马克•莱纳斯2013年1月3日在牛津农业会议上的演讲全文

　　http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

　　我想先表达一下我的歉意。为准确起见，我首先在这里为自己攻击过转基因作物几年而致歉。

　　我也很抱歉自己在二十世纪九十年代中期帮助发动了反对转基因的运动，在妖魔化这项可以造福环境的重要技术选择的过程中出了力。

　　作为一名环保主义者，而且是认为世界上每个人都有权享有自己选择的健康营养膳食的一个人，我本不应该选择如此事与愿违的一条路线。我现在彻底后悔了。

　　那么我猜你可能在想，从1995年到现在，究竟发生了些什么，不但让我改变了想法，而且还让我来到这里亲口承认了呢?答案其实很简单。我发现了科学，并且在这个过程中我希望自己成为了更好的环保主义者。

　　在我第一次听说孟山都的转基因大豆时，我清楚地知道我在想什么。这是个美国大公司，有着不良记录，不告诉我们就把一些新的实验性的东西加到了我们的食物里。把不同物种的基因混合在一起好像是你所能做到的最非自然的事情，人类获得了太多的技术威力，这一定会导致的可怕的结果。这些基因会像有生命的污染一样散播。这会是一场噩梦。

　　这样的恐惧像野火一样蔓延，几年里转基因就在欧洲基本被禁，而且我们的担忧被绿色和平组织、地球之友等非政府组织出口到非洲、印度以及亚洲其他地方，在那里转基因至今都被禁止。这是我参与过的最成功的活动。

　　这也是一场明明白白的反科学的运动。我们用了大量的图像表现科研人员在他们的实验室里一边搭着构成生命的积木一边邪恶地怪笑。从而有了弗兰肯斯坦食物的标签，这绝对跟人们内心深处对科技力量被偷偷用于制造非自然东西的恐惧有关。我们当时没有意识到的是，真正的弗兰肯斯坦怪物不是转基因技术，而是我们对它的反应。

　　对我来说，这种反科学的环保主义跟我在气候变化问题上亲科学的环保主义立场越来越无法统一。2004年我出版了我关于全球气候变暖的第一本书，我决心要把它写成有科学依据的书，而不只是一本奇闻异事集。

　　所以我必须用关于海冰的卫星数据来佐证我的阿拉斯加行的故事，我还需要用高山冰川质量平衡的长期历史记录来支持我所拍的安第斯山脉冰川消融的照片。这就意味着我必须学会阅读科学论文，了解基本的统计学知识，并且还要具备阅读从海洋学到古气候学等很多不同领域文献的能力，而我的政治学和现代史学位背景对这些都帮不大上忙。

　　我发现自己总在跟一些不可救药的反科学的人士在争论，因为他们不肯去听气候学家的话，否认气候变化的科学现实。我就给他们讲解了同行审查的价值，科学共识的重要性，以及如何只有发表在学术地位最高的期刊上的事实才是值得重视的。

　　我的第二本书《六度》写得很有科学性，甚至荣获了英国皇家学会科学图书奖，而与我交好的气候科学家们也会跟我开玩笑说我对这个学科比他们还懂。然而，令人难以置信的是，在当时，2008年，我还在《卫报》上写着抨击转基因的长篇大论，虽然那时我并没有对这个话题做过任何学术研究，只有很有限的个人理解。即便在这么后面的时期，我也从未读过一篇经同行审查的生物技术论文或者植物学论文。

　　很显然这种矛盾的做法是站不住脚的。真正把我打倒的是在我《卫报》上写的最后一篇反转基因文章下面的读者评论。尤其是看到有人如此批评：所以你反对转基因的依据就是因为它是大公司在销售的。那你是不是也反对车轮子，因为它是大汽车公司在销售的?

　　我就去读了些东西。然后我发现，我所珍惜的关于转基因的那些信念就跟绿色都市神话差不多。

　　我原以为它会增加农药的使用。结果抗虫棉和抗虫玉米需要用的杀虫剂减少了。

　　我原以为转基因只对大公司有好处。结果农民因为需要的投入减少了，能得到几十亿美元的实惠。

　　我原以为终止子技术是剥夺了农民保留种子的权利。结果杂交作物早就是这样了，而且终止子技术还从未用过。

　　我原以为没有人想要转基因的东西。实际上印度有转基因抗虫棉的盗版，巴西有抗农达大豆的盗版，因为农民渴望用它们。

　　我原以为转基因很危险。结果它比传统突变育种的方法更安全更精准，比如，转基因只改变一两个基因，而传统的育种是对整个基因组到处乱碰乱撞通过不断的尝试来筛选。

　　那么把不同物种的基因混在一起又怎么说呢?比如鱼和番茄?结果病毒一直在做着这样的事情，植物和昆虫也一样，甚至我们自己也是--这叫基因流动。

　　但这仅仅是开始而已。在我的第三本书《上帝物种》中，我从一开始就抛弃了所有的环保主义正统说法，试图从星球的视野去看整件事。

　　而这就是我们今天所面临的挑战：到2050年我们需要喂饱95亿希望到那时已经不那么贫穷的人口，而耕地面积和今天差不多，使用有限的肥料、水和农药，并处在在气候迅速变化的背景之下。

　　让我们把这个问题稍微解析一下。我知道在去年的大会上有一个演讲是关于人口增长的。这个领域也是被神话所困扰的。大家觉得发展中国家的高生育率是个大问题。换句话说，穷人生了太多的孩子，而我们需要采取计划生育或更加严厉的措施，比如独生子女政策。

　　现实是全球平均生育率降到了2.5，而你如果考虑到自然更替生育率为2.2，这个数字并不是很高。那么大量的人口增长是从哪里来的呢?它是来自于婴儿死亡率的下降，现在更多的年轻人能够长大生儿育女，而不是在幼年死于可以预防的疾病。

