Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist
Page 39
For centuries farmers used nicotine from tobacco plants as a natural pesticide. Organic farmers continued to use nicotine to kill insect pests until very recently. Nicotine is one of the most poisonous examples of a natural pesticide and it has now been banned even for organic farming. Some synthetic pesticides developed in the 1950s and 1960s have also been banned, as they too are very poisonous compared with the synthetic pesticides in wide use today. The lesson is that it is not so much whether a chemical is natural or synthetic that determines the risk of using or ingesting it. It is the nature of the specific chemical, how much of it we are exposed to, and how it affects living tissues.
Everyone has heard of DDT, the insecticide that became the subject of controversy in the 1960s, partly due to Rachel Carson’s influential book, Silent Spring.[25] Whereas DDT had originally been used to control mosquitoes and other insects that are responsible for the spread of typhus and malaria, after World War II it came into widespread use as a way to control insect pests in agriculture. As a result of the concern about DDT’s impact on wildlife, many countries, beginning with Hungary in 1968, banned the chemical’s use in agriculture. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. Additional bans followed around the world. DDT was even discontinued for use in malaria control by the World Health Organization and USAID. This decision proved to carry a high cost in terms of human lives.
The movement against mass aerial spraying of DDT initially focused on the use of DDT to kill insect pests on farms. Euphemistically known as “crop dusting,” in the 1950s and 1960s, the aerial spraying of food crops with insecticides and other pesticides became widespread. Some of these chemicals, including DDT, are known as broad-spectrum poisons. DDT, for example, is deadly to all insects, not just the target insects that prey on food crops. It addition, DDT does not break down or biodegrade quickly. And it tends to accumulate up the food chain. Such chemicals should be used sparingly, and only when there is no substitute that is more selective, breaks down quickly, and does not bio-accumulate.
Shortly after DDT was banned for use in farming, new chemicals were developed that were an improvement over the first wave of pesticides that came in after World War II. Today the chemicals used in agriculture are designed to be more selective. In our own gardens we might want to kill the aphids on our roses, but we might want the little ants that eat aphids to survive. If we get a huge nest of wasps in our eaves, we want to exterminate them, but we don’t want to kill every insect in the yard. Most chemicals used in modern farming biodegrade quickly and do not accumulate up the food chain.
Here is a case where the logic of restricting, or in this case outright banning, the use of a chemical for farming had the effect of also banning it for a medical use, killing the mosquitoes that spread malaria and dengue fever. The medical use does not involve widespread aerial spraying over vast landscapes, only the occasional indoor spraying on the walls of huts and homes. It doesn’t even involve killing all the mosquitoes. DDT is a very strong repellent, so spraying it in the home causes the mosquitoes to avoid coming into the house. The inhabitants avoid the bite and the infection, even though the mosquitoes may still be alive outside.
So even though DDT ended up being a story about chemicals and human health rather than farming practices and the environment, I will include its discussion here. There will be a chapter on chemicals further along.
There is no evidence that DDT is very toxic to humans. It was used to delouse tens of thousands of troops in wartime, and was sprayed on nearly every farm in the country with no clearly established effect on people’s health. The Environmental Protection Agency classifies DDT as a “presumed carcinogen,” which means it suspects DDT might be carcinogenic but doesn’t have any proof. DDT was finally condemned due to the belief it caused thinning eggshells among wild birds of prey. Even this is contentious, as it was never actually proven, and the evidence was circumstantial. For an alternative view to the common belief that DDT is “one of the deadliest chemicals in existence” it is informative to read the JunkScience.com posting on the subject. [26]
By the 1960s, largely due to the use of DDT, malaria had been eliminated from most industrialized countries but was still rampant in many tropical regions, Africa and India in particular. When the use of DDT was either banned or discontinued due to the policies of aid agencies, malaria continued to take an average of more than a million lives per year, 85 percent of which were in sub-Saharan Africa. During the time it was banned as many as 50 million people died from malaria. The majority of malaria deaths are among young, elderly, and poor people, the most vulnerable members of society. By 2005 the outrage among health professionals, scientists, and humanitarians resulted in the formation of a campaign called “Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW!” which called for the reintroduction of DDT as an essential tool to eradicate malaria. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a South African Nobel Prize recipient, soon joined the campaign and became its chief spokesperson. I was an early signatory and due to my past Greenpeace credentials was featured as a supporter of the campaign. [27]
During the years the WHO and USAID refused aid to countries that used DDT for malaria control, the rate of infection skyrocketed. The poorer countries relied on these aid agencies for health care and were therefore held hostage by the anti-DDT policy. Fortunately both South Africa and India had sufficient resources of their own and decided to reject outside aid and retain the right to use DDT. The success of their efforts at controlling the spread of malaria became one of the main beacons for the campaign to Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now! [28] While malaria infections plummeted by 90 percent in South Africa, they remained very high just across the border in Mozambique, where DDT was not used. In September 2006 the World Health Organization and USAid announced they would reintroduce DDT as an essential tool to combat malaria. “The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes,” said Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, World Health Organization assistant director-general for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.[29]
The Stockholm Convention of the United Nations was finalized in Johannesburg in December 2000. Its aim is to eliminate persistent organic pollutants (POPs), many of which are chlorinated compounds. DDT was named to the high-priority list known as the “dirty dozen.” Greenpeace and the WWF consistently opposed any use of DDT, even for malaria control, even though there is no evidence it causes harm when used in this context. In fact there is no conclusive evidence that DDT is harmful to humans even when one uses it indoors to kill mosquitoes at levels that are far higher than typical exposures. If it had not been for the intervention of sufficient African delegates, it is likely Greenpeace and its friends would have succeeded in having the Stockholm Convention ban DDT outright. Fortunately this didn’t happen and when the Convention was ratified in Paris in 2004, it contained an exception for the use of DDT in fighting malaria.[30] Later in 2004, under great pressure from humanitarians and scientists, both Greenpeace and the WWF made statements that they now agreed DDT should be used to control malaria.[31] Following a de facto ban that spanned more than 30 years and caused great harm, concern for human health finally triumphed over a dogmatic belief.
