My Gazette: Going Green

If it's Green, it isn't Gold.  Going Green is Another Term For Corruption, Hypocrisy, Lies and Insanity.

By Rich Kozlovich 

Growing up in South West Pennsylvania I saw pollution from the coal mines and coke ovens that was massive, and as a result, for many years I considered myself an environmentalist. That was a failure in definition on my part.  I considered justifiable concern about the environment meant being an environmentalist. How foolish I was. Environmentalists merely used that to disguise the real definition of organized environmentalism.

Green on the outside, and red on the inside.

After I became an exterminator, I wanted to make sure what I was doing wasn’t harmful to society and the environment, which meant doing a lot or research on pesticides, especially DDT.  What I found very quickly was if the greenies and/or leftists were for something, that was more than enough justification to be against it. From that point on I started writing about what I discovered in defense of my industry.

Everything you’ve been told about DDT and pesticides in general is a lie. The green/left nitwit brigade have tools they use consistently. Lies of commission, lies of omission, logical fallacies, speculation, and projection.  Nothing has changed, except I think far more people see them for who and what they really are now.

 On January 2, 2024, Jack Hellner published this article, The media and other green pushers clearly don't care about killing wildlife or the truth, saying:

Instead of the media blaming wind turbines for killing whales and dolphins, they blame conservatives for pointing it out. According to the Daily Signal:  Associated Press Gets It Wrong: Wind Farm Contractors Acknowledge Turbines Harm Dolphins, Whales........There is a sad story in USA Today that a bald eagle that had a gunshot wound had to be put down. They correctly said it was an inhumane act that killed the eagle:. .............Yet we never see stories about how inhumane it is that wind turbines are allowed to kill thousands of eagles without many if any repercussions. The green pushers are allowed to kill eagles and other wildlife because they are supposedly saving the planet from climate change............  

Remember DDT? It was banned because it was allegedly killing the avian life of North America, especially the Bald Eagle.  And that was a lie, a lie that's still being perpetrated.  

 

This picture to the right was featured in an article entitled, "What Were We Thinking? "The Top 10 Most Dangerous Ads", with the subtitle, "A look back at 10 colossally painful advertisements." 

 

Some of the stuff they point out is right on, but let's face it, they're wrong about DDT, because DDT was the greatest chemical compound ever created for the benefit of mankind.  It was good for everyone, and everything, except for bugs, especially mosquitoes, and everything you "know" about DDT is a lie.   

 

In spite of the claims in this article, DDT wasn't dangerous to the "nervous, immune, endocrine, and neurological systems." Nor did it have a "devastating influence on the natural environment." 

 

The fact is DDT was a weapon of mass survival, and saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the avian population actually increased during the DDT years, including the Bald Eagle, and the robin, which Rachel Carson claimed was going to go extinct, was the most populace bird in North America. Avian life was 19 times higher during the peak DDT years, and Rachel Carson had to know that because she was a writer for the Wild Life Service and every year she viewed and reported on the December Audubon Society's winter report showing that. 

 

Rachel Carson's science fiction book Silent Spring was blatantly false, and she knew it.  She was the mother of junk science, and that pattern of lies of commission, lies of omission, misdirection, speculation, and out right fraud has been the pattern of the green movement ever since.  

 

When one takes a good look at the claims of the green movement we find the rank and file, mostly useful idiots, really aren't so much concerned about the environment, as they're concerned about eliminating humanity.  The leadership is only concerned about using the fear mongering that movement can generate to attain unwholesome amounts of power, privilege, and money.   And make no mistake, none of their schemes will apply to them, and have no illusions, they will claim everything causes catastrophic climate change, including houseplants. Everything except what they're doing. 

 

Javier Milei, President of Argentina, made it clear at the latest Davos meeting - January 18, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Idle hands are the devil’s playground, and who has a more frivolous existence than a leftist working at the behest of any one of the West’s federal governments? Case in point: Justin Trudeau and his thumb-twiddling comrades. They are running out of private affairs in which to meddle; they’ve already socialized all the industries; baby murder is everywhere (and snowballing); and the unalienable “rights” of the people are all but dead. What else could they possibly find to do? Well, idle hands are drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame, and Canada’s federal government is now pursuing the ideas of creating a “net zero” military. As reported by Rebel News yesterday:..............

 

Here's what they're up to. 

 

Agriculture

 

The farmer protests that changed the Dutch government have come to Germany-  January 13, 2024 By Andrea Widburg - The mainstream media is assiduously ignoring a fascinating story: German farmers are doing what Dutch farmers did last year; namely, rising up in a massive protest against their country’s globalist, climate change policies. With luck, these protests will have the same outcome, which was a massive shift to conservativism in the Dutch government during the last election. Modern Germany is, in some ways, a very weird country thanks to the legacy of WWII. Its citizens have grown up in the shadow of their collective guilt for the Holocaust, along with the 80 million or so other deaths the Nazi war sparked. They are, in many ways, a very self-apologetic, self-loathing people.............

• WEF Speaker Claims Farming and Fishing Are “Ecocide” and It Be Recognized as a “Serious Crime” [VIDEO]

Anthropogenic Climate Change

 

The complete fantasy of climate science - January 10, 2024 By Andrea Widburg - One of the things to remember about climate change madness is that it has all the scientific validity of the flat earth theory or the ancient medical belief in humors. That is to say, it’s a sealed universe driven by self-reinforcing faith and fantasy without any serious reality attached. The last two days have brought two new examples of the delusions and outright lies that drive the climate change narrative.  On the delusion side, we have Axios’s horror that the earth is within 1.5 degrees of the global warming limit set at the Paris Climate Accords, paired with its assurance that (and I’m quoting more accurately than Claudine Gay ever would), “The climate of 2023 was the hottest seen in at least 125,000 years…” (Emphasis mine.)..........

 

Does the Earth have a fever? Is it boiling? Have we hit the tipping point? The answer is clearly no - January 13, 2024 By Jack Hellner -The public is constantly being told that the Earth is the warmest it has ever been. And that warming is being caused by humans, our use of natural resources, and CO2. 

And the solution for the media and other Democrats is the same as the solution for all problems: We need a bigger government, with higher taxes and more regulations and of course, the government has to be run by Democrats. We need to give up our gas-powered cars, furnaces, gas stoves, and appliances before it is too late. Something that never gets in their way as they push this green agenda are facts..........

