The Great GMO Debate
[This was the presentation I gave at Unity of Boulder, on Aug. 30]
My caveat here is that I am not speaking as a representative of Transition Colorado, or the Transition movement. For the moment I am taking off those hats and speaking solely as a human being, a member of the human race. I need to say this, because I will say some things that I as a human being must say, things that I feel are not being said enough or heard enough.
I know—because I have already experienced this—that as a result of what I say some will consider me their enemy. I’m not. I’m most certainly not anti-farmer, as I have been accused to my face—a moment I will never forget.
To begin, I’ll just say that corporate control of our food supply means loss of food freedom, food security, and food sovereignty. This is a profound assault on our very humanity.
In the larger scheme of things, we will gradually come to recognize that to genetically modify life—which has evolved over billions of years—in the “technological” manner we’re now using, is an abomination. Humans are inserting themselves into evolutionary processes that they neither comprehend nor appreciate. To do so is reckless, immoral, unethical, a fundamental violation of the sacredness of life. To do so for the sake of profit is particularly reprehensible, outrageous. To do so “to feed the world” is just a lie.
How do we know these things? Because the obvious result of such practices is to further disconnect us from life itself, and to make human technology the solution to all the problems we ourselves have created (Dr. Albert Bartlett reminds us of Eric Sevareid’s declaration long ago that the greatest source of problems is solutions). It is precisely this kind of self-serving striving that has led humanity—and the entire biosphere—to the brink of quite possibly irreversible disaster, that has caused global climate collapse which will keep unfolding for centuries and perhaps millennia, that has caused the largest mass extinction of species in 60 million years, wiping out as many as 200 species a day.
The debate over the use of GMOs has been pretty much explicitly confined to two aspects, the scientific and the economic. But as Wendell Berry says, these are only two sides of an eight-sided coin.
The economic issues are usually stated in very simple terms: protecting the profitability of certain farmers and preserving their way of making living.
The scientific issues are usually framed by the idea that any decision about GMOs must be based in science
I’m not anti-science, but someone needs to say that science is not capable of giving us answers to the questions of how we should live on the planet. It can give us perspective, understanding, and insight, and it can produce tools. But it cannot tell us how to live. We must draw upon deeper resources for that.
These are not issues that can be decided based on materialistic science or short-sighted economics, for the consequences of our actions here are very far reaching.
Here in the cauldron of Boulder County, we are making decisions that will shape the direction of humanity’s future—but we are not acting like that’s what we are doing.
This process that the county commissioners have orchestrated to settle the GMO issue has been very disappointing, even embarrassing. Is this really the best we can do here? I feel we need to start over and do better—even if the current process ends up disallowing GMOs on Open Space land.
Not only what we decide but how we decide the GMO issue in Boulder County will have impacts around the world and far into the future.
In such matters, we should at least be seeking guidance not just from so-called experts but from the wisest elders of our human tribe, those who have much deeper connections to what is sacred, much deeper connections to life itself, and can see beyond the urgencies of the moment to behold the broad sweep of evolution itself.
From the perspective of the elders—though many seem to remain silent—from a moral and ethical and evolutionary and spiritual perspective it is obvious that we must end the use of GMOs in our food supply. This is as obvious as it is that we must now very quickly end our carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
It does not matter how costly it is to do this in the short term, or how much “lost economic opportunity” this causes, or how much pain results from making such drastic changes. The choice is very clear: we have no choice but to make these kinds of course corrections—or we will ruin life on this planet. It’s that simple, and that complex, and that difficult. This is our moral and ethical and spiritual dilemma.
In the meantime, while we consider all this together, a few things are necessary in Boulder County. The first is a moratorium on the use of GMOs in agriculture, beginning now, beginning with Open Space land. If it turns out to be legally possible to institute such a moratorium on privately-owned land (as if there could ever really be such a thing as “private” land “owned” by someone), then we must also do that.
The second thing that is necessary is to require the labeling of all GMO food products in grocery stores and restaurants, so that people can make informed choices about what they eat. There will of course be great resistance to this—by just about everyone but eaters—but it is necessary. This is our responsibility.
I will suggest a third action, a moratorium on GMO-contaminated food in our schools. I realize that this is a taboo subject, but there it is. If we’re not moving aggressively towards this, we’re not taking the issue seriously, and we’re not taking our children seriously.
To be clear, I’m not calling for an all-out ban on GMOs, but a moratorium on their use in our food and agriculture in Boulder County until we can make a much more carefully-considered decision—a process that is likely to take years, maybe decades, but would certainly be historic.
Some will of course be outraged by such suggestions. Others, more sympathetic, will insist that they are simply not practical.
But never mind. We cannot be deterred by resistance. Let’s draw a line in the sand. This is nothing less than an evolutionary crossroads. If we in Boulder County cannot at least pause the juggernaut of the biotech industry locally to deeply consider the long-term consequences—which I believe is our sacred duty—who else could do this? Where else on the planet could such leadership emerge?
Recently, in an interview for the Food Localization Study we’re coordinating, we spoke with Adrian Card, who many of you know, and who is the CSU Extension agent for Boulder County and advises Parks and Open Space, as well as the county commissioners. In the closing moments of that interview, I took the opportunity to ask him a couple of “unfair questions.” For one, I asked him what he saw ultimately happening in Boulder County regarding the issue of GMOs.
To paraphrase (fairly I hope), he said, “This is not going to get settled with CPAG or with the county commissioners any time soon. We’re going to be wrestling with this issue for decades—locally and around the world.” I think he’s right. It’s going to be a very long struggle, and we need to get very clear inside ourselves about what really needs to happen over the long term. There’s a decision and a commitment that each of us will have to make, for this is about far more than GMO sugar beets or Bt corn.
It makes me very uncomfortable to say these things, but here is where I’ve come to in this process over the last three years:
We must say no to GMOs, and to those who seek to use them, and to those who have become dependent on them.
We must say no to public officials, appointed or elected, who will not stand firmly against GMOs and the corporations who seek to control our food supply.
We must say no to corporations who use GMOs in their products.
We must say no to corporations who seek to own GMO patents on seeds—as if life itself could be patented and owned!
We must say no to governments who allow this to happen!
That’s where I’ve come to. Where are you in all this?
What’s at stake is here nothing less than human freedom and sovereignty. Once we understand this, we have no choice but to do everything we can to keep throwing sand in the machine until it grinds to a halt. The contamination of the biosphere and of our food supply with genetically manipulated organisms must stop, no matter how long it takes, no matter the cost.
It will take a long time, for we are beginning to mobilize at a moment when the struggle has nearly been lost. But human dignity and human freedom must be restored.
In closing, I’d like to draw from the closing lines of a famous speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965 (I remember those days). He said:
“I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘When will wounded justice…be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?’ Somebody’s asking, ‘How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?’
He said, “I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’ How long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow.’ How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Yes, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
I leave you with my prayer:
May we align ourselves with that long evolutionary arc of the moral sacred universe and end the reign of those who would control our food supply, those who would control the very forces of nature, those who would control what is most precious and sacred in our seeds, soils and souls.
May we restore soils and souls and hearts and minds, and reverse this dreadful course that threatens to dominate our humanity and undermine our freedom.
May we truly be people of the earth, connected with land and water and sky and the natural cycles of life, connected with the tides of the seasons, connected with each other and connected with the greater community of life, connected with the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars and the galaxies, and connected with that sacred evolutionary spark that dwells within each of us.
That is my prayer, and my plea. Thank you.
