Mark Lynas is not one to shy away from media attention, especially if he thinks it's for a good cause.

The longtime climate change advocate once threw a cream pie in the face of climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg. He served as climate change adviser to the now-deposed Maldives president who held a Cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the looming threat of sea-level rise.

As a young activist, he ripped up fields of genetically modified crops and published opinion pieces on the dangers of genetically engineered agriculture in the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper.

Mark Lynas. Photo courtesy of Lynas.

And on Jan. 3, he inflamed the rage of his one-time accomplices in the anti-genetic modification (GM) movement in a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference to announce: "The GM debate is over."

Lynas' speech likened opponents to genetic engineering, in which the DNA of one species is modified with the genes of a different species, to deniers of climate change. The movement is based on fear, not science, he said, along with a "naturalistic fallacy" that natural phenomena are better than advances created in a laboratory.

There is no conclusive evidence that genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, pose significant risks to human health or the environment, said Lynas, and -- although he admits he is no scientist himself -- most scientists would agree with him.

"The sheer gravity of the situation we're in is forcing much of the environmental movement to become more pragmatic," said Lynas in an interview with ClimateWire one week after his speech. "Of course, I don't want to close down legitimate debate, but there comes a point where environmentalists need to respect the scientific consensus which has developed on this issue, just as they do with global warming."

This was hardly the first instance of Lynas' "coming out" in favor of genetic engineering. In his 2011 book "The God Species," he also apologized for his former self, writing, "I personally campaigned against it in the past, and now realize that this was a well-intentioned but ignorant mistake."

The 'naturalistic fallacy'

He described his support for the genetic engineering of crops in a 2010 British television documentary titled "What the Green Movement Got Wrong," alongside other environmentalists who now embrace technologies they once shunned, like nuclear energy and bioengineering.

"It was fundamentally a reactionary campaign about promoting fear, fear of new technology and fear of how the world would work in a modern age," said Lynas about his past. "It's largely based on ignorance and the naturalistic fallacy. It's not a million miles away from taking herbal supplements for cancer."

Lynas is not the only environmentalist who has changed views as time forms a more precise view of science and technology. Stewart Brand, the founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," has embraced nuclear power, genetic engineering and dense urbanization as ways to avert climate change.

"I was very anti-nuclear; I had strong roots in the environmental movement," said Robert Stone, director of the Oscar-nominated 1987 documentary "Radio Bikini," a film on the early tests on nuclear weapons in the South Pacific.

Stone will premiere his new documentary "Pandora's Promise" tomorrow at the Sundance Film Festival. "Pandora's Promise," which prominently features Lynas, tells the story of the growing support of nuclear power as a green source of electricity.

Nuclear power has near-zero carbon emissions, with the only outputs being heat and radioactive waste. Events like the disaster at Chernobyl in the then-Soviet republic of Ukraine and the more recent Fukushima Daiichi plant meltdown in Japan have stirred fear of radioactive poisoning, but climate activists like Lynas are beginning to pit the costs against the consequences of burning fossil fuels.

"I think the environmental movement has done wonderful things," said Stone. "But they're still using the same toolbox to address pollution control, to address climate change."

British environmental writer George Monbiot changed his views on nuclear energy after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster -- not in opposition, but in vigorous support.

"Coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power. Thanks to the expansion of shale gas production, the impacts of natural gas are catching up fast," wrote Monbiot in the Guardian. "Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small."

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, are the creators of the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank that promotes technological advances and development to improve the environment. The institute was formed after Schellenberger and Norhaus wrote "The Death of Environmentalism" in 2004, a controversial paper that embraced technology to forge a new economy and leave the old, dirty past behind. The institute bestowed a paradigm award to Lynas last year.

Building a cleaner environment, said Nordhaus, "is about innovation, and it's about technology, and it's about getting the innovation and the technology as much as you can."

It's not, he added, about consuming less energy, embracing a protected nature that is separate from our daily lives or shying away from scientific advances. Environmentalists like Lynas are shifting away from an idealized view of nature to a more integrated, and useful, one, he said.

"We're not going to put the world back the way it was," he said. "That never really existed."