　　婴儿死亡率的快速下降是我们这个年代里最大的好消息之一，而这一伟大成果发生的中心地带是在撒哈拉以南的非洲地区。这并不是说那边有更多的小孩出生，事实上，用汉斯•罗斯林(Hans Rosling)的话来说，我们已经达到了“峰儿”(儿童的峰值)。就是说，今天有大约20亿的儿童，因为生育率的下降，以后永远也不会有更多的儿童了。

　　但是今天20亿儿童中的更多人将存活到成年并生儿育女。他们是2050年的年轻人的父母。这是2050年95亿人口预测的来源。你并不需要通过失去一个孩子(神不允许这样的事发生)，甚至也不一定非要等当了父母才知道婴儿死亡率下降是一件好事。

　　那么这么多人将需要多少食物呢?按照去年发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上的最新预测，到本世纪中叶，我们将面对超过100%的全球需求增长。这几乎占据了GDP增长的全部，特别对于发展中国家来说。

　　换句话说，我们需要生产更多的粮食，不仅仅为了满足人口增长，还因为我们正在一步步消灭贫穷，而普遍发生的营养不良问题意味着今天仍然有将近8亿人每天晚上是饿着去睡觉的。而我想问一问富裕国家的人，谁会说贫穷国家的GDP增长是件坏事?

　　但因为这一增长，给我们带来了非常严重的环保问题。农地非农化是温室气体排放的一大来源，或许还是生物多样性丧失的最大来源。这是为什么需要农业集约化的另一个原因：我们需要在有限的耕地里种出更多的粮食，以保护热带雨林以及剩余的自然栖息地不被开发耕种。

　　我们还需要解决有限的水资源的问题，不仅仅消耗含水层，还因为气候变化造成的大陆农业中心地带预计会遭遇的越来越大的干旱袭击。如果我们从江河里取走更多的水，我们将加速在这些脆弱的栖息地的生物多样性的丧失。

　　我们还需要更好地管理氮的使用：人工肥料对于养活人类是必要的，但使用效率低下造成了墨西哥湾以及世界许多沿海地带的死区，也造成了淡水生态系统中的富营养化。

　　光坐在那里希望技术创新会解决我们的问题，是不够的。我们必须更加积极地宣传，要更有策略才行。我们必须保证技术创新能进展更快，方向正确，而且为最需要它的人们服务。

　　在某种意义上，我们曾经碰到过同样的问题。当保罗•埃利希(Paul Ehrlich)1968年发表《人口炸弹》一书时，他写道：“要养活所有人类的战斗已经结束。无论现在开始什么样的应急计划，到十九世纪七十年代都会有上百万的人死于饥饿。”他的意见是明确的，在印度这样的烂摊子国家，人们迟早是要挨饿的，所以应该取消对他们的粮食援助，以控制人口增长。

　　埃利希并不是命中注定就是错误的。事实上，如果大家都听从了他的意见，几亿人都可能已经不必要地死去了。但在该事件中，营养不良的现象大大降低，印度成为了粮食自给自足的国家，这都要感谢诺曼•博洛格(Norman Borlaug)和他的绿色革命。

　　重要的一点是要记得，博洛格和埃利希一样担忧人口增长的问题。他只不过觉得值得为此做一些努力。他是一个务实的人，因为他认为应该做能够做到的事情，同时他又是一个理想主义者，因为他认为世界各地的人都应该有足够的食物。

　　那么诺曼•博洛格做了些什么呢?他转向科学和技术寻找答案。人类是能制造工具的物种，从衣服到犁，技术是区别我们与其他猿类的主要特点。他大部分的工作都集中在主要驯化作物的基因组上，例如，如果小麦可以长得更矮，而且更注重于长种子而不是长秸秆，那产量就会提高，由于倒伏而造成的粮食损失也将减少。

　　在博洛格2009年去世之前，他花了很多年的时间与为了政治和意识形态原因反对农业现代创新的人作斗争。他说过：“如果反对者成功地中止了农业生物技术，他们可能就会让他们已经预测了近40年的饥荒和全球生物多样性的危机变成现实。”

　　而且，由于从富裕国家蔓延开来的所谓环保活动，我们已经离这样的情况很近了。生物技术没有被他们中止，但成本被弄得过于高昂，让除了巨无霸公司之外的所有人都只能止步。

　　现在在各个国家，让一种作物通过监管系统需要花费几千万美元。其实我刚刚从作物生命协会看到的最新数字表明，从发现一个新的作物性状到完全商业化，成本是1.39亿美元，所以公开资源的或公共部门的生物技术确实没有机会。

　　令人沮丧地具有讽刺意味的一点是，反对生物技术的活动者抱怨说，转基因作物只有大公司才能销售，而对于这种情况的出现，他们自己比其他任何人都出了更大的力。

　　在欧盟，该系统处于停滞状态，很多转基因申请已经等待了十年甚至更长时间，但被法国、奥地利这样的反生物技术国家的扭曲的国内政策永久性地搁置了。在全世界范围内，监管延迟从2002年的3.7年增加到现在的超过5年半。官僚主义的包袱越来越大。

　　法国，请记得，他们曾经很长时间拒绝接受马铃薯，因为它引进自美国。正如一位评论家最近所说，欧洲正处于成为食物博物馆的边缘。我们这些饮食无忧的消费者被过去传统耕作的浪漫怀旧蒙蔽了双眼。因为我们有足够的食物，所以我们有条件沉醉于自己的美学幻觉中。

　　但同时，主要粮食作物的全球产量增长已经停滞了，正如乔纳森•弗雷(Jonathan Foley)等人上月发表在《自然通讯》杂志上的研究所表明的。如果我们不能继续保持提高产量，我们确实会有麻烦，无法跟上人口增长和相应的需求增长，价格会上涨，同时更多的自然的土地会被转为农业用途。

