Science or starvation | 6 May 2012

Here, for CoffeeHousers, is an extended version of the leader column in this week’s magazine. It takes on the green fundamentalism which stupidly aims to put a stop to genetically modified foods:

At the end of the month, a group of shrieking protestors are planning to descend upon a field in Hertfordshire and, in their words, ‘decontaminate’ (i.e. destroy) a field of genetically modified wheat. The activists, from an organisation called Take the Flour Back, claim to be saving Britain from a deadly environmental menace. But in reality, these self-appointed guardians of Gaia are threatening not only to undo hundreds of man-years of publicly-funded research but also helping to destroy one of the best hopes we have of avoiding catastrophic famines in the poorest parts of the world in future decades. It is eco-snobbery on a global scale.

There has always been a nasty whiff of elitism about the Green movement, and the way it taxes the poor out of the sky or off the roads.