By Wendell Krossa
Ooops, There Goes Half the Ecological Footprint
(Note: Mounting evidence undermines the anthropogenic warming theory and therefore effectively undermines the basis for over one half of the ecological footprint models)
The Ecological Footprint model has been gaining acceptance across the globe as a government planning tool at federal, provincial/state, and even local/urban government levels. Advocates of the Ecological Footprint (EF) argue that it shows that humanity is “overshooting” the capacity of ecosystems to support our standards of living and we are heading for catastrophic environmental collapse.
Bill Rees, the originator of the EF, refers to a litany of supposed disasters to support his contention that the human enterprise is destroying nature and must be, not just halted, but actually reversed. He points to such things as massive species loss, forest devastation, pollution, overpopulation, soil degradation, agricultural decline, resource exhaustion (e.g. peak oil), and of course, potentially catastrophic global warming. Ozone depletion and acid rain also still hover in the background as occasional elements of his litany. This litany of disasters is employed to support his contention that we are using too much of nature’s resources and must reverse this overshoot level of resource use. He claims that if all of humanity desires to attain to the current standard of living of the developed world then we would need several more earths. I’ve read estimates of from 2 to 4 more earths.
One of his critics noted that politicians tend to accept the EF model without taking a close look at its details (data, methods). Some advocates of the model, noting its weaknesses such as “calculations based on crude estimates”, nonetheless dismiss such weaknesses as peripheral to the main purpose of the model. “Since the focus of the ecological footprint is heuristic- to awaken people, particularly those in more heavily industrialized societies, to their extensive resource use and its externalized costs- greater precision or detail might actually get in the way of this teaching goal” (http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Ecological_footprint_-_Criticisms/id/1349467). Did I actually read that? Yikes.
But what piqued my curiosity recently, especially as the model claims that we are seriously overshooting nature’s ability to sustain us, was a statement by the co-developer of the EF- Mathis Wackernagel- that “Land for carbon absorption is the most significant globally, representing nearly half of humanity’s total footprint” (Methods for Calculating National Ecological Footprint Accounts- available online). Rees has also stated in a paper at http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/faculty%20profiles/W.Rees-Pubs-2004_files/WileyRevised(Rees).doc (Ecological Footprints and Bio-Capacity: Essential Elements in Sustainability Assessment) that sequestration of CO2 makes up “half the global average eco-footprint and a greater proportion in high-income countries”. His ecological footprint model is especially dependent on the anthropogenic warming hypothesis and the belief that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere.
I have argued with Bill that his assumption that CO2 is a major factor in climate change and a primary forcing mechanism for climate modification is simply unproven. No consensus exists on this. There is no clear evidence to support this contention. I’ve sent him the recent APS paper by Lord Moncton and Roy Spencer’s Senate Testimony, along with other research on CO2 and warming. Emerging evidence continues to undermine the AGW theory from many differing angles. It appears then that, ooops, there goes one half, and more, of the human ecological footprint.
What about the other elements of Rees’s catastrophe litany that are used to validate the rest of his footprint model- for instance, forests? FAO Production Yearbooks show no serious decline in earth’s forest cover over the past 60 years when the human population went from 2.5 billion to 6.3 billion and world GDP went from $4 trillion to over $40 trillion. During this massive increase in population and consumption, forest cover remained roughly stable at about 30% of land area. One would think, according to ecological footprint theory, that such expansion of the human enterprise would have had a much more notable ‘overshoot’ impact on a resource like forests.
Also, the 1992 IUCN report uncovered no evidence of any species holocaust. Species losses appear to continue at low historical rates. Most species have survived past periods of massive change and upheaval such as glaciations, severe episodes of volcanism (with sudden cooling), and so on. They have adapted by migrating up and down mountain slopes and north and south over continents, as well as making other adaptations. So once again, on biodiversity, no evidence of overshoot. Now, if the litany of disasters is not as apocalyptic as he presents them then this undermines Rees’s central contention that the human enterprise is destroying nature and needs to be halted or reversed. Bill responds by pointing to local situations of devastation and the loss of isolated species with the less than subtle presumption that these can be extrapolated out to characterize the overall world situation. Or he will argue that our current overshoot will suddenly hit an unexpected tipping point and massive collapse will then occur. This is hard to imagine as today across the world scientists and others are watching the varied elements of ecosystems more closely and thoroughly than at any previous time in history. Satellites observe 24/7. If evidence of overshoot is there, surely we will know about it.
He further dismisses suggestions that such technologies as hydroponic crop production can be employed to alleviate pressure on what he views as overstressed agricultural resources. Inputs to hydroponic agriculture are even higher than those to regular agriculture, he claims. When I argued that we are not exhausting agricultural resources but are actually using less land over time he again stated that this higher agricultural production that uses less land requires more inputs and the impending disaster is that we will soon exhaust these limited inputs of fertilizers. He also argued that GM technology and other agricultural advances will also run up against similar constraints and limits. For every argument for technological advance he counters with a dark view of limited resources of some sort or other. Creative technological solutions do not fit his apocalyptic outlook which is heavily dependent on concepts of closed systems and strict resource limits and the dissipation, decline, and disorder produced in such systems by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as he employs it. The unlimited creativity of the human mind has no place in his model and is dismissed as a factor of limited impact. History proves him entirely wrong on this. The Green Revolution and Norman Borlaug’s work is one good example here. Borlaug ignored Paul Erhlich’s doom prophecies of massive famine and in a relatively short time had turned food shortages into agricultural abundance. The unlimited creativity of the human mind is the key factor that leaves doom scenarios with a 100 percent failure rate.
Rees also makes the following argument that we have improved our developed country environments at the cost of devastating the environment’s of other countries. “There is a whole other point: China and now India are among the most polluted countries on Earth but much, if not most, of the worst pollution comes from particularly dirty processing and manufacturing industries that have migrated there from Europe, North America and Japan but continue to operate producing goods mostly for consumption in those countries. Result: The rich countries get cleaner, the developing countries and their populations pay the pollution costs. (This phenomenon is readily revealed in our ecological footprint analyses--much of the pollution in China represents the extra-territorial eco-footprints of the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, etc., not of China itself.) In short, Goklany, Beckerman, Lomborg and the like, select data to create a black and white and partial caricature of a very complex and grey-scale picture. This is dangerously delusional and grossly misleading”. In my discussions with Rees I had been quoting research from Goklany, Lomberg, and Beckerman.
To be generous, one could grant that on varied points Rees expresses common sense concern over environmental issues. Obviously, we ought to try as much as possible to better understand our engagement of nature and the capacities of its varied resources that are essential to our living standards. It’s just that this EF model has been constructed by an ecologist who is committed to halting and reversing the human enterprise to a level appropriate to what many view as environmental extremist visions- a much diminished human population living in a largely wilderness world at a much lower standard of living. Rees states plainly that the human enterprise, as it currently exists in developed countries, is unsustainable. He believes this to be so because he is committed to the concept of strict limits in closed systems and the primacy of the Second Law with its inevitable consequences of decay, dissipation, and decline. I have responded to Bill that the concept of closed systems is a human invention and not a natural fact. It is simply a “philosophical prejudice that has led to unsound long-term forecasts” (Julian Simon, Life Against The Grain, p.330). Simon has countered well the dismal philosophical prejudice of limited resources and closed systems that is promoted by doomsters like Bill Rees (see for instance Ultimate Resource or A Poverty of Reason by Wilfred Beckerman).
If you buy Rees’s contention that our current developed world standards of living are unsustainable and all of humanity attaining these standards of living will require from 2 to 4 more earths, then you can see what diminished levels of living standards all of us would need to return to in order to live on just one of Rees’s earths. Rees argues that most families could live on about $8,000 of annual income. I doubt he is trying to do this himself.
Other questionable assumptions that under-gird the EF model include the argument that humanity should be allowed access to only a strictly limited amount of natural resources because if we take more, then other species are denied access to those same resources (e.g. photosynthetic capacity). Wilfred Beckerman responds to this argument in his book Green Colored Glasses. Also, the contention is made that our excessive use of renewable resources is undercutting the ability of ecosystems to regenerate or replenish themselves and hence these systems are facing collapse. While isolated species (e.g. cod in Eastern Canada) have been decimated, as noted above there is no evidence of overall collapse of larger ecosystems or general serious loss of biodiversity. Another contention is that of intergenerational equity. EF advocates argue that we must pass on to future generations an undiminished stock of natural capital. This ignores the fact that future generations will be much wealthier than we are and better able to solve any resource issues. They most likely will discover and access entirely new sources of energy to fuel the human enterprise. Arthur Clarke suggested that we would access dark energy in this century and have an unlimited source of energy. Again, researchers like Wilfred Beckerman have responded well to these questionable assumptions and presented the more complex elements surrounding these issues such as personal values/ideology and sense of aesthetics.
