You decide.
Here's a few quotes I found in Eco-Freaks that are eye opening and need to be brought to the public's attention.
I've always said that hatred of man, especially Americans, is the motive behind many environmentalist causes. Fewer people means fewer problems for the planet.
Here's a sample of quotes that supports my idea.
These are taken from Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health!
- In response to a reporters question as to whether a DDT ban could result in the use of organophosphate pesticides that are more dangrous to farm workers, Wurster (a chief scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, now Environmental Defense) replied, "So what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as any."
- Wurster also allegedly said, "It doesn't really make a lot of difference because the organophosphate acts locally and only kills farm workers and most of them are Mexicans and Negroes."
- Michael McCloskey, director of the Sierra Club in 1971, said, "the Sierra Club wants a ban on pesticides, even in countries where DDT has kept malaria under control. By using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in underdeveloped countires without the consideration of how to support the increase in populations."
- Alexander King, co-founder of the doomsday cult Club of Rome, said, "In Guyana, within almost two years, it (DDT) had almost delminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem."
- A blogger identifying himself as Jeff Hoffman, a former organizer for eco-terrorist group EarthFirst! and now an environmental attorney, wrote, "Malaria was actually a natural population control, and DDT has cuased massive population explosion in some places where it has eradicated malaria. More fundamentally, why should humans get priority over other forms of life? . . . I don't see any respect for the mosquitos (sic) in these posts."
- Paul Ehrlich, writer of The Population Bomb, which predicted mass starvation unsustainable population growth, has urged luxury taxes on layette, cribs, and diapers. He has also advocated for the forced sterilzation of men in India who have more than three children. He has advocated and endorsed the banning of all food aid to underdeveloped nations.
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Comments: 16
Or the mankind-hating supporters of the horror in Iraq (let me suggest a few links to those human-hating voices).
A few (unusual) words of common sense, Geoffrey.
One can find extremists of any conviction or party; to do so does not deny the valid points that others are making.
My position is 1) the warming is natural and not entirely caused by man, and 2) the results are not as disastrous as the lefties predict.
The thing that you need to understand about DDT however is that it is not the magic bullet to save the human race from malaria. Mosquitoes are unbelievably difficult to eradicate on a planetary scale. They are not going away. You can nearly wipe out a localized population with an enormous financial effort (and I do not see Republicans making those kinds of efforts either, spending 2 billion a week in Iraq seems more important to them) and prevent people for getting malaria one rainy season. However, you have got to do the entire thing over again next rainy season, exposing humans and all other wildlife to high levels of a powerful chemical, DDT, that remains in the body throughout one's lifetime. Mosquitoes bounce back and get busy infecting people again. Do not paint this as black and white, there are shades of gray. If you save a man's life, and then he dies six months later, did you really save his life?
You revel in painting environmentalists as callous buffoons who value human life less than the survival of other species. That is generally a lie. Environmentalists understand something you do not, that humans are part of the living systems of our planet and cannot survive without those systems. It is not an "either or", save the forest or let somebody keep his job. It is a "both"- save the forest and the river will continue to flow and there will be water to drink and irrigate crops and preserve the salmon run so that several other people can keep their jobs.
Your thinking is annoyingly short term. Try long term for a change. What kind of world do you expect your great great grandkids to live in?
And DDT has been around for the better part of 50 years. And, again, no deaths from its use. Indeed, one of the proponents of DDT would eat a spoonful of DDT at each speech he gave as evidence that in small doses it poses no real threat to man.
While working my way through FSU I worked at FSU's housing and used chemicals on a daily basis that have since been banned - Dursban and Diazinon.
Both were extremely effective against roaches and I've never had any issues from using them. But they were banned in a political orgy of chemical correctness in 2000 as Clinton was leaving office, just as DDT was (and I won't get started on the asbestos I inhaled replacing floors and that probably saved more than a few lives when fires broke out).
No, it's not an either-or and the radical environmental fringe needs to quit thinking in those terms because, for some reason, man comes out short.
The earth nor the environment nor man are fragile and we can work together for common-sense solutions to the problems we face.
But scaring children, promoting extreme policies reminiscent of Community Russia or Communist China or North Korea (where you're shot on the spot for cutting down a tree) is not the way to go.
The fact that the UN promotes policies which the US does not agree with does not mean they are 'against' the US. UN stands for United Nations (plural). That means that there are other interests at stake besides those of the US. The fact that some believe that the US runs the world and that the UN should be our bitch does not make it so.
One blogger conceded that DDT saved 50 million lives in Africa. One correction though, bird populations actually increased during DDT's use. Rachel Carlson falsley claimed DDT caused the thinning of egg shells, but never outlined how it happened and ignore evidence that 30-40 years before DDTs widepread use eggshells were thinning.
But using the Precautionary Principle to the detriment of lives seems irresponsible, especially when the evidence of a chemical's impact on the environment is lacking or vastly inconclusive.
As I've indicated, I used professional level insecticides (two of which have been banned on the flimsiest of evidence) in the course of exterminating while working through college, without a mask (try wearing one in Tallahassee's humid summers).
I've suffered no short or long term health consequences and had a beautiful daughter with no issues. Too often, action is taken because of politics and not hard science.
Prime example: the first time DDT was looked at in 1969, the judge found no evidence that DDT caused the problem its opponents claimed. But when the political climate changed in the 70s - well, you know the rest.