When environmentalists choose panic over progress

How a faction of green activists turned against the very technologies that could have saved millions of lives and slowed climate change.

Demonstrators hold a banner that says “phase out nuclear power, don’t wait for the disaster” in Paris, France, in September 2025. (Photo by Telmo Pinto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In April 2024, Greenpeace declared victory.

In a statement straight out of the 1990s, the environmental organization gloated about a Filipino court revoking the permit to grow “so-called Golden Rice.” Many scientists despaired. Including the plant biotechnologist largely responsible for the development of beta-carotene rice: “The court decision is a catastrophe for Golden Rice in the Philippines and elsewhere.” This isn’t the first time that environmentalists have found themselves fighting against technological progress.

Some of the world’s greatest missed opportunities in health care and climate policy were not due to technological limits, but to organized resistance to solutions that could have saved millions of lives. A prominent strain of Western environmentalism, amplified through NGOs and global campaigns, remains hostile to new technologies even as they provide the best path forward for global development and combating climate change.

I have spent much of my life in the environmental movement, even being arrested for climate action campaigns against coal expansion and tar sands extraction. Over time, I realized I had been misinformed about the risks posed by nuclear energy, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and other technologies. I want the environmental movement to succeed, but in order for that to happen, we need to eradicate the strain of anti-progress thought that animates much of climate activism today.

Emerging in the post-1960s, environmental movements in Europe and North America often emphasized the precautionary principle, distrust of industrial and technological interventions, and a prioritization of perceived natural systems over human-engineered solutions. While environmental concern is crucial for sustainable development, a subset of activists and NGOs have amplified opposition to technology itself, rather than regulating it based on scientific evidence.

How Greenpeace helped block Golden Rice

For anyone familiar with traditional environmentalism, opposition to gene-editing technologies, commonly referred to as “GMOs” is no surprise. But few are aware of how anti-GMO green activism continues to wreak havoc across the globe.

Golden Rice was developed in the late 1990s as a genetically modified (GM) crop capable of producing beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency is a leading cause of preventable blindness in children, and it increases the risk of mortality from infectious diseases. According to UNICEF, vitamin A deficiency affects one third of children aged 6 to 59 months, with the highest rates in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Each year, up to 500,000 children lose their sight as a result of this deficiency, and about half die within 12 months of going blind, according to the World Health Organization. In the Philippines alone, an estimated 1.7 million children under the age of five were affected.

There is good news: Periodic high-dose vitamin A supplementation is a proven, low-cost intervention that has been shown to reduce all-cause mortality by 12% to 24%, according to UNICEF. Enter Golden Rice — a genetically modified rice that can raise vitamin A intake.

In countries where diverse diets are limited by availability and affordability, vitamin A is scarce, and deficiency is widespread. But in many of these regions, rice is a staple food, and in places such as India, Bangladesh, and China, millions of children rely on it as their primary source of calories. Because Golden Rice can be cultivated just as easily as conventional white rice, it holds the potential to protect millions of children from malnutrition, hunger, and preventable blindness.

Yet decades after it was developed, Golden Rice remains largely unavailable in the countries that need it most. In 2021, the Philippines approved the commercial cultivation of Golden Rice, but last year, a court of appeal in the Philippines halted that approval following a campaign by Greenpeace, who argued that Golden Rice had not been proven safe.

Scientists fought back. They warned that the decision to reject Golden Rice could be catastrophic, delaying benefits that include reducing blindness and mortality among children. As far back as 2016, more than a third of the world’s living Nobel laureates, including James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, signed an open letter condemning Greenpeace’s campaign against Golden Rice: “How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a ‘crime against humanity’?”

The signatories urged Greenpeace and its supporters “to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against ‘GMOs’ in general and Golden Rice in particular.” Their appeal was not heard.

Instead, coordinated campaigns by anti-GMO activists, including large NGOs, continued to create barriers to adoption. They told convincing, frightening stories about environmental contamination, corporate control of agriculture, and the unknown long-term effects of GM crops — despite scientific consensus that Golden Rice is safe and the benefits far outweigh hypothetical risks. The result of this activism has been a decades-long delay in deployment, during which millions of children continued to suffer from preventable blindness and death.

And it’s not just Golden Rice.

The lost promise of nuclear energy

Nuclear energy provides abundant, reliable electricity with very low greenhouse gas emissions and a very small land footprint. Analysis by researchers at Our World in Data shows that nuclear power ranks among the cleanest and safest energy sources available. Countries such as France and South Korea have demonstrated that nuclear energy can form the backbone of low-carbon energy systems. Yet across much of Europe, North America, and parts of the developing world, nuclear programs were delayed or completely halted by organized activist campaigns that stoked public fear and wielded political pressure.

Germany’s Energiewende, for example, accelerated the shutdown of nuclear reactors following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Anti-nuclear campaigners had already fostered public distrust decades earlier, using the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 to turn people against the technology.

In reality, while fossil fuels are responsible for millions of deaths every year, nuclear energy is far safer, accounting for fewer than 10,000 deaths in total since its development, even when accounting for major accidents and long-term health effects.

