L’ambientalismo anti-scientifico e pauperistico rischia di danneggiare i Paesi in via di sviluppo

Per quelli di noi che possono permettersi di avere un termostato intelligente, che regola la temperatura in base alla temperatura esterna, è una grande comodità. Ma ha un costo. La protezione e lo sviluppo ambientale sono, indubbiamente, una causa giusta e nobile che però ha un costo.

Dopotutto, attraverso i cambiamenti negli atteggiamenti dei consumatori, le più recenti innovazioni sono diventate più sicure, più sostenibili e in generale più “verdi”. È quello che spinge i supermercati a scambiare i loro sacchetti di plastica per quelli di carta, e per nuovi prodotti come cannucce di metallo e bottiglie di bevande per diventare vitali.

Purtroppo, questo meraviglioso sentimento condiviso da un numero crescente di consumatori non si traduce altrettanto bene nel mondo della politica. La bellezza dell’innovazione orientata al consumatore è che si tratta di un processo naturale: i consumatori acquistano verde sia perché lo vogliono e perché possono permetterselo. Mettere lo stesso principio in politica spesso trascura questo passaggio cruciale.

L’atteggiamento della politica rischia di scaricare gli effetti negativi soprattutto sui Paesi in via di sviluppo. I paesi avanzati con buone intenzioni ignorano i bisogni e le capacità delle nazioni più povere nel nome dell’ambientalismo.

Prendiamo, ad esempio, un imminente conferenza in Kenya, tenuta congiuntamente dall’Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l’alimentazione e l’agricoltura (FAO) e dal Centro mondiale di conservazione degli alimenti. La “Prima conferenza internazionale sull’agroecologia che trasforma l’agricoltura e i sistemi alimentari in Africa” ​​mira ad attuare le politiche dell ‘”Agroecologia” in tutto il continente.

L’agroecologia propagandata dalla conferenza si riferisce a uno stile di agricoltura più “organico”, uno che è libero (o, almeno, meno dipendente) dai fertilizzanti sintetici e dai pesticidi. Di per sé, questa può sembrare una missione piuttosto nobile; se tali sostanze sono dannose per l’ambiente, perché non dovremmo voler ridurre il loro utilizzo?

Bene, in nazioni sviluppate come la nostra, questa sarebbe la reazione giusta. Il nostro settore agricolo, così come la nostra capacità di importare da altre nazioni, ci consente il lusso di chiedere riduzioni di tali pratiche agricole senza troppa preoccupazione per gli effetti sulla nostra offerta di cibo. Dopo tutto, se optare per l’opzione “organica” rappresenta qualche quid in più ogni settimana, qual è il problema?

In molte parti dell’Africa, dove questa conferenza si tiene, questo lusso purtroppo non esiste. Non dovrebbe sorprendere che i metodi di agricoltura agroecologica siano, in genere, molto meno efficienti rispetto alla moderna alternativa meccanizzata (una conclusione raggiunta in uno studio condotto da sostenitori agrocologici). In un continente che è stato a lungo afflitto da una scarsa crescita economica e, molto più gravemente, gravi carestie e scarsità di cibo, il rischio di passare a metodi meno produttivi in ​​nome dell’ambiente sarebbe cieco alle necessità di un’economia in via di sviluppo .

Visto semplicemente, si potrebbe facilmente etichettare questa visione del mondo e la prescrizione come arrogante. Se le persone nei paesi sviluppati (o altrove per quella materia) desiderano stabilire una fattoria biologica e agroecologica per promuovere un sistema più rispettoso dell’ambiente, allora hanno più potere per loro. Ma semplicemente non possiamo aspettarci che questo si applichi ai paesi in via di sviluppo come quelli in Africa.

La realizzazione di pratiche e tecnologie sostenibili e rispettose dell’ambiente nei paesi in via di sviluppo dovrebbe essere raggiunta attraverso maggiori investimenti e commercio, stimolando la crescita economica e lo sviluppo. A seguito della Brexit, il Regno Unito si troverà in una posizione ideale per farlo senza le restrizioni della politica agricola comune dell’UE, che ha reso ancora più difficile il commercio con gli agricoltori dei paesi in via di sviluppo.