It is hard to take this ecological footprint model seriously because it seeks validation in an unsubstantiated litany of disasters to support its disturbing devaluation of the human enterprise. And then there is the political component- Rees views the free enterprise system as responsible for what he believes to be our current destructive overshoot and he zealously advocates central planning and state regulation to slow and reverse economic growth. Hence this telling quote at the end of some of his papers, “Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”. Emphasis on coercion. As Wackernagel said in a video presentation on EF, “Aggressive sustainability initiatives are good for us” (http://ecocity.wordpress.com/tag/ecological-footprint/). Even if we don’t like them.
Despite the weaknesses of EF analysis, Rees has managed to promote awareness and acceptance of this planning model across the globe. His model claims to provide the factual basis for the sustainable development movement (what levels of human activity are ecologically sustainable). And it has now become a widely accepted belief in the public arena that the human footprint is too large and must be decreased in every way possible. As its influence grows, this model (its data details, methods, and assumptions) will have to be more closely looked at by capable researchers. I wonder if any subscribers to CCNet might be interested?
Wendell Krossa
PS. In relation to the above, the debate continues over the Science paper (see http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr98/oct98/noaa98-67.html) that suggested that North America naturally absorbs perhaps all of its human emissions of CO2 (human emissions of CO2 in the US are estimated to be around 1.7 to 2.0 billion tons annually- 1.87 billion tons in 2004, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/em_cont.htm). Pieter Tans is quoted as stating, “The North American land surface appears to be absorbing possibly as much as between one and two billion tons of carbon annually, or a sizable fraction of global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning”. This appears to further weaken the ecological footprint arguments for fully one half of the human footprint to be allocated to CO2 sequestration. Bill Rees dismisses this evidence.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The Weather Is Just Fine
By Wendell Krossa
There has been a slight warming (0.6 degrees Celsius) over the past century which is part of the natural rebound from the unnatural cold of the Little Ice Age of approximately 1350 AD to 1850 AD. We hope the trend toward a warmer world will continue but unfortunately the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDA) has shifted back to its cooling phase. These phases last approximately 20 to 30 years. A previous shift to a warming phase helps explain the warmer temperatures that we had from about 1975 to 1995.
Also, solar cycle 24 has not yet produced any sunspot activity and this further explains the cooler temperatures that we have been experiencing since the turn of the millennium. This could mean cooler temperatures for some decades to come but such is the natural variation in a climate system that is influenced most prominently by such things as the PDA and solar cycles. The best we can do in light of such natural variation is to adjust.
Over the past century and a half there has been a rise of about 100 ppm in CO2 levels in the atmosphere (from 280 to 380). This rise has resulted in a healthier amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which has led to increased plant growth (a greener world). More plant mass on earth has meant more food for animal populations which have subsequently increased. It has also meant more crop growth for humans and this has helped in feeding the increased human population.
Unfortunately, the small human addition to CO2 in the atmosphere has not helped to further warm the earth very much, if at all. There has still not been a scientifically confirmed linkage of CO2 levels with warming. And CO2 levels are still low compared to past history and have been exceptionally low over the years of the Ice Ages. Our atmosphere continues to be “CO2 impoverished”.
Perhaps we could encourage governments to pay people to produce more CO2 emissions. Or find a way to properly value CO2 in the market (I’m just kidding). But it is not a negative externality that needs some market mechanism to price its supposedly damaging costs.
The best way to prepare for whatever weather we will experience in the future is to encourage economic growth and development across the world. We can do this best by strengthening the fundamental institutions that have produced such growth and development in the past. These would include the most vital of all elements- individual freedom and individual rights such as private property rights. The critical counterpart to individual freedom and rights is to limit the greatest threat to such rights which is state power and intervention (growing government). The growth of government has inevitably resulted in the decline of economic growth and development. The history of the past few centuries has taught us clearly that trusting the spontaneous activity of our citizens is the safest way to promote freedom and growth. Freeing our citizens encourages them to express their natural creativity which then results in great explosions of technological innovation and progress.
Economic growth and development is also the best way to ‘save’ our environment. Such growth and development leads to meeting the basic needs of people. Once their basic needs are met and they have the money to do so, people then naturally turn to improving their environments as they are natural environmentalists at heart and value clean and enhanced surroundings.
So this is your latest weather report. Relax and enjoy the weather as for the most part it will continue its natural variation due to factors beyond human influence. Over the past we have learned to adjust to such natural variations and even adapt to the extreme weather events. The result has been less loss of life, especially in the more economically developed regions.
The future looks promising.
Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca
There has been a slight warming (0.6 degrees Celsius) over the past century which is part of the natural rebound from the unnatural cold of the Little Ice Age of approximately 1350 AD to 1850 AD. We hope the trend toward a warmer world will continue but unfortunately the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDA) has shifted back to its cooling phase. These phases last approximately 20 to 30 years. A previous shift to a warming phase helps explain the warmer temperatures that we had from about 1975 to 1995.
Also, solar cycle 24 has not yet produced any sunspot activity and this further explains the cooler temperatures that we have been experiencing since the turn of the millennium. This could mean cooler temperatures for some decades to come but such is the natural variation in a climate system that is influenced most prominently by such things as the PDA and solar cycles. The best we can do in light of such natural variation is to adjust.
Over the past century and a half there has been a rise of about 100 ppm in CO2 levels in the atmosphere (from 280 to 380). This rise has resulted in a healthier amount of CO2 in the atmosphere which has led to increased plant growth (a greener world). More plant mass on earth has meant more food for animal populations which have subsequently increased. It has also meant more crop growth for humans and this has helped in feeding the increased human population.
Unfortunately, the small human addition to CO2 in the atmosphere has not helped to further warm the earth very much, if at all. There has still not been a scientifically confirmed linkage of CO2 levels with warming. And CO2 levels are still low compared to past history and have been exceptionally low over the years of the Ice Ages. Our atmosphere continues to be “CO2 impoverished”.
Perhaps we could encourage governments to pay people to produce more CO2 emissions. Or find a way to properly value CO2 in the market (I’m just kidding). But it is not a negative externality that needs some market mechanism to price its supposedly damaging costs.
The best way to prepare for whatever weather we will experience in the future is to encourage economic growth and development across the world. We can do this best by strengthening the fundamental institutions that have produced such growth and development in the past. These would include the most vital of all elements- individual freedom and individual rights such as private property rights. The critical counterpart to individual freedom and rights is to limit the greatest threat to such rights which is state power and intervention (growing government). The growth of government has inevitably resulted in the decline of economic growth and development. The history of the past few centuries has taught us clearly that trusting the spontaneous activity of our citizens is the safest way to promote freedom and growth. Freeing our citizens encourages them to express their natural creativity which then results in great explosions of technological innovation and progress.
Economic growth and development is also the best way to ‘save’ our environment. Such growth and development leads to meeting the basic needs of people. Once their basic needs are met and they have the money to do so, people then naturally turn to improving their environments as they are natural environmentalists at heart and value clean and enhanced surroundings.
So this is your latest weather report. Relax and enjoy the weather as for the most part it will continue its natural variation due to factors beyond human influence. Over the past we have learned to adjust to such natural variations and even adapt to the extreme weather events. The result has been less loss of life, especially in the more economically developed regions.
The future looks promising.
Wendell Krossa wkrossa@shaw.ca
Monday, August 11, 2008
Who Are You?
By Rich Kozlovich
History is a funny thing. We have always heard how history keeps repeating itself and how we keep missing the message. Why is that?
Because we don’t study history, and when we do, we don’t really study history, because most of what we get in school is very basic and the real lessons that need to be learned can’t be learned without the details and nuances as a result most of it would qualify as propaganda. Finally, as a society, we just don’t seem to care! We think it’s just a bunch of old dusty records that don’t really apply to our time. Yet we know that history does repeat itself constantly. The names, places and events might be different, but the underlying principles are all the same. The patterns of human conduct constantly repeat over and over again. Why? Because the one thing all of humanity has had in common all though the all of the ages is that we are human. We are still motivated by the same wants, needs and desires that all men have been motivated by forever.
What has this to do with the pest control industry you may ask? Every person or corporation involved in the pesticide manufacturing and application industries is one of the three following people. Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill or Vidkun Quisling.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain, 1869-1940
Chamberlain was a Rugby educated member of the British upper classes and had been in government all of his adult life starting in 1911 as a member of the Birmingham city council later becoming Lord Mayor.
His career continued in an upward direction from that time on, serving in the national government in various capacities facing the rough and tumble of parliamentary British politics becoming Prime Minister in 1937.
