Costly harvest of ignorant GM campaign

By Jennifer Marohasy. Jennifer's blog is here



The organic food market is growing and according to some studies this demand is being driven by increasing consumer resistance to genetically modified foods. This resistance in turn is driven by anti-GM campaigning. In Australia, state government bans on GM food crops prevent the planting of GM corn, soybeans and canola, varieties grown overseas, including in the US.

During the past two weeks the Australian organics industry has sponsored a lecture tour by anti-GM advocate and US-based consultant Charles Benbrook. As part of this tour, Benbrook has made several claims, such as GM crops have been a failure in the US and herbicide use, particularly for GM soybeans, is at record levels. This story was picked up and run by numerous media outlets, including ABC radio. The only problem is that what Benbrook has said is not supported by the available evidence.

Information on herbicide use is available at the US Department of Agriculture website. This data shows that during the past 10 years the area planted with GM soy has increased and that overall herbicide use has remained steady. Last year 87 per cent of the total area planted to soybeans in the US was planted with GM varieties. Yield was a record high, at 42.5 bushels per acre, while herbicide use was equivalent to 1996 levels, the year the first GM variety was planted. In fact soybean production in 2004 totalled 3.14 billion bushels, making it the largest soybean crop in US history. It is difficult to reconcile these statistics with an out-of-control weed problem as claimed by Benbrook. While the statistics indicate that herbicide use has not declined in soybeans, there has been an almost complete shift to the more environmentally friendly herbicide glyphosate. In this regard the GM technology has been spectacularly successful.

Earlier this week a report from the US National Centre for Food and Agricultural Policy sang the praises of GM technologies, claiming that GM varieties increased yields, decreased production costs, and provided $2.3 billion in additional revenue to US farmers.

Interestingly Australia was the first country to release a GM organism, the crown gall bacterium, in 1988. Since then we have made only one other release, GM cotton, first planted in 1996. Now grown on 90 per cent of cotton farms, the latest GM varieties have reduced pesticide use by an average 88 per cent, allowing beneficial insects to return to fields and reducing the risk of pollution.

About 35 per cent of the vegetable oil we consume in Australia is from cotton seed. Most of the rest of our vegetable oil is from canola. A Greenpeace anti-GM campaign deceptively targeted GM canola as the first GM food crop and ignored GM cotton as an existing source of vegetable oil. This campaign led to the state bans on GM food crops, with only cotton exempt on the basis it is grown primarily for fibre.

Incredibly, in Australia we have banned GM varieties that could help us reduce our ecological footprint, through the use of more environmentally friendly herbicides in the case of soybeans and canola. Ironically, while the Victorian Government has banned GM food crops, Victorian farmers import large quantities of GM soybeans from the US to feed their dairy cows. Europe is supposedly GM free but imported $858 million worth of GM soy last year, also from the US.

Benbrook's tour has added to the confusion and fear and included claims at odds with the official statistics. The misapprehension is likely to reinforce opposition to GM technologies and increase market share for organic farmers. The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics has reported that failure to commercialise GM crops will cost Australian agriculture $3 billion by 2015. Executive director Brian Fisher has said growth in GM crops overseas will disadvantage Australian grain and oilseed producers as non-GM varieties are more expensive to produce. Furthermore, he has said present bans are harming innovation and research in Australian agriculture.

Misinformation from anti-GM campaigning comes at a significant economic and environmental cost. Benbrook and the organic food industry may unintentionally be playing an expensive game with Australian agriculture.

Source




Nuclear Energy Debate Turns Radioactive at Climate Conference

Nuclear energy would reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels and help cut greenhouse gas emissions, said advocates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal. "Expanding nuclear energy is one way that we can actually [reduce] reliance on fossil fuels in a big way," said Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace. Moore left the group in the 1980s after becoming disillusioned with what he considered the group's radical approach to environmental concerns. He currently heads the Canadian-based environmental advocacy group Greenspirit Strategies, and he blames liberal green groups for halting the expansion of nuclear energy. "It is the environmental movement itself that is the primary impediment to the reduction of CO2 emission and fossil fuel consumption because they refuse to support the obvious alternatives" (nuclear power and hydro power), Moore told Cybercast News Service. Moore's pro-nuclear discussion at the U.N. conference on Monday evening drew skepticism and jeers from his former environmental colleagues. Moore, who rejects alarmist predictions of human-caused "global warming," also praised the United States for refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, calling the treaty "a colossal waste of time and money."

