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How about a culture war outside the traditional red/blue conflicts for a change?
The Guardian ("I read it for the math problems") reports on the decision by a court in the Philippines to ban golden rice, a GMO plant designed to combat vitamin A deficiency. The NGO arguing for a ban (aside local farmers) was Greenpeace.
[https://www.supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html](168 Nobel laureates) have called on Greenpeace to stop campaigning against golden rice in 2016. Here is a discussion on EA forums.
Now historically, I have not been vehemently opposed to Greenpeace. When I was a kid in the 1990s, they were protesting French above-ground nuclear weapon testing, which seems fair enough. While pro-NPP myself, I think there are solid arguments to be made for opposing nuclear power (like proliferation risk and long-term disposal of used-up fuel elements), but I can't understand why you would target NPP before you would target fossil fuel power generation.
The steelman of the Greenpeace argument would be that allowing patent-encumbered GMOs will be a foot in the door for pushing more GMOs on rural farmers which will eventually result with Monsanto owning the small farmers. The situation for GMOs is not unlike the situation for software: expensive to develop, but cheap to copy. As a free-software advocate, I very much would prefer outcomes where the companies who develop the software/GMOs do not end up with a stranglehold on the end users due to copyright or (even worse) patent laws.
At least for software there exist alternatives like FLOSS. From reading the FAQ of golden rice, it looks like they could not develop their product without using technologies patented by biotech companies, so they got to them to agree to waive licences for farmers who make less than 10k$ per year, which is their target audience. This is still far from ideal (better would be a blanket free licence for golden rice, or constraining biopatents so much that you do not have to ask Japanese Tobacco to licence your rice plant, or perhaps abolishing them altogether), but does not seem like a terrible deal -- especially if you have a local court system which is rather pro small farmers.
So my conclusion is that Greenpeace's opposition is unreasonable and they have been become one of these organizations who advocates for policies which are deeply unpopular (like PETA, or "always believe the woman" groups) in the wider population as members race to signal how committed they are to their cause.
As far as I can tell, Greenpeace has never been reasonable, and their anti-nuclear power campaigns are evidence of Just Not Being Willing To Be Happy With Anything, Ever. Seriously, the only alternative at scale to nuclear power is fossil fuels unless you have particularly fortuitous geography. Greenpeace also does things like protest against sustainable fisheries and cross-pollinates heavily with hardcore nuts like animal rights groups, to the extent of providing some amount of cover for ecoterrorists.
Campaigning against golden rice therefore is just another case of Don't Want Anything To Get Done. I'm critical of this tendency in my ingroup; I'm far less sympathetic of it in far-outgroup types like greenpeace.
To channel Hlynka again, then, Greenpeace is on the extreme end of traditionalism/conservatism and their attitude towards
the industrial revolution and its consequencesoil pipelines is (predictably) the exact same as a certain other US group's attitude towards abortion clinics.I don't think it's a surprise that countries defined by liberalism, specifically France, treats Greenpeace the way they do.
Defining Greenpeace as part of traditionalism/conservatism, like Hlynkas redefinitions, moves us to a position of less understanding and unnecessary confusion.
Highly liberal USA doesn't do so. Liberal Britain is following zero carbon targets even under the Torries, who aren't a conservative party. Liberal Germany has strong Green party and anti nuclear policies. So it is false that this is due to liberalism. Rather than blaming conservatism and praising liberalism for what Greenpeace a group that liberals are more sympathetic towards, the reality is that the French are more pro nuclear than many other peoples and they appreciate better that it worked well for them. You could say that the French in general including French liberals are more pro nuclear, and more hostile towards Greenpeace, but you can't praise liberalism and blame conservatism in general.
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