GMO crops are safe and promote a better environment (via less land use and less pesticide and herbicide use). There is almost no research out there to confirm any of the outrageous claims of opponents. The best opponents can do is link to fancy, slick, flyers from anti-"E"nviornmental organizations (that's my new name for them) that just claim it is bad.
I think many GM opponents have had to face this reality. But rather than be persuaded by the lack of evidence of the harm of GMOs, they simply continue in their hunt for another reason to shut them down. I'll ask a question first and then make a comment.
The question:
- If GMOs had been, and are, developed by small mom-and-pop organizations and farmers, and which "strengthened" local communities and not mega-firms like Monsanto, do you think folks would be as aghast at the Frankenfoods as they are today? To ask this question is to answer it. We are in the realm of religion. Which is fine. Just stop making it out to be anything else.
- It's always time "for more research." Always. And the anti-"E"nvironmentalists want fracking bans, GMO bans, and the like until "more research" is done. Yet I have never seen an anti-"E"nvironmentalist lay out conditions for when these things would become acceptable. What research outcome would you find to be acceptable and therefore tell me that it is OK to proceed with your disfavored technology. Seriously. Ask any opponent of anything out there to specify what research would have to confirm before they would accept the new technology and you'll either hear crickets – or an outright rejection of the laws of scarcity. For example, one of my students wrote a very nice OpEd in our campus paper trying to get himself uninvited to cocktail parties by trying to have folks think clearly about the U of R investing in companies like Raytheon. The socialists' objections to this on campus is that we are profiting at the U of R from a company that makes missiles. My student correctly asked the question, "as compared to what?" In other words, Raytheon develops weapons that produce far less collateral damage than what was used before-hand. The stylish socialists of course object by simply changing the question. "Are you saying that war and death is good?" Of course you cannot have a reasonable discussion. The point is that investing in Raytheon, may at the margin, actually improve human well-being. Asking for people to now be perpetually in a state of war is like asking for St. Obama to shower free health care on us without having anyone have to provide it. The same is true when it comes to the environment. No damage at all, anywhere, is permitted. Of course, the "as compared to what" is millions of sick and starving and poor people around the world that the anti-"E"nvironmentalists either pretend don't exist, or pretend exist because capitalism and Monsanto made them this way. Just tell me how effective Monsanto was at making people poor and hungry in the 15th century.
The comment:
- The stylish anti-everythings have successfully changed the conversation. How? Suppose that the optimistic claims of folks on the "pro" side of the GMO movement are overblown. Suppose that they don't really save on water. Suppose that they don't really save on pesticides. Suppose that the fortified rices and wheats are not going to solve malnutrition. So what? You see how the goal line has been moved? Do the GM foods INCREASE water use? Do they INCREASE malnutrition? And are people forced to buy and consume them? Furthermore, the GM varieties surely reduce costs to farmers and surely reduce land use. But anti-everythings now think that pointing to the fact that "Golden Rice" may not have enough Vitamin A in them to solve Vitamin A deficiency as a trump card in them to justify banning GMOs or at least mandating their labeling. This is infantile argumentation that sadly wins the day.
The entire thing is sickening. I'll take any of it seriously when logic and reason are the standards for which "arguments' take place. I'll take any of it seriously when anti-everythings can point to relevant externalities and violations of property rights from the things they are against. I'll take any of it seriously when anti-everythings provide any evidence that there is something up for discussion here? Is it only me that has to offer up the idea that I'll oppose something if the research suggests it is harmful? But "they" don't have a similar intellectual and moral obligation?
The whole thing is a joke. People keep telling me that we can keep "politics" out of most things. I think that is a joke and it is a joke because of the cancer that politics has become. When you want a world where everything is done by the government, then we have a world where politics MUST become part of every discussion we have. But that discussion is to be left for another post – the contents of which will have me removed again from polite company.
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