Enviroactivism junk science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science says biotechnology is safe. The French Academy of Science agrees: "All criticism against GMOs can largely be rejected on strictly scientific criteria." The national science academies of Germany, Brazil, India, China as well as Britain’s Royal Society share the same view. And the World Health Organization (WHO) States: "No effects of human health problems have been shown as a result of the consumption of GM foods..."

why is free trade a collective action problem ie benefit/many people => small benefit per person

Because free trade increases GDP through comparative advantage and specialization but the effect is so diffuse over a large population that to each individual the benefit seems quaint. Consider countries do better with free trade by doing what they do best and exporting any surplus to trade.  Hence no one has a big bone to pick except when the free trade affects them directly. When this happens, lobby groups are formed and there is little opposition because the benefits are so diffusely spread over a massive population. The govt often caves into the lobby hurting the more massive population. An example would be Bush caving into Ohio steel workers, who in the end costs the economy more jobs due to higher steel prices. Three quarters of people directly hurt by free trade often find new employment equal to or above their pre-free trade employment. In economics, comparative advantage refers to the ability of a party to produce a particular good or service at a lower marginal and opportunity cost over another.
     Economist Ha-Joon Chang criticized the comparative advantage principle, contending that it may have helped developed countries maintain relatively advanced technology and industry compared to developing countries. In his book Kicking Away the Ladder, Chang argued that all major developed countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, used interventionist, protectionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing the same. For example, according to the comparative advantage principle, developing countries with a comparative advantage in agriculture should continue to specialize in agriculture and import high-technology widgets from developed countries with a comparative advantage in high technology. In the long run, developing countries would lag behind developed countries, and polarization of wealth would set in. Chang asserts that premature free trade has been one of the fundamental obstacles to the alleviation of poverty in the developing world. Recently, Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan and China have utilized protectionist economic policies in their economic development.^[15]