In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-MD) and assorted radicals declared April 22 as Earth Day, apparently to celebrate the hundredth birthday of Vladimir Lenin – a bloodthirsty revolutionary, the founder of the Soviet Union, and a revered icon of the Left until 1992. It is long overdue to end this travesty and establish Earth Day on some other day, and in honor of somebody more deserving. Let us celebrate Earth Day on March 25, in honor of Norman Borlaug.
Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called The Father of the Green Revolution and The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives.
Borlaug developed novel sorts of wheat with outstanding yields and resistance to diseases, along with novel methods of wheat planting. Later, he expanded his research into corn and rice. He produced his most important results in Mexico, with American funding and political support. Mexico also became the first beneficiary of his research: by 1963, 95% of Mexico’s wheat crops used the semi-dwarf varieties developed by Borlaug. That year, the harvest was six times larger than in 1944, the year Borlaug arrived in Mexico. Mexico had become fully self-sufficient in wheat production, and a net exporter of wheat, despite enormous population growth. India, Pakistan, and other Asian, Latin American, and African countries quickly followed suit.
Norman Borlaug had this to say on climate change: “I don’t think our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. I’d rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first.” (John Tierney in NY Times blogs, 2008)
Since at least the 1980’s, Norman Borlaug and his life work were frequently attacked by the environmentalists.