He demonstrated good leadership skills and in spite of being a member of the conservative party he was more of a socialist in temperament than a conservative, instituting many reforms that were very popular. The outcome of his plans never came to fruition as WWII broke out in 1939.
Chamberlain, in his defense, was a good administrator and in many ways a mirror image of his countrymen when it came to another war. WWI had so horrified the British people that they wanted peace at almost any cost. After the bloodbath of 1914-1918 they would have done almost anything to avoid another war. Unfortunately Hitler was not of the same mental bent. Chamberlain was a pragmatist. His “general policy of appeasement” was perfect for Hitler’s general policy of conquest. Hitler had an agenda. Dealing with someone with a definite agenda of conquest by going along to get along was a system for disaster for the British.
Chamberlain is best known for sacrificing the part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler in the Munich Agreement. He came back to England waving the agreement in the air for all to see declaring “peace in our time”. The Czechs (you know the people actually impacted by the agreement) didn’t think much of his peace. Nor did that peace of appeasement last long. March of the same year Hitler invaded and conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia. Finally after the invasion of Poland Chamberlain declared war. It was too late.
Finally in 1940 one of his friends delivered a devastating speech in the House of Commons quoting Oliver Cromwell speaking to the Long Parliament “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.” His career as Prime Minister was over.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965.
Churchill, like Chamberlain was of the British upper classes, only at a higher level since he was a descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough. His early years could only be described as unimpressive, especially his school work, which caused his father Lord Randolph Churchill to consider him a “disappointment”.
He was however an accomplished swordsman and found his niche in the British military. As an unabashed self-promoter he did everything he could to be in every war the British conducted during the years before WWI. Captured during the Boer War he became a hero back in England because of his escape from the Boer prison camp.
His career in government began in 1900 taking on serious positions of responsibility. He too survived the rough and tumble parliamentarian political system of the British Empire. His military mentality was displayed during a number of upheavals in England at that time. He was more than willing to do what most would be aghast at today, including his willingness to use machine guns on striking miners.
Before and during the appeasement period promulgated by Neville Chamberlain, Churchill was virtually a lone voice “crying out in the wilderness” about the dangers of Hitler’s rearmament (forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles). When WWII broke out he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty (the same job he had in WWI) and became a prominent figure in the government since during the “Phony War” most of the action was at sea.
Finally he became Prime Minister in 1940. Most will remember the “I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech Churchill made to the British people. This was a direct response to the go along get along crowd criticizing him for not fixing the war immediately. This was in spite of the fact they created the problem and had no solutions themselves. This speech quieted them for the remainder of the war.
Whatever else Churchill did (his life was filled with decisions that most of us would consider disturbing) he knew whom his enemies were and what needed to be done about them. This was an issue in which he was irritatingly vocal about to a country that was remarkably uncaring of his views. Irritated and uncaring until the war broke out.
Vidkun Quisling, 1887-1945.
The son of a Lutheran minister he was born into one of Norway's oldest families. He graduated from the Norwegian war academy as the best cadet ever, and later rose to the rank of Major, even serving as defense minister in the early 30’s. He was also a brilliant mathematician. His early adult years were spent in relief work in Russia during the time when Stalin was starving his people to death, and later even received the Commander of the British Empire for his promotion of British interests in Russia.
In 1933 Quisling formed the Norwegian Fascist Party with himself as the Norwegian equivalent of Der Fuhrer.
Although he performed a coup d’tat setting up a Nazi style government just as Hitler was invading Norway, he did so in hopes that not all the power would go to the Germans. His government only lasted 5 days. The Germans were willing to let him act as a figure head that could be useful.
Although he considered himself a patriot, doing what was best for the people of Norway (and himself), the Norwegians considered him a traitor. He was executed for treason in 1945.
Who are you?
Are you the ultimate pragmatist willing to go along to get along? Always believing we can come to some accommodation with the environmental activists by appeasing them just a little more? Or perhaps you're the hardheaded realist who knows who his enemies are and what needs to be done about them, fully aware that appeasement isn’t the answer. Then that leaves the foolish traitor who is at one with the activists and believes that the offerings of the activists is a good thing for everyone and actively support their projects?
Make no mistake about it - we are all one of these individuals. Like Hitler the activists have an agenda and that agenda is an agenda of conquest. The elimination of the pesticide manufacturing and application industries is their goal. Here are the choices. Appeasement, fight the good fight or treason.
Who are you really?
History is a funny thing. We have always heard how history keeps repeating itself and how we keep missing the message. Why is that?
Because we don’t study history, and when we do, we don’t really study history, because most of what we get in school is very basic and the real lessons that need to be learned can’t be learned without the details and nuances as a result most of it would qualify as propaganda. Finally, as a society, we just don’t seem to care! We think it’s just a bunch of old dusty records that don’t really apply to our time. Yet we know that history does repeat itself constantly. The names, places and events might be different, but the underlying principles are all the same. The patterns of human conduct constantly repeat over and over again. Why? Because the one thing all of humanity has had in common all though the all of the ages is that we are human. We are still motivated by the same wants, needs and desires that all men have been motivated by forever.
What has this to do with the pest control industry you may ask? Every person or corporation involved in the pesticide manufacturing and application industries is one of the three following people. Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill or Vidkun Quisling.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain, 1869-1940
Chamberlain was a Rugby educated member of the British upper classes and had been in government all of his adult life starting in 1911 as a member of the Birmingham city council later becoming Lord Mayor.
His career continued in an upward direction from that time on, serving in the national government in various capacities facing the rough and tumble of parliamentary British politics becoming Prime Minister in 1937.
He demonstrated good leadership skills and in spite of being a member of the conservative party he was more of a socialist in temperament than a conservative, instituting many reforms that were very popular. The outcome of his plans never came to fruition as WWII broke out in 1939.
Chamberlain, in his defense, was a good administrator and in many ways a mirror image of his countrymen when it came to another war. WWI had so horrified the British people that they wanted peace at almost any cost. After the bloodbath of 1914-1918 they would have done almost anything to avoid another war. Unfortunately Hitler was not of the same mental bent. Chamberlain was a pragmatist. His “general policy of appeasement” was perfect for Hitler’s general policy of conquest. Hitler had an agenda. Dealing with someone with a definite agenda of conquest by going along to get along was a system for disaster for the British.
Chamberlain is best known for sacrificing the part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler in the Munich Agreement. He came back to England waving the agreement in the air for all to see declaring “peace in our time”. The Czechs (you know the people actually impacted by the agreement) didn’t think much of his peace. Nor did that peace of appeasement last long. March of the same year Hitler invaded and conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia. Finally after the invasion of Poland Chamberlain declared war. It was too late.
Finally in 1940 one of his friends delivered a devastating speech in the House of Commons quoting Oliver Cromwell speaking to the Long Parliament “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.” His career as Prime Minister was over.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, 1874-1965.
Churchill, like Chamberlain was of the British upper classes, only at a higher level since he was a descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough. His early years could only be described as unimpressive, especially his school work, which caused his father Lord Randolph Churchill to consider him a “disappointment”.
He was however an accomplished swordsman and found his niche in the British military. As an unabashed self-promoter he did everything he could to be in every war the British conducted during the years before WWI. Captured during the Boer War he became a hero back in England because of his escape from the Boer prison camp.
His career in government began in 1900 taking on serious positions of responsibility. He too survived the rough and tumble parliamentarian political system of the British Empire. His military mentality was displayed during a number of upheavals in England at that time. He was more than willing to do what most would be aghast at today, including his willingness to use machine guns on striking miners.
Before and during the appeasement period promulgated by Neville Chamberlain, Churchill was virtually a lone voice “crying out in the wilderness” about the dangers of Hitler’s rearmament (forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles). When WWII broke out he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty (the same job he had in WWI) and became a prominent figure in the government since during the “Phony War” most of the action was at sea.
Finally he became Prime Minister in 1940. Most will remember the “I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech Churchill made to the British people. This was a direct response to the go along get along crowd criticizing him for not fixing the war immediately. This was in spite of the fact they created the problem and had no solutions themselves. This speech quieted them for the remainder of the war.
Whatever else Churchill did (his life was filled with decisions that most of us would consider disturbing) he knew whom his enemies were and what needed to be done about them. This was an issue in which he was irritatingly vocal about to a country that was remarkably uncaring of his views. Irritated and uncaring until the war broke out.
Vidkun Quisling, 1887-1945.
The son of a Lutheran minister he was born into one of Norway's oldest families. He graduated from the Norwegian war academy as the best cadet ever, and later rose to the rank of Major, even serving as defense minister in the early 30’s. He was also a brilliant mathematician. His early adult years were spent in relief work in Russia during the time when Stalin was starving his people to death, and later even received the Commander of the British Empire for his promotion of British interests in Russia.
