The Environmental Protection Agency recently approved the usage of a Dow Chemical pesticide called Enlist Duo to be used on biotech crop farms across the country. It will start off in limited trial runs and would be available widely once usage is confirmed not to be harmful. According to Reuters:

Dow will be required to closely monitor and report to EPA to ensure that weeds are not becoming resistant to Enlist Duo, the agency said. As well, EPA is ordering a 30-foot in-field “no spray” buffer zone around application areas. It has also banned use when wind speeds are over 15 miles per hour.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice will have none of it. They just filed a lawsuit against the EPA edict in hopes of reversing it in which the basis for their suit is that the herbicide will not only have an adverse effect on people’s health but will also pose a risk to the population of the Monarch butterfly.

Despite the EPA’s thorough study of the usage of the chemical agents involved in this pesticide that included research on the risks to humans and environmental risks. Despite Enlist Duo passing all of the tests that is not enough for the green Luddites of the NRDC and Earthjustice. With the lack of effective pesticides that can be used to protect crops against weeds and insects it drive down the availability of food for humans to consume.

Despite their claim of concern for humans, I find it intentionally misleading that NRDC and Earthjustice have their well-being in mind since one need only look at each group’s name for an indication where they loyalties ultimately lie. Humans are not a part of the environment as far as they are concerned. In light of this and other cases of green group activities such as opposition to pesticides, vaccines, GMO’s and support for animal rights, I am reminded of a quote by CS Lewis who said:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.