 

Media members panic with the record cold, worry it will derail ‘warming’ tale - January 18, 2024 By Jack Hellner - The media agents can’t stand the thought of people seeing and experiencing the record cold in the United States, because they’re worried it will have an effect on the everyday person’s willingness to believe the scam that the earth is warming—so they put out this piece of propaganda:

US in deep freeze while much of the world is extra toasty? Yet again, it’s climate change

Wind chills in parts of North Dakota reached minus 70 degrees (minus 56 degrees Celsius), while the heat index in Miami was more than 160 degrees warmer at 92 (33 degrees Celsius). The fourth-coldest NFL football game took place in Kansas City, while across the globe the thermometer hit a blistering 92 degrees, 12 degrees (6.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than average on Friday during tennis’ Australian Open in Melbourne. Warm temperature records fell overnight in Aruba, Curacao, parts of Argentina, Oman and Iran.

If it seems as if the world has gone topsy-turvy, in a way it has. Because this all comes from what’s happening in the Arctic, where it used to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Now, it’s warming three to four times faster.

Hint: If all the things we are told cause warming, actually did, it would be warming everywhere. You wouldn’t have record cold temperatures across different climates and regions...........

Electric Vehicles

So filled with fraud: The green agenda and the rich who benefit from it -  January 19, 2024 By Jack Hellner - The federal government essentially has ordered electric car companies to commit fraud.  Here's the headline: The Electric-Vehicle Cheating Scandal, A government rule makes them look nearly seven times as efficient as they are. Here's what's from the article:..............These are the worthless carbon credits that companies such as Tesla got rich selling to companies like GM and Ford so they could pretend to reduce the carbon from their highly profitable gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. Democrats claim they care about the poor and middle class but the poor have been screwed for years to pay more for their gas-powered vehicles to cover the massive losses from selling inefficient, expensive, impractical vehicles powered by the highly flammable pollutant lithium that the green pushers want to force all of us to buy. ..............

The Electric Car Con Explained - William Levin There is no factual basis to claim that the government man - January 11, 2024 By William Levin - Is electricity a source of energy? Most people will answer yes, which is incorrect. Electricity carries energy but it is not itself a source of energy, which in the U.S. is supplied 60% by natural gas and coal, 18% nuclear and 22% renewables (hydro, solar and wind). The related question is whether cars are a major consumer of energy and hence a significant contributor of Co2 emissions? Again, most people believe both statements are self-evidently true, hence the importance of moving to electric cars. In fact, cars (light-duty transportation) account for less than 5% of global energy demand, with U.S. cars accounting for 19% of the global car fleet, declining to under 15% by 2050 as car demand grows faster outside the U.S.   Putting these facts together, and they are indisputable facts, provides a stunning insight................ In other words, there is no factual basis to claim that the government mandate to switch to electric cars will have any material impact on global Co2 emissions..........

Hertz backpedals… again… and announces plan to sell off EV fleet and purchase gas vehicles -

January 12, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Is this schadenfreude or a palate cleanse? Perhaps a little of both? In 2021, Hertz had publicized plans to have electric vehicles comprise 25% of its fleet by 2024, and announced it would be ordering 100,000 Teslas by the end of 2022. By the end of 2023, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen; per Hertz Global CEO Stephen Scherr, “our in-fleeting of EVs will be slower than our prior expectations.” (Scherr cited price cuts as Tesla, in conjunction with repair costs which were “twice” as much as a normal gas-powered vehicle.)  In November, I wrote a blog on the car rental company’s decision to renege on previous commitments to the “green” agenda, but it seems I was a bit premature, because the story wasn’t finished; from an article at Detroit Free Press published yesterday:............

 

Why Electric Vehicles Have a Reduced Range in the Cold - Alex Caprariello, Urja Sinha Jan 16, 2024 - As subzero temperatures slam the U.S., electric vehicle drivers are learning their cars’ batteries don’t perform well in the cold. Some charging stations in cities like Chicago have become EV graveyards with long lines of Teslas that won’t start. “It’ll drain pretty fast. This cold is brutal. It’s draining the battery, I can’t even get inside the car,” said EV driver Wes France. “My battery drained down to five percent, which is faster than normal. Long story short, here I am, I have to tow it out this way.”...........

 

Chicago becomes a ‘graveyard’ littered with corpses of ‘dead robots’ - January 16, 2024 By Olivia Murray - As the late great John Wayne purportedly said, “Life’s hard; it’s even harder when you’re stupid.” The Midwest, accustomed to brutal winters, has been hit by an especially “bitter” storm; Chicago in particular is dealing with temperatures as low as the negative 20s and 30s, and a high of… one whole whopping degree. Now, as anyone with even the slightest bit of awareness could have told you, E.V.s were not going to perform… like at all, in this kind of weather. But then again, are the people buying these cars really doing so with any awareness? Arguably no, which is presumably why they actually relied on their vehicles for transportation, and were genuinely shocked to discover how truly unreliable the E.V. design is; read below, reported by a Fox News outlet based in Chicago:..........

 

My Take - Chuckling. I'm really enjoying all this. Is that being mean? Yep, and I'm really enjoying all this, and I don't care. Those who wrote about this from the beginning, and were called Luddites, deniers, and worse, have the right to enjoy this. Maybe all that smug, arrogant self righteousness will keep them warm? Oh, wait, that's all frozen now.  Schadenfreude!

 

Electric buses: another bankrupt green boondoggle  -January 9, 2024 By Mike McDaniel - Electric buses are just like electric passenger vehicles: they’re not ready for prime time, only more so. Proterra buses are a case in point. Cities that wasted money on them found they had far less range then advertised. They commonly couldn’t complete even short, flat routes specifically designed for them. The enormous weight of their batteries cracked frames, and getting parts from the factory was virtually impossible. But to make up for their failures, they were far more expensive than reliable diesel buses. Proterra went bankrupt in August of 2023. President Biden gave Proterra at least $10 million, and lauded it as the future: “when you start making a thousand buses a year, you’re going to need more room for customers.”  That makes as little sense as anything Biden is saying these days. And as with everything else, the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration is incapable of learning from its mistakes: ......... 

 

Ford Cuts Michigan Workforce for Electric Truck That Joe Biden Touted - John Binder 19 Jan 2024 - Ford Motor Company is following through on plans to scale back production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup that President Joe Biden once touted. On Friday, Ford executives announced that about 1,400 auto workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, would be moved to other manufacturing jobs at the company or offered retirement packages. The workforce cuts come as Ford scales back production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning due to a lack of demand among American consumers................

Fossil Fuels

Left Wing Climate Activist Endorses Blowing up Pipelines and Admits People Could be Killed - Mike LaChance Jan. 16, 2024 -  A left wing climate activist named Andreas Malm was recently interviewed by the New York Times and openly endorsed the idea of blowing up pipelines and admitted that there could be casualties. Trump supporters are sitting in jail for merely walking through the Capitol, but left wingers can openly call for crime and violence in the furtherance of their political goals and no one says a thing. When pressed on that response, Malm argued, “Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future.”...........The left is so used to getting away with this behavior that they’re perfectly comfortable talking about it openly.

