I used to be a rather radical environmentalist, and in many ways I still am, but I finally came to the conclusion that like anything else environmental issues must be weight with other factors and a course taken to do the least harm and/or the most good. I found however that I was considered a renegade and turncoat when I mentioned this course of action to anyone really into the movement. Strange that when one becomes fixated on an issue be it the favorite flavor of ice cream or a spotted owl or health care reform at the cost of a nation there seems to be no room for common sense. It is to hell with everything else and any future harm an action may cause it is the issue right now and right now is all that should be considered. And once more the fanatic will shout forever that his opinion is the correct one and you are just stupid or bias or racist (I love this one!).
This article is by one who like me woke up to reality one day. It is interesting because it is a reminder of the great harm environmentalist have done and are doing because their movement is gaining more power in Congress and certainly in the White House. BB
Ann McElhinney was not always a conservative; in fact, she was once quite liberal. She used to think that environmentalism was cute, but it “ain’t so cute anymore,” she said. “Big environment is getting away with murder.”
The murder McElhinney referred to was that of the hundreds of Africans that die every day as a result of America’s ban on DDT. Rachel Carson, the original environmentalist, made her mark on the world by getting the substance banned; DDT is the single most effective pesticide for Anopheles mosquitos, the main carriers of malaria in Africa, and it has no side effects whatsoever for humans or other mammals. The effects of DDT on birds have been greatly exaggerated as well, as McElhinney noted.
Because DDT was banned, today over 370 children die daily of malaria in Uganda alone. “This is one hundred percent unnecessary death,” McElhinney argued. She wondered what would happen if 370 American children die from malaria in Virginia every day. “I think we’d all be going around and all our clothes would be covered in dust, they would be air-bombing us in DDT. We’d work out the problems later because we wouldn’t allow our children to die. But obviously it doesn’t work like that for black children,” McElhinney said. “We’ve got to save the children first,” she argued, stating that even if DDT was harmful to birds, it would be worth it to use to save our children.
“The new Rachel Carson is Al Gore,” McElhinney argued. Indeed, Gore’s attempts to destroy modern energy production literally results in the deaths of jobs and people, as factories close and jobs are destroyed over carbon emissions, and as food that would go to the starving in America and elsewhere goes to biofuel production instead. This is the problem McElhinney is fighting: the attitude that puts the environment above human life and human livelihood.
“There are journalists who don’t believe in journalism anymore,” she said. “They aren’t telling the truth.”
We have to weigh carefully all issues in the light of what is most important. there are so many things the environmental movement is doing to impact our world in negative ways. In California right now the environmentalist have gotten the water turned off to canals that irrigate hundreds of acres of vegetable fields. This because a tiny rather minnow like fish that as far as scientists can tell has no significant impact on the environment or sustaining life happen to live in these canals. this action took away the livelihood of hundreds of people from the owners of the property to the workers. It also made the costs of vegetables go up considerably because instead of US grown vegetables on our table we are importing more from countries with less concern for little fish.
We should remember well what the spotted owl did to the lumber industry in the northwest. the cases go on and on and so many of them could have been solved with less harm to all if only a bit of common sense had been applied. BB
