves an awful lot of time, money and stress, while helping nature into the bargain.

For me, the economic value of insects is just a tool with which to bash politicians over the head. They only seem to value money, so I point out to them that insects contribute to the economy. But if I’m honest, their economic worth has nothing whatsoever to do with why I try to champion their cause. I do it because I think they are wonderful.

Why he was asked to comment on a subject on which he has no expertise is unclear, but in these strange times it seems common for the opinions of celebrities to be valued regardless of qualifications or experience.

Personally, I do not think we should dismiss GM technology. However, so far most GM crops have been developed by large corporations, with the clear goal of lining their pockets rather than benefiting people or the environment.

Some previous deliberate introductions of non-native species to Australia had gone horribly wrong: for example, cane toads from South America, introduced to help control sugar cane pests, have themselves become a plague, proliferating to the point where there are now estimated to be about 200 million of them, eating everything except the pests they were intended to control.

One man’s weed is another man’s wildflower.

Suppose one were to invent a new wheat variety that gave twice the yield. Would the world’s wheat farmers turn half their land over to nature? Of course not. Wheat prices would collapse, and we would find ever-more-wasteful ways of using the surplus, for example by feeding more to animals or using more for biofuels. The farmers would end up farming harder than ever to make ends meet, and nature would not benefit at all.

If one was designing a system from scratch to feed the world with healthy food in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way, it would look nothing like our current forming system.

Glyphosate is a general-purpose herbicide, killing any plant it touches. It is systemic, which means that it spreads through the tissues of the plant to kill the roots. I hate to admit this now, but I once used to use it quite a lot in my garden, as I believed the manufacturers when they claimed that it was non-toxic to wildlife and broke down very quickly in the environment. I used to be very naïve.

I am not suggesting that petitions are a waste of time – they actually take up very little time – but don’t expect them to achieve much. There is a danger that people feel that the job is done, just because their favoured petition has reached a certain number of signatures. We will not save the planet simply by signing petitions, no matter how many we sign; they are a little more than a displacement activity.

We are committing ecocide on a biblical scale. I am in no way religious, but if you are, consider this; do you really think God created wonderful diversity and gave us dominion over it so that we could exterminate it? Do you really think He or She is pleased with what we have done?

Similar issues affect the 211,000 km² protected by the USA’s sixty-two National Parks. These are supposed to be wilderness areas unaffected by man’s activities, yet many are affected by oil and gas drilling, or by invasive species, while quite a few allow hunting, and climate change is affecting them all. The Everglades National Park, for example, is being damaged by over-extraction of water to irrigate crops, by fertiliser and pesticide pollution, and by no fewer than 1,392 different invasive species, spanning everything from Burmese pythons to spreading spans of Australian tea trees.
It is clear that trying to set aside areas for nature has not been adequate as a strategy to prevent biodiversity loss – though nature reserves undoubtedly have value – and that we need to do much more. We do not have to continue headlong towards environmental Armageddon, but to halt this process requires us to recognize that our current strategies are not working, and that we cannot carry on as we have in the past. It is not too late to save our planet, but to do so we need to learn to live alongside nature, to value and cherish it, to respect all life as equal to our own, especially the small creatures.

Globally, beef provides just 2 per cent of the calories we consume, yet 60 per cent of the world’s agricultural land is used for beef production.

If one looks at the bigger picture, modern farming is part of a staggeringly inefficient, cruel and environmentally damaging food-supply system.

Truth was defined by those who shouted loudest, or had the money to buy it.