Britain, France, and the European Union - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 103

voles, and salmon. he zebra mussel from Russia has invaded Scotland.
Japanese knotweed and pennywort displace native plants. DEFRA esti-
mates the annual cost of exotic species is two billion pounds a year.
Genetically modiied crops have stirred strong opposition in the United
Kingdom, as well as Germany and elsewhere on the Continent. Food such
as maize, beets, oilseed rape, and potatoes have their genes modiied to
tolerate herbicides or in some other fashion. Corporations promoting this
include Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta, some of the biggest in the world.
In the 1990s government scientists planted maize in an experiment that
provoked bitter opposition. A leading group was GM Freeze. Protesters
dressed up in bio-hazard suits trespassed on the ields and dug the plants
out of the soil. heir theatrics gained popular attention and sympathy,
despite the fact that scientists claimed there was no danger to human
health. he DEFRA minister told Parliament that “here was no scien-
tiic case for ruling out all GM crops or products.” 5 his was not persua-
sive, and the sponsor, Bayer, withdrew from the commercial market in the
United Kingdom. he controversy lared again in 2012. Protesters calling
themselves Take Back the Flour threatened to rip up an experimental ield
of spring wheat genetically modiied to resist aphids at the Rothamsted
Research Station in Hertfordshire. When the day came to attack the test
plot, the police successfully defended it.
France. During the 17th century, France pioneered in creating and pro-
tecting landscapes, albeit not always natural ones. King Louis XIV built
his palace at Versailles with endless formal gardens, laid out symmetrically
and pruned neatly. his relected the Enlightenment ideals of rationality
and science. A century later, with the rise of Romanticism, aristocratic taste
shited to naturalistic gardens. Louis XV and Madame du Pompadour, and
the Duke of Orleans, were royal leaders in this. Jean Jacques Rousseau
wrote of the beneits of living close to nature. He, along with Diderot,
Voltaire, and Delille, bought or rented country estates. Later the Romantic
poet heophile Gautier praised the greenery that symbolizes spring:
he chestnut trees are soon to lower At fair St. Jean, the villa dipped
In sun, before whose viny tower Stretch purple mountains silver-tipped
he little leaves that yesterday Pressed in their bodices were seen
Have put their sober garb away, And touched the tender twigs with green. 6