Mark Lynas - Science and the Left

Host: Chris Mooney

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.

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

He's a British environmentalist and author, and he recently gained dramatic attention for his public conversion on the issue GM crops—denouncing his prior allies, and also his prior self, on the issue.

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—like nuclear power.

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

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.