Greenpeace's crime against humanity

Consider the issue of climate change.  Whether we are scientists or not--no, I am not referring to the old GOP saw--we have our take on that issue.  We rational people, even when we do not understand how scientists measure the complicated aspects that they talk about, feel strengthened by the fact that 97 percent of the scientists agree on climate change and the human activities that are speeding things up.

We understand there is something important about science and scientists.  Which is also why are interested in who the Nobel Prize winners are, even though we have enormous difficulty even understanding one bit of the science they talk about.

What if a hundred Nobel laureates--ok, make that 108 laureates--put their signatures to a petition endorsing a scientific/technological advancement.  Such a statement from the high priests will be a powerful proxy for those of us who don't know how to do science, right?  Those who passionately argue by citing the scientific consensus in climate change will use the 108 laureates as fantastic evidence, right?

Of course I am setting you up! ;)

The 108 laureates signing off on a petition is for real.  What is their petition about?

The United Nations Food & Agriculture Program has noted that global production of food, feed and fiber will need approximately to double by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing global population. Organizations opposed to modern plant breeding, with Greenpeace at their lead, have repeatedly denied these facts and opposed biotechnological innovations in agriculture. They have misrepresented their risks, benefits, and impacts, and supported the criminal destruction of approved field trials and research projects.We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against "GMOs" in general and Golden Rice in particular.

Now, that's a clear statement.

Unfortunately, facts do not matter to most who have built their reputation championing an ideology.  But, even Greenpeace activists have done a 180.  Like this former Greenpeace activist and GMO hater.  Heck, even the Greenpeace co-founder did a 180!

The laureates state in their petition:

Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

To borrow from Kanye West, Greenpeace doesn't care about poor brown people.

After calling on Greenpeace to "cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically" the 108 Nobel laureates add this:

  How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a "crime against humanity"?

Ouch!  That's one stinging blow.

To which Ronald Bailey, whose post is how I came to know about this petition, adds his comment:

Actually, Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activists such as Naomi Klein and Vandana Shiva have long surpassed that threshold.

Ouch!

It is a strange world in which climate change-deniers refute the science behind climate change, while the GMO-deniers refute the science behind GMO, and the vaccine-deniers refute the science behind vaccines and autism.  Which can mean only one thing: we pick and choose from whatever appeals to us the most.  An approach that is exactly the opposite of the scientific method in which, to paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, we need to change our opinions when the facts change.  It is dirty rotten politics!

Narendra Modi loves the Chinese model. Heck, any anti-democratic model!

A couple of days ago, after reading a news item that half of India's rivers are polluted, I tweeted about it.  A high school friend from India replied, with his characteristic sarcastic brevity, "just half?"

Talking about pollution, working on highlighting the damage to the natural environment, and actively engaging to protect it, might sound as valid democratic activities to us here in the US.  Every plant and animal and river and lake and mountain seems to have a group or two championing the cause openly and loudly.  Which is what I expect in a democracy, even when I disagree with them.  If we can have the NRA and the Chamber of Commerce, then why not the other organizations too?

It can be frustrating, no doubt, to have all these people yelling and screaming about their favorite issues all the time.  But, the alternative is far worse.

There are countries that are not willing to accommodate the multiple and competing interests and claims.  Especially the ones that don't agree with the government's bottom-line.  At an extreme is North Korea.  But, along that continuum of gradual change, a change from conditions here in the US to North Korea, lie a bunch of countries.  A whole range of them.  And, many of them seem convinced that the Chinese approach is better than the American one.  Unlike in the US, what if the troubling voices are silenced?

With every passing day, it appears that India's Narendra Modi's government is moving farther away from an American-style democracy--however screwed up it might be--towards a Chinese model.  The latest example:

Stating that acceptance of foreign contributions by Greenpeace India has prejudicially affected the public and the economic interest of the country in violation of the Section 12 (4)(f)(iii) and Section 12(4)(f)(ii) of the FCRA, the government said the act also amounted to violation of the conditions of grant of registration certificate. Accordingly, the Central government has suspended the registration of the organisation, including its branches and units, under the FCRA, for six months beginning Thursday.

I like how the government makes explicit "the public and the economic interest of the country."  The "Make in India" slogan shall not be compromised!

Have I violated the rule? ;)
"Use of the 'Make in India' logo is strictly prohibited without permission of DIPP"

India being a complex labyrinth of rules and regulations that are meticulously implemented by the "Ramamrithams" that this blogger caricatures and tortures, the following is no surprise:

The suspension order faulted the NGO for shifting its office and activities from Chennai to Bengaluru and also replacing 50% or more of its executive committee members without approval or intimation of the home ministry.

How dare somebody move their office from Chennai without the government's approval!

Greenpeace, I am sure, took quite a few line-in-the-sand approaches that were against "the public and the economic interest of the country."  It is not the only one either:

Activist groups working against coal-fired power plants and other infrastructure projects have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of diluting environmental rules and making it easier for businesses to buy land and set up factories. Modi came to power a year ago with the promise of reviving Asia’s third largest economy and break business bottlenecks.