San Diego Catholic diocese touts its 'historic first' in divesting from fossil fuels -  January 13, 2024 By Monica Showalter - The Catholic Diocese of San Diego, led by progressive San Francisco Cardinal Robert McElroy, apparently doesn't care if it ends up looking stupid ... or for that matter, broke. According to the National Catholic Reporter, it's taking its cues on economics from Argentine-educated Pope Francis, who understands about as much about economics as the socialist regime in that country that was just thrown out by its voters......

Trudeau’s regime shifts its focus to a ‘net-zero’ military -  January 18, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Idle hands are the devil’s playground, and who has a more frivolous existence than a leftist working at the behest of any one of the West’s federal governments? Case in point: Justin Trudeau and his thumb-twiddling comrades. They are running out of private affairs in which to meddle; they’ve already socialized all the industries; baby murder is everywhere (and snowballing); and the unalienable “rights” of the people are all but dead. What else could they possibly find to do? Well, idle hands are drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame, and Canada’s federal government is now pursuing the ideas of creating a “net zero” military. As reported by Rebel News yesterday:............

My Take - As a side bar, you may find this interesting.  Trudeau's Hypocrisy Regarding Israel - American Thinker.   The man has been vile his entire career, and yet he's still in power. I'll never understand Canadian politics or parliamentarian government with the convoluted structure it creates.  But beyond that, it seems totally clear to me there's something wrong with this man's mind, and he's certifiable. 

Green Energy

2024 Promises the Expansion of the Green Energy Scam - January 17, 2024 By Vince Coyner -  Years ago, I wrote a post about how cheap air travel to Europe was ruining America. My point was that the Americans visiting Europe were confusing what they experienced as a tourist with the reality of life in Europe. These progressive American fans of two-hour lunches and 6 months of maternal and paternal leave didn’t have a clue about how average Europeans lived. Indeed, a couple of years later, the Foundation For Economic Education came out with a study that showed the poorest 20% of Americans were better off than the average European. Basically, the average European suffers from high taxes, high prices, tiny homes and cars, and, increasingly, less freedom. But tourists sipping tea in London or shopping in Paris rarely, if ever, see this, or understand it if they do.......

 

Final thought:   Will Rogers once said, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”  That thought never crossed the minds of these nitwits. After all, the peasants are in dire need of their elite wisdom. Right?   Of course, It would be nice if their views were predicated on history, logic, facts, and reality versus intimidation by thugs and imbecilic ideologues.

Rachel Carson, environmentalism's answer to Pol Pot.

James Dillingpole, May 28th, 2009

Yesterday would have been her 102nd birthday and I'm sorry I missed it, but my sharp-eyed fellow-traveller David Hinz at The Minority Report celebrated with a lively dance on the old fraud's grave. He doesn't mince his words: Rachel Carson - poster girl of the international eco movement - was a "mass murderer" to rival Stalin and Pol Pot.

Was she really responsible for the deaths of as many as 50 million people? That's just an estimate. What we do know is that her landmark 1962 bestseller Silent Spring - the book that set a million and one green activists on the path of eco righteousness - was responsible for the worldwide ban on the insecticide DDT, the most effective preventative against the mosquitos which spread the world's deadliest disease, Malaria. In this way countless millions of people, mostly Third World children, were condemned to death in the name of ecological correctness.

Rather as so many people do now with the global warming/climate change story, readers in the 1960s just couldn't get enough of Rachel Carson's apocalyptic predictions of man-made eco doom. There might, she claimed, be a cancer epidemic which would hit 'practically 100 per cent' of the human population; bird life would be wiped out. And all because of the evil DDT. As a result of this scare-mongering DDT was banned first by an eco-activist administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), subsequently by the UN and the World Health Organisation.

Problem was, few if any of the claims made by Carson were true. They were derived from a complete misrepresentation of research by Dr James DeWitt.

She claimed: "Dr DeWitt's now classic experiments [show] that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched."

In fact DeWitt's research had shown the exact opposite:

"DeWitt reported no significant difference in egg hatching between birds fed DDT and birds not fed DDT. Carson omitted mentioning DeWitt's report that DDT-fed pheasants hatched about 50 percent more eggs than "control" pheasants."

DDT doesn't cause cancer. (Carson blamed DDT for something that was actually, later research found, caused by aflatoxin, a toxic by-product of fungi). Nor does it damage bird reproduction. In 1971-72 an EPA judge concluded after seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony:

"DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."

In 2006, the WHO tacitly acknowledged its mistake by partially rescinding the ban. "We must take a position based on the science and the data. One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT," said Arata Kochi of WHO.

Do the utterly misleading "extreme scenarios" posited by Rachel Carson remind you of anyone? Prince Charles, maybe? Al Gore? Dr James Hansen? No surprise if they do. Carson's bestselling brand of junk science and misanthropic, anti-capitalist doom-mongering has provided the model for the international green movement ever since.

The Dirt On Earth Day: Chemophobia Masquerading As Environmentalism

By Henry I. Miller and Kavin Senapathy, April 20, 2015

Wednesday will be the 45th anniversaryof the first Earth Day.  (Editor's Note: Please note this originally ran on April 20,2015)  Founded by then-U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin), it was held in1970 as a “symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship. In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience, and most activities were organized at the grassroots level.

A driving force of environmentalism in that era was Rachel Carson’s best-selling 1962 book, Silent Spring, an emotionally charged but deeply flawed excoriation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides on crops and wetlands for the control of crop-devouring and disease-causing insects. 

 

Carson’s proselytizing and advocacy led to the virtual banning of DDT and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides in spite of the fact that “Silent Spring” was replete with gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of egregious academic misconduct. Carson’s observations about DDT were meticulously rebutted point by point by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, Professor of Entomology at San Jose State University, a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. In his stunning 1992 essay, “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” Edwards demolished her arguments and assertions and called attention to critical omissions, faultyassumptions and outright fabrications. For example:....To Read More.....

Book Review: Silent Spring at 50

Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson (Hardcover) $25.95, By Roger Meiners, Pierre Desrochers, and Andrew Morriss

Click here to look inside the book.
 

This book is a "must read" for the pesticide manufacturing, distribution and application professionals ,and is the perfect book for those with an interest in the EPA and the regulatory nightmare that has been created by Silent Spring, Carson, the green movement and those who actually created the foundational logic and views of modern environmental history, because the ban on DDT was foundational to this movement.

