George Monbiot and I find common ground: Eff anti-progress cruelty

Alana Davis - Love and Pride

Death Valley - many liberals fantasy.

In Losing, I take great umbrage with "liberals" who espouse policies / fantasies that will lead to much more suffering. 

For example, the sections of the book:

"Eating organic can be immoral" ("My research experience tells me not to yearn for an organic, local, or slow food system, since that ... would force farmers to accept more toil and less income, consumers would be given fewer nutritious food choices, and greater destruction would be done to the natural environment…") and 

"Opposition to mosquito eradication is immoral and incredibly arrogant." ("In general, all those who oppose GMOs should go down as some of humanity’s worst monsters. People are suffering and dying every single day while the 'No GMOs!' crowd drive their Teslas to Whole Foods. It is simple: our world will continue to be far worse than it needs to be because of them.")

George Monbiot - who is generally far, far more of an idealist than I am - has finally had enough. In "The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People" (c/o Vox's great Kenny Torrella) George summarizes the barbarous lunacy being overtly stated by the latest "pro-starvation" "liberals" (my edit for clarification):

I thought I had seen it all: the full gamut of cruel fantasies which privilege bucolic comfort zones above global necessities. But this was before I read the new book by Chris Smaje, a small farmer and writer with an academic background, called Saying No to a Farm-Free Future. The book has been praised by a number of prominent food, farming and environmental writers and campaignersd. It is becoming something of a bible for their movement. It promotes what appears to be a recipe for mass global starvation.... 

One of the reasons why high yields ensure that more people can be fed is that more supply reduces the price of food, making it more accessible to the poor. Chris flatly rejects this reasoning. He asserts that “Low food prices, high yields and overproduction are absolutely at the root of food system problems, including global poverty and hunger.” He then goes on to make two statements that left my jaw on the floor:

Lower food prices are “the last thing the global poor need. The result is usually more poverty, more hunger”.

and

“Higher food prices might alleviate hunger globally”.

 

Black is white, up is down, we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Gawd, I hate it when the right is right.

PS: Is it just me, or are there fewer and fewer writers who get to the point quickly? It seems to me that the people with good ideas think they are more persuasive if they write more and more and more. Maybe the highly-educated (I'm speaking in generalities) are more impressed by volume. But I think the crazies (Fox News, etc.) are successful because they keep things simple, short, and to-the-point. Headlines that cover everything they need, bullet points that can appear in listcicles, something your crazy uncle can digest in a tweet.