JM Mulet, biologist: "The strategy of environmental groups reminds me of that of religious groups"

• Waste More masks than jellyfish in the sea

"Caring for the environment can be very easy, you can do many things and above all, you can save a lot of money."

It is the message that the molecular biologist and popularizer José M. Mulet sends to all citizens concerned about the environmental crisis that the planet is experiencing.

Convinced that "a banner or a catchy slogan will not solve anything," the author of

Eating without fear

or

Medicine without deception

arrives in the middle of a pandemic with

Real Ecologismo

(Destino), a book in which he has tried to collect "everything that science says you can do to conserve the planet and environmentalists will never tell you. "

In his book he is critical of both conservation organizations and climate change gurus such as Al Gore, whom he reproaches for "consuming electricity equivalent to that of 20 families", or declared environmentalists such as Carlos de Inglaterra, "who has a brand of products. and travels by helicopter to give lectures on degrowth, a theory that says that the solution for the environment is that we are all poor. It is not very congruent for a person who has three castles to say that, "he reflects during a telephone interview.

"I do not want people to be mortified, I want people to lead their normal lives, not to renounce anything because that is not incompatible with protecting the environment," he says.

During the pandemic, we have had to forcibly change many habits, some with an environmental impact.

Was it during confinement when you decided to write this book? It was thought before but I took advantage of teleworking to finish writing it and there is some reflection related to the pandemic.

We have discovered that you can telecommute, which is a great option for the environment because the best displacement is the one that is not done.

In fact, we have already seen how the air quality in cities improved dramatically when travel was limited.

Maybe we can learn something for the future.

In his book he argues that buying an electric car right now means changing the emissions we generate from one place to another.

What type of car would you recommend?

The first thing to do is think about whether you really need to buy one.

Calculate well how much it will cost you and how long you are going to use it because it can usually be cheaper to rent it every time you need it.

I know this because I was able to live three years without a car, renting it when I needed it and I assure you that you save money.

But if the calculation indicates that you have to buy a car, today the best and most practical is a hybrid.

At the moment when electricity does not depend on coal, oil and gas as it does now, we could talk about electric cars. The use of electric bikes and scooters is increasing in the city.

How do you rate these means of transport? I see them very well because bikes and, a little less, electric scooters because you have to charge them with electricity, take up very little space.

If people used them instead of going in cars in which often only one person travels, there would probably be no traffic jams.

It is true that many cities were not adapted for bicycles or scooters and their users risked their lives for cars, and pedestrians when walking on the sidewalks.

Now it is safer, so I think they are very good options that must be promoted but, please, respect the pedestrian crossings.

Going shopping is also a challenge for people who care about the environment.

There are a lot of labels, the official ones and others: ecological, organic, biological, zero waste,

plastic free

... which ones would you advise to look at?

Nowhere, would I tell people not to get dizzy by those labels because none of them really guarantees that the product is more environmentally friendly.

In fact, not even that of 'organic' because it refers only to the production method.

If kiwis grown in New Zealand are allowed to be sold in Europe as organic, then you see that it does not tell you anything about the environment.

I would advise eating more fruit and vegetables, and that they be seasonal and local, and above all, that they consume more fresh and less processed products.

This is not only an improvement for the environment, in most cases also for your health and for your pocket, it also considers an incongruity the cotton that is sold as organic but needs a lot of water for its cultivation.

Organic cotton is a crop that needs not only a lot of water, but also a lot of pesticides.

Curiously, the most environmentally friendly cotton is transgenic.

So that stamp doesn't guarantee anything.

And on the other hand, cotton is of course useful for clothing.

The longer you carry it the better but the cotton bags for shopping or taking food are not environmentally friendly or safe. You say that plastic bags were not as harmful as they were presented, and you even consider them a better alternative than the paper ones.

Yes. The advantage of plastic bags is that they are made from a fraction of the oil that is of virtually no use.

You can reuse it several times and in fact, in Spain there is a custom of using them for garbage, which is something that has nothing wrong.

But it is true that it did not make sense to use so many bags and leave with four every time you went to the supermarket.

That was the problem.

But once we come to the conclusion that we must reduce their use, it makes no sense to change them for cotton ones.

You have to use a cotton bag 160 times to amortize a plastic bag for the energy it takes to make them.

In addition, it is dirty to use them for food because you have to wash them with hot water, so they are not recommended for purchase.

It would be best to use the reusable raffia bags or the polyethylene bags that fold.

Those made of paper, if they are not recycled and end up in the landfill, also pollute, and can practically not be reused.

But many plastic bags reach the sea and there are animals like turtles that are affected. Yes, it is obviously a problem but its impact is very localized and it is not a European problem.

Everyone is shocked by the photo of a turtle with a bag in its stomach, but Europe is doing quite well.

We must insist that people have to be more aware and collect garbage in a natural environment.

But in Europe there is practically no plastic or industrial waste that ends up in the sea because we have a fairly efficient management system.

The problem is very localized in Asian countries, where it is true that the management of plastic waste is a disaster.

The pandemic has also forced us to use more precautionary disposable products, increasing waste.

Do you think it will be temporary?

I hope so.

If you can avoid plastic, avoid it, but you have to be clear that the alternative you choose is less polluting because there are cases in which it is not, and cases in which plastic is essential.

