The Anti-Science Left

Environmentalist Mark Lynas delivered an amazing speech at the recent Oxford Farming Conference on the irrationality of the Left's opposition to GM food products. You should really take the time to listen to both the speech and Q&A, but the prepared speech gets to the heart of everything.



The key to his speech is the following paradox: when it comes to climate science, the Left is almost immediate to chastise the Right for being anti-science. But when things turn to food, the Left is now on the exact opposite side of scientific consensus. In fact, we should all be eating GM crops to reduce the impact that agriculture has on the greater environment. The damage to the earth through pesticides, carbon consumption and expanded land use are substantial, and GM crops offer the only viable way for reducing our impact in the future.

The internet is literally swamped by BS on GMOs. People are know to be especially touching about their food, since it touches a revulsion, a characteristic we developed for survival. Nonetheless, the view on among consensus bodies is pretty clear. There is nothing risky about consuming organic foods, and nearly every major health organization and scientific body confirms this.  What's more, there is no clear evidence that organic foods are any healthier.

Hundreds of millions of meals containing GM foods have been eaten over the last two decades, and there has not been a single documented case of someone getting sick because the food was GM. These products are already subject to an incredible amount of scrutiny and review. This will continue into the future, just as it continues for every product meant for human consumption. There is literally nothing to be gained by forcing further scrutiny, or banning these products.

Maybe you disagree. But understand that you disagree with every major scientific body when doing so, including the Royal Society, the National Academies of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, three of the most prestigious scientific bodies in the world. The left often accuses the right of being anti-science, but by being irrationally anti-GM, you're doing the exact same, progress-inhibiting thing.

Doing so, for example, the Left has ruined the livelihood and threatened the lives of scientists in China, by stirring up GMO fears about a vitamin-A carrying form of rice that could dramatically reduce malnutrition in that country. They have convinced autocratic governments that scientists should be imprisoned for trying to develop a more sustainable food system. They attack public research foundations (literally tearing publicly-funded test crops from the ground) and encourage bureaucratic interference so great that only the biggest corporations in the world can actually conduct this kind of research. They falsify data and stir up controversy, treating science the same way tobacco companies did in the 60s and 70s.

Not only is their behavior irrational, ideological and plainly stupid, it is morally reprehensible. They force their aesthetic views onto a food system where other people would dramatically benefit from different choices, and they have no concern for the extensive damage that they cause. This is the worst kind of zealotry.

Climate change and continued population growth will put tremendous pressure on the planet to produce enough food over the next few decades. We should be doing everything we can to meet these challenges, and we should be utilizing every resource that we have. Instead, the environmental left insists on discarding our most promising technologies for reasons that have literally no scientific justification. They are on the wrong side of progress, and it's time for this to stop.