Nuclear energy has saved 1.8 million lives that otherwise would have been lost due to fossil fuel pollution and associated causes between 1971 and 2009, according to a 2013 study by climate scientists James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha.

Germany’s nuclear phaseout actually led to a significant increase in coal burning to fill the energy gap, which directly contributed to higher carbon emissions and more air pollution linked to over 1,100 additional deaths each year from air pollution.¹

The resulting rise in pollution carried an estimated economic cost of $8.7 billion per year, making up more than 70% of the total estimated $12.2 billion annual costs of the nuclear phaseout.

Additionally, a December 2024 report found that had nuclear power plants not been phased out globally, “global energy-related emissions would have been 6 per cent lower…This would be the same as taking about 460 million cars from the road for a year or removing the combined total 2023 emissions of Canada, South Korea, Australia and Mexico.”

The greatest irony is that this phaseout was spearheaded by the German Green Party, which claims to champion environmental protection and climate action. Instead, it led to increased reliance on fossil fuels and Russian gas, which ultimately worsened carbon emissions, air pollution, and energy security.

Globally, nuclear energy could have played a pivotal role in mitigating climate change, yet activist pressure and policy reversals slowed its adoption. Even in countries without significant domestic opposition, anti-nuclear sentiment has influenced global funding and regulatory frameworks.

International institutions, wary of controversy, have often favored renewable energy subsidies over nuclear investments, leaving developing nations reliant on fossil fuels as a baseload source of energy to support renewables. For example, the European Union initially excluded nuclear energy from its standard “green” classification, known as the EU Taxonomy, which provides an evidence-based framework for defining which economic activities contribute substantially to environmental goals.

To assess nuclear energy’s role, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) evaluated it against the Taxonomy’s criteria. The JRC concluded that nuclear energy easily meets its standards, and highlighted the beneficial role of nuclear energy as baseload power.

Still, several EU member states, led by Germany, opposed including nuclear in the green finance taxonomy. In response, 86 Members of the European Parliament signed an open letter to urge the Commission to “follow the science” and include nuclear under the Taxonomy.

The debate raged for months, but eventually landed on the side of reason in 2022. Just this year, Austria sought to overturn this decision, but the General Court ruled against it. The consequences of delay are measurable: higher greenhouse gas emissions, energy insecurity, and delayed progress toward climate goals.

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It’s notable that none of these technologies are new. A 2018 report by the MIT Energy Initiative explained in detail that nuclear energy has a vital role to play in deep decarbonization of the electricity sector, and that without it, the cost of achieving decarbonization increases significantly. Unfortunately, long-established solutions were ignored as fear-driven activism drowned out scientific guidance.

In agriculture, this anti-technology faction has blocked the adoption of GM crops in much of Europe, which in turn influences trade and regulatory standards worldwide. Developing nations, facing pressure from NGOs and donors, have often deferred or banned GM crops, including Golden Rice, despite the health needs of their populations.

Activists are often persuasive and skilled communicators, while scientists, despite having the evidence, struggle to make their case resonate with the public. Anti-GMO campaigns often frame all genetic modification as “unnatural” or corporate-controlled, conflating entirely different crops and technologies.

Anti-nuclear activism emphasizes catastrophic risks while downplaying decades of safe operation and conflates civil nuclear energy with nuclear weapons. These narratives are effective because they appeal to emotion and moral reasoning, even when they contradict empirical evidence.

The costs of these anti-technology interventions are staggering. In the case of Golden Rice, studies estimate that millions of children could have avoided blindness and death if deployment had begun in the early 2000s. The delay is not a marginal issue; it represents a significant human toll that could have been prevented by adopting an evidence-based approach.

With nuclear energy, the costs are measured in both carbon emissions and economic consequences. Every nuclear power plant that is retired or never built leaves a gap filled by fossil fuels. In Europe, early nuclear shutdowns have contributed to higher electricity prices, delayed decarbonization, and job losses for skilled workers. Globally, failure to invest in nuclear energy has constrained options for achieving climate targets.

Not all environmentalism is harmful — the movement successfully fought to fix the ozone layer, fight lead pollution, and end acid rain, and the goals of protecting ecosystems, conserving biodiversity, and combating climate change remain vital.

The problem arises when a faction of environmental activism treats all development and technological progress as unilaterally bad for the “environment.” Well-intentioned but misinformed resistance to innovation and technology slows progress toward the very objectives environmentalism aims to achieve, failing to protect nature and leaving vulnerable communities at the mercy of hunger, disease, and climate impacts that could otherwise be mitigated.

The sweet spot is evidence-based environmentalism: prioritizing technologies that demonstrably reduce carbon emissions, save lives, and alleviate poverty. Science-driven environmentalism would adopt GM crops where evidence shows clear health or environmental benefits, such as biofortified staple crops that address malnutrition. It would embrace nuclear energy as part of a low-carbon energy mix and invest in public education and engagement to ensure citizens understand both the risks and benefits of technological solutions. It would encourage evidence-based policy at national and international levels, resisting pressure to adopt bans or restrictions based solely on feelings.

1. When coal-fired power replaced shuttered nuclear plants in Germany, that led to roughly a 12% increase in three common air pollutants.