　　再引用一下诺曼•博洛格的话：“我现在说，世界上的技术，已有的或者在研发库中已高度开发了的，能够可持续地养活一百亿人。今天更具针对性的问题是，是否允许农民和农场主使用这些新技术?富裕国家当然可以负担得起采取超低风险的立场，花更多钱来买用所谓“有机”方法生产的食物，但低收入、缺粮的国家里十亿营养不良的人负担不了。”

　　就像博洛格说的，也许在所有的神话里面最有害的一个就是，有机生产对人或环境更好。有机产品更健康的说法已经在科技文献中被一遍遍地证明为错误的。我们也从许多研究中看到，有机生产的生产效率低得多，同样土地面积的产量低了40-50%。土壤协会最近的一份报告费了九牛二虎之力谈论有机产品养活世界，闭口不提生产率上的差距。

　　报告中也没有提到，总体上说，如果考虑进土地置换效应，有机生产对生物多样性也是不利的。他们反而是在谈论一个理想世界，西方人总体来讲吃更少的肉，摄入更少的热量，这样发展中国家的人就能有更多食物。这是简单化的胡说八道。

　　如果你仔细去想一想，有机运动的核心是一种拒绝主义。原则上它不接受许多现代技术。就像宾夕法尼亚州的亚米希人用马车把他们的技术冻结在1850年，有机运动也基本上把技术冻结在1950年左右，而且并没有更好的理由。

　　然而，该运动甚至也没有一以贯之地应用这一观点。我读到的一份近期的土壤协会杂志上说可以用火焰喷射器爆掉野草，或者也可以用电流烧，但良性的除草剂，如草甘膦，仍然不行，因为它们是“人工化学物质”。

　　在现实生活中，实在没有理由说明为什么避免使用化学品会对环境更好，事实正好相反。洛克菲勒大学的杰西•奥苏贝尔(Jesse Ausubel)和他的同事们研究过，如果还是使用1961年的技术，要达到今天的总体产量，印度的农民需要多耕种多少农田。答案是六千五百万公顷，相当于法国的国土面积。

　　在中国，种玉米的农民们省下了一亿两千万公顷土地，相当于两个法国的面积，多亏了有现代技术帮助取得高产。在全球范围内，从1961年到2010年，农田面积只增长了12%，而人均热量摄入量从2200千卡增加到了2800千卡。所以即便人口增加了三十亿，每个人还是有更多的食物，多亏了在此期间产量增长了300%。

　　那么凭借着显著的产量提高(而化学品投入在提高产量中又起着至关重要的作用)，在这个过程中全世界共省下了多少土地?答案是三十亿公顷，相当于两个南美洲的面积。如果没有产量的提高，今天就不会有亚马逊热带雨林剩下了。印度也不会有任何一只老虎，印度尼西亚也不会有红毛猩猩了。所以我不明白为什么那么多反对把技术应用于农业的人会称自己为环保主义者。

　　那么他们为什么会反对?似乎存在着一个普遍的假设，现代技术等于更多的风险。其实非常自然的、有机的方式也会导致很多疾病和夭亡，就像2011年德国的有机豆芽事件所证明的那样。那是场公共健康的灾难，其中伤亡的人数跟切尔诺贝利核电站事故所造成的伤亡一样多，原因可能是动物粪便中的大肠杆菌感染了从埃及进口的有机豆芽。

　　总共有53人死亡，3,500人患上了严重的肾功能衰竭。那么为什么这些消费者会选择有机产品呢?因为他们觉得有机产品更安全更健康，而且他们更害怕那些受到高度管制的化学农药和化肥所带来的非常细微的风险。

　　如果你不戴偏见地去看这个事情，大部分的辩论，无论是反对生物技术的还是关于有机产品的，都是简单地建立在自然主义之上的谬论，即自然的就是好的，人工的就是坏的。这是种谬论，因为有很多完全纯天然的毒药和死亡的方式，就像那些大肠杆菌中毒的死者家属会告诉你的那样。

　　对于有机产品，这种自然主义谬论已经提升到了成为整个运动的中心指导原则的位置。这是非理性的，我们对地球和我们的孩子都负有责任，必须做得更好。

　　这并不是说有机农业就一无是处了，人们已经开发出了很多好的技巧，比如套作和混栽，能有很好的环保效果，但即便如此，也往往很费人工。所有人也应该重视遵循农业生态学的原则，比如营养物质的回收利用以及促进农场内的多样性。

　　但是当有机生产拒绝创新的时候，它就挡了进步的路。再以转基因作为最明显的例子，很多第三代转基因作物让我们可以不再使用对环境会造成破坏的化学品，因为相关作物的基因组被做了修改，这样植株就可以保护自己不受害虫侵害了。为什么这就不是有机呢?

　　当有机生产被用来剥夺他人的选择的时候，它也挡道了。有一种最常见的反转基因的说法是，有机种植的农民会被转基因花粉“污染”，所以应该不允许任何人用它。这样，少数富有的人的权利，归根结蒂是基于美学的一种消费偏好，就压倒了其他所有人使用对环境有益的改良作物的权利。

　　我是完全支持世界多样化的，但这意味着一种种植体系不能声称自己垄断了美德，力图排除所有的其他选项。为什么我们不能和平共处呢?尤其是当要把我们绑回去使用的旧技术比新技术有更高内在风险的时候。

　　好像几乎所有人都必须向“有机”致敬似的，对这种正统质疑是想都不能想的。好吧，我今天就来质疑一下。

　　所有的风险中最大的风险是我们不去利用能带来创新的各种机会，只因为一些其实只是盲目的偏见的原因。让我举两个例子，很遗憾地，它们都跟绿色和平组织有关。

　　去年绿色和平组织在澳大利亚毁掉了一种转基因小麦，出于所有传统的理由。我非常熟悉这些理由，我自己就做过这样的事。这是项由澳大利亚联邦科学与产业研究组织资助的研究，但这点没有用。他们反对的原因就是转基因，非自然。