This book will force anyone who really wants to search out the truth to think about the issues.  It also helps to know about the foundational thinkers and early writers that influenced Carson. 

I have to say this is the strangest book I have ever read on this subject.  The primary writers enlisted the efforts of a number of people who wrote with different styles and philosophies.  That can be a bit of a turn off, but in order to really appreciate what's happening in this book it is important to get past that and read this book to its conclusion.  I feel this book is that important.  

I will say this though.  The history of pesticide regulation goes back to 1910, and you will find that the manufacturers will not come out of this looking like anything except Machiavellian in their attempt to pass laws and regulations to prevent smaller companies from cutting into their margins, no matter how they attempt to frame their views.  A case of not seeing the long term consequences of unleashing the regulatory hounds.    

There is one point that some may find disturbing, and that is the issue of egg shell thinning where in Larry Katzenstein’s chapter he says that:

“Virtually everyone now agrees that DDT can harm certain bird species: its magnification up the food chain does cause thinning to occur in the eggs of raptors (including the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon, and the osprey), resulting in a decline in the number of those birds."  

That's inaccurate, but the rest of the chapter is very well done, and one I enjoyed.  He also provides wonderful information on what is the primary legacy of Silent Spring imposed on the world today; The Precautionary Principle.  As I said, there are different writing styles and philosophies presented including the first chapter from a self described activist.  There is one thing they all agree on.  Silent Spring is not a scientific publication and its author was not a scientist. 

As I have said, in many ways it was the strangest book on this subject I have ever read, but also the one most thought provoking because of its depth.  It kind of reminds me of working a crossword puzzle.  You have to fit the pieces together, and this book forces you to think a bit differently, and in my opinion more effectively.

Although I underlined and highlighted heavily while reading, my regret is that I didn’t take side notes and create an extra index for easier reference.  This is a book to be studied and I may have to read it again to get the full impact. 

This book isn’t just for scholars!  It is a must read book for all those involved in any chemical industry and for those who stand against the irrational, misanthropic and morally defective green movement.   

Silent Spring: Fifty Years of Junk Science, Part III - By Rich Kozlovich Saturday, February 9, 2013 - Rachel Carson is commonly known as the mother of the environmental movement due to the publication of her book Silent Spring.  Why did this book have such an impact?  First of all, she was an exceptional writer.  Her writing skills placed her beyond the works of others of her time discussing many of the same subjects.  Originally her major in college was English, which she later changed to biology, but first and foremost she considered herself a writer.   Although classified as a scientist, she wasn’t a practicing scientist.  While “working for the U.S. Bureau of Fish and Wildlife Services in the Commerce Department, her job there was as a writer, summarizing then popularizing the work of scientists in the lab and in the field.” Before she wrote Silent Spring she was already well known for her books about the ocean.  Her personal research included “a brief and shallow dive clinging to a boat’s ladder”.  She never claimed to have been where she had not, but she wrote with a technique “guiding the reader in narrative form, observing as if with her own eyes- or the readers.” …….

From The Climate Policy Network

Silent Spring at 50

The False Alarm of Rachel Carson 

 

 This week Silent Spring will turn 50. Rachel Carson’s jeremiad against pesticides is credited by many as launching the modern environmentalist movement, and the author, who died in 1964, is being widely lauded for her efforts. In Silent Spring, Carson crafted a passionate denunciation of modern technology that drives environmentalist ideology today. At its heart is this belief: Nature is beneficent, stable, and even a source of moral good; humanity is arrogant, heedless, and often the source of moral evil. --Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, October 2012

Did cancer doom ever arrive? No. In Silent Spring Carson cites data showing that American farmers were then applying about 637 million pounds of pesticides to their crops. The most recent Environmental Protection Agency estimate is that farmers used 1.1 billion pounds in 2007. What happened to cancer incidence rates? According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, age-adjusted incidence rates have been dropping for nearly two decades. Why? Largely because fewer Americans are smoking and lots of women stopped using hormone replacement therapy, which researchers have now concluded significantly increased the risk of breast cancer. --Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, October 2012

This iconic book, hardly scrutinized over the decades, substituted sensationalism for fact and apocalyptic pronouncements for genuine knowledge. Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work. Despite her reputation as a careful science- and fact-based writer, Carson produced a best-seller full of significant errors and sins of omission.  Carson vilified the use of DDT and other pest controls in agriculture but ignored their role in saving millions of lives worldwide from malaria, typhus, dysentery, among other diseases. Millions of deaths, and much greater human suffering, ultimately resulted from pesticide bans as part of disease-eradication campaigns. -- Roger Meiners, Master Resource, 21 September 2012

 Carson produced a best-seller full of significant errors and sins of omission. Far from being on the verge of collapse, American bird populations were, by and large, increasing at the time of Silent Spring’s publication. Although Carson was active in the Audubon Society, she ignored Audubon’s annual bird count, which had long been the best single source on bird population. Instead she relied on anecdotes claiming bird population was collapsing. It is inconceivable that Carson did not know about the annual bird count–some of which occurred in the locations she asserted were in collapse. -- Roger Meiners, Master Resource, 21 September 2012

Rachel Carson's mentor and the source for much of her case that synthetic pesticides, and DDT in particular, were devastating bird life and causing widespread cancer in people, was a fervent denier of the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. His name was Wilhelm Hueper. An immigrant to the United States from Germany (who shook off an embarrassing but brief enthusiasm for Nazism that led him to seek a job back in Hitler's Germany) he became the first director of the environmental cancer section of the US National Cancer Institute. There he single-mindedly pursued the idea that cancer was on the increase and that the cause was largely synthetic chemicals in the environment. He encountered resistance, however, and not just from the chemical industry. Medical scientists were growing convinced that the rise of lung cancer was being caused by a rise in smoking. Hueper would have none of it. –-Matt Ridley, The Spectator, 20 September 2012 

 Dr. Baldwin led a committee at the National Academy of Sciences studying the impact of pesticides on wildlife. In his review, he praised Ms. Carsons’s literary skills and her desire to protect nature. But, he wrote, “Mankind has been engaged in the process of upsetting the balance of nature since the dawn of civilization.” While Ms. Carson imagined life in harmony before DDT, Dr. Baldwin saw that civilization depended on farmers and doctors fighting “an unrelenting war” against insects, parasites and disease. He complained that “Silent Spring” was not a scientific balancing of costs and benefits but rather a “prosecuting attorney’s impassioned plea for action.” But scientists like him were no match for Ms. Carson’s rhetoric. DDT became taboo even though there wasn’t evidence that it was carcinogenic (and subsequent studies repeatedly failed to prove harm to humans). -- John Tierney, The New York Times, 5 June 2007