I cuori degli ambientalisti sono certamente nel posto giusto, ma suggerimenti come quelli della prossima conferenza di agroecologia minacciano di negare alle economie in via di sviluppo le possibilità di crescita e sviluppo di cui hanno disperatamente bisogno. Investiamo in questi paesi e lasciamo che le innovazioni si scatenino mentre le loro economie migliorano.

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Unjustified and outsized verdicts harm society by discouraging investment in innovative products, yet they’re becoming startlingly common.

Only 51 percent of Americans think socialism would be a bad thing for the country, according to a Gallup poll released in May. Although the 2020 election will be a big test for whether socialism gains a foothold, freedom-lovers should be worried more broadly than at the polls.

The slide towards socialism is taking root not only at the ballot box, but also from the jury box. Plaintiffs’ lawyers are having wild success in their campaign to redistribute wealth from innovative companies to sympathetic clients—all while taking a healthy cut for themselves, of course.

Unjustified and outsized verdicts harm society by discouraging investment in innovative products. Researchers at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Tilburg University recently aggregated data from more than 40,000 lawsuits filed between 1996 and 2011 and found that “frivolous lawsuits tended to focus on highly innovative businesses,” costing the average defendants $1.1 million each year. They found that the cases were, in effect, a disproportionate tax on innovation.

Consider the recent $2 billion jury verdict against Bayer AG (which acquired Monsanto) for allegations that its Roundup herbicide, made with glyphosate, caused cancer in plaintiffs. This was the third verdict for plaintiffs in California in the last year, with more than 13,400 cases pending nationwide.

Yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under Democrat and Republican administrations alike, has thoroughly and repeatedly evaluated glyphosate and found that it is not a carcinogen and it poses, “no risks to public health from the current registered uses of glyphosate.” The risk-averse European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) similarly does not classify glyphosate as carcinogenic. Australian and Canadian regulators reached the same conclusion.

But plaintiffs’ lawyers are making bank on a controversial report issued by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an affiliate of the scandal-ridden World Health Organization. In all but one of its 900 evaluations, IARC’s flawed methodology led it to identify a chemical (Caprolactam), as “not” carcinogenic to humans.

Cherrypicking Data to Make Bank with Gullible Juries

IARC’s conclusion that glyphosate is “probably” carcinogenic to humans was particularly tainted. Christopher Portier, a consultant for lawyers suing on behalf of “victims” of glyphosate, and a part-time employee of Environmental Defense Fund, was behind the initiation IARC’s evaluation glyphosate. He then served as an “invited specialist” for IARC, despite having no background in chemical research. Not surprisingly, IARC relied on cherrypicked low-value studies and excluded relevant safety data.

That report then became the centerpiece of an anti-glyphosate campaign Portier led to undermine the safety findings of every major government evaluation of the herbicide. The outlier report and the political campaign to leverage it prompted the executive director of EFSA, Bernhard Url, to offer dramatic testimony before the European Parliament’s environment committee, lambasting IARC’s politicized work and how far it strayed from EFSA’s transparent peer-reviewed scientific work.

Url pointed out that the activism and the turmoil it caused by undermining legitimate studies suggested we have entered the “Facebook age of science,” where you post a report you like “and you count how many people like it. For us this is no way forward.” In this environment, it’s easy to see how a group of jurors, asked to evaluate “conflicting studies,” could side with sympathetic plaintiffs over a big chemical company.

I could imagine jurors in the $2 billion verdict thinking, “I don’t really know whether this product caused Alva and Alberta Pilliod’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but a big verdict in their favor will help them more than it’ll hurt Bayer.” Bayer’s share price fell 6 percent on news of the verdict, reflecting investor concern about liability in the thousands of other cases.

False Lawsuits Are Attacks on Discovery

Put aside the cost to a typical investor’s retirement account and consider the costs to society in a world where innovative scientists have to answer the following questions from potential investors: Let’s say your product actually does the wonderful things you are developing it to do. Let’s also say that regulators around the world repeatedly vouch for the safety of its proper use.