　　但是没有多少人听说过，另外有一项进行中的试验幸运地没有被绿色和平组织的活动家们的电动割草机成功地毁掉，竟意外地发现了这种小麦能多增产30%。想想吧。如果绿色和平组织成功地毁掉了这个创新，我们就永远得不到这个知识了。正如英国全国农民联盟主席彼得•肯德尔(Peter Kendall)最近所说，这种行为就像在任何人能够读到之前把图书馆里的书都烧了。

　　第二个例子发生在中国，绿色和平组织在那边成功地发动了一场全国性的媒体恐慌，声称24个孩子被当成了转基因黄金大米试验的试验品。他们完全不去考虑事实上这种大米更健康，每年可以帮助成千上万的孩子避免维生素A缺乏造成的失明和死亡。

　　结果在绿色和平组织的新闻发布会上被点名的三位中国科学家受到了公开的围剿，从此失去了工作。国际上，由于过度监管，黄金大米已经被束之高阁十几年了，现在多谢绿色和平等组织的活动家们，缺乏维生素的穷人可能永远都得不到它了。

　　这在我看来是不道德不人道的，因为在遥远地方不缺维生素A的富人们的美学偏好，就剥夺了穷人及其子女所需要的能帮到他们的东西。绿色和平是个每年经费一亿美元的跨国组织，因而它也像其他大公司一样具有道德责任。

　　黄金大米是由公共部门为造福公众而开发的，这一事实对那些反对者没有起到任何作用。再举个英国洛桑研究所的例子，这个研究所的主任莫里斯•莫洛尼(Maurice Moloney)明天会发言。去年洛桑研究所开始了一项抗蚜虫的转基因小麦试验，这种小麦不需要杀虫剂就能抵抗这种严重的病虫害。

　　因为是转基因，反对者们就决定要毁掉它。他们失败了，因为约翰•皮克特(John Pickett)教授和他的团队很有勇气，他们上了YouTube和媒体，告诉大家为什么他们的研究很重要，以及为什么不应该被破坏掉。他们收集到了有数千人签名的请愿书，而反对者们只拿到了几百个签名，于是摧毁这项研究的企图就落空了。

　　有一个入侵者确实成功地翻过了栅栏，不过他也正好是反转基因抗议者形象的完美代表--一个伊顿公学的贵族，其丰富多彩的历史让我们牛津当地的布兰福德侯爵看上去都像是个有责任感公民的典范。

　　这位出身高贵的活动家在试验点撒了有机小麦种子，大概是作为自然性的一个象征性声明。皮克特教授的团队告诉我，他们用了一种技术水平非常低的办法来打扫，就是拿着一个无绳的便携式吸尘器来清除。

　　今年，除了重复小麦试验之外，洛桑研究所还在研究一种能够在鲑鱼养殖中替代食物中的野生鱼的欧米加3油籽。这样能帮助减少过度捕捞，将种植的饲料用于水产养殖。对，这是转基因，那就等着反对者也来反对这项研究吧，即便在海洋生物多样性方面的潜在环保益处是那么地明显。

　　我不知道你怎么想，我是觉得够了。所以我今天的结论非常清楚：转基因的辩论结束了。就是完结了。我们不再需要讨论它是否安全，在十五年以上的时间里，我们吃了三十万亿份的转基因餐，还没有发生过任何一个实在的有害案例。你被小行星砸中的几率都比被转基因食物所害的几率大。更重要的是，人们已经因为选择有机产品而死去过，却还没有一个人因为吃转基因食物而死。

　　就像我十年前所做的那样，绿色和平组织以及土壤学会声称自己受共识科学指导，就像在气候变化问题上一样。然而在转基因问题上，科学共识非常牢固，受到美国科学促进会、英国皇家，以及世界各地的卫生机构和国家科学院支持。不过这种让人感到不便的真相被忽视了，因为与他们的意识形态冲突。

　　最后一个例子是转基因抗枯萎病马铃薯的可悲故事。这种马铃薯是由剑桥塞恩斯伯里实验室和爱尔兰的一家公费资助的Teagasc研究所共同开发的，但是爱尔兰的绿党(他们的领袖经常来参加我们这个会议)，非常反对，甚至向法院提起了诉讼。

　　他们无视了这样的事实：这种抗枯萎病马铃薯能够让农民每季不用再喷洒15次杀真菌剂，因为马铃薯是无性繁殖，不存在花粉转移的问题，而那个冒犯了他们的基因来自于马铃薯的野生近缘种。

　　如果有一种抗枯萎病马铃薯能在爱尔兰开发出来会是一个很好的历史回响，因为在十九世纪中叶那里曾有上百万人死于马铃薯饥荒。如果是爱尔兰战胜了枯萎病，对这个国家来说会是很美好的一件事。但是因为爱尔兰绿党，这些都不会发生。

　　而且很不幸地，这些反对者现在有官僚们站在他们一边。威尔士和苏格兰正式规定不能含有转基因成分，按理说受科学指导的政府把中世纪的迷信当做一种战略必须。

　　很不幸地，在非洲和亚洲情况都差不多。印度拒绝了抗虫茄子，即便它能减少农田里杀虫剂的使用以及果实上的农药残留。印度政府越来越被思想倒退的理论家所束缚，如凡达纳施瓦(Vandana Shiva)，把工业化之前的村庄农业理想化，罔顾史实，那其实是个反复发生饥荒以及具有结构不安全性的时代。

　　在非洲，“禁止转基因”仍然是很多政府的口号。比如肯尼亚就实际上禁止了转基因食物，因为所谓的“健康风险”，尽管事实上转基因食物可以帮助减少在这个国家仍然猖獗的营养不良现象，而营养不良是一种已被证实的健康风险，无需更多的证据来证明。在肯尼亚，如果你开发一种营养价值更高或者产量更高的转基因作物来帮助贫穷的农民，你会被判处十年徒刑。

