http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/09/farm-boy.html

The most politically significant paragraph in the entire article is this one:

 "Africa was next on Borlaug's agenda, but by the 1980s he started to face intense opposition from Western environmental groups. Despite his record of success in averting starvation [in Mexico, India and Pakistan], they opposed his 'Green Revolution' scientific methods -- the use of cross breeding, hybridization, inorganic fertilizer -- as 'unnatural.' Some complained the intensive farming techniques he introduced were displacing traditional subsistence farming, as if starvation by native methods were somehow beautiful and noble. "

 If this doesn't define the radical environmentalists, I can't think of three sentences that do a better job of it.  They act as if the primitive farming methods still in use in the Third World are cultural imperatives, and must be preserved at all costs... and it is easy for them to say so, since the aforementioned costs are borne by the people, not the environmentalist, in for form of deaths by starvation, stunted children and the diseases of inadequate nutrition like rickets and scurvy.

Note that the First World recognized rickets and scurvy; we defeated those diseases centuries ago, by improving our agricultural practices with scientific development.  Yet these people in the environmental movement don't apparently care how many children starve in the Third World; they should not be allowed to use hybridized, high-yield seeds or chemical fertilizers.    It worked for us; are these people somehow unworthy?  Do they not deserve to live better and longer now that the technology is available to make it possible for them?  What makes them undeserving?  Is it (whisper it: ) their skin color?

I wonder.

Do you?