I wish that Prof. Steve Jones would leave off ridiculing Prince Charles and listen to him instead (View from the lab: What Charles can learn from Darwin, 25 May 2000). 

Following the "debate" on GM crops, which is more like a slanging match, what strikes me most is how much the Prince of Wales is misunderstood. This is because he is speaking from the heart rather than the head, while his critics' hearts are more-or-less closed, which makes them blind to the wisdom he is speaking.

Let us remember and learn from the mistakes we made with nuclear energy. If just a fraction of the resources that were put into developing that technology had been put instead into developing renewable sources of energy, how much further we would now be along the road to solving our energy problems, and how much safer we and coming generations would be from the threat of nuclear accidents and radioactive contamination. 

The fact is that man, despite his name (Homo sapiens), his great intelligence, and the phenomenal amount of recently acquired knowledge and understanding at his disposal, is not half as wise or knowing as Prof. Jones and many others believe. Prince Charles, on the other hand, realises this, and the need for man to defer to a "higher authority". Thus, he argues for a far more precautionary approach to the development and introduction of new technologies.

If technological developments were driven by wise, rational and benign forces we would have nothing to worry about, but they are not. They are driven largely by "economic necessity" (profits, jobs etc.) and by people's "not-so-enlightened" self-interests. When a scientist argues that Prince Charles' attitude is blocking progress in the developing world, he neglects to mention, and perhaps does not realise himself, that he is also defending his own interests - his livelihood and social standing.

Apart from man's overestimation of himself, the problem is also one of "economic necessity", which forces the rapid development and introduction of new technologies, and marginalises questions relating to sustainability and potential risks. This "forced" development is the real threat, but it is built into the system. And we are so busy competing with each other that we fail to see the abyss we are running towards.

Although in many ways it has served us - or at least many of us - so well, we need to take an urgent, but nevertheless, long and critical look at our economic system and the values it is based on.