My Predictions for 2009

By Rich Kozlovich

Since everyone else seems intent on making predictions for 2009, I thought I might do so as well. Along with the thinking of my friend Alan Caruba I will say this...If I am right...I will crow about it! If I am wrong, I won't see the need to bring it up again. Especially since "prediction is really hard...especially about the future".

For those who read a great deal, think that history is important and spend a great deal of time watching the world and thinking about what they are seeing, you will not find anything said here startling. There is one thing that I will say that many will find potentially disturbing. History will mark 2008 as the year when everything changed. Dramatically!

1. Pesticides will come under even greater attack by the new head of EPA, in line with those actions by Browner and Ruckelshaus.
2. Green activists and EPA will pressure states to eliminate preemption laws.
3. Green activists and EPA will pressure states to implement new regulations which will mandate IPM language in all locations, not just schools.
4. There will be strong efforts to implement a new IPM licensing requirement in all states.
5. The pesticide manufacturing, distribution and applications industries will continue to jump on the green band wagon.
6. The national and state trade associations for the pesticide applications industries will be forced to implement green initiatives.
7. The national and state trade associations will face financial difficulties.
8. There will be fewer trade associations defending the pesticide applications industries.
9. There will be fewer, or at least less viable, pesticide manufacturers and distributors by the end of 2009.
10. The pest control industry will make more money than ever before, but because of economic issues there will be fewer companies.
11. The pest control industry will adapt to whatever is required.
12. Bedbugs will become a nationwide plague.
13. Strong efforts will be made to remove pyrethroids from the market place for use by the general public.
14. Strong efforts will be underway to remove them from the professional pest controller’s arsenal.
15. Rodenticides will be lost for use by the public.
16. Work will be under way to remove them for use by professional pest controllers.
17. Rodent control will suffer and their numbers will increase dramatically.
18. Prices for pest control services will become so high that those with the most need will be unable to afford it.
19. Insect and rodent borne diseases will increase startlingly, or at least this will be the start.
20. The poorest least educated among us will turn to illegal means of getting the relief that they need from pests that the government and green activists have deprived them of.
"We live in a time when great efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to falsify the record of the past and to make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties, and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was." - Islam Bernard Lewis', historian