Bartholomew’s most distinctive effort to “update” the Church is his commitment to environmentalism. In the press, he is sometimes called the Green Patriarch. When, in 1997, he declared that abusing the natural environment was a sin against God, he became the first major religious leader to articulate such a position.

research has found that conservatives are more likely to support a pro-environmental agenda when presented with messages containing themes of patriotism and defending the purity of nature.

An honest environmental organization, having discovered these low concentrations, might have reconsidered its opposition to Bt crops. But Greenpeace simply changed its rationale. Having argued in its 1999 lawsuit that Bt crops produced too much toxin, Greenpeace now reversed itself. In its report on the German and Spanish corn, the organization complained that Bt crops produced too little toxin to be effective. It argued, in essence, that the Bt in transgenic crops was unsafe for humans but insufficient to kill bugs.