In 1933 Quisling formed the Norwegian Fascist Party with himself as the Norwegian equivalent of Der Fuhrer.
Although he performed a coup d’tat setting up a Nazi style government just as Hitler was invading Norway, he did so in hopes that not all the power would go to the Germans. His government only lasted 5 days. The Germans were willing to let him act as a figure head that could be useful.
Although he considered himself a patriot, doing what was best for the people of Norway (and himself), the Norwegians considered him a traitor. He was executed for treason in 1945.
Who are you?
Are you the ultimate pragmatist willing to go along to get along? Always believing we can come to some accommodation with the environmental activists by appeasing them just a little more? Or perhaps you're the hardheaded realist who knows who his enemies are and what needs to be done about them, fully aware that appeasement isn’t the answer. Then that leaves the foolish traitor who is at one with the activists and believes that the offerings of the activists is a good thing for everyone and actively support their projects?
Make no mistake about it - we are all one of these individuals. Like Hitler the activists have an agenda and that agenda is an agenda of conquest. The elimination of the pesticide manufacturing and application industries is their goal. Here are the choices. Appeasement, fight the good fight or treason.
Who are you really?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Solar power realities
This is from an e-mail to Jon Ray's blog "Greenie Watch".
A comment by someone who knows from professional experience -- received via a reader. The report focuses on Tasmania, which is in roughly the equivalent latitude to Italy. So what is bad in Tasmania will be worse in Britain (for instance). As for Sweden or Canada, stop laughing! Jon Ray
I am one of those people who supply and maintain solar and wind power installations to power electronic systems at remote (unpowered) sites -- e.g. two way radios up on mountain tops.
Twenty plus years ago, a couple of us had a good look at the possibility of making a dollar or two out of flogging this emerging technology to the great unwashed. We didn't bother because it didn't stack up energy wise or financially. I admit the efficiency of the solar panels us mere mortals can afford has improved a bit since then (at least 8%) but the figures are still similar.
A loose look at the energy required to make the things verses the energy output of them during their average lifetime was not really surprising. The panel would return enough energy in the first year to smelt the aluminum in its frame and its mounting and transport the manufactured panel to us. We could not get energy figures for melting the silicon so the wafers could be grown and then cut up to make the semiconductors but overall it will be high so we guessed that it would take at least 100Kwh . This equates to 3 years output from the panel used up by the time it is delivered on site.
But it doesn't end there. Over the life of a set of panels the owner will probably need 3 or 4 sets of batteries. These are full of nice things like lead and acid and plastic and are very heavy. Then there is the magic box called the inverter. This is the box that converts the panel power up to the 230 volts mains power that we use. These are full of electronic things that take a lot of energy to make and have a reasonably short life span - say 10 years. You must include the energy costs for making and transporting these items to site in the overall energy that the solar panels must return during their lifetime. A battery pack of say 13kw h weighs in at approximately 500kg. So during the life of a set of panels you are going to have to transport 2 tons of them from (say) Sydney to Hobart and back again. Do the energy calculations on that one considering that the energy output per annum from each panel equates to about 4.5 litres of petrol.
I must qualify the above by saying that in our lovely clean green (work in the tourism industry or starve) state we don't get a lot of sun for large chunks of the year. When we are working out the energy budget for a solar site we allow an average of 3.5 hrs a day full output from the panels and have battery backup to allow for 14 - 28 days (site dependant) with no output. When the batteries are fully charged you can store no more so you effectively get no output from the panels. Therefore the extra output in summer is not usable unless you seriously upscale the battery capacity. Up in Queensland you can get away with less than half the number of panels for the same load. In drier climates panels seem to last a bit longer as well.
There are some interesting practical considerations that must be considered when using these things. It never ceases to amaze me how many people seem surprised to discover that a solar panel needs to get actual direct sunlight on it to give a worthwhile output. This can be a simple task of (wait for it - shock horror - sit down Rev. Bob in case you have a nasty turn) cutting down the trees to the height of the panels because the sun gets pretty close to the horizon down here in winter. Or if you have built your house on the southern side of a hill or taller building it is even simpler - you need to move the house or increase the number of panels to compensate. An extra $10k - $40k will usually suffice.
In Tasmania more than 50% of houses don't have a clear enough view north to make solar panels worthwhile and if you elevate them you begin to shadow the house to the south of you. This means you can never optimize the energy return from the panels. And what about our nice green leafy suburbs? When your northern neighbour's trees get high enough to shade your panels you lose output. Or if a leaf blows onto one of your panels the output goes down. (if you cover approximately 5% of the face of the panel the output will drop to almost zero.) The government will have to bring in draconian chain saw laws and you will have to have a photo license and a chainsaw safe to own one. Panels need to be cleaned regularly. Feathered airfoil excrement is especially effective in stopping them working.
Every time you need to have the system serviced the serviceman will use petrol in his van to get there. This will probably average using the equivalent energy output of one panel for a year for each trip and that does not count the energy required to make the van in the first place.
There is little doubt that in Tassie a solar installation as a collective item over its life is a net energy sink not a source. It is no different financially. My last electricity account for my workshop lists the cost as 18.5c per kwh or 21.4c including supply charge and for this my installation costs can be amortized over a 50 year life span. Over a 20 year life an $800 panel will return me 900kwh or $166.50 worth of electricity. Don't forget that out of the massive savings you have made there you must buy batteries, inverter, have it installed, pay the interest on the money you borrowed to buy the system and maintain it.
Note that this energy consumption would require 136 panels ($110,000.00), 14 day battery backup $13,500.00 (weight 1.6 tons, life 10 years), three phase inverter $15,000.00 (expected life 5 - 10 years). Interest alone would exceed $1,675.00 for the same period I paid the electricity authority $334.95. (Don't forget that if the batteries went flat and I had no electricity to run the workshop I would still have to pay my employees so a system failure could wipe me out. I would have to have a generating plant and/or duplicate equipment to allow for that. Even if you quadrupled the energy output from the panels the figures don't add up.
A comment by someone who knows from professional experience -- received via a reader. The report focuses on Tasmania, which is in roughly the equivalent latitude to Italy. So what is bad in Tasmania will be worse in Britain (for instance). As for Sweden or Canada, stop laughing! Jon Ray
I am one of those people who supply and maintain solar and wind power installations to power electronic systems at remote (unpowered) sites -- e.g. two way radios up on mountain tops.
Twenty plus years ago, a couple of us had a good look at the possibility of making a dollar or two out of flogging this emerging technology to the great unwashed. We didn't bother because it didn't stack up energy wise or financially. I admit the efficiency of the solar panels us mere mortals can afford has improved a bit since then (at least 8%) but the figures are still similar.
A loose look at the energy required to make the things verses the energy output of them during their average lifetime was not really surprising. The panel would return enough energy in the first year to smelt the aluminum in its frame and its mounting and transport the manufactured panel to us. We could not get energy figures for melting the silicon so the wafers could be grown and then cut up to make the semiconductors but overall it will be high so we guessed that it would take at least 100Kwh . This equates to 3 years output from the panel used up by the time it is delivered on site.
But it doesn't end there. Over the life of a set of panels the owner will probably need 3 or 4 sets of batteries. These are full of nice things like lead and acid and plastic and are very heavy. Then there is the magic box called the inverter. This is the box that converts the panel power up to the 230 volts mains power that we use. These are full of electronic things that take a lot of energy to make and have a reasonably short life span - say 10 years. You must include the energy costs for making and transporting these items to site in the overall energy that the solar panels must return during their lifetime. A battery pack of say 13kw h weighs in at approximately 500kg. So during the life of a set of panels you are going to have to transport 2 tons of them from (say) Sydney to Hobart and back again. Do the energy calculations on that one considering that the energy output per annum from each panel equates to about 4.5 litres of petrol.
I must qualify the above by saying that in our lovely clean green (work in the tourism industry or starve) state we don't get a lot of sun for large chunks of the year. When we are working out the energy budget for a solar site we allow an average of 3.5 hrs a day full output from the panels and have battery backup to allow for 14 - 28 days (site dependant) with no output. When the batteries are fully charged you can store no more so you effectively get no output from the panels. Therefore the extra output in summer is not usable unless you seriously upscale the battery capacity. Up in Queensland you can get away with less than half the number of panels for the same load. In drier climates panels seem to last a bit longer as well.