A half-century ago this summer, Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring began to appear in serialized form in The New Yorker, instilling an awareness of environmental impacts in the very fabric of our culture. Silent Spring now affects everything we do, buy, eat and wear. It has also shaped how we think about technology in general and pesticides in particular, seeing them at best as necessary evils. This legacy has yielded both good and bad results. The good is that Silent Spring inspired the creation of federal regulation that subjects pesticides and new technologies to strict scientific scrutiny before they can be commercialized and used. The bad is that the demonization of agricultural technology obscures the overwhelming environmental fact of our times, that such technology — even pesticides — has been an overwhelming good for the environment and human health. --Charlie Stenholm and John Block, USA Today, 27 September 2012
 

EPA Hails Rachel Carson: 'How One Person Can Make a Difference'

By Elizabeth Harrington

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used its annual “pollution prevention” week to praise the late environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose book “Silent Spring” served as the impetus for banning DDT, a pesticide that virtually eradicated malaria in Europe.  To Read More….

Editor’s Note:  I recommend reading the comments in this article, which is somewhat flattering to Carson....mores the pity.  Those of us who have been pointing out for many years that Rachel Carson became the driving force for the modern environmental movement have also pointed out that she did so with lies, speculation and imagination, but little science; forever earning her the epithet she so richly deserves; The Mother of Junk Science.   

For fifty years those who took that position was a correctly informed small circle.  As the years went by that circle became larger, but even twenty years ago it still wasn't that large.  

 Today..... the internet has changed all of that, and the comments reflect it.  That circle is expanding exponentially because people know. 

Now they know!

Silent Spring: A New Book!

______

Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson (Hardcover) $25.95

By Roger Meiners, Pierre Desrochers, and Andrew Morriss

Click here to look inside the book.

 

Would Rachel Carson Have Supported GMO's?

__________________________________________

Would Rachel Carson Embrace 'Frankenfoods'?
This Scientist Believes 'Yes'

 

By Pamela Ronald

“A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical control of insects is available. Some are already in use and have achieved brilliant success. Others are in the stage of laboratory testing. Still others are little more than ideas in the minds of imaginative scientists, waiting for the opportunity to put them to the test. All have this in common: they are biological solutions, based on the understanding of the living organisms they seek to control and of the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong. Specialists representing various areas of the vast field of biology are contributing—entomologists, pathologists, geneticists, physiologists, biochemists, ecologists—all pouring their knowledge and their creative inspirations into the formation of a new science of biotic controls.” - Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, p. 278

The ‘Frankenfoods’ debate is coming to your dinner table. Just last week, a mini-war developed in Europe, when the European Union’s chief scientist, renowned biologist Anne Glover, said that foods made through genetic engineering, such as soy beans—about 80 percent of U.S. grown soybeans have been engineered to grow with the use of less pesticides—are as safe as organic or conventional foods. It’s a wholly uncontroversial comment—at least among scientists. But it set off the usual scare mongering from Friends of the Earth, and other like-minded advocacy groups that finds all genetically engineered (GE) foods and crops to be, in their words “stomach turning.”......

My Take - I don't agree with the writer. Although based on the quoted Carson's writings one could make the argument that she would support GMO's. My experience is that I have found that these "radical back to naturists" are all too willing to support all sorts of things that don't exist. And more than happy to condemn them as soon as some poor foolish businessman finds a way of implementing the very solutions they promoted.

I would be more inclined to believe that she would follow the rest of the misanthropic green crowd in condemning GMO's. Carson was good at creating caveats in her work, as she never called for the elimination of DDT, yet it was clear that the only conclusion one could come to after reading Silent Spring was that pesticides, especially DDT, needed banned. Her views were based on false assumptions and were clearly outside the realm of truth.

There are those who will demand source information from me and yet rave about the ‘scientific genius' of Rachel Carson. Yet she violates the very rules they demand from me by making statements about events with no attribution as to where the evidence came from regularly in her book. We now know that she deliberately misrepresented facts! In a court of law one cannot be found lying and have any testimony presented before or after to be worthy of consideration. I think that is a valid approach to science also. There has been far too much scientific fraud over the years, and as a result of the corrupting influence of government grant money, it seems to have increased to the point that peer review is now being seriously questioned and justifiably doubted.

I don’t think one can easily dismiss the ‘mother of junk science’ epithet about Rachel Carson. Especially now, since we know that she was so prolifically wrong. Especially now since we know the end result has been the creation of a movement that is so irrational and misanthropic and notorious for supporting any sort of junk science that will promote their views.

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The Noble Savage

By David Deming

This appeared at here  at LewRockwell.com

The late Joseph Campbell maintained that civilizations are not based on science, but on myth. "Aspiration," Campbell explained, "is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization." Our technological society has been built on Francis Bacon's myth of the New Atlantis. Bacon was the first person to unambiguously and explicitly advocate the practical application of scientific knowledge to human needs. "The true and lawful goal of the sciences," he explained, "is that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers." Writing in the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon predicted lasers, genetic engineering, airplanes, and submarines.

Competing with Bacon's vision of a society based on science is the older and more persistent fable of the Noble Savage. The Noble Savage is not a person, but an idea. It is cultural primitivism, the belief of people living in complex and evolved societies that the simple and primitive life is better. The Noble Savage is the myth that man can live in harmony with nature, that technology is destructive, and that we would all be happier in a more primitive state.

Before Jesus Christ lived, the Noble Savage was known to the Hebrews as the Garden of Eden. The Greek poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) called it the Golden Age. In the lost Golden Age, people lived in harmony with nature. There was no disease, pain, work, or conflict. Everyone lived in perfect peace. Insects didn't bite you. There were no extremes of temperature, and you could wander naked through the fields. If you happened to be hungry, all you had to do to satisfy your craving was reach up and pick a sumptuous ripe fruit off a nearby tree.

In all the ages of the world, otherwise intelligent and learned persons have swooned to cultural primitivism. In the sixteenth century, French writer Michel de Montaigne described native Americans as so morally pure they had no words in their languages for lying, treachery, avarice, and envy. Montaigne portrayed the primitive life as so idyllic that American Indians did not have to work but could spend the whole day dancing.

When captain James Cook and other European explorers first encountered the native people of Polynesia in the late eighteenth century, they romanticized the primitive and ignorant state as a happier one, free of cares and anxieties. It was better, one European wrote, to be simple-minded and ignorant. "We must admit," he explained, "that the child is happier than the man, and that we are losers by the perfection of our nature, the increase of our knowledge, and the enlargement of our views."

