The GNW Interview: Patrick Moore Founding Director, Greenpeace

Patrick Moore is a man environmental activists love to hate. An ecologist who co-founded Greenpeace in the early 1970s, the perceived political and social shifts of the organization led Moore to part ways in 1986. He has become one of the most vocal critics of Greenpeace and other environmental groups that are influencing public policy with "pagan beliefs and junk science."

An independent thinker, Moore takes sides that might be unexpected from an ecologist, such as rational logging and the use of genetic modification in agricultural technology. His views have made him a lightning rod for outrage from environmentalists, who have created anti-Moore web sites in an attempt to drown out his views.

Bruce Goldfarb: Where did things go wrong with the environmental movement?

Moore: They went wrong for several reasons. At an evolutionary level, by the mid- to late-80s mainstream society was already adopting the reasonable items in the environmental movement's agenda. The only way to remain in an adversarial position was to adopt more extreme demands. And this is why science and logic were gradually abandoned. Environmental groups have been toying with this sort of anti-science, anti-intellectual stuff for a while now.

BG: Why is golden rice shaping up to be a litmus test for biotech? It seems that both sides have chosen this as the line in the sand.

Moore: The biotech sector has chosen it as the issue on which they will stand or die because it so clearly goes beyond the purely financial, corporate profit-type argument, and has a very powerful moral dimension.

The reason Greenpeace has decided to come out in full force and attack it is because they have painted themselves into such a corner on this issue -- zero biotech, basically -- that if they were to admit that there is one good agricultural biotech product, they have to then admit that there might be others. Then they would be reduced to a rational discussion along with the rest of us about which is good and which is not.

So they're taking a fundamentalist view to, in the case of golden rice, what could be a brilliant innovation that is aimed at a quarter of a billion consumers who have Vitamin A deficiency.

Moore: No. Farmers planting Bt cotton have experienced dramatic improvements in yields and in reduction of chemical application. Bt cotton is really promising, and farmers want to use it. They know how important this is, and yet you have these intellectuals and academics claiming that they're speaking on behalf of the small farmer and the poor. It's just a complete hoax.

There is no way they are speaking for the poor. They're basically elitists and totally removed. Greenpeace is always saying that there are other ways to cure Vitamin A deficiency. Why aren't they doing it then? All they're trying to do is discredit golden rice and the science.

BG: Is Greenpeace having an effect on stifling GMO (genetically modified organism) technology?

Moore: Most certainly. They're the reason why there's hardly any field trials in Europe. There have been some, but no new ones in a long time. There is a total stifling of biotech in Europe.

What's happening there is a combination of the public's fear of mad cow disease, which of course has nothing to do with GMOs, but people are afraid of their food. But the other thing is that agriculture in Europe is more of a social program than it is anywhere else. It's highly subsidized and highly protectionist. So the anti-biotech movement plays into the politics of protectionism against US imports. Even though Novartis, the company largely responsible for the Bt innovations, is a European company, [Bt cotton] is seen as something coming from the US because that's where the technology has been taken up.

The New Zealand government has a commission on genetic modification, and the green movement is taking a "GE-free" position there. The anti-biotech campaign is alive and well in Australia, and a lot of effort is being focused on Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
Countries that rely on agricultural exports, like Thailand, are easier targets for the anti-biotech movement because they're afraid that their products won't be received in the market. However, countries that consume most of their own food -- and this includes China, India, Indonesia and to some extent the United States -- are much more likely to adopt biotech because they see the advantages and are not as easily held hostage to trade sanctions.

BG: Why hasn't the debate on GMO reached the level in the Unites States as it has in Europe, Australia and New Zealand?

Moore: Because Americans are more accepting of innovation. There's no mad cow disease history. There's no protectionist sentiment against imports to the US as there are in Europe. Those are some of the reasons.

BG: Is the StarLink episode an object lesson for American industry, or was it just a tempest in a teapot?

Moore: Well, it is a tempest in a teapot, but I think it's more of an object lesson for American regulators. They never should have allowed a biotech crop to be grown that was not licensed for human consumption. I mean, it's okay to feed to cows and not people? The system in the US is to mix non-GMO with GMO corn and soybeans et cetera. I don't know how they thought [segregation] was possible.
It's certainly a lesson for Aventis. They did not, or were not able to, comply.

One of the problems here is that everybody knows there was nothing wrong with the corn, that there was a presumption that there could possibly be an allergic reaction to it. There never have been any allergic reactions that anybody knows. If that corn was toxic to people, it never would have been mixed in with the other corn.

BG: Is there a risk that the StarLink experience will set up the perception that there may be problems with our food supply. Will it set back the introduction of GMO technology?

Moore: It already has. Monsanto has a Roundup-ready wheat variety that is ready to release but it is not releasing because of concerns that have been raised. There already is an impact. So I'm saying that an ad-hoc reaction is no longer an appropriate response, a concerted campaign on the part of the pro-ag biotech sector.

BG: What are your views on food labeling?

Moore: That's probably the most difficult political issue in the whole debate, because it isn't clear one way or another. On the one hand, there is the principle of disclosure and making sure people know what they're eating. On the other hand, there is the fact that there doesn't appear to be any health or nutritional reasons to disclose [GMO ingredients].

If I were the organics lobby, or the anti-GMO lobby or whatever you want to call them, I would seize the opportunity to label it the other way, non-GMO. The same way they label it organic, which means non-chemical to most people. But apparently that isn't viable because a lot of big chains like Safeway will not accept that.

So it's a complicated problem as to how to move forward. The Europeans seem to have adopted labeling. I don't think there's anything wrong with labeling. I don't think it should be done in a way that scares people. It should be in the same way you say this product may contain palm or peanut oil, so say this food may contain ingredients derived from genetically modified plants.

BG: You don't sound like an environmentalist.

Moore: My education is in science. There isn't enough science in Greenpeace.

First they drifted into extremism because all their reasonable positions were adopted. They decided that rather than joining the sustainable development consensus, the multi-stakeholder process to find solutions, that they were going to remain more or less on the other side, be a watchdog, be in a confrontational and adversarial position. Much of the rest of the environmental movement has followed suit.

Secondly, following the falling of the Berlin wall, and the end of the peace movement, and the end of radical socialist politics in the labor and women's movement, an awful lot of those people drifted into environmentalism. It's been highjacked by political and social activists who are using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas that have more to do with anti-corporate and class warfare than they do with ecology or saving the environment.

The World Trade Organization riot in Seattle was the culmination of that phenomenon, where environmentalism is seen as one and the same with anti-globalization. I grew up with an environmental movement where Barbara Ward, who wrote Spaceship Earth, was our hero. And she believed that there is one world and there should be one human family. To me, free trade and globalization is part of the expression of one world family. I don't see how anti-globalization fits in with ecology.

BG: Does it pain you to be portrayed as a traitor?

Moore: Oh fine, if that's the best they can do. I'm interested in a discussion of the issues, and I place myself in fora all the time at universities and conferences where I can be challenged and discuss those issues, and I really enjoy that.

Character assassination, discrediting people, that's an old trick that doesn't work with me very well. It's just water off a duck's back. I haven't betrayed anybody.

[Golden rice inventor Ingo] Potrykus has said you guys will be guilty of crimes against humanity if you continue along these lines. And I have to agree with that. What pains me is seeing the organization I helped create go off on such a wrong track. Rather than discrediting golden rice, they should be raising millions of dollars to address the problem it is intended to solve.

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