But it was Moore's promotion of nuclear energy that met swift resistance by the movement he helped to found. "History has shown [nuclear energy] is a problematic technology," said Kaisa Kosonen, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace Nordic, told Cybercast News Service. Kosonen wants to see existing nuclear power phased out. She warned that creating more nuclear material creates attractive targets for terrorists. "I would not take that risk," she said. Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) shared Greenpeace's anti-nuclear position. "We don't support it. [Nuclear] represents a massive challenge, not only economically, but radioactive waste still represents a massive problem and quite frankly it's not particularly popular with the public," said Catherine Pearce, an international climate campaigner for FOEI. Both Greenpeace and FOEI want to encourage the world to turn to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.

Fossil fuels currently make up about 85 percent of the world's energy consumption, followed by nuclear and hydro power at seven percent each. Only one percent of energy consumption comes from sources such as solar, wind and geothermal, according to Moore. "We don't see any scenario where windmills and solar panels alone can solve the problem [of fossil fuel dependence,]" Moore said. Moore praised nuclear energy for its reactor safety record and waste storage methods. He also dismissed concerns about two high-profile nuclear reactor accidents in the past. "[Pennsylvania's] Three Mile Island was a success story," he said. "Radiation did not escape from Three Mile Island [in 1979]," Moore said, because a containment structure prevented radioactive leakage. "[The Soviet Union's] Chernobyl [accident] was a sad accident waiting to happen because of the Soviet design and bad management," Moore said of the 1986 incident that killed 56 people.

Moore also dismissed fears of a nuclear plant being the target of terrorism. "Sure there is a possibility of nuclear terrorism, but all technology can be used for harm," he said. "You don't ban technologies that are being used for good purposes just because they can also be used for evil," he added. Anti-nuclear movies such as the Jane Fonda's "The China Syndrome" in 1979 further raised public fears about nuclear energy, Moore said. "We have a population that is more afraid of nuclear when its record is far safer than many other technologies that we have," he said. "There is no basis for this fear. Nuclear is safe."

Source




NEW BRITISH TORY LEADER DAVID CAMERON: A NAIVE YOUNG ECOTOFF

Post excerpted from Prof Stott

At Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday (December 7), the new, fresh-faced Leader of the Opposition, the Right Honourable David William Donald Cameron, MP, Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, might have wounded Mr. Blair over education policy, but he was lamentably naive over climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, allowing Mr. Blair ample opportunity to present him with a seminar on the realities of international climate-change negotiations (a seminar which frankly could have been found on 'EnviroSpin'). Cameron's limp questions demonstrated a worrying lack of experience with respect to the hard facts and knocks of foreign policy.

Here is the Hansard transcript of the parliamentary exchange taken from the official '10 Downing Street' Web Site:

"Mr. David Cameron: The Montreal climate change conference is taking place this week. We support the goal of a new Kyoto-style treaty that will tackle carbon emissions. Earlier this year the Prime Minister said that he had been changing his thinking on the issue. Can he set out his new thinking? In particular, is he still committed to a proper successor to Kyoto based on clear targets and including all the major carbon-producing countries of the world?

The Prime Minister: Yes, I most certainly am committed to that. The reason it is important that we change our thinking on the matter is that I do not believe that the successor to Kyoto can work unless it has not just the United States involved in such targets and such a framework, but India and China, because they are the major emerging economies of the world. In China, for example, one power station is being built every week or every two weeks. Therefore, unless we manage to get a comprehensive framework that also involves India and China, it will not be of much use to us. I entirely agree that the issue is immensely important. That is one of the reasons, of course, why we passed the climate change levy. I hope the Hon. Gentleman's question indicates that he will support us on that, too.