　　因此最被需要的农业创新就被令人窒息的大量监管规定扼杀了，而这些规定并非基于任何理性的科学风险评估。现在的风险不是谁会被转基因食物伤害，而是数百万的人会被没有足够食物所伤害，因为富裕国家里声音响亮的少数人想吃他们认为自然的食物。

　　我希望现在事情在发生变化。尊敬的比尔和梅琳达•盖茨基金会最近给予约翰英纳斯中心1000万美元，启动将固氮能力加入主要粮食作物的工作，从玉米开始。是的，绿色和平组织，这将是转基因的。想开吧。如果我们想减少全球性的氮污染问题，那么让主要作物植株自己来固氮就是个值得努力的目标。

　　我知道这么说是政治不正确的，但我们确实需要大剂量的国际范围内的粉碎神话以及放松监管。当我跟我认识的植物学家说这些的时候，他们用双手抱住了自己的头，因为政府以及那么多人的风险感都错得离谱，并且没收了一项极其重要的必要的技术。

　　诺曼•博洛格现在已经去世了，但我想当我们拒绝向政治正确的正统让步，因为我们知道它们是错的，这时我们就是在向他的事迹和远见卓识致敬。此事利害攸关。如果我们继续做错，几十亿人的生活前景将会受到损害。

　　所以我今天向你们所有人发出挑战，质疑一下自己在这个问题上的信念，看看它们是否经得起理性的检验。永远寻求证据，就像宣传活动团体科学智识组织所建议的那样，并且确保你不只阅读参与宣传活动的非政府组织所提供的自我参照的报告。

　　但最重要的一点是，农民应该有自由选择采用何种技术的权利。如果你觉得老方法是最好的，那也行。你有这个权利。

　　但你没有权利去做的是挡着别人的道，那些希望而且渴求用不同方式做事，而且希望能做得更好的人。那些明白人口增长和世界气候变暖带来的压力的农民们。那些明白亩产量是最重要的环保指标的人。以及那些明白技术永远不会停止进步，而连电冰箱和朴素的马铃薯都曾经是新的、吓人的东西。

　　所以对那些反转基因说客，从英国的贵族、名人的厨师等等到美国的美食家、印度的农民团体，我想说的是：你们有权拥有自己的观点。但是到现在你们必须知道，你们的观点并不受科学支持。我们正在靠近一个危机点，为了人类和地球，现在是你们走开，让我们其余的人开始进行可持续地养活世界的工作的时候了。

　　谢谢。

　　马克•莱纳斯是《上帝物种:地球将如何在人类的时代存活》一书的作者,2011年7月由Fouth Estate出版社出版。在英国，平装版2012年2月由HarperPerennial出版社出版，而美国版本《上帝物种--在人类时代挽救地球》由国家地理出版社出版。本书还有瑞典语、丹麦语和其他语言的版本。他过去曾写过两本关于气候变化的主要书籍：《高潮：来自一个变暖的世界的新闻》(2004年)以及《六度：我们在一个更热的行星上的未来》(2007年)。

　　I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

　　As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

　　So I guess you’ll be wondering – what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.

　　When I first heard about Monsanto’s GM soya I knew exactly what I thought. Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares.

　　These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa,Indiaand the rest ofAsia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with.

　　This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.

　　For me this anti-science environmentalism became increasingly inconsistent with my pro-science environmentalism with regard to climate change. I published my first book on global warming in 2004, and I was determined to make it scientifically credible rather than just a collection of anecdotes.

　　So I had to back up the story of my trip toAlaskawith satellite data on sea ice, and I had to justify my pictures of disappearing glaciers in theAndeswith long-term records of mass balance of mountain glaciers. That meant I had to learn how to read scientific papers, understand basic statistics and become literate in very different fields from oceanography to paleoclimate, none of which my degree in politics and modern history helped me with a great deal.

　　I found myself arguing constantly with people who I considered to be incorrigibly anti-science, because they wouldn’t listen to the climatologists and denied the scientific reality of climate change. So I lectured them about the value of peer-review, about the importance of scientific consensus and how the only facts that mattered were the ones published in the most distinguished scholarly journals.

　　My second climate book, Six Degrees, was so sciency that it even won the Royal Society science books prize, and climate scientists I had become friendly with would joke that I knew more about the subject than them. And yet, incredibly, at this time in 2008 I was still penning screeds in the Guardian attacking the science of GM – even though I had done no academic research on the topic, and had a pretty limited personal understanding. I don’t think I’d ever read a peer-reviewed paper on biotechnology or plant science even at this late stage.

　　Obviously this contradiction was untenable. What really threw me were some of the comments underneath my final anti-GM Guardian article. In particular one critic said to me: so you’re opposed to GM on the basis that it is marketed by big corporations. Are you also opposed to the wheel because because it is marketed by the big auto companies?

　　So I did some reading. And I discovered that one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths.

　　I’d assumed that it would increase the use of chemicals. It turned out that pest-resistant cotton and maize needed less insecticide.

　　I’d assumed that GM benefited only the big companies. It turned out that billions of dollars of benefits were accruing to farmers needing fewer inputs.

　　I’d assumed that Terminator Technology was robbing farmers of the right to save seed. It turned out that hybrids did that long ago, and that Terminator never happened.

　　I’d assumed that no-one wanted GM. Actually what happened was that Bt cotton was pirated intoIndiaand roundup ready soya intoBrazilbecause farmers were so eager to use them.

　　I’d assumed that GM was dangerous. It turned out that it was safer and more precise than conventional breeding using mutagenesis for example; GM just moves a couple of genes, whereas conventional breeding mucks about with the entire genome in a trial and error way.

　　But what about mixing genes between unrelated species? The fish and the tomato? Turns out viruses do that all the time, as do plants and insects and even us – it’s called gene flow.

