Such extremism has led Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, to level his own charges against his former organization. If Greenpeace et al had any moral standards they would be offering millions to solve any outstanding problems with Golden Rice, or at least encouraging humanitarian agencies to do so. Instead they sit on the sidelines of human misery and take pot shots at a brilliant invention, threatening to prevent the possible solution to a tragedy that makes Chernobyl pale by comparison, he wrote. Indeed, a world of 6 billion people headed for 8.5 billion in the next quarter century desperately needs more efficient methods for providing people with protein and fiber. Without them, more forestland will go to tillage, more seabeds will end up denuded of their resources and more conflicts will arise between nations seeking to stem starvation.
Biotechnology offers help to prevent such tragedies.
The poor, of course. To own a pair of Patagonia s organic cotton ducks would take three months labor for more than a billion of the world s workers today. To Patagonia, those people are a sightseeing attraction for dirtbag culture, or worse as impediments to its idea of the wild, as excess population.