Greenpeace has a problem with the truth

 

If you have the facts on your side, there’s no need to lie. And if you don’t … why, then, if you’re Greenpeace, you just make it up. In the words of the American Council on Science and Health  “made up of Internet hackers and eco-terrorists using fear-mongering to get uneducated people to do their dirty work for them.” And their succesful opposition to Golden Rice in particular, a technology promising to liberate millions from disease, they are involved in what Nobel Laureate Sir Richard Roberts calls a “crime against humanity.”

From publishing staged photos and video to faking studies, distributing false and misleading statements and destroying crops, this is the crowd who say we should follow “settled science” when it suits them, and when it doesn’t resorts to vandalism and lies.

If you are not familiar with it, Golden Rice is the name of a product created when scientists added three genes for producing beta carotene, a Vitamin A precursor, to the 30,000 already in rice. Obviously this is a good thing in countries where Vitamin A deficiency is common. Regardless, organisations like Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists have labelled it “Frankenfood.” In the time these groups have helped block its approval, nearly 20 million children have died and another 20 million have suffered preventable blindness…

“That’s blood on the hands of Greenpeace and the organisations they mobilise for support” – including the Green Party, from whence NZ’s current Greenpeace director comes.

Greenpeace has variously alleged that the levels of beta-carotene in Golden Rice are too low to be effective or so high that they would be toxic. But feeding trials have shown the rice to be highly effective in preventing vitamin A deficiency, and toxicity is virtually impossible. (There’s an internal feedback loop in humans that stops beta-carotene from being converted to vitamin A if levels become too high.)

Yet there is nothing behind their allegations. Never has been. They trade not in science but in fearmongering and innuendo.

So with no science to support its antagonism to genetic-engineered food,

the organisation has been forced to adopt a new strategy: try to scare off the developing nations that are considering adoption of the lifesaving products. Greenpeace has gone so far as to concoct tales of genetically-engineered crops causing homosexuality, impotence and baldness, and of increasing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Every trick in its playbook has been pulled out, leading 100 Nobel Laureates this week to “sign an open letter asking Greenpeace and others who have been blocking progress and access to beneficial plant biotechnology products, like Golden Rice, to abandon their campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture.”

In a letter unveiled at a press conference on June 30, more than 100 Nobel Laureates from diverse disciplines voiced their support for genetic engineering in agriculture and called on NGOs, the United Nations and governments around the world to join them. The Laureates–in fields including Medicine, Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace–all signed an open letter asking Greenpeace and others who have been blocking progress and access to beneficial plant biotechnology products, like Golden Rice, to abandon their campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture…
    The website accompanying the release documents the global scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs (recently reaffirmed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, and virtually every other authoritative scientific body on the planet). It also documents the abundant and widespread environmental and economic benefitsconfirmed by the experience of more than 18 million farmers around the world, the vast majority of them small farmers in developing countries.

Greenpeace Inernational’s response? They refuse to budge. And the local rabble, led by former Green Party leader Russel ‘Rustle’ Norman? “The Herald says that “Greenpeace New Zealand could not be reached for comment.”

The Green Party itself however could be reached, co-leader James Shaw proudly affirming the hypocrisy would continue.

Green co-leader James Shaw said that’s not going to change anything here.

Science being irrelevant to Shaw and his colleagues, why the hell would it. But you do have to wonder what would make them change their minds about anything?If not science, then what? As commentator Henry Miller concludes:

It is unclear why Greenpeace—which has also raised money and its profile by bragging about sabotaging efforts to test insect-resistant crops that need less chemical pesticide—persists in some of its mendacious, anti-social campaigns. What is clear is that none is likely to be more harmful to the world’s children than its assault on Golden Rice.
    The real threat to life and limb is not genetic engineering. It’s the organised-crime organization called Greenpeace.

And the Green Party.

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