When Environmental Activists Kill

Millions of deaths (mostly women and children)

Illness (billions sickened), and poverty (over a trillion dollars in lost GDP, and counting).

Who is responsible for this decades-long catastrophe, and will the perpetrators be held responsible?

 

Last week’s announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in global public health since… well, 1943 when DDT was first used to combat insect-borne diseases like typhus and malaria…..

 

Rachel Carson kicked-off DDT hysteria with her pseudo-scientific 1962 book, “Silent Spring.” Carson materially misrepresented DDT science in order to advance her anti-pesticide agenda. Today she is hailed as having launched the global environmental movement. A Pennsylvania state office building, Maryland elementary school, Pittsburgh bridge and a Maryland state park are named for her. The Smithsonian Institution commemorates her work against DDT. She was even honored with a 1981 U.S. postage stamp. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of her birth. Many celebrations are being planned.

It’s quite a tribute for someone who was so dead wrong. At the very least, her name should be removed from public property and there should be no government-sponsored honors of Carson.

[snip]Business are often held liable and forced to pay monetary damages for defective products and false statements. Why shouldn’t the National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club and other anti-DDT activist groups be held liable for the harm caused by their recklessly defective activism?

It was, of course, then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Ruckelshaus who actually banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge’s ruling that there was no evidence indicating that DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment. Ruckleshaus never attended any of the agency’s hearings on DDT. He didn’t read the hearing transcripts and refused to explain his decision.

None of this is surprising given that, in a May 22, 1971, speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus said that EPA procedures had been streamlined so that DDT could be banned. Ruckleshaus was also a member of — and wrote fundraising letters for — the EDF. source

 

If the EDF rings a bell, here is a memory-refreshing previous post regarding the Rockefeller-Snowe extortion letter on global warming to ExxonMobil, and the subsequent visitors our website had from the possible authors of that missive, the very same EDF. Hysterical clamoring for governmental action based on incomplete scientific evidence, and effectively shouting down all opposing viewpoints by arrogantly claiming that “the debate is over” stinks to high Heaven. And, in the case of the ban on DDT, is in my opinion, criminally negligent as well.