The scientific consensus around climate change and the one around GMOs are less alike than they appear.

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“GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left,” declares the headline of a recent piece by Keith Kloor in Slate. The argument goes like this: Just as certain conservative writers flout science by denying the urgency of climate change, there are progressive writers—he named me as a prominent example—who defy an alleged scientific consensus by criticizing the genetically modified crop industry. We’re hypocrites, the charge goes, because we thunder against the denial of good science when it comes to climate, but indulge in denialism when it comes to GMOs.

I think Kloor’s critique is nonsense. Sure, there are whackos who campaign against GMOs, but not all GMO critique is whacko. In a 2010 roundtable in Seed Magazine, I debunked the idea that there’s a scientific consensus around GMOs analogous to the one around climate. I also ruminated on that theme in this 2009 review of Michael Specter’s book Denialism. I plan to return to the theme of scientific consensus and GMOs soon, but to make a long story short, I’ll quote my Seed piece:

The consensus around climate change developed in spite of a multi-decade campaign by some of the globe’s most powerful and lucrative industries—the petroleum and coal giants—to protect markets worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The consensus around GMOs—or at least the specter of one—arose through the lobbying and support of an industry desperate to protect its own multibillion-dollar investments.

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