There are some interesting practical considerations that must be considered when using these things. It never ceases to amaze me how many people seem surprised to discover that a solar panel needs to get actual direct sunlight on it to give a worthwhile output. This can be a simple task of (wait for it - shock horror - sit down Rev. Bob in case you have a nasty turn) cutting down the trees to the height of the panels because the sun gets pretty close to the horizon down here in winter. Or if you have built your house on the southern side of a hill or taller building it is even simpler - you need to move the house or increase the number of panels to compensate. An extra $10k - $40k will usually suffice.
In Tasmania more than 50% of houses don't have a clear enough view north to make solar panels worthwhile and if you elevate them you begin to shadow the house to the south of you. This means you can never optimize the energy return from the panels. And what about our nice green leafy suburbs? When your northern neighbour's trees get high enough to shade your panels you lose output. Or if a leaf blows onto one of your panels the output goes down. (if you cover approximately 5% of the face of the panel the output will drop to almost zero.) The government will have to bring in draconian chain saw laws and you will have to have a photo license and a chainsaw safe to own one. Panels need to be cleaned regularly. Feathered airfoil excrement is especially effective in stopping them working.
Every time you need to have the system serviced the serviceman will use petrol in his van to get there. This will probably average using the equivalent energy output of one panel for a year for each trip and that does not count the energy required to make the van in the first place.
There is little doubt that in Tassie a solar installation as a collective item over its life is a net energy sink not a source. It is no different financially. My last electricity account for my workshop lists the cost as 18.5c per kwh or 21.4c including supply charge and for this my installation costs can be amortized over a 50 year life span. Over a 20 year life an $800 panel will return me 900kwh or $166.50 worth of electricity. Don't forget that out of the massive savings you have made there you must buy batteries, inverter, have it installed, pay the interest on the money you borrowed to buy the system and maintain it.
Note that this energy consumption would require 136 panels ($110,000.00), 14 day battery backup $13,500.00 (weight 1.6 tons, life 10 years), three phase inverter $15,000.00 (expected life 5 - 10 years). Interest alone would exceed $1,675.00 for the same period I paid the electricity authority $334.95. (Don't forget that if the batteries went flat and I had no electricity to run the workshop I would still have to pay my employees so a system failure could wipe me out. I would have to have a generating plant and/or duplicate equipment to allow for that. Even if you quadrupled the energy output from the panels the figures don't add up.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Weasel Words and Phrases
By Rich Kozlovich
When you start to look at these “studies” touted by the activists you find that there is one common thread. They are full of weasel words and phrases. This gives them a great deal of wiggle room because they never come out and definitively state that things are factual….they are always ‘maybes’, and always scary ‘maybes’. Did it ever occur to anyone that these “Weasel-words and Phrases” are perhaps just somebody’s unfounded printed accusation, or perhaps some professional’s words for guessing? When this stuff makes it into print, they never give the impression that this may be not only a minority opinion, but may be viewed as …..well……whacky……by the rest of the scientific community.
Anthropogenic Global Warming was one such idea that was considered laughable; at least until the government started feeding huge amounts of grant money into studying it and then it became “science”. Especially since only those who promoted it got the money. All the “science” has turned out to be wrong or fraudulent; but what has that to do with grant money? After all, truth is no longer the Holy Grail of science…..The Holy Grail of science is now grant money.
I have been keeping an updated running list of Weasel-Words and Phrases. You might find them amusing…..You will also notice that these phrases appear in all these “studies” that make outrageous claims against chemicals.
1. Might cause
2. Studies suggest
3. Could cause
4. The long term effects are unknown
5. Linked
6. Voiced concerns about
7. Expressed some concern
8. Experts fear
9. Warning that the chemical could be causing neurological and behavior effects in unborn babies and young children
10. Negligible concern is still expressed
11. Minimal concerns
12. Still leaves doubts
13. Warning of a great cause for concern
14. Some scientists were critical
15. Researchers hypothesize
16. Suspected hormonal imbalance
17. Many scientists say
18. Still, some environmental substances remain suspicious
19. Data is yet inadequate to make a judgment, however the weight of the evidence says we have a problem
20. But government scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies.
21. May make women more likely to
22. We've used a new research technology to generate hypotheses and possible associations
23. Probably to blame
24. Ecologists are worried that
25. It has been found through laboratory analysis that (X) substance is present in
26. While further study is needed to understand the impact, it is unlikely (or likely) that
27. While voicing caution on the link to (X), concerns were echoed widespread that, if left unregulated, (X) could hurt the environment.
28. Have the potential to significantly promote
This one is my favorite
29. The simple truth is that the way we allow chemicals to be used in society today means we are performing a vast experiment, not in the lab, but in the real world, not just on wildlife but on people
30. Factors suggest
31. In sum, however, the weight of the evidence says we have a problem. Human impacts beyond isolated cases are already demonstrable. They involve
impairments to reproduction, alterations in behavior, diminishment of intellectual capacity, and erosion in the ability to resist disease. [emphasis in the original -- http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Basics/bottomline.htm viewed 5/16/06] (This turned out to be a lie)
32. Mounting evidence" that these chemicals "may trigger hormonal changes."
33. There is a serious connection to….
I guess that 100 to 300 million dollars spent by the chemical companies to meet the required testing by EPA in order to introduce a pesticide into the environment was meaningless.
Perhaps I am being too concerned about that which is factual and what can actually be proven….I just dawned on me……perhaps I can get on the “grant money express”. Let’s give this a try…….
There is something in the environment that might cause something because scientists state that studies suggest something could cause long term effects which are unknown due to links that some have expressed or voiced some concerns over. Experts are issuing this warning for fear that this something could be causing some effects in unborn babies and young children. Although negligible or minimal concern is still expressed, studies still leave doubts; therefore questions remain.
Some scientists were critical and felt a warning of a great cause for concern should be issued because researchers hypothesize that something may cause a suspected something. Many other scientists are quoted as saying that; “Still, some environmental substances remain suspicious although the data is yet inadequate to make a judgment, however the weight of the evidence says we have a problem with something.”
Although government scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved, and lack of evidence from other studies. It is possible that this should make women more likely to be concerned because we've used a new research technology to generate hypotheses and possible associations which suggest something is probably to blame.
Other scientists say that ecologists are worried that it has been found through laboratory analysis that some substance is present in something and while further study is needed to understand the impact, it is unlikely (or likely) that something could have the potential to significantly promote something. While voicing caution on the link to something, concerns were echoed widespread that, if left unregulated, something could hurt the environment.
The simple truth is that the factors suggest that if we allow something to be used in society today, it means we are performing a vast experiment, not in the lab, but in the real world, not just on wildlife but on people; in sum, however, the weight of the evidence says we have a problem. Furthermore, due to the growing body of assertions; there is mounting evidence that something may trigger something.
What do you think? Do you think I could ask for a grant of $150,000,000 to get started studying “something”?
When you start to look at these “studies” touted by the activists you find that there is one common thread. They are full of weasel words and phrases. This gives them a great deal of wiggle room because they never come out and definitively state that things are factual….they are always ‘maybes’, and always scary ‘maybes’. Did it ever occur to anyone that these “Weasel-words and Phrases” are perhaps just somebody’s unfounded printed accusation, or perhaps some professional’s words for guessing? When this stuff makes it into print, they never give the impression that this may be not only a minority opinion, but may be viewed as …..well……whacky……by the rest of the scientific community.
Anthropogenic Global Warming was one such idea that was considered laughable; at least until the government started feeding huge amounts of grant money into studying it and then it became “science”. Especially since only those who promoted it got the money. All the “science” has turned out to be wrong or fraudulent; but what has that to do with grant money? After all, truth is no longer the Holy Grail of science…..The Holy Grail of science is now grant money.
I have been keeping an updated running list of Weasel-Words and Phrases. You might find them amusing…..You will also notice that these phrases appear in all these “studies” that make outrageous claims against chemicals.
1. Might cause
2. Studies suggest
3. Could cause
4. The long term effects are unknown
5. Linked
6. Voiced concerns about
7. Expressed some concern
8. Experts fear
9. Warning that the chemical could be causing neurological and behavior effects in unborn babies and young children
10. Negligible concern is still expressed
11. Minimal concerns
12. Still leaves doubts
13. Warning of a great cause for concern
14. Some scientists were critical
15. Researchers hypothesize
16. Suspected hormonal imbalance
17. Many scientists say
18. Still, some environmental substances remain suspicious
19. Data is yet inadequate to make a judgment, however the weight of the evidence says we have a problem
20. But government scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies.
21. May make women more likely to
22. We've used a new research technology to generate hypotheses and possible associations
23. Probably to blame
24. Ecologists are worried that
25. It has been found through laboratory analysis that (X) substance is present in
26. While further study is needed to understand the impact, it is unlikely (or likely) that
27. While voicing caution on the link to (X), concerns were echoed widespread that, if left unregulated, (X) could hurt the environment.