The quintessential exposition of the Noble Savage myth is found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book Discourse on Inequality (1755). Rousseau argued that what appeared to be human progress was in fact decay. The best condition for human beings to live in was the "pure state of nature" in which savages existed. When men lived as hunters and gatherers, they were "free, healthy, honest and happy." The downfall of man occurred when people started to live in cities, acquire private property, and practice agriculture and metallurgy. The acquisition of private property resulted in inequality, aroused the vice of envy, and led to perpetual conflict and unceasing warfare. According to Rousseau, civilization itself was the scourge of humanity. Rousseau went so far as to make the astonishing claim that the source of all human misery was what he termed our "faculty of improvement," or the use of our minds to improve the human condition.

Rousseau sent a copy of his book to Voltaire. In a letter acknowledging receipt of the work, Voltaire made a pithy and devastating criticism. "I have received, monsieur, your new book against the human race. I thank you for it...no one has ever employed so much intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to walk on four paws when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me to resume it."

Voltaire's insight was immediate and inerrant: opposition to technology is opposition to the human race itself. Man lives by technology. The human race has never existed in a state of harmony with nature. Since Rousseau wrote, more than two hundred and fifty years of archeological and ethnographic research have shown that the imaginative conceptions associated with the Noble Savage are completely wrong. Before the advent of civilization people endured disease, violence, hunger, and profound poverty.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, the common notion was that humans are the only animal that conducts warfare. But research over the past few decades has shown that this is false. In Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson documented observations of chimpanzees in their natural habitat engaging in systematic planned violence. Humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor about four to six million years ago. The fact that chimpanzees make war suggests that our human ancestors also did. The roots of human violence thus lay deep in time.

Male chimps conduct raids with the intent of catching a lone male from another group. If the odds in their favor are greater than three-to-one, they will attack and kill or maim him. The attacks are vicious and merciless, "marked by a gratuitous cruelty." The preferred procedure is for two chimps to hold a victim on the ground while a third pummels and bites the prey until he is dead or mortally wounded. The aggressors enjoy the violence. After the attack has concluded they exhibit their exuberance by branch-waving, screaming, hooting, and drumming.

Eliminating male rivals bestows a reproductive advantage on the members of the attacking group. Chimpanzee behavior is calculated and organized, not incidental, and reveals a high degree of intelligence. Chimpanzees have been known to rape their own sisters. Other human relatives also share a disposition to violence. Rape is commonplace among orangutans, and about one-seventh of gorilla babies perish from infanticide.

Before the advent of human civilization, conflict between bands of hunter-gatherers was universal and intense. In his book Constant Battles, Harvard archeologist Steven A. Leblanc documented that "warfare in the past was pervasive and deadly." Cannibalism and infanticide were also common. Ethnographic studies of hunter-gatherer groups surviving in remote areas of the world during the twentieth century have found that about twenty-five percent of adult males perish in war. LeBlanc concluded "the common notion of humankind's blissful past, populated with noble savages living in a pristine and peaceful world, is held by those who do not understand our past and who have failed to see the course of human history for what it is."

Before the Industrial Revolution, disease and poverty were endemic, even in the most advanced societies. Infectious diseases, including typhus, smallpox, and malaria, were rampant. Intestinal worms and dysentery were common among all classes of people. In eighteenth century Europe, half of all children died before their tenth birthday. Life expectancy at birth was only about twenty-five years, virtually unchanged from the days of the Roman Empire. Filth and dirt were everywhere. In 1741, Samuel Johnson gave a speech in Parliament where he complained that the streets of London were "obstructed by mountains of filth."

Neither did pre-industrial civilizations live in a state of ecological harmony with their environment. Their exploitation of nature was often destructive. The Mediterranean islands colonized by the ancient Greeks were transformed into barren rock by overgrazing and deforestation. The Bay of Troy, described in Homer's Iliad, has been filled in by sediment eroded from hillsides destabilized by unsustainable agricultural practices.

Before Europeans arrive, American Indians managed the land aggressively by burning it. And they likely hunted several animals to extinction. The disappearance of the Pleistocene Megafauna in the Americas coincides with the expansion of human settlement about 10,000 years before present. The long list of animals hunted to extinction by American Indians include dire wolves, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, giant beavers, mastodons, and mammoths.

Even the conception of primitive societies as egalitarian is flawed. In Sick Societies, anthropologist Robert Edgerton documented that all human societies make distinctions based on "sex, age, and ability." Groups also tend to treat people differently based on distinctions of "wealth, power, or kinship." It should not be surprising, for example, to find that the chief of a tribe will advance his own interests "at the expense of lower-status people."

All of this would be of academic interest only, were it not the case that the modern environmental movement and many of our public policies are based implicitly on the myth of the Noble Savage. The fountainhead of modern environmentalism is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The first sentence in Silent Spring invoked the Noble Savage by claiming "there was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings." But the town Carson described did not exist, and her polemic, Silent Spring, introduced us to environmental alarmism based on junk science. As the years passed, Rachel Carson was elevated to sainthood and the template laid for endless spasms of hysterical fear-mongering, from the population bomb, to nuclear winter, the Alar scare, and global warming.

Human beings have not, can not, and never will live in harmony with nature. Our prosperity and health depend on technology driven by energy. We exercise our intelligence to command nature, and were admonished by Francis Bacon to exercise our dominion with "sound reason and true religion." When we are told that our primary energy source, oil, is "making us sick," or that we are "addicted" to oil, these are only the latest examples of otherwise rational persons descending into gibberish after swooning to the lure of the Noble Savage. This ignorant exultation of the primitive can only lead us back to the Stone Age.

February 14, 2012

 

David Deming [send him mail]  is associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma. His book, Black & White: Politically Incorrect Essays on Politics, Culture, Science, Religion, Energy and Environment, is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

“What’s Bugging You?”

by Harry L Katz

FEAR occupies an inordinate part of our time. Fear of more illness, fear of the stock market, world politics, our children’s welfare, and fear of the insects and other pests, etc, etc. The universal fear that I would like to discuss is the fear of perceived danger of the toxicants that we use to control the pests.

Living in an area that was once a semi tropical swamp, we have perennial invasions of many pest species. We kill a colony of ants in the apartment. But another colony comes in to take its place. Most residents call the pest management people and wait for service. Others are too impatient to wait for service and resort to using sprays., disregarding a subconscious fear of the danger of toxicants.

Over sixty years ago, fear of toxicants was indeed real. That was before the BC (Before Carson) Era, and before the Environmental Protection Agency cancelled the registrations of most toxicants. I know of one case in which a woman disposed of her obnoxious husband by buying a tube in a hardware store of “Electric Paste” which contained phosphoric acid rat bait. She squeezed some of it into his fourth glass of beer… and he died. The EPA has since removed all such toxicants from the retail market. In the process, however, they did of good job of overkill in warning of the dangers of all toxicants in our environment.

