Green Wars: It takes a lot of gall to accuse people of being anti-science dunderheads while ignoring science yourself. Yet that's precisely what Greenpeace is doing when it comes to the safety of "genetically modified" foods.
More than 100 Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and other sciences this week signed a blistering letter attacking Greenpeace's "fact-challenged propaganda campaign against innovations in agricultural biotechnology."
"Greenpeace and their allies have claimed falsely that GMOS are dangerous, untested and inadequately regulated," the letter states. "But the science telling us GM crops and foods are safe has been confirmed by vast experience."
The letter goes on to point out that "As we have shown elsewhere, we know that GMOS are at least as safe as crops produced with other breeding methods. The only time a safety difference has been found the GMOs have been safer."
Worse, the latest target of Greenpeace's anti-GMO campaign is a type of rice — called Golden Rice — that would "reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by vitamin A deficiency, which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeastern Asia."
Greenpeace, mind you, is the same organization that thinks "climate change denial" is a crimeworth prosecuting.
To show just how truly muddle-headed Greenpeace is, a recent study published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature found that the use of GMOs can help fight climate change by cutting methane emissions. Which means Greenpeace's anti-science GMO stance trumps its allegedly pro-science climate-change fanaticism.
Greenpeace isn't alone on the left-wing fringes here.
A Pew Research Center survey found, for example, that just over a third of Democrats think GMOs are safe to eat. Translation: two-thirds of Democrats are anti-science.
Left-leaning groups like Consumers Union, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Center for Food Safety, and the Union of Concerned Scientists are demanding mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. Sen. Bernie Sanders has vowed to block a GMO-labeling bill that he says is "pathetic."
Dressed up as a "right to know" issue, this labeling campaign is little more than an attempt to scare people away from such foods, since virtually everything we eat has technically been genetically modified by man.
As the left's favorite scientist Neil de Grasse Tyson put it: "It's wrong to simply attack the right for science denial. Liberals cannot claim to fully embrace science, there is plenty of science denial from the left."
So the next time a liberal starts ranting about evil climate-change deniers, invite them to discuss it over a plate of GMO corn, alfalfa sprouts, summer squash, and Golden Rice, along with beef from cattle raised on GMO foods.
Then see who's really anti-science.