28. Have the potential to significantly promote
This one is my favorite
29. The simple truth is that the way we allow chemicals to be used in society today means we are performing a vast experiment, not in the lab, but in the real world, not just on wildlife but on people
30. Factors suggest
31. In sum, however, the weight of the evidence says we have a problem. Human impacts beyond isolated cases are already demonstrable. They involve
impairments to reproduction, alterations in behavior, diminishment of intellectual capacity, and erosion in the ability to resist disease. [emphasis in the original -- http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/Basics/bottomline.htm viewed 5/16/06] (This turned out to be a lie)
32. Mounting evidence" that these chemicals "may trigger hormonal changes."
33. There is a serious connection to….
I guess that 100 to 300 million dollars spent by the chemical companies to meet the required testing by EPA in order to introduce a pesticide into the environment was meaningless.
Perhaps I am being too concerned about that which is factual and what can actually be proven….I just dawned on me……perhaps I can get on the “grant money express”. Let’s give this a try…….
There is something in the environment that might cause something because scientists state that studies suggest something could cause long term effects which are unknown due to links that some have expressed or voiced some concerns over. Experts are issuing this warning for fear that this something could be causing some effects in unborn babies and young children. Although negligible or minimal concern is still expressed, studies still leave doubts; therefore questions remain.
Some scientists were critical and felt a warning of a great cause for concern should be issued because researchers hypothesize that something may cause a suspected something. Many other scientists are quoted as saying that; “Still, some environmental substances remain suspicious although the data is yet inadequate to make a judgment, however the weight of the evidence says we have a problem with something.”
Although government scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved, and lack of evidence from other studies. It is possible that this should make women more likely to be concerned because we've used a new research technology to generate hypotheses and possible associations which suggest something is probably to blame.
Other scientists say that ecologists are worried that it has been found through laboratory analysis that some substance is present in something and while further study is needed to understand the impact, it is unlikely (or likely) that something could have the potential to significantly promote something. While voicing caution on the link to something, concerns were echoed widespread that, if left unregulated, something could hurt the environment.
The simple truth is that the factors suggest that if we allow something to be used in society today, it means we are performing a vast experiment, not in the lab, but in the real world, not just on wildlife but on people; in sum, however, the weight of the evidence says we have a problem. Furthermore, due to the growing body of assertions; there is mounting evidence that something may trigger something.
What do you think? Do you think I could ask for a grant of $150,000,000 to get started studying “something”?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Halting The Human Enterprise
By Wendell Krossa
The great environmental narrative beaten into public consciousness across the world today is that the human enterprise (economic growth and development) is destroying nature. Environmentalists claim that, in particular, our use of energy is producing pollution and this is leading to catastrophic global warming. Hence on every side we are being told to lessen our footprint, to be more green, to use less energy and fewer chemicals. And like any myth there is an element of truth buried in this narrative- that we should always strive to be more efficient in using resources and not wasteful and that we should lessen any pollutants that we put into the environment. Agreed. But the downside to this narrative is devastatingly harmful in that it is slowing economic growth and development and this is hurting many poor people.
The use of energy is the life blood of human economies. To restrain energy use (by taxing and prohibiting emissions) will lead to further loss of competitiveness, loss of jobs, lowered living standards, along with a general hindering of economic growth and development (note reports on the problems in Europe from all the tax and cap schemes and the public revolt now brewing).
This environmental claim that human activity is destroying nature is simply not true. The planet is not in peril from our engagement of nature. Certainly we use land and other resources to improve our living conditions and to make further progress on varied fronts. But this is natural and humane. It is the right thing to do. We have the right to use and change the natural environment in our search for better living conditions. Human beings have always done so. And while we do this, many of us also value the preservation of some wilderness for recreational and other purposes.
The conflict arises over how much of nature should be preserved as wilderness. Many environmentalists believe that much more of nature should be preserved in wilderness conditions with little left for human use (Ecological footprint activists argue that humans should use only one quarter of the Earth). Should the rest of us then be limited in our pursuit of improved standards of living (our use of nature) according to these extreme green visions? Many of us do not believe that nature is supreme and that most of nature should be preserved as wilderness.
We believe that humanity has priority rights to nature. And again, this does not mean that we would want to transform all of it into built environment (“paving paradise, put up a parking lot”). Despite environmental exaggeration and distortion, the fact is that at this time in world history in our advanced societies we have actually built up very little of our land area. In the US the built up areas are only 3.6 percent of the total land area and in Europe the built up areas are only 8 percent. This is a small fraction of the entire land area. And remember, agricultural land is still natural and reverts quickly to wilderness when no longer used. But even our built up areas should be considered natural in the sense that we are as valid a part of nature as any other species and what we do is as natural as what any other species does (e.g. termites or bees building their housing and work areas).
Other good sources also disprove the environmental claims that we are destroying nature. For instance, the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization- UN) shows that net deforestation has declined significantly and there is no forest holocaust occurring. Also, see the IUCN information at the end of this essay on the great environmental lie regarding species holocaust. And what about the DDT alarm that has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of as many as 50 million people (see DDT FAQs at Junkscienc.com)? All of these environmental alarms (add here the great ozone layer scare and the acid rain scare) have come to nothing. Nothing.
Wilfred Beckerman, among others, has challenged this environmental belief that the human enterprise is destroying the Earth and must be slowed or even halted. He argues well that the environmental endeavor to stop human growth and development is based on a personal aesthetic vision that cannot be pushed on others. The interests and needs of all people must be taken into account and these take priority over nature preservation. Some people want more wilderness but many others want improved standards of living and this is a basic right. What right do some have to deny them this basic right and need?
And what about the fact that lifting people out of poverty (by using natural resources) is essential to saving the environment? Poverty is the main destroyer of the environment. “Economic growth is still a necessary condition for remedying most of the serious environmental problems facing the world…in the (developing world) environmental problems persist largely because of poverty…the only route by which these countries can overcome their appalling environmental problems is to become richer…the resulting rise in incomes leads to a shift in people’s priorities from the satisfaction of basic needs to concern with their environment and a greater willingness to devote resources to environmental protection” (Wilfred Beckerman, Green Colored Glasses, p.4-6). Indur Goklany calls this the “Environmental transition” (with increasing wealth, and after meeting basic needs, people naturally turn to protecting their environments- The Improving State of the World).
The environmentalists continue to argue against further economic growth and development by claiming that we are using more of such resources as photosynthetic capacity and when we do so we deny this capacity to other species of plants and animals. Beckerman responds- So what? Before, that capacity was simply wasted. And if some species are lost when we take more resources, then we need to publicly debate such questions as how many members of any given species (or entire species themselves) deserve to be preserved before human needs are met? Here we get to differing valuations of nature and humanity. These are personal aesthetic and philosophical differences. While it is unfortunate that any species should go extinct, it is simply not feasible or reasonable or humane to preserve every species no matter what the cost to humanity. And despite the wildly exaggerated claims of environmentalists that there is a species holocaust occurring due to human activity, there is absolutely no evidence of species loss above historical rates which run at about 1 or 2 species a year (again, see IUCN report at the end of this essay).
In trying to sort out these differing beliefs and information we must not be cowed by the alarmism and manipulation of data by environmental extremists as they try to force their apocalyptic hysteria on the rest of our populations.
I would add here that the novel Pan’s Labyrinth has an interesting chapter on animals in nature and in zoos. Even animals are not wild about wilderness living. In the wild they are subject to insecure food supplies, violent predation, and disease. They, like us, may actually prefer the security of a domesticated situation such as a zoo where they are free from the stresses of life in the wild. Nature is a wicked old witch or Dark Nature according to Lyall Watson.
The great tragedy now arising from all this environmental alarmism and extremism is that humanity is being made poorer. Human progress is being seriously hindered. And the poorest people are suffering the most. Too much public and private money is being wasted in response to green hysteria. Environmental regulation is hindering companies from exploring and accessing more energy sources. Money is being diverted from other research to green causes. Much funding is being diverted to alternative energy sources that are more costly to develop and use than hydrocarbons. And taxes on energy are distorting free market processes.
Milton Friedman warned about the growth of government after the Second World War and how this hindered economic growth. David Boaz estimates that postwar growth in government has made us all 40 percent poorer. Indur Goklany has presented research that shows that for every 10 percent growth in government there is a correlated 1 percent drop in economic growth rates. And this excessive government growth is continuing in response to the hysteria of the environmental movement.
In light of this I would argue that the only safe use of the precautionary principle should be to encourage economic growth and development as much as possible in order for humanity to be able to adapt to whatever natural variations nature throws at us, which is most likely to be a cooling spell over the next few decades and possibly longer.
