Founder and president, Foundation on Economic Trends; former advisory board member, EarthSave International; national council member, Farm Animal Reform MovementJeremy Rifkin, the founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET), is the intellectual guru of the neo-Luddites, especially as their anti-technology principles apply to food. He is the author of 16 books, most of them littered with errors and false predictions. A professional scaremonger who has been called “the most hated man in science” by TIME magazine, Rifkin nonetheless has a wide following and genuine influence on public policy debates. National Journal magazine named Rifkin one of the 150 people in the U.S. that have the most influence in shaping federal government policy for his “skillfully manipulated legal and bureaucratic procedures to slow the pace of biotechnology.”

Rifkin’s international campaigns against beef consumption and genetically enhanced crops are motivated by his anti-technology philosophy. Rifkin disparages efficiency, promotes “empathy” with nature, and thinks human beings were better off in less advanced centuries. Always prone to exaggeration, Rifkin wrote in his book Beyond Beef that giving up steaks and burgers “is a revolutionary act” that heralds “a new chapter in the unfolding of human consciousness.”