Mr. Cameron: I am grateful for the Prime Minister's answer. His Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in advance of Montreal: 'Without mechanisms in the form of compulsory action, such as targets to cut emissions, existing and new technologies will never be rolled out on the scale we need', and I agree with that. The Prime Minister said last month that people get 'very nervous and very worried' about this approach, and that we need a 'better, more sensitive set of mechanisms'. Will he confirm that he still genuinely agrees with what his Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said?

The Prime Minister: I just said in answer to the previous question that it is important that we get binding targets. Emerging economies will want those to be sensitive to the needs of their economic growth, but one of the important issues that was not part of Kyoto but needs to be part of a new protocol is technology transfer. As we develop the research that allows us to have clean energy, we need to share that research and that technology with others. I am sorry? - I was pointing my finger; I would not want that to break up the new consensus. It is important not merely that we say how much we care about climate change, but that we take the action necessary. Therefore, it will be no use the Hon. Gentleman's saying that he supports the aim unless he also supports the climate change levy, the renewables obligation and the extra investment that we put into energy efficiency. If he is prepared to have a consensus on that basis, I welcome it."

As I have written on many occasions before, Mr. Blair's climate-change stance has been honed by real-world politics, and it may be summarized as follows:

(a) a clear recognition that no country in the world, and most certainly not a UK under Mr. Blair (nor, for that matter, one under Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer), will ever contemplate sacrificing economic growth. Blair knows that this is especially the case in the US, as well as in the emerging giants of China and India. What he is actually saying is: "Hey, you Greens; get real!" The recent politics and economics of Germany stand as a stark warning in this respect;

(b) a full understanding that any moves on climate-change political policy (for which read 'energy policy') must be truly international, for any unilateral action will leave an economy weak and exposed;

(c) the promotion of dialogue, especially with the countries of the developing world, not the neo-colonial imposition of European ecohype;

(d) a carefully-orchestrated set of moves to facilitate the inevitable re-introduction of nuclear power in the UK;

(e) a balanced approach which leaves no scientific option out of consideration, from the deep geological storage of carbon to every possible alternative technological source of energy. He has no time whatsoever for the utopian brigade who demand dramatic 'back-to-nature' life-style changes. There will be no turning the clock back;

(f) a clear rejection of the environmentalist and extreme 'Green' agendas of 'contract and converge' and hair-shirt politics; and,

(g) a recognition that technology transfer to the developing world has to be the way forward.

Despite, therefore, Mr. Blair's seeming focus on climate change, the agenda is not in the least environmentalist. It is, at heart, about future energy needs. In UK political terms, Blair is proving, yet again, to be as astute as ever.

In stark contrast, Mr. Cameron appears to be deeply naive and to be adopting a 'socialistic' and unilateral climate-change policy that is sheer madness for the Conservative Party. By 2020, the UK will be consuming less than 1.5% of world energy (not, of course, because of reductions in the UK, but because of the phenomenal growth in energy use in the developing world, especially in Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia). Any unilateral actions in the UK of the type seemingly envisaged by Cameron will therefore be totally meaningless in both energy and emission terms; but worse, if they add significant costs and restrictions to industry and commerce, they could prove devastating for British competitiveness. This is not the Conservative way. As we have already seen, Blair is all too aware of the problem.

Mr. Cameron still has much to learn and to think through. He cannot deliver such naive stuff on climate change, while at the same time declaring that he will build more roads and focus on increasing UK competitiveness. I fear Mr. Cameron has been listening far too much for his own good to a small group of trendy Notting Hill ecotoffs.





Six Arrested for Ecoterrorism Attacks : "Six people were arrested in a string of ecoterrorism attacks in the Pacific Northwest dating to 1998 -- four fires that caused millions in damage and the toppling of an 80-foot power transmission tower, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The arrests were made Wednesday in Arizona, New York, Oregon and Virginia. The radical groups Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front had claimed responsibility for most of the acts. In the transmission tower attack, bolts were removed from guy wires near Bend, Ore., on the eve of the millennium. The fires were set at a federal agricultural research facility in Olympia, a logging company's headquarters in Medford, Ore., a lumber company in Glendale, Ore., and a tree farm in Clatskanie, Ore".

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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