"Borlaug's Revolution"
By Rob Tarr (July 17, 2007)

In "Borlaug's Revolution" (Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2007), you write: "As anti-development environmentalists preach the gospel of limits and state coercion, here is a question worth asking: How many millions of people might have perished had Norman Borlaug heeded their teachings?"

Here is a deeper question worth asking: What is the evidence that radical environmentalists care about human lives--or deaths--at all? 

As an ideology, one of environmentalism's fundamental tenets is that the ultimate standard of "goodness" is pristine, untouched nature. But, from agriculture to atomic power, mankind's survival and flourishing depends precisely on modifying and rearranging nature. This makes us innately evil, judged by environmentalism's value-standard. 

On issue after issue, from DDT to genetically modified crops to opposition to industrialization in general, environmentalism's only concern is that we stop "meddling" with nature (as logically entailed by its fundamental premises). To environmentalists, the fact that millions might perish--or be saved--is entirely irrelevant.