In a bracing bit of good news, on January 3 Mark Lynas, the British environmental activist who led the movement against genetically modified crops, has abjectly apologized for his misguided crusade and has embraced science and technology as a means of overcoming the world’s food security problems.
Lynas is famous for having thrown a pie in the face of Bjorn Lomborg, the Dutch libertarian skeptic of environmental doomsayers. The fact that he has come around to Lomborg’s view must be particularly satisfying to Lomborg, as it should be to all who embrace truth in the face of political demagoguery.
Lynas’ speech is remarkable for its thoroughness and honesty. It is also remarkable because it confirms the opinions that many of us have had of the radical environmental activist community.
- That he began with preconceived biases. “When I first heard about Monsanto’s GM soya I knew exactly what I thought,” he writes. “Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us.” And Lynas confesses that “I only recently discovered the work of Julian Simon,” even though Simon’s work was well-known and directly related to the areas of Lynas’ interest.
- That he opined on science before he understood it. As part of leading the anti-GMO movement, “I had to learn how to read scientific papers, understand basic statistics and become literate in very different fields from oceanography to paleoclimate, none of which my degree in politics and modern history helped me with a great deal.”
- That it is an anti-science movement. Lynas says explicitly, “This was also an explicitly anti-science movement . . . this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends.”
Lynas is as fearless as he is honest. In one of the most important portions of his speech, he says that the core of the problem is the “naturalistic fallacy—the belief that natural is good, and artificial is bad.” May his tribe increase.
Innovation in food production is critical to supplying the food security needs of the world’s growing population, and will lead to more efficient use of water, less dependency on pesticides and herbicides, greater yields, less erosion, and greater durability. It’s heartening to see one of the most prominent critics of food innovation see the light.