　　But this was still only the beginning. So in my third book The God Species I junked all the environmentalist orthodoxy at the outset and tried to look at the bigger picture on a planetary scale.

　　And this is the challenge that faces us today: we are going to have to feed 9.5 billion hopefully much less poor people by 2050 on about the same land area as we use today, using limited fertiliser, water and pesticides and in the context of a rapidly-changing climate.

　　Let’s unpack this a bit. I know in a previous year’s lecture in this conference there was the topic of population growth. This area too is beset by myths. People think that high rates of fertility in the developing world are the big issue – in other words, poor people are having too many children, and we therefore need either family planning or even something drastic like mass one-child policies.

　　The reality is that global average fertility is down to about 2.5 – and if you consider that natural replacement is 2.2, this figure is not much above that. So where is the massive population growth coming from? It is coming because of declining infant mortality – more of today’s youngsters are growing up to have their own children rather than dying of preventable diseases in early childhood.

　　The rapid decline in infant mortality rates is one of the best news stories of our decade and the heartland of this great success story is sub-SaharanAfrica. It’s not that there are legions more children being born – in fact, in the words of Hans Rosling, we are already at ‘peak child’. That is, about 2 billion children are alive today, and there will never be more than that because of declining fertility.

　　But so many more of these 2 billion children will survive into adulthood today to have their own children. They are the parents of the young adults of 2050. That’s the source of the 9.5 billion population projection for 2050. You don’t have to have lost a child, God forbid, or even be a parent, to know that declining infant mortality is a good thing.

　　So how much food will all these people need? According to the latest projections, published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we are looking at a global demand increase of well over 100% by mid-century. This is almost entirely down to GDP growth, especially in developing countries.

　　In other words, we need to produce more food not just to keep up with population but because poverty is gradually being eradicated, along with the widespread malnutrition that still today means close to 800 million people go to bed hungry each night. And I would challenge anyone in a rich country to say that this GDP growth in poor countries is a bad thing.

　　But as a result of this growth we have very serious environmental challenges to tackle. Land conversion is a large source of greenhouse gases, and perhaps the greatest source of biodiversity loss. This is another reason why intensification is essential – we have to grow more on limited land in order to save the rainforests and remaining natural habitats from the plough.

　　We also have to deal with limited water – not just depleting aquifers but also droughts that are expected to strike with increasing intensity in the agricultural heartlands of continents thanks to climate change. If we take more water from rivers we accelerate biodiversity loss in these fragile habitats.

　　We also need to better manage nitrogen use: artificial fertiliser is essential to feed humanity, but its inefficient use means dead zones in theGulf of Mexicoand many coastal areas around the world, as well as eutrophication in fresh water ecosystems.

　　It is not enough to sit back and hope that technological innovation will solve our problems. We have to be much more activist and strategic than that. We have to ensure that technological innovation moves much more rapidly, and in the right direction for those who most need it.

　　In a sense we’ve been here before. When Paul Ehrlich published the Population Bomb in 1968, he wrote: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” The advice was explicit – in basket-case countries likeIndia, people might as well starve sooner rather than later, and therefore food aid to them should be eliminated to reduce population growth.

　　It was not pre-ordained that Ehrlich would be wrong. In fact, if everyone had heeded his advice hundreds of millions of people might well have died needlessly. But in the event, malnutrition was cut dramatically, andIndiabecame food self-sufficient, thanks to Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution.

　　It is important to recall that Borlaug was equally as worried about population growth as Ehrlich. He just thought it was worth trying to do something about it. He was a pragmatist because he believed in doing what was possible, but he was also an idealist because he believed that people everywhere deserved to have enough to eat.

　　So what did Norman Borlaug do? He turned to science and technology. Humans are a tool-making species – from clothes to ploughs, technology is primarily what distinguishes us from other apes. And much of this work was focused on the genome of major domesticated crops – if wheat, for example, could be shorter and put more effort into seed-making rather than stalks, then yields would improve and grain loss due to lodging would be minimised.

　　Before Borlaug died in 2009 he spent many years campaigning against those who for political and ideological reasons oppose modern innovation in agriculture. To quote: “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”

　　And, thanks to supposedly environmental campaigns spread from affluent countries, we are perilously close to this position now. Biotechnology has not been stopped, but it has been made prohibitively expensive to all but the very biggest corporations.

　　It now costs tens of millions to get a crop through the regulatory systems in different countries. In fact the latest figures I’ve just seen from CropLife suggest it costs $139 million to move from discovering a new crop trait to full commercialisation, so open-source or public sector biotech really does not stand a chance.

　　There is a depressing irony here that the anti-biotech campaigners complain about GM crops only being marketed by big corporations when this is a situation they have done more than anyone to help bring about.

　　In the EU the system is at a standstill, and many GM crops have been waiting a decade or more for approval but are permanently held up by the twisted domestic politics of anti-biotech countries likeFranceandAustria. Around the whole world the regulatory delay has increased to more than 5 and a half years now, from 3.7 years back in 2002. The bureaucratic burden is getting worse.

　　France, remember, long refused to accept the potato because it was an American import. As one commentator put it recently,Europeis on the verge of becoming a food museum. We well-fed consumers are blinded by romantic nostalgia for the traditional farming of the past. Because we have enough to eat, we can afford to indulge our aesthetic illusions.

　　But at the same time the growth of yields worldwide has stagnated for many major food crops, as research published only last month by Jonathan Foley and others in the journal Nature Communications showed. If we don’t get yield growth back on track we are indeed going to have trouble keeping up with population growth and resulting demand, and prices will rise as well as more land being converted from nature to agriculture.

　　To quote Norman Borlaug again: “I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called ‘organic’ methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.”

　　As Borlaug was saying, perhaps the most pernicious myth of all is that organic production is better, either for people or the environment. The idea that it is healthier has been repeatedly disproved in the scientific literature. We also know from many studies that organic is much less productive, with up to 40-50% lower yields in terms of land area. The Soil Association went to great lengths in a recent report on feeding the world with organic not to mention this productivity gap.