And it turns out that right from the start, extremist interpretations of Rachel Carson’s writings from the early 1960s were responsible for these millions of unnecessary deaths. On page 12 of Silent Spring, she states clearly, “It is not my contention that chemical insecticides should never be used.” Rather she argued against their “indiscriminate” and “unchecked” use.[32] This was reasonable seeing that at the time thousands of tons of DDT were being aerially sprayed on millions of acres of farmland, with little regard for their impact on water, wildlife, or even non-target insects. It was not Rachel Carson who was unreasonable, but rather the extremists who used her writings to further a zero-tolerance agenda in their efforts to obtain political power on the back of what should have been a more
sensible, balanced environmental and health agenda.
If you search the Internet for “Rachel Carson, malaria,” you will find hundreds of recent websites accusing her of genocide and mass murder and comparing her to Hitler and Stalin. I’m thankful she is not alive to see this undeservedly harsh backlash. I hope her descendants and friends have thick skins.
Genetic Engineering
There is a lowly soil bacterium named Bacillus thuringiensis that produces a natural insecticide.[33] Bt, as it is commonly known, is particularly poisonous to the larvae (caterpillars) of moths and butterflies, which are common pests to a number of important agricultural crops. The European corn borer and the cotton bollworm can cause devastating losses for farmers around the world. This reduces both crop production and the prosperity of farmers and their families.
Since the 1920s Bt has been used to control a number of crop pests and has been particularly favored by organic farmers as it is considered a “natural” insecticide. Bt is commonly used as a spray, and thus affects the larvae of all moths and butterflies in the treated fields. In 1984 a Belgian plant breeding company became the first company to introduce a genetically engineered crop—a tobacco plant with the insecticide from Bt bacteria built into the DNA of the plant. Thus began one of the most important advances in the history of agriculture, the ability to move desirable traits from one species to another directly by transferring DNA. It’s ironic that the process started with a tobacco plant, one of the most damaging products of farming.
Genetic engineering (or genetic modification, often called GM, the products being genetically modified organisms, or GMOs) is an entirely organic procedure. In this sense it resembles conventional breeding as it does not require chemicals or radiation to produce changes in the DNA of the product. Genetic modification simply involves moving a small piece of organic DNA from one plant or animal to another. It is very precise in that the DNA that is moved is known to be responsible for expressing the desired trait in the species being modified.
Conventional breeding is a slow and imprecise process. It can take many generations and many failed efforts to finally develop an improved variety of food crop in this way. Some traits simply can’t be developed through sexual reproduction. For many decades now, plant breeders have used a couple of shortcuts to develop new varieties without going though the laborious breeding procedure. These are referred to as chemical mutagenesis and nuclear mutagenesis. Both techniques are used to induce mutations in the DNA of crop plants in the hope of generating desirable traits. The vast majority of mutations are useless, detrimental, or even fatal. But on occasion a mutation occurs that improves some aspect of the plant’s growth, productivity, resistance to disease, or other factors. It is very much a scattergun approach.
Chemical mutagenesis involves exposing seeds or other parts of a plant to a chemical known to cause mutations in the DNA.[34] The technique was developed in Russia and the U.K. in the 1940s and became popular in many countries, including Sweden and the United States. Many new seed varieties have been produced by this method and many are used in both conventional and organic farming.
Nuclear mutagenesis uses various forms of radiation, including X-rays, to induce mutations in the DNA. Typically the plants and their seeds are exposed to varying levels of radiation. Some receive a high enough dose that it kills most of the plants, others get such a low dose that very few plants are affected and in between, at a medium dose, some are damaged and others appear normal. At all levels from high to low doses, it is possible a mutation will occur that will make the plant better from an agricultural or nutritional point of view. It takes thousands, even millions of replications but when a desirable trait is generated it is like striking gold.