But what’s to stop plaintiffs from ginning up enough high-dose animal studies to get IARC to study it, leading to an almost certain cancer warning? And what’s to stop those lawyers from using that report to canvas for cancer patients who used the product? Won’t this be another glyphosate?

There are no good answers to these questions. And that’s why these types of cases represent a serious attack on progress.

We are all beneficiaries of technology. Whether it’s lower-cost food and reduced soil erosion because of glyphosate, or critical components of computers, cell phones, and aircraft, innovation makes life better for everyone. That’s why they are so widely used.

Sadly, if not ironically, it’s also why enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers are seeking to capitalize on sympathy towards socialism, both abroad at IARC, and at home in the jury pool. For them, it’s a solid investment.

Don’t look to Congress to fix the problem anytime soon. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, passed in 2016, made it clear that the legislation would not preempt toxic tort litigation.

The best we can hope for is a more scientifically literate populace who, as jurors, are less likely to be duped by those who game the system. We should also be cautious about what we share on social media. As Smokey Bear said, “Only YOU can stop forest fires.” And only YOU can tamp down the “Facebook age of science.” At a time when nearly half of Americans don’t seem to understand the threat of creeping socialism, it’s time for those of us who do to be on guard on all fronts.

Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center. He is also a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute.

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UN’s insistence on organic food prolongs the needless starvation of millions on the globe’s poorest continent, says Bill Wirtz. 

This month the World Food Preservation Center in partnership with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, will hold the first “International Conference on Agroecology Transforming Agriculture & Food Systems in Africa”, in Nairobi, Kenya. The goal of this conference is to promote organic and non-GMO farming as part of a complete “socio-economic transformation” of Africa. A misguided and unscientific overhaul, it would devastate the parts of developing Africa that need innovation the most.

The fascination for increased organic farming isn’t new. In the UK, organic production makes up almost ten per cent of total farming, with Environment secretary Michael Gove being pushed continuously to do more for organic farming on a public policy level. The French government is increasing subsidies to organic farms in an effort to reach 15 per cent organic production by 2022.Germany and Luxembourg have set goals of 20 per cent organic production by 2025 and 2030 respectively.

Even the international development community has bought into the concept – but they’ve taken it to a whole new level. Led by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), development programs and assistance are increasingly being predicated on adoption of “agroecology,” which takes organic farming as its starting point and adds on a series of social and economic theories that seek to achieve the “total transformation” of agricultural production, and even society as a whole.

According to its original definition, agroecology is simply the study of ecological practices applied to agriculture. What started out as science, however, has morphed into a political doctrine that not only rules out modern technologies such as genetic engineering, advanced pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, but explicitly extols the benefits of “peasant” and “indigenous” farming and in many cases discourages mechanization as a way of freeing the world’s poor from backbreaking agricultural labor. Add on to a hostility to international trade and intellectual property protections for innovators (“seed patents,” which are standard in all advanced crops, not just GMOs, are a frequent cause of complaint) and you can see why agroecology’s promoters so often talk about it as “transformative.”

We should remember, however, that not all “transformations” are good. They can just as easily be bad, even catastrophic. A recent study by pro-agroecology activists found that applications of their principles to Europe would decrease agricultural productivity by 35% on average, which they considered a positive, as in their view Europeans eat too much anyway. It’s hard to see how a 35% drop in productivity among the world’s rural poor – a large percentage of the 800 million people who currently suffer from malnutrition – would be anything other than a calamity.  

As someone from a family that were peasants from their existence until the end of the last world war, I can only stand in awe at the idea of ridding agriculture of mechanisation. My ancestors worked 60-hour weeks of hard manual labour, and it was modern agriculture that was able to make them more productive and allow them free time: something they were never able to enjoy before.

There is nothing wrong with practicing “peasant farming” on a purely voluntary basis, within a community of people who enjoy being one with nature (and/or inflicting terrible back pain on themselves). In fact, in a Western world of mechanised farming, it is even sustainable to have some farms operate in such a fashion (even if it requires increased subsidies), for the purpose of pleasing nostalgic customers. However, what is truly disturbing is when agroecology activists and international institutions supposedly dedicated to alleviating poverty are willing to distort the scientific reality and impose their ideology on those who can least afford it.

