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HOLDEN: I have a deep fear of reductionism and the idea that we can improve on nature with technical fixes without knowing the consequences. We are part of nature, and with that relationship should go respect, humility, and above all responsibility. In the past we’ve waited for evidence of harm before we’ve acted. That is no longer good enough, and the BSE experience should teach us that. In making decisions we need to take into account the role of intuition, emotional influences, even spiritual influences—things we might not yet understand.

MANNING: I’ve ended up with an absolutist position that everything is natural. In the opening sequence of his film 2001, Stanley Kubrick shows an ape-man using a club, and then in the next scene cuts to a space shuttle landing on an Earth orbiter on its way to the Moon. Kubrick is saying that once you have the tools, the rest is inevitable. Human beings are one end point in the process of natural selection. An AK47 rifle, a Pentium processor, a Mozart piano concerto—these are all natural. I don’t think you can draw the line. Of course, when it comes to interacting with and managing an environment, once you start you generally have to keep on doing it, otherwise you find it runs into trouble. But it would be good for us to unmanage if we can. I’d like us to withdraw from large areas of the world. The best thing that could happen to our species is if our numbers declined to a fifth of what they are now.

DAWKINS: Popular views of nature often regard it as benign and self-preserving until man comes along with his unnatural greed and ruins it. But this disagreeable quality of ours is not new, is not peculiar to us, and is very natural. This doesn’t make it good. On the contrary, it’s something to be fought against. All animals look after their short-term interests. Homo sapiens is the only species that can rebel against the otherwise universally selfish Darwinian impulse. We are Earth’s last best hope. Our brains follow their own rules, which can rise above the rules of natural selection. I am a passionate Darwinian in that it is the main ingredient in our understanding of life. Yet I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to human social and political affairs.

LEAVER: I believe that GM technology has a place in addressing some of our major challenges. Since 1960 the world’s population has gone from 3 billion to 6 billion. In the next 60 years it will increase to 9 billion. We’re going to have to double our food productivity on the same amount of land. Plant breeding has been incredibly successful. What right have we to deny people the opportunity to evaluate a technology that could make a difference. Reverting back to a mythical rural idyll is not the answer.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Why is biodiversity important?

LEAVER: Partly because nature is a beautiful place that we all enjoy living in. But I believe biotechnology will increase biodiversity, because instead of breeding down to one completely monogenous genome, you can introduce new genes.

HOLDEN: From the organic perspective, biodiversity is the key to making things work. Chris is saying we can splice genes and create biodiversity that way, but for me that isn’t going to work. We need to rethink how varieties are related to place, and that means learning from nature.

DAWKINS: I value biodiversity at the very least on aesthetic grounds. I love living in a world that is the result of a very long period of co-evolution of different species. Humans have done some very wrong things in dispersing species before realising how important it is to respect biogeographic boundaries. When the Duke of Bedford introduced grey squirrels to Britain he didn’t realise what the consequences would be. There could be an analogy with biotechnology here. When we introduce genes from one phylum into another—a fish gene into a tomato, for example—we might be doing something rather similar. I don’t think it’s a reason for not doing it, but I think it’s a reason for being very cautious.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Richard’s suggestion that our brain allows us to somehow rise above the rest of nature seems just another way of reinventing the soul. It sets us apart from nature and makes us able to exploit it. Yet Aubrey, who believes everything is a part of nature, was nodding in agreement with him. Are we a part of nature or aren’t we?

DAWKINS: It’s not an absolute distinction. There is a quantitative continuum, but out of this come qualitative distinctions. We have language, for example. I wouldn’t deny the possibility that there might be other species that could rise above nature, but I don’t think that even the great majority of humans rise above it. I didn’t say that humans did rise above it, I said that humans are our last best hope of doing so.

MANNING: The tragedy of the present imbalance between human numbers and the demand for resources is that so often human beings are put in direct conflict with the rest of the natural world. Unless we can achieve a balance again, we’re not going to get anywhere. We are unique in the sense that we have that ability to be responsible. That doesn’t make us unnatural.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Patrick Holden and Aubrey Manning seem to be saying that any human intervention is bound to be destructive. What’s happened to the positive view of humanity?

MANNING: I like human beings. I hope we have a future. An organisation I belong to has as its slogan, “More humanity with less humans”. The increase in human numbers has made it more difficult for us to lead a rich and varied existence. I see a conflict between quantity and quality. I don’t see it denigrating to suggest people should limit the number of children they have. That’s not anti-human, it’s pro-human.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Surely what is important is not the debate over what is natural, but over what in nature is good and sustainable and what is bad?

HOLDEN: This reminds me of E. F. Schumacher, who said that people speak of abattle with nature but that if we win that battle we will end up being on the losing side. I think of nature as a teacher. The agriculturalist Sir Albert Howard said we should come to regard pests, parasites and diseases as nature’s professors because they reveal to us the consequences of bad management.