This legislation all began after Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring,” when a Congressional Committee was appointed to investigate the hazards of pesticides. A good friend of mine, Dr Carroll Weil, was called to serve on that committee. He was president of the Toxicology Society of America and a Fellow at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh. The other members of the committee were all anti-pesticide people.

The committee decided to ban the use of DDT because they said it was carcinogenic. Dr Weill explained that the tests used to reach this conclusion were badly flawed. The committee argued late into the night, but Carroll would not agree to a unanimous decision to ban DDT. Finally, the committee promised that an addendum by Weill could be published, and he gave up. This proved to be the death knell of millions of natives of third world countries who died of malaria from mosquitoes. DDT that had prevented these deaths had been taken off the market.

One of the “Myth Conceptions” that plagues the mindset of the general public, as well as various regulatory communities, is that a low dose of a toxicant is just as bad as a gross dose that can cause a tumor, benign or cancerous. If this were true, according to Bruce Ames of the University of California, at Berkley, we should not eat carrots, celery, parsley, mushrooms, cabbage, brussels sprouts, mustard, orange and grapefruit juices, pepper, cauliflower, broccoli, raspberry or pineapple. All these foods contain natural toxicants that cause cancer in rats or mice when they are tested at the same gross levels that are used to test pesticides. Dr Ames further claims that the natural level of toxicants in these foods is far higher than the trace residues in treated foods.

So, for those of you who are overly concerned about the pesticides that are on the market, all registered by the Environmental Protection Agency, you can remove pesticides from your “worry list“.




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Green Haze – An Open Letter to the Industry

by Chris Donaghy, President of Residex

Green Cool-Aide: The Taste is Sweet, but the Hangover Could be Deadly
Like a heavy bank of fog rolling off the cold Pacific Ocean into San Francisco, or a dense London fog where it is hard to see where the road begins and ends, the Green Movement is shrouding our industry with a blanket of confusion and potential risk. The anti-pesticide groups are there in the clearing and they can see perfectly through the green mist that we find so alluring yet confusing as an industry. The anti-pesticide movement couldn’t be happier as the manufacturers, pest management companies and support associations pull in so many directions that they can hear the fabric of our once united front tearing away. In order for our industry to reunite and to be known again as the protectors of health and property, we must revisit the archives of our most successful moments in history as well as the anti-pesticide’s most prominent moment in history to understand how we came to this place, and why we need to define “Green”.

Anti-Pesticide Movement’s Greatest Moment in History:
Rachael Carson is the heroine of the “Green/Environmental Movement” because she is considered the savior of the American eagle and our environment through the power of her pen in her legacy publication “Silent Spring”, published in 1962. In fact Rachael saved nothing and she is actually indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent men, women and children. Her treatise “Silent Spring” was based on speculation and unsupported claims against the most effective and important pesticide of the times, DDT, and led to the banning of DDT in 1972 as well as sparked the beginning of the endless assaults against all synthetic pesticides.

Carson’s only true claim is that she pointed out the irresponsible use and disposal of pesticides by some people, not all, in our society at that time. This discovery should have led to better controls, education and training, and not the outright banning of DDT, the most effective and life-enhancing insecticide of its day. Sound science had no place in the assaults that followed Carson’s “Silent Spring” by her “world-saving” crusaders. Again, they saved nothing, and countless men, women and children died needlessly from malaria and other insect-born disease. “Science along with economics has a role to play (but) the ultimate decision remains political.” William Ruckelshaus, EPA Administrator, 1972 after overruling the EPA science panel to ban DDT.

It can be argued that Rachael Carson and her legions of self-righteous followers are responsible for the Dark Ages that people of the third world still have to endure because disease-vectoring insect populations go unchecked and inflict their deadly and debilitating scourge on the masses, and therefore their economies are anemic or non-existent. The 70’s should be likened to the dark times of the Middle Ages when claims of heresy were commonly levied against science and the likes of Galileo, Da Vinci and many other notable greats because the misinformed and ill-intentioned didn’t want or understand the truth.

Pest Control’s Greatest Moment in History:
If we could travel back in time and erase the discovery of DDT, life as you know it today would be quite different. Many of you would not be here especially our friends of Jewish heritage because the German extermination effort would have continued to completion. Many others would not exist because “one-day” fathers would have been killed in battle or died of an insect-born disease before their offspring were ever born. The world language would either be German or Japanese, and if you were not of pure German or Japanese heritage, then you’d be placed into eternal servitude, tortured or killed.

The facts are that typhus, malaria, dengue and yellow fever were disabling and killing more of the Allied troops than bullets and bombs, and if DDT wasn’t introduced during WWII, the Allied Forces could have easily lost the war because they were incapable of fighting. The invention and broad scale use of DDT was pest control’s greatest moment in history to date. It could be argued that DDT was the greatest modern discovery of the 20th Century because its use allowed for the preservation of lives and civilization as we know it today.

Much of the coastal sections of the USA were virtually uninhabitable because of yellow fever, dengue and malaria. Other parts of the modern world were also uninhabitable for the same reasons. The invention and use of DDT allowed for modern societies to flourish and live life without the fear of contracting deadly and debilitating insect-born diseases.

As Rachael Carson’s fanatical followers worked hard to reverse the benefits of modern science and still to this day their work continues with a high degree of success. Yet one man goes unmentioned, forgotten for his monumental discovery that helped lead to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, that led to a better lifestyle for billions of people in many countries around the world, that led to the advancement of commerce, that led to the freedoms we enjoy from deadly and crippling disease-vectoring insects. Who is this great person you ask?

His name is Paul Hermann Muller. Muller discovered the DDT molecule in 1939, just in time to save the Allied Forces in WWII. Muller was a Swiss born chemist and the winner of the Nobel Prize in 1948 for his lifesaving discovery of DDT. Paul Hermann Muller saved billions of lives since his discovery of DDT. Our industry needs to raise Muller to the highest superhero status, and never forget about the man who created our professional industry and allowed us to hold our heads high as the protectors of health and property.

Ancient History of the Green Movement:
Traveling even further back in time, we find the origins of “Green” pest control. “Green” has been around for a long time, and what is meant by Green is “natural”. The media and special interest groups have done an excellent job of convincing the consumer that “Green” and “Natural” mean safe and effective. In the meantime, I get the sense that many of our industry professionals are buying into that same popular belief of our time, and that is where the real danger exists. Sometimes captive audiences begin to believe the propaganda of their captors as the truth, known as the Stockholm syndrome. But is the truth really being told here, and are the American consumers being misled by the misinformed or worse yet, the ill-intentioned? We need to explore history in order to find the real answers and the truth.

