A Pledge for Scientists and Technologists?? August 29, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , trackbackI seem to be following The Daily (Maybe) rather a lot lately, but he the UK’s top Green Blogger! His poll about one of our policies makes interesting reading.
This rather unfortunate policy says:
ST252 A pledge will be introduced by which all scientists and technologists will promise to respect the Earth and life upon it
It’s the only such pledge in the manifesto. At no point do we ever say that politicians, civil servants, lawyers or financiers should have this sort of pledge.
As a technologist, with a science degree, I’m happy to be bound by the code of conduct of my professional society, the British Computer Society, but I would seriously object to a future Green government forcing this on me. I certainly don’t object to the the words themselves, but by singling out scientists and technologists, the Green Party is saying something about how it sees people in those fields.
It’s an attitude we need to overcome if the Greens are to move forward as a viable alternative to other parties. I know it loses us votes, and makes it very hard to combat the accusation that we are anti-science.
We could argue that it is technology which has got us into this position, and there’s some truth in that. That’s a naive analysis though, which ignores the choices society has made, and the influence of our political and economic systems since the start of the industrial revolution.
If we are to create a society that is just, sustainable and community based, and meet the challenges posed by climate change, we need to respect and make use of science and technology. It is science which shows us how climate change is happening, and technology will have a huge role to play in overcoming, or at least adapting to it.
This is a policy which needs to be removed.
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