The problem that environmental policies often have is that they do not stop to assess the different cases and the different uses and everything is prohibited because if you run a campaign, a message in black or white, good or bad, is much more salable.

Imagine if plastic was banned, could civilization resist it?

The issue is not to ban it but to make it better.

And the campaigns of environmental groups are raised on the basis of prohibiting and that is normally an aberration.

With plastic, there is a lot of scope to do things well that we now do poorly, starting with leaving it in the right container.

He is a strong advocate for GM foods and claims they are safe.

Environmentalists oppose their use and there are people who are suspicious of consuming them, what would you say to them?

I still think that the GMO debate has never bothered people.

The proof I have is that in Europe there is a law that requires labeling any transgenic used in food and when I give a talk and ask people if they can tell me a brand that uses them or if when they go to buy they look for the label to avoid that product, only 1% or 2% tell me they do.

It is another problem for environmental groups and political parties, which have made a legal framework in Europe totally inoperative.

If we had listened to what the environmental groups said in the 80s and 90s, today we would not have a vaccine for Covid because although they say they have not messed with the applications in medicine, I have to say flatly that it is a lie.

If we go to the newspaper library we will see that they asked to ban genetic engineering in all its variants, and in 2011 there was a Greenpeace trial in Germany against stem cell research.

The ecologists' GMO campaign has been a resounding failure because there are more and more uses, also in agriculture.

In Europe we cannot plant them but we are importing them more and more.

It is a technology that has worked very well and has been quite successful.

In his book he is critical of catastrophic messages about the environment. Environmental groups have adopted a strategy that reminds me of a religious group, accusing you that you are a sinner and selling you salvation.

Basically the fault of all the ills of the planet is the ordinary citizen when I believe that the citizen is more the victim than the culprit.

Am I to blame for the Chernobyl accident or the deforestation of the Amazon?

In any case, I will suffer the consequences.

But if you see the campaigns they do, we are all guilty except them.

Along the same lines, you say that a catchy banner or slogan is not going to solve anything.

Don't you think that the mobilizations serve to pressure governments to take measures that are beyond the reach of the citizens? I'm sorry but no and I'll tell you why.

All these mobilizations are fine because they serve to raise awareness, but what are the solutions they propose?

I already know that there is a problem with climate change but if at the demonstration they tell me that nuclear power must be banned because that is the message they have sold, I say no.

Germany has banned them and they have increased CO2 emissions per capita.

The problem with legislating through mobilization is that it is not based on what scientific evidence or experts say, but on the basis of the popular message that has permeated it.

The European legislation on transgenics has not taken into account scientific evidence either, but popular demonstrations, and that's how it goes.

That an activist tells me the solutions scares me, because he is not the most capable person anyway.

Is it fashionable to be an environmentalist?

I think it has always been in fashion because it is a very salable message.

For example, a company or a famous person who lives on their image, knows that the best way to improve it is to participate in a campaign of an environmental group, and environmental groups know that this makes them profitable so an interesting symbiosis is created.

Being an environmentalist is a matter of image, the issue is what else you do.

There is no point taking photos on an Antarctic glacier to denounce climate change when your trip has generated wild emissions and then living in an attic that has the heat on all winter.

Let them calculate how many emissions a Greenpeace campaign generates, they never say that.

He argues that instead of climate change, which he considers empty, we would have to use the concept of anthropogenic global warming.

What do you think of the term climate crisis that we now use in many media?

Climate change is too generic, and it means something else, it is something that a person who studies the climate says because the climate has always been changing, and on top of that it seems to be a distant thing.

What we are experiencing now is anthropogenic global warming.

Climate crisis I do not like either because it does not say what is happening.

A climate crisis could be an ice age and it doesn't have to be human in origin either.

In his book he analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of different energy sources.

Right now with the technology that exists, how would you combine the energies available in Spain, what percentage of each would ideally be more efficient to use to balance consumption needs with the fight against global warming? The problem in Spain and the world is that Although we have been talking about renewables and nuclear for a long time, practically all the energy comes from coal, oil and gas, that is, from fossil sources that are the ones that have the most emissions.

And it is a problem that we do not solve.

So you have to say yes to renewables but by themselves they cannot be responsible for the energy that a country like Spain needs.

Firstly because we don't have so much installed power and secondly because we need a lot of surface to produce power.

There is no Spain for so much solar panel, so it can be a support but not the base.

And thirdly, what do you do at night?

From time to time we have the news that 98% of all energy has been renewable but it is usually a summer day when it has been very windy.

Another day it may be 2% because the electrical mix changes daily.

So the first thing is to continue investigating new forms of energy, because there is much to investigate;

hopefully one day nuclear fusion and other more efficient forms of energy will come.

For now, we must continue to invest in renewables, try to close all thermal power plants and extend the useful life of nuclear power plants.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Environment

• Science and Health

• science

Climate crisis The droughts in Central Europe since 2015 are more severe than in the last two millennia

A time capsule in a Cold War base: traces of an ancient forest found in the Greenland ice

EnvironmentAzahar, postcard images .. and electricity: Seville uses its urban orange trees to obtain biogas

See links of interest

• Work calendar

• Spain - Greece, live

• Asvel Villeurbanne - Real Madrid

• Valencia Basket - FC Bayern Munich