Friends of the Earth, on the other hand, is an organization that has stuck to its ground, said Eric Hoffman, the food and technology policy campaigner for the organization. Founded in 1969, the organization stands fiercely against nuclear power, genetic engineering and compromising with economic forces that pollute.

"A number of [environmental] groups feel they have to make more deals and be more moderate in their positions," Hoffman said. "Change takes a long time, and we need to hold the hard line to make sure that what our planet needs becomes possible."

Science or anti-science?

In a world where humans must increase food production by 75 percent with less land, water and nutrients by 2050 -- as predicted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization -- roadblocks to agricultural technology are not an option, say promoters of genetic engineering.

Drought-parched cornfields in the Midwest, a disappointing rice harvest in India due to a weak monsoon and a worrisome winter wheat crop in the dusty Great Plains are recent reminders that crops continue to dwindle in inhospitable climates. This scenario is likely to get worse as temperatures rise and weather becomes more erratic. Pest infestations are likely to change patterns along with the climate.

Genetically engineered crops have the potential to decrease the number of pesticide applications and nitrogen fertilizers, said Lynas in his speech, not to mention offer better nutrition to those who need it. It was anti-GM activists in the Irish Green Party who shut down research on a blight-resistant potato, a project backed by a publicly funded scientific institute in Ireland. Public outcry stopped the planting of Bt brinjal -- a type of eggplant genetically engineered with the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis to resist certain pests -- in India.

"The science and public sector is being strangled by the activist fringe," said Lynas.

Lynas' lack of a scientific degrees is an easy target for GM-cautious scientists to question the validity of his claims.

"While he's touting himself as somebody that has tremendous expertise in this, he doesn't have the credentials," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist in the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "To try to unilaterally suggest that he has the answer, it's a misunderstanding of what the scientific process is really about."

Although the Union of Concerned Scientists is not against genetic engineering, the organization believes that uncertainties about the safety, ecological benefits and effectiveness of GM crops remain. There are certainly activists who have exaggerated the correlation of risk, but the concerns are real, said Gurian-Sherman.

Herbicide-resistant crops, such as those engineered to withstand weed killers like Monsanto's Roundup, breed with native plants to create "super weeds" that don't die when sprayed. In China, secondary pests have begun attacking GM crops left alone by the primary insects that once feasted on them.

The scientific consensus on climate change is a completely different issue, said Gurian-Sherman. There aren't nearly enough data on the possible long-term safety of GM crops.

Lynas tries to divorce the role and the proper use of genetic engineering within society from the technology itself, said Gurian-Sherman. The "need" is driven by demand. "Their perspective is, and it's a political one, is to let the markets decide," he said. "What he's suggesting is to shut out scientific debate."

Cost barriers for the poor?

Despite his high-tech bent, Lynas is against the proprietary laws that keep technology away from the poor. He calls for public-sector, royalty-free genetically engineered hybrids that farmers can save year after year -- the generic drugs of agriculture.

Private biotechnology companies, with coffers much deeper than those of public research institutions, are the ones driving the technology. Monsanto has completed field trials for drought-tolerant corn and is developing GM wheat and vegetable crops.

Arcadia Biosciences, a small biotech company in Davis, Calif., has successfully developed rice, canola, tobacco and arabidopsis -- a small flowering plant related to cabbage -- with nitrogen-use efficiency technology. Nitrogen is the main element in commercial fertilizer, and its overuse can lead to water pollution and greenhouse gases.

Danielle Niereberg, director of the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet Initiative and co-founder of Food Tank, is skeptical, as well -- not because of the health or environmental problems GMOs may pose, but because of the relative inaccessibility they will have in the markets in which innovation is most needed.

"I haven't seen the potential that he seems to see," she said.

In discussions on agriculture, said Nierenberg, GMOs "take up all of the oxygen in the room."

They are an exciting prospect, but are expensive and have been promoted at the cost of innovations in agroforestry, rainwater harvesting, improving mobile phone technology or other tools that could have a greater impact on rural farmers in the developing world.

"I'm someone who gets excited by the science of it all," she said. But "it's a risk that we don't invest in the less expensive technologies out there."