The Nairobi conference

The conference held in Kenya is a combination of two events that were initially set to be organised at the same time. “The Eastern Africa Conference on Scaling up Agroecology and Ecological Organic Trade” and the “1st All Africa Congress on Synthetic Pesticides, Environment, and Human Health“. Scrolling through the list of organisers and participants, it’s most notable that agencies, institutions, and organisations that don’t endorse agroecology, or have a scientific view on herbicides and GMOs contrary to the pushed narrative, won’t be present. Seemingly, some people were not supposed to ruin the party.

And a party it will be. That is, at least, if you’re of the belief that the end justifies the means when spreading misinformation about pesticides and GMOs.

One of the speakers at the conference is Gilles-Eric Séralini, a French biologist and anti-GMO activist. He is famous for his 2012 study claiming to demonstrate that that rats fed with genetically modified corn reported an increase in tumours. What followed was coined the “Séralini affair”, with various regulatory authorities and scientists dismissing the study for deep-rooted methodological flaws. The study was later retracted, and four recent government-funded studies (three by the EU and one by France) have now thoroughly refuted the Seralini thesis. 

Other speakers speakers include fringe scientists Don Huber and Judy Carmen, both of whom have made similar – and similarly debunked – claims about GMOs, and Tyrone Hayes, who is famous for his claim, now championed by conspiracy monger Alex Jones, that the herbicide atrazine, in his words “turns frogs gay”. Such an invite would be discrediting for any major organisation, but seemingly the FAO doesn’t seem to care.

And still, even though the conference disreputes itself merely by its choice of speakers, agroecology is making leaps forward (pun intended). Through the FAO, these policies are increasingly being required by international governmental organisations and NGOs as a condition of receiving financial aid.

Now that it is expanding to Africa, which is in desperate need of mechanisation and of efficient farming methods, it needs to be called out for what it is: anti-science activism, based on environmentalist fantasies. Agroecology as a political doctrine, has no place in science-based policy discourse, and its promotion – given the scientific knowledge we have to today – is immoral. It needs to be stopped.

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GMOs and pesticides are safe – ignore the anti-science hysterics who say they aren’t.

It’s usually an upper-middle-class elite, living in the metropolitan centre, that shops for organic and GMO-free food items from fancy stores. That’s fine, nobody really has an issue with people paying more for green carton packaging and food with no added health benefits. What is concerning, however, is that, increasingly, the same people want to impose their habits on those who don’t believe in it and those who can’t afford it.

Despite scientific evidence showing the safety of gene-edited crops and modern pesticides, radical activist groups are trying to get them banned. But as some politicians are still choosing to listen to scientific arguments, activists are shooting the messenger.

The head of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Dr Bernhard Url, says that just because you don’t like the results, ‘don’t shoot science’. He adds that ‘if science becomes just one more opinion, which can be overlooked in favour of superstition, this carries an enormous risk for society’.

EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis even speaks of a new ‘Middle Ages’ for science and of a witch-hunt. The former Lithuanian minister of health even points to established newspapers such as France’s Le Monde misrepresenting scientific evidence, saying: ‘We sent [them information] several times to explain the reality, [but] it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t work.’

He could have been talking about the UK’s Defra minister, who apparently wants to ban even synthetic fertilisers, or the French agriculture minister, who says farming should return to the practices of our ‘grandparents’. Never mind that the EU already has to import food in order to have enough to eat. The bureaucrats at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation are pushing the same regressive, low-yield organic practices on malnourished African farmers in the name of promoting – this is no joke – ‘peasant’ agriculture.

Anti-science activists likely don’t care. The scientists who enthusiastically talk about new types of crops made possible by new forms of gene-editing that could banish food insecurity from the world will be drowned out by an avalanche of unscientific bogus claims. Standing up to this crowd with facts gets you slandered and labelled in the most colourful of manner.

Again, nobody objects to alternative foods being sold. However, it is also the prerogative of those consumers who choose to believe in the scientific evidence and the achievements of modern agriculture to shop as they see fit. In a larger sense, it should be the aim of all enlightened individuals to defend the scientific method, as well as the realm of free expression and debate.

Bill Wirtz is a policy analyst for the Consumer Choice Center.

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