Borlaug dismissed most claims of critics, but did take certain concerns seriously. He stated that his work has been “a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into a Utopia”. Of environmental lobbyists he stated, “some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”
Borlaug has been one of my heroes for a long time. He’s is the most important American no one has heard of. The number of lives he saved is staggering.
Bookmark.
Borlaug is perhaps the single biggest hero in the history of mankind.
Bigger even than the guys who invented DDT.
If you ever want to see an emphatic recognition of Borlaug’s accomplishments, google for “Bullsh**”, the Penn and Teller show from Showtime on Borlaug and the food hysterics.
Here’s a segment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPosEhkx5vI&feature=related