Dr David Farrier, Department of English
Intervening in the debate around GM food this month, the environment minister Owen Patterson suggested that the public should listen more to their heads than their hearts when it comes to genetically modified crops entering the food chain. This is not the forum to rehearse the arguments around GM and neither am I, it must be said, especially well-placed as a literary scholar to offer meaningful comment. Patterson’s comments do however point to where the humanities can engage fruitfully with ecological matters: what is the place of emotion in an environmental ethics?
