Madam, - Dr William Reville, in his column of June 26th denouncing greens as religious fundamentalists, is guilty of many generalisations which display either a lack of clear argument or an ignorance of the green movement.
To assert that "the green movement" believes in a goddess called Gaia is to imagine that the beliefs of a small minority are held by many thousands of others. The concept associated with the word Gaia, which that minority erects into an idea of a goddess, is that the earth may be a self-regulating mechanism which, given time, will adjust itself to changed conditions - but in a way that does not guarantee a future for all species, ourselves included. That we may well be the authors of our own extinction is a rational possibility; to make out, as Dr Reville does, that "the Green God can and will punish us for doing wrong" tells us more about Dr Reville's idea of God than about the existence of a green religion.
He also confuses the idea of a society living in harmony with the environment - the Garden of Eden as he calls it - with "pre-modern societies" dominated by "inter-tribal warfare, intra-tribal murder and violence". It doesn't take a very great acquaintance with anthropology to distinguish between hunter-gatherer societies, which did show a considerable degree of peaceful behaviour, non-hierarchical structures, and harmony with the environment, and the later societies following the agricultural revolution which permitted the accumulation of wealth and hence the development of violent struggles over that wealth. The Christian theologian Teilhard de Chardin identified the agricultural revolution with the Fall of Man.
Only a few American survivalists would wish to return to a hunter-gatherer society; but an understanding that large-scale domination and violence are not intrinsic to human nature but dependent on social structures is surely of benefit to all trying to work out the future of society.
Organic agriculture, he tells us, will never feed the world population; "modern agriculture" is necessary for that. If he thinks about modern agriculture, he may accept that it depends on oil-based fertilisers. We all know that the age of cheap oil is over. Organic products are no longer going to be so much more expensive.
As a scientist, Dr Reville surely recognises that scientific truth is always provisional, and should be open to dissident views, which may lead to a revised theory. Is it really established science to say that low-level use of DDT "poses no health hazards"? It is not scientific research that is contrary to green thinking, but the use of technology without reference to its side-effects and social consequences. — Yours, etc,
JOHN GOODWILLIE,
Old County Road,
Crumlin,
Dublin 12.