There’s no shortage of commentators on the political left beating up on people on the political right for being “deniers” when it comes to climate change science. Meanwhile, we have long noted the hypocrisy of certain activists on the political left in holding up the scientific consensus of climate change while simultaneously ignoring the one around genetically improved foods (GIFs) and chemical safety. Now a science writer has put two and two together in the Washington politics newspaper Politico to make a similar condemnation of anti-science behavior on the political left.
It highlights how activist groups like Greenpeace, the Environmental Working Group, and the Sierra Club ignore the scientific consensus – led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (and, we would add, numerous other bodies), 25 years of research, and more than 500 independent research groups – around the safety of GIFs. And despite charges that only right-leaning sources are anti-science, as we’ve noted before, it is liberals and Democrats like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein who are spearheading GIF labeling bills in statehouses across the country, dismissing scientists’ belief that such labeling could “mislead and falsely alarm customers.”
We would go further and point out how the unscientific opposition to GIFs also threatens the world’s starving children, who depend on advancements in food technology to prevent malnutrition and death. Unneeded regulations on food technology in the U.S. could potentially cripple the advancement of this lifesaving technology.
And it’s not only GIFs where the Left shows its anti-science stripes. The article also highlights how they are the leading practitioners of “chemophobia” – the unfounded fear of chemical exposure. Epitomized by the neurotic mother who won’t let her child play with plastic toys or crawl on carpets because of trace chemicals used in their manufacture, chemophobes wage a pointless war trying to ban chemicals like bisphenol A. This is despite the fact that scientific consensus – led by the Food and Drug Administration and European, German, and Canadian health authorities – has declared BPA safe at present exposure levels.
Here, the article explains how this position is also dangerous, articulating how its unintended consequences – namely the fact that other, less tested ingredients may be substituted in BPA’s place – are potentially hazardous to health.
There will always activists ignoring science and common sense to promote a dangerous agenda. (They used to be called hippies.) But when they begin to influence an entire political wing – especially one that claims to be the defenders of science – their hypocrisy must be exposed, wherever they lie.