　　Nor did it mention that overall, if you take into account land displacement effects, organic is also likely worse for biodiversity. Instead they talk about an ideal world where people in the west eat less meat and fewer calories overall so that people in developing countries can have more. This is simplistic nonsense.

　　If you think about it, the organic movement is at its heart a rejectionist one. It doesn’t accept many modern technologies on principle. Like the Amish inPennsylvania, who froze their technology with the horse and cart in 1850, the organic movement essentially freezes its technology in somewhere around 1950, and for no better reason.

　　It doesn’t even apply this idea consistently however. I was reading in a recent Soil Association magazine that it is OK to blast weeds with flamethrowers or fry them with electric currents, but benign herbicides like glyphosate are still a no-no because they are ‘artificial chemicals’.

　　In reality there is no reason at all why avoiding chemicals should be better for the environment – quite the opposite in fact. Recent research by Jesse Ausubel and colleagues at Rockefeller University looked at how much extra farmland Indian farmers would have had to cultivate today using the technologies of 1961 to get today’s overall yield. The answer is 65 million hectares, an area the size ofFrance.

　　InChina, maize farmers spared 120 million hectares, an area twice the size ofFrance, thanks to modern technologies getting higher yields. On a global scale, between 1961 and 2010 the area farmed grew by only 12%, whilst kilocalories per person rose from 2200 to 2800. So even with three billion more people, everyone still had more to eat thanks to a production increase of 300% in the same period.

　　So how much land worldwide was spared in the process thanks to these dramatic yield improvements, for which chemical inputs played a crucial role? The answer is 3 billion hectares, or the equivalent of twoSouth Americas. There would have been no Amazon rainforest left today without this improvement in yields. Nor would there be any tigers inIndiaor orang utans inIndonesia. That is why I don’t know why so many of those opposing the use of technology in agriculture call themselves environmentalists.

　　So where does this opposition come from? There seems to be a widespread assumption that modern technology equals more risk. Actually there are many very natural and organic ways to face illness and early death, as the debacle withGermany’s organic beansprouts proved in 2011. This was a public health catastrophe, with the same number of deaths and injuries as were caused byChernobyl, because E.-coli probably from animal manure infected organic beansprout seeds imported fromEgypt.

　　In total 53 people died and 3,500 suffered serious kidney failure. And why were these consumers choosing organic? Because they thought it was safer and healthier, and they were more scared of entirely trivial risks from highly-regulated chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

　　If you look at the situation without prejudice, much of the debate, both in terms of anti-biotech and organic, is simply based on the naturalistic fallacy – the belief that natural is good, and artificial is bad. This is a fallacy because there are plenty of entirely natural poisons and ways to die, as the relatives of those who died from E.-coli poisoning would tell you.

　　For organic, the naturalistic fallacy is elevated into the central guiding principle for an entire movement. This is irrational and we owe it to the Earth and to our children to do better.

　　This is not to say that organic farming has nothing to offer – there are many good techniques which have been developed, such as intercropping and companion planting, which can be environmentally very effective, even it they do tend to be highly labour-intensive. Principles of agro-ecology such as recyling nutrients and promoting on-farm diversity should also be taken more seriously everywhere.

　　But organic is in the way of progress when it refuses to allow innovation. Again using GM as the most obvious example, many third-generation GM crops allow us not to use environmentally-damaging chemicals because the genome of the crop in question has been altered so the plant can protect itself from pests. Why is that not organic?

　　Organic is also in the way when it is used to take away choice from others. One of the commonest arguments against GM is that organic farmers will be ‘contaminated’ with GM pollen, and therefore no-one should be allowed to use it. So the rights of a well-heeled minority, which come down ultimately to a consumer preference based on aesthetics, trump the rights of everyone else to use improved crops which would benefit the environment.

　　I am all for a world of diversity, but that means one farming system cannot claim to have a monopoly of virtue and aim at excluding all other options. Why can’t we have peaceful co-existence? This is particularly the case when it shackles us to old technologies which have higher inherent risks than the new.

　　It seems like almost everyone has to pay homage to ‘organic’ and to question this orthodoxy is unthinkable. Well I am here to question it today.

　　The biggest risk of all is that we do not take advantage of all sorts of opportunities for innovation because of what is in reality little more than blind prejudice. Let me give you two examples, both regrettably involving Greenpeace.

　　Last year Greenpeace destroyed a GM wheat crop inAustralia, for all the traditional reasons, which I am very familiar with having done it myself. This was publicly funded research carried out by the Commonwealth Scientific Research institute, but no matter. They were against it because it was GM and unnatural.

　　What few people have since heard is that one of the other trials being undertaken, which Greenpeace activists with their strimmers luckily did not manage to destroy, accidentally found a wheat yield increase of an extraordinary 30%. Just think. This knowledge might never have been produced at all, if Greenpeace had succeeded in destroying this innovation. As the president of the NFU Peter Kendall recently suggeseted, this is analogous to burning books in a library before anyone has been able to read them.

　　The second example comes fromChina, where Greenpeace managed to trigger a national media panic by claiming that two dozen children had been used as human guinea pigs in a trial of GM golden rice. They gave no consideration to the fact that this rice is healthier, and could save thousands of children from vitamin A deficiency-related blindness and death each year.

　　What happened was that the three Chinese scientists named in the Greenpeace press release were publicly hounded and have since lost their jobs, and in an autocratic country likeChinathey are at serious personal risk. Internationally because of over-regulation golden rice has already been on the shelf for over a decade, and thanks to the activities of groups like Greenpeace it may never become available to vitamin-deficient poor people.

　　This to my mind is immoral and inhumane, depriving the needy of something that would help them and their children because of the aesthetic preferences of rich people far away who are in no danger from Vitamin A shortage. Greenpeace is a $100-million a year multinational, and as such it has moral responsibilities just like any other large company.

