University of Alabama's Law School chairman Andrew Morriss discusses his new book Silent Spring: The False Crises of Rachel Carson.
Dr. Morriss:
"It’s not polite to talk about brown and black people dying because rich white people in America feel better about themselves when the brown and black people don’t get to use DDT,"
Along with China's One Child Policy and other population control regimens imposed on poor people in India, Peru and elsewhere, the DDT ban and the resulting tens of millions of malaria deaths are the foremost crimes against humanity of the late 20th century. The numbers of dead from environmentalist atrocities-- forced population control and the DDT ban-- are at least 210 million. 160 million girls have been killed by selective abortion and female infanticide (almost all associated with population control schemes) and 50 million poor people have died unnecessarily from malaria because of the DDT ban.
Now the same environmentalists want you to think that the earth has a fever, and you need to cede control of the world economy and politics to them.
Michael,
ReplyDelete(Sigh)... No. I have just purchased the book, and I haven't had time to read more than 2 chapters. It's a multiauthor book, and the chapters I've read so far, I'd actually agree with.
The interview appears to be pandering to the anti environmentalist agenda, deliberately, not reflected in the chapters I have read so far.
Rachel Carson in 'Silent Spring' was almost entirely concerned with the widespread spraying of DDT in agriculture, and its use in vector control in disease prevention received little passing mention, which the authors feel deserve criticism.
Its banning in America was due to the 'Baptists and Bootleggers' effect. Environmentalists wanted DDT banned for its environmental effects, and the chemical companies didn't mind, because DDT wasn't a source of much profit and was a competitor to their new proprietary insecticides.
DDT undoubtedly was, still is, a useful insecticide for vector control when properly used. It'll take me a week or so to read the book, so when you post your thread on Rachel Carson as you've promised, I'll respond.
And the Earth is warming. Bjorn Lomborg in the article you recently linked to clearly states he he accepts that it's happening, that humans are the cause and we need to take action.
What action, is the problem. Richard Muller in 'Energy for Future Presidents' notes that the developed countries can't adopt energy policies that the developing world can't afford. With economic development of developing countries, most of new greenhouse gases in the future will be coming from poor countries trying to become richer.
Poor countries generally don't have large reserves of coal, oil or natural gas under their soil. To become rich, they need energy, which they have to buy on the world market. To be able to buy energy on the world market, they need to become rich.
And rich developed countries are addicted to energy, so whenever there's a shortfall of supply over demand, they're able to bid up the price of energy to get their supply (unwillingly) so that poor countries can't afford it, putting strain on other parts of their economies.
A few points:
ReplyDelete(1) Statistically, saying that "the Earth is warming" is like saying the skin color of New York City citizens is taupe. Once you've done that, you've lost all the meaningful information.
(2) The planet is a dynamic system, constantly changing. And yes, humans have played a role in the planetary temperature dynamic (the magnitude of that role is a matter of spirited debate), as have algae and peat moss. Labeling it "bad" is arbitrary. Was the Ice Age "bad"? Was the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event "bad"?
(3) Energy consumption is simply a code phrase for civilization. Yes, energy can be wasted, but when everybody is trudging behind a hand plow, leisure and the arts, as well as law enforcement, advanced medical care, and travel will have become extinct.
(4) So-called "sustainable" energy sources have one major problem: they are diffuse. It is a tragedy that America's most beautiful open spaces are being blighted by forests of Chinese-made, bird- and bat-killing windmills and by vast fields of mirrors shading the ground and destroying the photo-dependent life underneath them. Twenty years ago, if the building of a convenience store had been proposed for some of these places (i.e., the Mojave), watermelon enviros would have been rending their garments to preserve the view. Ted Kennedy's opposition to windmills off the coast of MA is instructive in this regard: "But I sail there!"
(5) Having traveled over the world, it makes me nauseous to see rich Westerners prancing around developing countries, clad in ridiculously expensive "activewear", armed with high-tech water purification bottles and malaria medications, railing against the economic development of the Picturesque Poor in "native costumes" with swollen bellies and running eyes who live in grinding poverty and die early deaths. This ain't cosplay, a**holes.
To all the self-righteous enviros who buy Fair Trade clothesline and eschew more than one square of toilet paper, I have but one thing to say: "F*** you and the Volt you rode in on". Oh yeah, I almost forgot: "Keep your stinkin' a** away from me."
George:
Deletegreat points all.
I love "watermelons"-- green on the outside, red on the inside.
After 1991, I wondered where all the commie-worshipers went. No need to wonder now.
George,
DeleteAnd your point? Or better still, your solution? Poor countries need energy to become richer. Where are they going to obtain it?