Dissenting opinions and movements are, well, dissenting and not supportive.   In a democracy, we learn to live with opinions that don't agree with ours.  I know it all too well--it seems like I am always on the dissenting side, at my work and even otherwise.

In a democracy, we don't work to silence dissent.   But then, China is no democracy and that is the model that appeals to quite a few these days, Modi included.

When environmentalists ditch their mantra. Ah, fun to watch!

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" wrote the incomparable Shakespeare in Hamlet.  Ever since I came across that phrase in my early youth, I have always been über-suspicious about people who insist, almost evangelically, about their beliefs, whether it is about anti-homosexuality or religion or war or the environment.  And, if by some fortunate accident should the person's doublethink be exposed, mayhem ensues.

Remember, for instance, Ted Haggard?  Christopher Hitchens went through such a phase himself, when he broke away from his leftist colleagues and friends.  For the most part, they never forgave him for that sin, especially not after the golden boy that he was when in that camp.

For people like me, who think there is no better drama than the one that unfolds in real life, those are some really awesome moments.

I suppose for the big protesters, their entire identity is built on a certain set of ideas and even when they know it is false, they simply have no option but to keep saying and practicing those very ideas because, if not, their identity and livelihood collapse.  They are prisoners of their own ideologies.  That is one problem that, fortunately, I do not have!

A few years ago, Patrick Moore, who was the co-founder of Greenpeace, shocked the environmental world with his volte–face:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Moore now heads an energy coalition that champions nuclear energy, and freely admits to the mistake he helped propagate by lumping nuclear energy with nuclear weapons.

The latest in such "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is Mark Lynas, who "spent years destroying genetically modified crops in the name of the environment."  Yes, he protested too much. Even with machetes:

Back in the mid-90s he'd belonged to a "radical cell" of the anarchist, anti-capitalist environmental movement. He was influential – a co-founder of the magazine Corporate Watch who'd written the first article about the evils of Genetically Modified Organisms [GMOs] and Monsanto, the multinational biotech company whose work with GMOs was to become notorious. He was a law breaker. He'd pile into vans with gangs of up to 30 people and spend nights slashing GM crops with machetes. He was angry. 

That was then.  "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" indeed!

And then a Damascene conversion!  Back in January, he spoke up:

My lords, ladies and gentlemen. I want to start with some apologies, which I believe are most appropriate to this audience. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I'm also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid-1990s and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

Reacting to that speech, The Economist politely said, "I told you so!"

His new position will be familiar to readers of this blog. “We will have to feed 9.5 billion hopefully less poor people by 2050 on about the same land area as we use today, using limited fertiliser, water and pesticides and in the context of a rapidly changing climate.” It will be impossible to feed those extra mouths by digging up more land, because there isn’t much going and because land conversion is a large source of greenhouse gases. Taking more water from rivers will accelerate biodiversity loss. And we need to improve—and probably reduce—nitrogen use (ie in chemical fertilisers) which is creating a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and eutrophication in fresh water. The only way of squaring this circle will be through the technology-driven intensification of farming—ie, GM.

It is not as if Lynas' conversion was a matter of one moment when the new year came around.  It was building up over the years, he says, starting with 1998:

He'd begun to notice a widespread denial in the people around him. The more he recognised it, the more it felt like hypocrisy. "Everyone thought of themselves as being tolerant and open-minded," he says. "But if you said something critical about them, you'd be in quite serious trouble."

Sounds familiar to me.

There is no way the believers will want their folks, especially an influential leader, to question their own beliefs.  Remember that wonderful scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian?

Lynas has been very critical of Greenpeace's policy towards a GM crop that's become totemic among campaigners. Golden rice is a crop that's been modified, by the insertion of the genes for the chemical beta-carotene, in an attempt to make it provide more vitamin A. "Vitamin-A deficiency is one of the leading causes of death in southeast Asia," says Lynas. "It's led to blindness and the death of about a quarter of a million people a year." Yet campaigners, including Greenpeace, lobbied against it.  Greenpeace insists golden rice is a "waste of money" and an "ineffective tool… [that] is also environmentally irresponsible, poses risks to human health and compromises food security". For Lynas, its stance is "just superstition. 

Finally, he can stop protesting too much.

My neighbor comments that I am a freaking tree-hugger, and it is true in so many ways.  I try to be ultra-careful when it comes to even using chemicals against bugs.  I mostly buy grains and vegetables, and occasionally chicken or beef, and cook my own meals.  I bring home the groceries in my washable bags.  I love the river that is close by, and love walking by its side.  The coffee I buy is certified that it was grown in environmentally safe conditions.  But, as much as my neighbor thinks that I am a tree-hugger, my arguments in favor of nuclear energy and GM pisses off people who believe they are out to save the planet.  I can only imagine their responses if they came to know that once for Earth Day I showed in a class the classic George Carlin routine on "Save the Planet."

The world will be much better off if only we can shed our ideological frames that distort our visions.  But then, that will mean going against what Shakespeare observed.  Maybe you are thinking Shakespeare was wrong.  Let me warn you--if anybody dares to argue that Shakespeare was wrong, then I shall protest too much! ;)

The Willamette River, in late September of 2012