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A Final Word
Okay, I'm just going to keep you for
a couple of minutes more and finish with a short film, send you
on your way to tea with an appetite for something to drink, I
hope.
I'd like to start off by thanking all
our speakers, and particularly John Shepherd and Sian for chairing
the morning and afternoon sessions so well. I thought I'd better
gloss over what's turned out to be the most embarrassing aspect
of the day, namely that this much-criticised article in the Sunday
Times turns out to have been written by a marine biologist, something
we've uncovered in front of so many marine biologists. Actually,
I think if you look at it carefully, it was probably the graphic
artist that did the map that's really to blame for most of the
misleading aspects, so leave any marine biologists in the audience
with that comforting thought. And you certainly won't find somebody
from Greenpeace sticking up for the media, given the amount of
trouble that we have with their reporting of what we do.
I wanted to thank a number of people
from Greenpeace: Phil Aikman, Catherine Nehemiah, Liz Pratt, and
also Bob Earll, the consultant who helped us put today's meeting
together and did so much hard work in doing that. Thank you all
very much indeed, thank you. I thought I'd make just a couple of comments. I found it personally a fascinating day; I don't claim to be an expert in this field, but there are a number of things I would draw from it. I thought from John Gordon it will be fascinating to see what comes of the EU-funded fisheries project.
From John Lambshead, I was familiar
with some of these analogies with rainforests, but not as familiar
as I now am with some of the arguments about that. The thing that
struck me particularly was that we have here an area, whatever
the arguments about the terminology, which does have great biodiversity,
about which we still know very little, and for which the UK has
a responsibility. It's not just under our control, but we as a
country, and our government, all of us have a responsibility for
it. And I was grateful to Mark for sharing the sounds and the
fascinating new information about whales in particular with us
today.
Sylvia Earle in her message said that
we focus on terrestrial habitats and species because we know them
better. I must say, given our enormous ignorance of natural ecosystems
on the land, even in a country like this, even in some of the
most studied species we have - Euan will know the catastrophic
decline we've seen farmland birds in this country, how poorly
understood that was, how little monitored, how late in the day
we realised what was happening. I mean, and these are familiar
species like tree sparrows and skylarks, so to say that we know
less about the deep oceans than we do about natural ecosystems
on land is a truly terrifying thing to say, because our knowledge
of the land is very limited. And of course, as John Gage said,
we need more and better information. Absolutely, and I know it's
an absolute truism of conferences, scientists get together to
discuss an area like this, that there's a demand for more and
better information. But, boy, this is the one time that I've heard
that said where I really do think it's an unarguable demand. But of course the question is, and a number of people have said this, why hasn't this need been recognised sooner, and why hasn't much of the excellent work that we've heard about today which is now underway, just started, being funded by the oil industry, why wasn't it done long ago, when this area was first earmarked for development, last licensing blocks started to be drawn on maps and so on, that's when it should have been done. And in the meantime, as Euan from the RSPB said, and it a theme that organisations like WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace would all strongly argue for, we have to apply a precautionary principle, not just to these new deep sea fisheries, as Euan said, but to the whole problem of climate change. I was reminded, just one argument, I was reading a report over the weekend which Greenpeace has produced about this new food agency. And there's a nice quote, from obviously a worthy and distinguished scientific committee, and I was reminded about this by the references to the problems about the beef industry in Orkney. And I was reading this on a farm in Norfolk where we used to have a beef herd but don't any longer. And in the early days the advisory committee told John Gummer that there's no evidence of any danger from BSE as far as human health is concerned, and this was translated the next day into a statement in Parliament of John Gummer saying that scientists say it's safe. And it's just not true if scientists say we can't prove that X is going to happen, that everything is alright in the world and we haven't reached the stage, as John Browne of BP says, where we need to start talking about action, and that the point we're at.
But it going to be a long-term campaign
for us. It's the world's most serious environmental threat, climate
change, and we need to begin the process of ending that threat,
which is beginning the end of the use and development of fossil
fuels. And we look forward, I think optimistically, to a bright
renewable energy future. So, support is growing for the campaign,
but we need as much support as we can get, so any of you here
who want to support it, please do. Sign the joint statement on
climate change and energy policy, and the petition for the Prime
Minister, which I guess are just outside on your way out.
And finally, I'd like to take another
ninety seconds of your time to show you some computer-simulated
denizens of the deep. These ones move, unlike the ones you saw
this morning, and appear in a Greenpeace cinema advertisement
that showed around the country last week. So, if we could have
the film.
[Showing of cinema film]
And thank you all very much for coming.
ENDS. |