　　The fact that golden rice was developed in the public sector and for public benefit cuts no ice with the antis. Take Rothamsted Research, whose director Maurice Moloney is speaking tomorrow. Last year Rothamsted began a trial of an aphid-resistant GM wheat which would need no pesticides to combat this serious pest.

　　Because it is GM the antis were determined to destroy it. They failed because of the courage of Professor John Pickett and his team, who took to YouTube and the media to tell the important story of why their research mattered and why it should not be trashed. They gathered thousands of signatures on a petition when the antis could only manage a couple of hundred, and the attempted destruction was a damp squib.

　　One intruder did manage to scale the fence, however, who turned out to be the perfect stereotypical anti-GM protestor – an old Etonian aristocrat whose colourful past makes ourOxfordlocal Marquess of Blandford look like the model of responsible citizenry.

　　This high-born activist scattered organic wheat seeds around the trial site in what was presumably a symbolic statement of naturalness. Professor Pickett’s team tell me they had a very low-tech solution to getting rid of it – they went round with a cordless portable hoover to clear it up.

　　This year, as well as repeating the wheat trial, Rothamsted is working on an omega 3 oilseed that could replace wild fish in food for farmed salmon. So this could help reduce overfishing by allowing land-based feedstocks to be used in aquaculture. Yes it’s GM, so expect the antis to oppose this one too, despite the obvious potential environmental benefits in terms of marine biodiversity.

　　I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough. So my conclusion here today is very clear: the GM debate is over. It is finished. We no longer need to discuss whether or not it is safe – over a decade and a half with three trillion GM meals eaten there has never been a single substantiated case of harm. You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM food. More to the point, people have died from choosing organic, but no-one has died from eating GM.

　　Just as I did 10 years ago, Greenpeace and the Soil Association claim to be guided by consensus science, as on climate change. Yet on GM there is a rock-solid scientific consensus, backed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society, health institutes and national science academies around the world. Yet this inconvenient truth is ignored because it conflicts with their ideology.

　　One final example is the sad story of the GM blight-resistant potato. This was being developed by both the Sainsbury Lab and Teagasc, a publicly-funded institute inIreland– but the Irish Green Party, whose leader often attends this very conference, was so opposed that they even took out a court case against it.

　　This is despite the fact that the blight-resistant potato would save farmers from doing 15 fungicide sprays per season, that pollen transfer is not an issue because potatoes are clonally propagated and that the offending gene came from a wild relative of the potato.

　　There would have been a nice historical resonance to having a blight-resistant potato developed inIreland, given the million or more who died due to the potato famine in the mid 19th century. It would have been a wonderful thing forIrelandto be the country that defeated blight. But thanks to the Irish Green Party, this is not to be.

　　And unfortunately the antis now have the bureaucrats on their side.WalesandScotlandare officially GM free, taking medieval superstition as a strategic imperative for devolved governments supposedly guided by science.

　　It is unfortunately much the same in much of Africa andAsia.Indiahas rejected Bt brinjal, even though it would reduce insecticide applications in the field, and residues on the fruit. The government inIndiais increasingly in thrall to backward-looking ideologues like Vandana Shiva, who idealise pre-industrial village agriculture despite the historical fact that it was an age of repeated famines and structural insecurity.

　　InAfrica, ‘no GM’ is still the motto for many governments. Kenya for example has actually banned GM foods because of the supposed “health risks” despite the fact that they could help reduce the malnutrition that is still rampant in the country – and malnutrition is by the way a proven health risk, with no further evidence needed. In Kenya if you develop a GM crop which has better nutrition or a higher yield to help poorer farmers then you will go to jail for 10 years.

　　Thus desperately-needed agricultural innovation is being strangled by a suffocating avalanche of regulations which are not based on any rational scientific assessment of risk. The risk today is not that anyone will be harmed by GM food, but that millions will be harmed by not having enough food, because a vocal minority of people in rich countries want their meals to be what they consider natural.

　　I hope now things are changing. The wonderful Bill and Melinda Gates foundation recently gave $10 million to the John Innes Centre to begin efforts to integrate nitrogen fixing capabilities into major food crops, starting with maize. Yes, Greenpeace, this will be GM. Get over it. If we are going to reduce the global-scale problem of nitrogen pollution then having major crop plants fixing their own nitrogen is a worthy goal.

　　I know it is politically incorrect to say all this, but we need a a major dose of both international myth-busting and de-regulation. The plant scientists I know hold their heads in their hands when I talk about this with them because governments and so many people have got their sense of risk so utterly wrong, and are foreclosing a vitally necessary technology.

　　Norman Borlaug is dead now, but I think we honour his memory and his vision when we refuse to give in to politically correct orthodoxies when we know they are incorrect. The stakes are high. If we continue to get this wrong, the life prospects of billions of people will be harmed.

　　So I challenge all of you today to question your beliefs in this area and to see whether they stand up to rational examination. Always ask for evidence, as the campaigning group Sense About Science advises, and make sure you go beyond the self-referential reports of campaigning NGOs.

　　But most important of all, farmers should be free to choose what kind of technologies they want to adopt. If you think the old ways are the best, that’s fine. You have that right.

　　What you don’t have the right to do is to stand in the way of others who hope and strive for ways of doing things differently, and hopefully better. Farmers who understand the pressures of a growing population and a warming world. Who understand that yields per hectare are the most important environmental metric. And who understand that technology never stops developing, and that even the fridge and the humble potato were new and scary once.

　　So my message to the anti-GM lobby, from the ranks of the British aristocrats and celebrity chefs to theUSfoodies to the peasant groups ofIndiais this. You are entitled to your views. But you must know by now that they are not supported by science. We are coming to a crunch point, and for the sake of both people and the planet, now is the time for you to get out of the way and let the rest of us get on with feeding the world sustainably.

　　Thank you.