Sometimes there’s no point in mocking the opponents of biotechnology, because they do such a fine job of looking like fools on their own.
Consider Greenpeace, the international, self-proclaimed environmental group that is also, perhaps the world’s most hysterical anti-biotech organization.
Last November, the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior II, embarked on a mission to protect the Tubbataha Reef, a coral formation near the Philippines. In 1993, the United Nations listed the reef as a World Heritage Site because so many endangered species live there. So obviously it’s worth protecting.
But from whom?
Apparently the Tubbataha Reef needs protection from Greenpeace, because the Rainbow Warrior II ran aground, smashing through a delicate coral structure that took many years for nature to create. The group was fined nearly $7,000 by the Philippine government for the damage it caused, though a new coral reef can’t simply be purchased from a store. Only time – much time - will heal the Tubbataha Reef in the wake of this environmental calamity.
The Greenpeace website greets visitors with this message: “Greenpeace exists because this fragile Earth deserves a voice.” All I know is that coral reefs are very fragile, and that if they had voices they surely would scream in pain whenever ships slammed into them.
Tellingly, Greenpeace tried to shrug off responsibility for its episode of reefer madness. Members of the group claimed that the Philippine government gave them faulty nautical maps. That’s a good one: The next time I get lost on a snowmobile trail, I’ll have to blame it on maps I picked up from the local government.
Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for Greenpeace to admit that it was a victim of its own incompetence--and to apologize for putting its ship in a place where it didn’t belong?
Greenpeace simply has no sense of shame. This became even more abundantly clear in May, when President Bush visited Pennsylvania for a speech on nuclear power.
Greenpeace despises nuclear energy, even though reactors provide 20 percent of America’s power (over 75 percent in France) without producing a single plume of greenhouse gases. So the group jumped into action and issued a press release that called nuclear plants “volatile and dangerous.”
But Greenpeace didn’t stop there. The following is a direct quote from its press release, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world’s worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE.]”
That’s an amazing statement. For one thing, I didn’t realize that “Armageddonist” was actually a word. I’ll have to starting using it in polite conversation. For another, the press release provides a remarkable glimpse into the minds of Greenpeace activists: Their most important goal, whenever they open their mouths to speak on behalf of coral reefs or whatever it is they’re allegedly protecting, is to scare the living daylights out of you. Boo!
A Greenpeace spokesman later replaced “Boo!” with “Oops!” Actually, what he really said was that the person who drafted the anti-nuke statement was joking, and that the joke inadvertently had slipped through the group’s normally crackerjack editing process.
So that explains it. But who among us regards the debate over conservation, energy, and Armageddon as a laughing matter?
Later, Greenpeace put out a revised statement, complete with its hair-raising factoids: It warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns. The updated release made no mention of ships crushing coral reefs.
These incidents are at once spectacular and pathetic. Then again, everyone makes mistakes. What should embarrass Greenpeace even more than these snafus is the nonsense it spouts every single day. On its website, it condemns the “genetic pollution” of biotech farming, which is in reality helping the environment by substantially reducing the energy used with lessened tillage. In addition, higher biotech yields continue to reduce the pressure to convert wilderness into cropland.
Greenpeace would have people think that biotech food presents a horrific hazard to human health. It warns darkly of “contaminating” the planet and threatening “future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.”
What a bunch of utter hogwash. Let me do my best to respond: [FILL IN PIECE OF COMMON SENSE HERE]
Dean Kleckner chairs Truth About Trade and Technology (www.truthabouttrade.org). He is an Iowa farmer and past president of the American Farm Bureau.
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Sometimes there’s no point in mocking the opponents of biotechnology, because they do such a fine job of looking like fools on their own.