Green isn’t a new concept as many are led to believe, as a matter of fact, it is quite ancient. Ancient populations, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians and the Chinese, all used “green” products and practices to keep themselves, their livestock, their pets, their children and their homes safe from the devastation of the multitude of crop, property and public health pests of their day, the same exact pests that exist today.

The ancients used “green” products and techniques such as herbs, essential oils, fire, crop rotation, cutting weeds, plowing, trapping, crushing, etc. to ward off disease vectoring insects and plant destroyers including mosquitoes, fleas, aphids and weevils. The result was that the ancients died in mass from plague, dengue, malaria, yellow fever, typhus and starvation because their “Green” and natural methods were no match for mosquitoes, rats, fleas and crop pests. Their forests and subsequently, their villages burnt to the ground due to devastating tree pests such as moths and a variety of borers, leaf miners, leaf rollers, and other insects leaving nothing but dried timber in their wake of destruction awaiting the first lightning strike. Even in modern times where third world countries still rely on ancient pest remedies, mechanical and cultural methods to protect home, health, livestock and crop, such as those used in Africa, Asia and South America, people are living in abject poverty and dying in mass from pest-related disease and starvation events related to crop devastation by pests.

The average American and European citizen is so far removed from our ancestral experiences with pest-related disease and devastation events that as a society, some simply can’t be concerned about those things that are not negatively impacting their lifestyles at the moment. Do you really believe that the average American or European citizen realizes that the number one killing disease in the world is a mosquito-born disease called malaria, and that it remains as the number one human killing disease of all time? Do you think that the average American or European citizen realizes that the tiny flea and a bacterium partnered to kill more humans in a single event than any other single event in the history of mankind? Do you believe that the average American or European citizen understands that malaria-carrying mosquitoes continue to kill at a steady rate today (one child every 30 seconds in parts Africa), and that both the malaria-vectoring mosquitoes and the plague-vectoring flea live right in their very own backyards, and from time to time venture inside their homes and bite their children and pets? Do you think they know that Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium is alive and well in the USA and Europe and just waiting for its opportunity to devastate mankind again?

Scare tactics? NO. Scary? YES because it is reality and backed by hard scientific fact. Futhermore, I’d like to hear CDC’s spin on the fact that our nation’s uncontrolled borders are allowing human carriers of many diseases long forgotten in this country to be reestablished on our soil. Diseases like dengue, filariasis, West Nile, malaria, etc., are crossing the borders and entering through airports across the land, and the pest vectors that are capable of broad scale spread are already endemic to the region.

What happens when and if the “Green Movement” is so well-entrenched that regulatory constraints and bans on the use of highly effective synthetic pesticides prevent us from quickly combating insects carrying killer diseases such as malaria, dengue or the plague? Do you really want to face these pests and the devastation they bring with essential oils and glue boards? This is where the industry is heading and we are being led there by the misinformed and ill-intention special interest groups, and even some of our own industry brethren who seek a marketing advantage for their product line or service offering. It is time we listen to reason, review history and take back the destiny of our industry. Our rightful place is as protectors of health and property, and we cannot effectively perform those operations without effective chemistry.

Our industry has a grand opportunity to take a stand and educate the misguided and the misinformed, and not waste our time on trying to convince the eco-activists and the ill-intentioned that our industry is a noble trade and that we understand their point of view. Please take notice that the other side rarely, if ever, spends time or resources on trying to convince the professional industry to stop using traditional pesticide, and they NEVER understand our point of view. Instead, they effectively convince consumers, the general public, the media and the regulatory community to act against our industry, and demand changes without any concern for proven scientific and medical facts.

The time has come for a change in our tactics on how to target the general public with the facts. In reality the time to change our tactics resides a few years back; however it is not too late to take back our rightful place in protecting health and property. Traditionally, we have used hard, cold scientific facts presented by high-powered technically educated individuals to deliver our accurate, truthful yet non-compelling message to the general public. On the other hand, the anti-pesticide movement has used highly sensationalized non-factual, emotional appeals to a much higher degree of success. We must use the emotional appeal backed by scientific and medical facts if our industry is to successfully turn the tide that is against us.

The other side is winning and winning big. The big fear that I share along with other industry professionals is that some within our own industry may be drinking big gulps of the anti-pesticide cool-aide, and are now beginning to believe or at least feel the need to embrace the ideal that the other side might be right and there are plenty of effective “green” options out there.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” Lenin, and the basis behind propaganda.

The truth is that current “Green” technology is nowhere near as effective on serious pests such as stinging insects, disease vectoring and blood sucking ticks, fleas, flies and mosquitoes, bed bugs, disease carrying rodents and cockroaches as are the synthetic modern pesticides. If we allow the other side and some industry opportunity-seekers to tie the use of effective synthetic pesticides into regulatory knots, then I just hope we all realize the potentially deadly and destructive consequences that humankind will face when epidemic and pandemic insect-vectored diseases of third world status are unleashed on us.

Over the past 2 years, I have had the unpleasant opportunity to witness the mass devastation caused by gypsy moths in the NJ Pine Barren communities. Sections of a once pristine mixed forest of hardwoods and pines stands skeletonized and dead just awaiting a lit cigarette or lightning strike to cause additional devastation. Why? NJ restricts the use of effective pesticides needed to safely and properly control the gypsy moth, and NJ, as well as other states, continues their drive to eliminate all effective modern synthetic pesticides from use in the state. Also, I must remind the reader that the gypsy moth is an introduced species.

Also, there are 20,000+ cases of Lyme disease reported annually to the CDC and on a steep rise as physicians become better at the diagnosis of the disease. Many medical experts believe, with a high degree of evidence, that the real number of Lyme cases in America alone exceeds 400,000 annually; however complex symptoms are confused with other misdiagnosed medical conditions. This epidemic, when fully proven, is 10 times larger than the current AIDS epidemic in America. Lyme is a debilitating and deadly disease found in every state in the USA, and it gets very little government and media attention as to its seriousness. Lyme could become our industry’s “poster child” disease to bring America back to its senses.

For some in our industry, the “Green” cool-aide may taste real sweet right now, and the “Greening” of our industry may seem like a great marketing opportunity; however allow common sense, science and history to drive the defining of “Green”. Otherwise “Green” may turn to “Brown” as our pristine landscapes and forests fall victim to insects and disease, and our lives may turn to “Black” as the plagues of insect-born diseases return to USA and European societies as they did when “Green” pest management practices were vogue once before.