Interestingly, organic farmers are not prohibited from using seeds that are genetically modified through nuclear and chemical mutagenesis. These methods are clearly not organic in any way; they involve toxic chemicals and radiation. And yet organic farmers have universally rejected genetic modification that uses only the organic genes themselves, transferred from, say, a corn plant into a rice plant to give the rice the ability to produce beta-carotene, which is essential for good eyesight.
Instead, many organic growers have thrown their lot in with anti-GM activists, who claim there is something sinister about this important advance in crop improvement. The detractors dubbed genetically modified crops “Frankenstein foods” or simply “Frankenfoods.” They also use the epithets “Killer Tomatoes” and “Terminator Seeds” to describe a technology that has yet to harm a single person or damage any aspect of the environment. This is classic propaganda. Note that all three of these terms have been borrowed from scary Hollywood movies: Frankenstein, Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes, and the classic Terminator series, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger. These movies are fantasies, and the campaign of fear waged against genetic modification is equally based on fantasy rather than facts. The sense of fear is conjured by the associating scary ideas with genetic science, as if some monster is being created. Greenpeace and its allies have been at the forefront of this campaign of fear.
All the genetic modifications being developed around the world are aimed at improving our farms, food, and medicine. There are no evil scientists involved and the genetically modified crops are rigorously tested to ensure that they will not harm us. Every major academy of science supports genetic modification as a way to address malnutrition and a variety of environmental issues. Genetic modification is the only practical means to address many nutrient deficiencies, including vitamin A, vitamin E, iron and lysine (an amino acid).
The campaign against GM science is both intellectually and morally bankrupt. If it were not such a serious issue, one that means life or death for millions of people, the opposition to genetic engineering would be laughable. In reality it is enough to make one weep.
Despite its efforts, the anti-GM movement has not stopped the ever-growing acceptance of these new varieties of crops around the world. Genetically modified soybeans, corn, cotton, and canola (rapeseed) lead the trend, occupying the majority of the millions of acres of GM crops in 25 countries planted in 2008. Most of the traits in these new varieties are designed to combat insect pests, increase production, and reduce pesticide use. They have had strong support from the major seed companies partly because they represent huge volumes and therefore large markets. It has become very expensive to get new GM varieties approved, due mainly to the onerous amount of red tape involved. Every variety is treated as if it is a new pharmaceutical that could have unknown side effects on human health. There is no reason to believe, and no evidence in the facts to assume, that GM foods could be harmful. They are not new drugs; they are new foods. Well, they are the same old foods but with a little or a lot of improvement.
Unfortunately Greenpeace and its friends succeeded in getting a precautionary principle enshrined in the Cartagena Protocol, the international treaty that sets out the rules for adoption of and trade in GM seeds. This has made it possible for activists to prevent many varieties of nutritionally improved crops from being planted, even when there is no evidence any harm could result. It will be some time before the international community wakes up and realizes the calamity that it has allowed to occur. But it will inevitably recognize that a great humanitarian error has been made in denying a cure for nutrient-deficiency-related disease in hundreds of millions of people.
One can predict with some certainty that the area planted in GM varieties will continue to increase. Many new traits, including nutritional improvements, drought tolerance, salt tolerance, enhanced nitrogen uptake, disease resistance, etc., have been developed in a number of crops, including beets, cassava, papaya, potatoes, eggplant, wheat, and rice. Most of these have yet to be introduced due to opposition from anti-GM campaigners. Countries once opposed to GM crops are gradually changing their positions and embracing them as a key part of agricultural policy. The benefits are so obvious when weighed against the nonexistent “risks” that anyone with a clea
r understanding of the precautionary approach would embrace the technology. While caution is always warranted when introducing new science, there is nothing in the evidence to justify the zero-tolerance policy adopted by Greenpeace and others.
In a May 2010 article in Forbes Magazine, Henry I. Miller does an excellent job of deconstructing a biased article in the New York Times. [35] A read of Miller’s piece will give you an excellent example of how bad journalism can turn a positive story into a negative one, and by quoting sources in the zero-tolerance camp, the Times can make it appear that GM crops are a failure rather than the success they really are.[36]
The adoption of GM varieties has been an uphill battle on the part of farmers around the world. The anti-GM folks attempt to depict farmers as gullible dupes, who are forced by Monsanto and other “seed giants” to buy GM seeds, thus destroying their “traditional agricultural practices.” This is nonsense of course. Farmers are free to buy seed from whomever they wish, as long as it is legal, and sometimes even when it isn’t. If they wish they can start their own seed company. In the name of “free choice,” activists work to deny farmers the choice by campaigning to make GM illegal. They were particularly successful with this approach in Europe, where incidences of mad-cow disease and chemical contamination has sensitized the public to food scares. European agriculture is shaped more by social policy than by economic necessity. Farmers are paid not to grow food, as there is a regional surplus. Those who do grow food receive large subsidies. So European farmers do not have much incentive to improve their yields or profits.