I have just sent this letter to the Guardian:
In response to Donald Brown’s call for climate scepticism to be
classified as a crime against humanity (1st
November),
in which he said `We may not have a word for this type of crime
yet, but the international community should find a way of
classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that
could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against
humanity’:
during all the years that I have argued that green opposition to
golden rice perpetuates childhood blindness,
that green opposition to bt-maize and bt-cotton perpetuates
pesticide poisoning and is bad for insect and birdlife,
that the greens’ biofuels are causing starvation and are bad for
orang utans,
that greens’ organic farming causes malnutrition and destruction
of rain forest because it is land hungry,
that greens’ championing of wind power causes fuel poverty and
kills eagles,
that greens’ obsession with ocean acidification is distracting
us from real problems in the ocean
— during all this time, not once have I called for those with a
different point of view to be prosecuted as criminals for their
views. Nor would I. Nor would I expect a national newspaper to
publish my views if I said something so hateful.
Yet the evidence of `extraordinarily irresponsible scientific
claims that could lead to mass suffering’ is far stronger in these
cases than it is in the case of scepticism that the current warming
of the planet is unprecedented, dangerous and mostly man-made.
Yours faithfully,
Matt Ridley.