Art by Grace Crabtree
Genetically modified organisms have courted controversy since they were first developed. Mark Lynas? new book explores the surprising extent to which politics has trumped science in the GMO debate, says Shannon Osaka
When Mark Lynas slouched onto the stage at the 2013 Oxford Farming Conference, he looked decidedly uncomfortable. After all, the British environmentalist and science writer — known for his well-researched and detailed books on climate change — was about to face his peers in a format best resembling a confession. ?My lords, ladies, and gentlemen,? he began. ?For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops.?
Lynas wasn?t speaking metaphorically. In the late 1990s, dressed in a black hoodie and clutching a machete, Lynas took part in ?direct actions? against geoengineering, in which he and his fellow activists dodged police and landowners to destroy GM crops. Their call to action was a milieu of anti-corporate sentiment, anti-capitalism, and resistance to the modification of nature. In advance of one early action, Lynas wrote on a flyer: ?Huge corporations?are using genetics to engineer a corporate takeover of our entire food supply. There is still time to stop them.? From the beginning, the producers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs or GMs for short) ? including such unsavoury companies as the US-based Monsanto ? have been embroiled in a war of attrition against environmenta...