Why Won’t the Greens Follow the Science with GM?

The Greens like to hector us over climate change by insisting “the science is settled”. However, they steadfastly refuse to follow the science with regard to genetic modification.

Peter Griffin writes:

The Green Party has long had a tenuous relationship with science.

The low point came in 2014, when Green MP Steffan Browning signed a petition calling for the World Health Organisation to use homoeopathic remedies to tackle Ebola in West Africa, a move he later admitted was “probably  pretty unwise”.

Now that Green MPs are ministers, the pseudoscience has been reined in and the best evidence available from the IPCC and other sources informs their policies on climate change.

But, as a group of young scientists pointed out in an open letter to the Greens last week, ideology rules the Party’s position on genetic modification.

“We  believe that GM based research could be decisive in our efforts to  reduce New Zealand and global climate emissions as well as partially  mitigating some of the impacts of climate change,” wrote the 155 biology and environmental science PhD and Masters students.

Which is a fair point. Ironically GM is the best option we have to mitigate climate change, yet they refuse to touch what is ‘third rail’ for them.

The  Greens are opposed to anything but tightly controlled GM lab  experiments. That goes for genetically modifying pasture grasses to reduce emissions. It goes for using GM technologies such as gene drives to tackle our invasive pests.

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has ruled them out of the Government’s Predator Free 2050 plan. There were signs that climate change minister James Shaw was leading a re-think of his party’s  position.

When asked by TVNZ in March  whether he’d support the use of GM technologies to combat climate  change he said: “I want to see what the science says about that and what the science ethics committee say about that. I would be led by the  science on that.”

But two weeks ago, when asked about it in Parliament, Shaw toed the  party line. We have to think of our GM-free brand, he said. There are  non-GM solutions that will do the job.

Well, the science says that GM has huge potential to reduce emissions  through agricultural efficiency, carbon sequestration, and alternative  protein production.

Our young scientists know this. Shaw knows this.

But he is held captive by party members who want to cherry-pick the science to suit their ideological agenda.

Stuff

The Greens should embrace the science on GM as after all absolutely none of their scare-mongering over GM has ever remotely come to pass. The science regarding GM certainly has a far better and accurate record than the pseudo-science of climate change.

They need to match their actions on climate change with a more sensible approach to GM. Their weasel words need to be called out.