DDT and the Silent Majority

By Rich Kozlovich

Many years ago (I can’t remember when I started doing this) I started what is now Green Notes. It wasn’t a “newsletter”! It was merely a list of people to whom I would send links on articles that I felt were important to many of the decision and opinion makers in our industry. In fact, many times it wasn’t even a list of articles; I would send one or two links and sometimes at multiple times during the week. I used Green Notes in the “subject” line, and that is how the name came about.

Later I started a blog called Green Notes, which I only wanted to maintain for one year, which I did. After that I restarted my mailing list.

At one point I started sending out so many that I thought it was unfair to the recipients…who I didn’t bother to ask if they wanted Green Notes or not to be sending so many e-mails to them each week.

There wasn’t any format then either, until my friend Frank Gasparini, who worked for Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment the time, called it a “newsletter” and that was pivotal for my thinking, because until then I didn’t actually see that it was a newsletter. I decided to commit myself to making this a real E-Newsletter, and one that was worth reading.   (Editor's Note:  I don't do that particular e-mail Green Notes newsletter any longer.  RK)

I started the change with this note to everyone;

There are so many great articles floating around out there that I couldn't, with good conscience, send them all piecemeal (at least without making some people mad at me) so I put together a "blog" page of what I thought to be interesting and thought provoking articles, giving everyone the opportunity to pick and choose.

There are a whole host of articles dealing with subjects of interest, which are not listed such as the Endangered Species Act, and how it has deprived property owners of use of the property they paid for and pay taxes on. I just can't send them all. The goal of all of this is to promote a new paradigm regarding environmental issues and the pesticide application industry. That paradigm is one based on science, not philosophy.

The amount of information on DDT, ozone depletion and global warming (especially global warming) is unbelievable and impossible to keep up with. I felt these articles were timely and would engage you intellectually. I hope that everyone will use what I call the Sowell Critique during this exercise, that being; what alternatives do you offer; what hard evidence do you have; how much will it cost?

Warmest Regards,

That was in February of 2007, and it was just a list of links. By July the format became very similar to what you see now. I also let those who I had been imposing on for so long know that if they didn’t want to be on my Green Notes list to let me know and I would stop sending it to them.

I only had two people ask not to be on the list. Interestingly there have been a number of people ask to be on my list who are not part of the pest control industry and will e-mail me to say how much they enjoy these efforts.

By September of 2008 the format was settled and has remained mostly unchanged, although I never stopped tweaking it.

I had been touting the DDT issue regularly, long before Green Notes became a newsletter. One editor of one of our trade journals, who is now freelancing, told me that DDT was a dead issue. I said it wasn’t to me, however I was also convinced that everyone ….. and I mean everyone….believed all the lies promulgated by Rachel Carson and her acolytes in the media and government, and with a few exceptions, that I was standing alone on this issue. I not so sure any longer!

Since this bed bug issue has become so dominant in structural pest control – and in the lives of many unfortunate people, DDT has been the rage, and the amount of people demanding its return has stunned me, in spite of the fact that DDT doesn’t kill bed bugs any longer.

Apparently this was all that it took for people to start saying how they really felt. After all of these years I should know by now that most people have no desire to be the rock in the current. Most people merely want to live their lives and will just follow the current. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t see and understand things.

The release of the documentary movie, 3 Billion and Counting, has triggered a host of web articles, and many of them stating those things that my peers thought was ridiculous when I said them a few years ago. Amazing how things can turn around. That is the value of rowing against the tide when you believe you are right; eventually the tide turns and then you are in front, and rowing against the tide puts you in great shape; in this case intellectually.

No….DDT isn’t a dead issue. It is the only issue!

All the money, influence and power the green movement has acquired has been as a direct result of their successful efforts to get DDT banned. This is the foundation of the environmental movement. If this can be uprooted then all else they promote can be called into question and people can start thinking critically about what they say, what they do and what their goals really are. And that Silent Majority is now paying attention and is being heard.