01-16-2014, 09:24 AM
What’s really interesting to me at this point about the anti-GMO issue is its striking resemblance to other anti-science issues. A short list would include:
Anti-evolution
Anti-big bang/age of the universe
Anti-climate change
Anti-vaccine
Anti-GMO
Groups against evolution and the big bang are closely identified with conservative political ideology and fundamentalist religion. Groups denying climate change are closely identified with the petroleum extraction industry and their conservative political allies, who typically have economic interests in their states and in their reelection. Anti-vaccine and anti-GMO are rather different with some of the constituency of the former and a lot of the latter coming out of folks with relatively liberal political views. The anti-vaccine crusade has been at least partially identified with suburban “soccer Moms” and our current anti-GMO crusade with long standing liberal support of organic foods and anti-corporate views. This was notable in the NYT article featuring Gregor Illegan in which a UH scientist rather plaintively wondered why people who were generally on his side in political matters (“my people”) had given themselves over to the anti-GMO side.
What is consistent about the GMO issue with the other issues is that it is “a lot like religion” as Rob wrote. I would go further and say that our anti-GMO crusaders are exactly like a religion (which in its dictionary definition does not necessarily include a supernatural deity). Perhaps the most relevant aspect of the religious nature of the anti-GMO crusade is its reliance on faith rather than facts. Science is simply the best method humans have developed to distinguish between fact and fiction (Google Karl Popper's writings, for instance). Whatever point and counterpoint occur in our GMO debates, the body of scientific knowledge about the food safety of GMO crops is deep and extensive. There is no comparable body of knowledge whatsoever for the anti-GMO position (I won’t repeat all the links that were covered in previous GMO threads here on Punaweb). For instance, there is no “poison” in GMO crops in any scientifically verifiable way. Maybe it's complicated to understand that Bt is harmless to humans but kills certain insects. But that's a fact verified by good science. Nonetheless anti-GMO activists repeat the “poison” term based on what therefore can only be described as unshakeable faith. And on and on.
The county council meetings on Ford and Wille’s anti-GMO legislation remind one of nothing other than the raucous and unhinged 2010 Tea Party town hall meetings widely shown on the news at the time. It is deeply disappointing that a large enough portion of our Big Island community should be so captured in this faith-based anti-GMO ideology, behaving like those Tea Party groups, that legislation has been passed that can and probably will, if not thrown out by legal challenge, adversely impact Big Island agriculture.
Anti-evolution
Anti-big bang/age of the universe
Anti-climate change
Anti-vaccine
Anti-GMO
Groups against evolution and the big bang are closely identified with conservative political ideology and fundamentalist religion. Groups denying climate change are closely identified with the petroleum extraction industry and their conservative political allies, who typically have economic interests in their states and in their reelection. Anti-vaccine and anti-GMO are rather different with some of the constituency of the former and a lot of the latter coming out of folks with relatively liberal political views. The anti-vaccine crusade has been at least partially identified with suburban “soccer Moms” and our current anti-GMO crusade with long standing liberal support of organic foods and anti-corporate views. This was notable in the NYT article featuring Gregor Illegan in which a UH scientist rather plaintively wondered why people who were generally on his side in political matters (“my people”) had given themselves over to the anti-GMO side.
What is consistent about the GMO issue with the other issues is that it is “a lot like religion” as Rob wrote. I would go further and say that our anti-GMO crusaders are exactly like a religion (which in its dictionary definition does not necessarily include a supernatural deity). Perhaps the most relevant aspect of the religious nature of the anti-GMO crusade is its reliance on faith rather than facts. Science is simply the best method humans have developed to distinguish between fact and fiction (Google Karl Popper's writings, for instance). Whatever point and counterpoint occur in our GMO debates, the body of scientific knowledge about the food safety of GMO crops is deep and extensive. There is no comparable body of knowledge whatsoever for the anti-GMO position (I won’t repeat all the links that were covered in previous GMO threads here on Punaweb). For instance, there is no “poison” in GMO crops in any scientifically verifiable way. Maybe it's complicated to understand that Bt is harmless to humans but kills certain insects. But that's a fact verified by good science. Nonetheless anti-GMO activists repeat the “poison” term based on what therefore can only be described as unshakeable faith. And on and on.
The county council meetings on Ford and Wille’s anti-GMO legislation remind one of nothing other than the raucous and unhinged 2010 Tea Party town hall meetings widely shown on the news at the time. It is deeply disappointing that a large enough portion of our Big Island community should be so captured in this faith-based anti-GMO ideology, behaving like those Tea Party groups, that legislation has been passed that can and probably will, if not thrown out by legal challenge, adversely impact Big Island agriculture.