Patrick Moore was one of the original founders of Greenpeace. Now the argument is about whether it was Moore or the Greenpeace movement that changed. There's an article up at Wired.com that tells his story. Here's an excerpt:
Today, he's a mouthpiece for some of the very interests Greenpeace was founded to counter, notably the timber and plastics industries. He argues that the Amazon rain forest is doing fine, that the Three Gorges Dam is the smartest thing China could do for its energy supply, and that opposition to genetically modified foods is tantamount to mass murder......He derides today's activists as philosophically unmoored and blindly technophobic, and he offers an alternative philosophy that not only accepts but celebrates humankind's growing ability to alter the planet. With a tip of the hat to best-selling "skeptical environmentalist" Bjørn Lomborg (and perhaps Thomas Paine), he has anointed himself the sensible environmentalist and set out to win converts. There haven't been many...
On genetically modified foods, Moore is on the side of feeding people, preventing blindness, and speaking common sense:
"This is where the environmental movement is dangerous," he says. "Environmentalists are against golden rice, which could prevent half a million kids from going blind every year. Taking a daffodil gene and putting it into a rice plant: Is this Armageddon?"Posted by dan at March 4, 2004 08:43 AM