And especially, we need to quit worrying about our use of fossil fuel energy and consequent CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Lawrence Solomon has summarized the research which shows that CO2 is not a pollutant but is a beneficial nutrient on which all life depends.
The 32,000 scientists who signed the protest petition against global warming alarmism have included statements affirming the value of CO2. “This treaty (Kyoto) is, in our opinion, based on flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful” (http://www.oismorg/pproject/s33p36.htm). Increased CO2 has produced a greener world over the past few decades and this has benefited animal life with increased numbers supported by increased plant life. And humanity has also benefited with increased crop growth. In the past there were periods with much higher levels of atmospheric CO2 and geologists have argued that our current atmosphere is “CO2 impoverished” (Geocraft.com).
Why then such fear of CO2? Some have suggested that CO2 has become a proxy for socialist hatred of capitalism. They attack CO2 which comes from the use of energy to fuel our economic growth. People who hate development, humanity, free markets, and progress will focus on stopping such by hindering energy use because it is the life blood of our economies and success. These opponents of human progress have been effective in publicly demonizing CO2 as a pollutant and poison, which it is not.
Much more could be said about CO2 such as the fact that there is no scientifically confirmed link of CO2 emissions with climate warming trends. For instance, Earth cooled from 1940 to 1975 while CO2 levels increased significantly. And Earth is now cooling since 1998 while CO2 levels continue to increase. So there is no clear linkage between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and global warming. While it is theorized that CO2 may have a miniscule effect at the margins of natural warming trends (as much as a fart in a hurricane, according to one scientist) there is no clear scientific evidence that more CO2 will cause catastrophic warming as in the alarmist models.
Unfortunately, many governments are cowing to pressure from Green extremists and alarmists who are making it harder for people to use energy. These politicians are proposing policy responses that are making energy use more expensive and this in a time of cooling when we need more and cheaper energy to adapt to such cooling. The International Energy Agency predicts that all the effort to slow energy emissions will add some $45 trillion to global energy bills over the next 40 years. This is money that could be better spent in increasing economic growth and development in order for humanity, and especially the poor, to adapt to whatever natural variation climate throws at us in the future.
Environmental extremists are hampering freedom to explore and use cheap energy to fuel economic growth and development. They are creating unnecessary guilt and distortion over the falsely imagined damaging impact of CO2. They are trying to halt the human enterprise and our use of resources. This is anti-human and anti-progress. It is becoming the greatest assault on human freedom since Communism. Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, has said, “I feel obligated to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning” (quoted in Ray Evans essay The Chilling Cost of Climate Catastrophism).
In the midst of the current hysteria and pressure to “go green” we need to ask some basic questions: Why? Why are we trying to reduce CO2 emissions? Why are we trying to stop climate change? (the natural variation of climate that has always been the norm for Earth and cannot be stopped by human action) Why are people so hysterical about all this natural climate variation at this time in human history?
One answer to the last question- why is the public going along with environmental hysteria over natural variation- is that climate alarmists have vented their hysteria in the public realm and the media with typical knee-jerk irresponsibility have further exaggerated even more this green alarmism. This has panicked the public and then surveys have reported such panic which has then pressured mindless politicians to react with fear-based policy responses which have increased government regulation and control over citizens. It is a self-reinforcing cycle of insanity.
Future generations will look back on this time of hysteria over nothing and how it hindered human progress and development and will shake their heads just as we shake ours over the witch hunts and crusades and other movements of mass hysteria of the past.
In conclusion let me state clearly that the planet is not stressed or in peril from our economic growth and development. Evidence on every important indicator- species, forest, land use, climate- shows no reason for alarm. In fact, it is the very growth and development of our economies that will lessen any destruction of nature. The human enterprise will save nature. And yes, increased energy efficiency is a smart thing to engage unless the cost to do so competes with other important needs. But too much pursuit of such things is driven by a baseless concern to decrease CO2. And for what good scientific reason?
Lets come back to our senses and refuse to be cowed any further by all this insane alarmism over such things as natural variations in climate. It is not due to our economic activity and use of energy. There is absolutely no sound reason for slowing or halting the human enterprise.
The great environmental narrative beaten into public consciousness across the world today is that the human enterprise (economic growth and development) is destroying nature. Environmentalists claim that, in particular, our use of energy is producing pollution and this is leading to catastrophic global warming. Hence on every side we are being told to lessen our footprint, to be more green, to use less energy and fewer chemicals. And like any myth there is an element of truth buried in this narrative- that we should always strive to be more efficient in using resources and not wasteful and that we should lessen any pollutants that we put into the environment. Agreed. But the downside to this narrative is devastatingly harmful in that it is slowing economic growth and development and this is hurting many poor people.
The use of energy is the life blood of human economies. To restrain energy use (by taxing and prohibiting emissions) will lead to further loss of competitiveness, loss of jobs, lowered living standards, along with a general hindering of economic growth and development (note reports on the problems in Europe from all the tax and cap schemes and the public revolt now brewing).
This environmental claim that human activity is destroying nature is simply not true. The planet is not in peril from our engagement of nature. Certainly we use land and other resources to improve our living conditions and to make further progress on varied fronts. But this is natural and humane. It is the right thing to do. We have the right to use and change the natural environment in our search for better living conditions. Human beings have always done so. And while we do this, many of us also value the preservation of some wilderness for recreational and other purposes.
The conflict arises over how much of nature should be preserved as wilderness. Many environmentalists believe that much more of nature should be preserved in wilderness conditions with little left for human use (Ecological footprint activists argue that humans should use only one quarter of the Earth). Should the rest of us then be limited in our pursuit of improved standards of living (our use of nature) according to these extreme green visions? Many of us do not believe that nature is supreme and that most of nature should be preserved as wilderness.
We believe that humanity has priority rights to nature. And again, this does not mean that we would want to transform all of it into built environment (“paving paradise, put up a parking lot”). Despite environmental exaggeration and distortion, the fact is that at this time in world history in our advanced societies we have actually built up very little of our land area. In the US the built up areas are only 3.6 percent of the total land area and in Europe the built up areas are only 8 percent. This is a small fraction of the entire land area. And remember, agricultural land is still natural and reverts quickly to wilderness when no longer used. But even our built up areas should be considered natural in the sense that we are as valid a part of nature as any other species and what we do is as natural as what any other species does (e.g. termites or bees building their housing and work areas).
Other good sources also disprove the environmental claims that we are destroying nature. For instance, the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization- UN) shows that net deforestation has declined significantly and there is no forest holocaust occurring. Also, see the IUCN information at the end of this essay on the great environmental lie regarding species holocaust. And what about the DDT alarm that has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of as many as 50 million people (see DDT FAQs at Junkscienc.com)? All of these environmental alarms (add here the great ozone layer scare and the acid rain scare) have come to nothing. Nothing.
Wilfred Beckerman, among others, has challenged this environmental belief that the human enterprise is destroying the Earth and must be slowed or even halted. He argues well that the environmental endeavor to stop human growth and development is based on a personal aesthetic vision that cannot be pushed on others. The interests and needs of all people must be taken into account and these take priority over nature preservation. Some people want more wilderness but many others want improved standards of living and this is a basic right. What right do some have to deny them this basic right and need?
And what about the fact that lifting people out of poverty (by using natural resources) is essential to saving the environment? Poverty is the main destroyer of the environment. “Economic growth is still a necessary condition for remedying most of the serious environmental problems facing the world…in the (developing world) environmental problems persist largely because of poverty…the only route by which these countries can overcome their appalling environmental problems is to become richer…the resulting rise in incomes leads to a shift in people’s priorities from the satisfaction of basic needs to concern with their environment and a greater willingness to devote resources to environmental protection” (Wilfred Beckerman, Green Colored Glasses, p.4-6). Indur Goklany calls this the “Environmental transition” (with increasing wealth, and after meeting basic needs, people naturally turn to protecting their environments- The Improving State of the World).
The environmentalists continue to argue against further economic growth and development by claiming that we are using more of such resources as photosynthetic capacity and when we do so we deny this capacity to other species of plants and animals. Beckerman responds- So what? Before, that capacity was simply wasted. And if some species are lost when we take more resources, then we need to publicly debate such questions as how many members of any given species (or entire species themselves) deserve to be preserved before human needs are met? Here we get to differing valuations of nature and humanity. These are personal aesthetic and philosophical differences. While it is unfortunate that any species should go extinct, it is simply not feasible or reasonable or humane to preserve every species no matter what the cost to humanity. And despite the wildly exaggerated claims of environmentalists that there is a species holocaust occurring due to human activity, there is absolutely no evidence of species loss above historical rates which run at about 1 or 2 species a year (again, see IUCN report at the end of this essay).
