Mark Lynas - Science and the Left

Published: March 5, 2013, 6:12 a.m.

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Host: Chris Mooney

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I\'m a big defender of the proposition that when it comes to abusing science, the political left and the political right are very different beasts.

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But that doesn\'t make the left innocent of science abuses\\u2014and one man who knows that very well is Mark Lynas.

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He\'s a British environmentalist and author, and he recently gained dramatic attention for his\\xa0public conversion\\xa0on the issue GM crops\\u2014denouncing his prior allies, and also his prior self, on the issue.

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Lynas had been an anti-GM activist and even a destroyer of crops. Now, he thinks science leads to a very different conclusion. He\'s also a defender of science on other issues where one can make a pretty serious case that the Left gets it wrong\\u2014like nuclear power.

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So I wanted to bring Mark on to discuss anti-science on the left\\u2014and finally, to weigh the irrationality of the political poles and see if the scales are really balanced... or not.

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Mark Lynas is a British journalist and environmental activist. He is the author of three books, most recently The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans.

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