In trying to sort out these differing beliefs and information we must not be cowed by the alarmism and manipulation of data by environmental extremists as they try to force their apocalyptic hysteria on the rest of our populations.
I would add here that the novel Pan’s Labyrinth has an interesting chapter on animals in nature and in zoos. Even animals are not wild about wilderness living. In the wild they are subject to insecure food supplies, violent predation, and disease. They, like us, may actually prefer the security of a domesticated situation such as a zoo where they are free from the stresses of life in the wild. Nature is a wicked old witch or Dark Nature according to Lyall Watson.
The great tragedy now arising from all this environmental alarmism and extremism is that humanity is being made poorer. Human progress is being seriously hindered. And the poorest people are suffering the most. Too much public and private money is being wasted in response to green hysteria. Environmental regulation is hindering companies from exploring and accessing more energy sources. Money is being diverted from other research to green causes. Much funding is being diverted to alternative energy sources that are more costly to develop and use than hydrocarbons. And taxes on energy are distorting free market processes.
Milton Friedman warned about the growth of government after the Second World War and how this hindered economic growth. David Boaz estimates that postwar growth in government has made us all 40 percent poorer. Indur Goklany has presented research that shows that for every 10 percent growth in government there is a correlated 1 percent drop in economic growth rates. And this excessive government growth is continuing in response to the hysteria of the environmental movement.
In light of this I would argue that the only safe use of the precautionary principle should be to encourage economic growth and development as much as possible in order for humanity to be able to adapt to whatever natural variations nature throws at us, which is most likely to be a cooling spell over the next few decades and possibly longer.
And especially, we need to quit worrying about our use of fossil fuel energy and consequent CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Lawrence Solomon has summarized the research which shows that CO2 is not a pollutant but is a beneficial nutrient on which all life depends.
The 32,000 scientists who signed the protest petition against global warming alarmism have included statements affirming the value of CO2. “This treaty (Kyoto) is, in our opinion, based on flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful” (http://www.oismorg/pproject/s33p36.htm). Increased CO2 has produced a greener world over the past few decades and this has benefited animal life with increased numbers supported by increased plant life. And humanity has also benefited with increased crop growth. In the past there were periods with much higher levels of atmospheric CO2 and geologists have argued that our current atmosphere is “CO2 impoverished” (Geocraft.com).
Why then such fear of CO2? Some have suggested that CO2 has become a proxy for socialist hatred of capitalism. They attack CO2 which comes from the use of energy to fuel our economic growth. People who hate development, humanity, free markets, and progress will focus on stopping such by hindering energy use because it is the life blood of our economies and success. These opponents of human progress have been effective in publicly demonizing CO2 as a pollutant and poison, which it is not.
Much more could be said about CO2 such as the fact that there is no scientifically confirmed link of CO2 emissions with climate warming trends. For instance, Earth cooled from 1940 to 1975 while CO2 levels increased significantly. And Earth is now cooling since 1998 while CO2 levels continue to increase. So there is no clear linkage between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and global warming. While it is theorized that CO2 may have a miniscule effect at the margins of natural warming trends (as much as a fart in a hurricane, according to one scientist) there is no clear scientific evidence that more CO2 will cause catastrophic warming as in the alarmist models.
Unfortunately, many governments are cowing to pressure from Green extremists and alarmists who are making it harder for people to use energy. These politicians are proposing policy responses that are making energy use more expensive and this in a time of cooling when we need more and cheaper energy to adapt to such cooling. The International Energy Agency predicts that all the effort to slow energy emissions will add some $45 trillion to global energy bills over the next 40 years. This is money that could be better spent in increasing economic growth and development in order for humanity, and especially the poor, to adapt to whatever natural variation climate throws at us in the future.
Environmental extremists are hampering freedom to explore and use cheap energy to fuel economic growth and development. They are creating unnecessary guilt and distortion over the falsely imagined damaging impact of CO2. They are trying to halt the human enterprise and our use of resources. This is anti-human and anti-progress. It is becoming the greatest assault on human freedom since Communism. Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, has said, “I feel obligated to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning” (quoted in Ray Evans essay The Chilling Cost of Climate Catastrophism).
In the midst of the current hysteria and pressure to “go green” we need to ask some basic questions: Why? Why are we trying to reduce CO2 emissions? Why are we trying to stop climate change? (the natural variation of climate that has always been the norm for Earth and cannot be stopped by human action) Why are people so hysterical about all this natural climate variation at this time in human history?
One answer to the last question- why is the public going along with environmental hysteria over natural variation- is that climate alarmists have vented their hysteria in the public realm and the media with typical knee-jerk irresponsibility have further exaggerated even more this green alarmism. This has panicked the public and then surveys have reported such panic which has then pressured mindless politicians to react with fear-based policy responses which have increased government regulation and control over citizens. It is a self-reinforcing cycle of insanity.
Future generations will look back on this time of hysteria over nothing and how it hindered human progress and development and will shake their heads just as we shake ours over the witch hunts and crusades and other movements of mass hysteria of the past.
In conclusion let me state clearly that the planet is not stressed or in peril from our economic growth and development. Evidence on every important indicator- species, forest, land use, climate- shows no reason for alarm. In fact, it is the very growth and development of our economies that will lessen any destruction of nature. The human enterprise will save nature. And yes, increased energy efficiency is a smart thing to engage unless the cost to do so competes with other important needs. But too much pursuit of such things is driven by a baseless concern to decrease CO2. And for what good scientific reason?
Lets come back to our senses and refuse to be cowed any further by all this insane alarmism over such things as natural variations in climate. It is not due to our economic activity and use of energy. There is absolutely no sound reason for slowing or halting the human enterprise.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Through The Looking Glass
By Rich Kozlovich
Editor’s note: This article has been hit a great deal lately and so I went back and read it. Since I am a bug man and not a trained writer I find that much of the work I have done in past years could stand improvement, therefore I have reworked this article. I hope it is an improvement. RK - 3/9/11
Heisenberg’s uncertainty Theory – The more closely you study the subject the less clearly defined it becomes. May I be so bold as to entertain the thought that this certainly would apply to those who attempt to define Integrated Pest Management (IPM) or Green for the structural pest control industry? Here is the reality we are faced with; we have agreed to use these terms without agreeing on what they mean. I hear the statement often; “we all know what IPM is or; we all know what Green means”. Really? The reality is that there is “no universally accepted definition of the IPM and Green phenomena; there is no consensus as to their range, their ideological origins, or the modalities of action which characterize them.”*
Yet, the activists wield words and phrases such as, “we must reduce our chemical impact” like a cudgel to browbeat anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their views regarding IPM or Green pest control. They suggest that we are a bunch of evil fascists attempting to pollute the world and kill our children for mere profit.
My questions are always the same;
It can be clearly shown that while they spew out unproven claims about pesticides and those who use them, the green movement has wreaked havoc on people’s lives all over the world. Children dying by the millions and tens millions suffering from a host of maladies and conditions created by the things that they promote, which could have been easily prevented except for the influence activists have on the decision makers of the world. These are facts and they are part of the public record for those who are willing to look for them. They cannot be disputed! They can be spun, they can be denied, they can be twisted and the can be ignored….but they cannot be disputed!
This brings me to some questions that I would really love an answer to:
How do these ideas take hold in an industry? It is caused by decent, everyday, go to work men who willingly but unknowingly take these concepts seriously. And why are they so 'willing' and 'unknowing'? Actually it is understandable. It is because there is no one from our industries that is rebutting these claims, or responding to the arbitrary demands from the activists and regulators in our own forums. And apparently, it appears that no one else is permitted to publically rebut them. As a result they have no other touch stone to go by except the propaganda of the greenies and the EPA.
Another point that I think should be obvious to the most casual observer is that we can't get “ahead of this green issue”. How can we get ahead of something that isn’t ours? It is their program and they will adjust it to offset anything we do. If we even appear to be “getting ahead” they will adjust it in such a manner that we will fall behind again. We will never get ahead of this “green” phenomenon; period! You can’t get ahead of an irrational concept that is initiated by those who wish you ill. If it isn’t your program you can’t control it; you can only defeat it!
Green is even less definable than IPM. “We didn’t get ahead of IPM and look where it got us”; I was recently told. We waste energy trying to get ahead of things we cannot get ahead of and cannot control. Furthermore, we shouldn’t be trying to get ahead; we should be working to eliminate them. The reason we have “green” as an issue now is not because we didn’t get ahead of IPM; it’s because we didn’t defeat IPM. This was the next obvious step after IPM. Their goal is to eliminate pesticides, and each time we adopt an attitude of appeasement, they will go to the next level and each level will be more extreme than the last. Make no mistake about it; we didn’t stand up to IPM then, and if we don’t defeat “green” now the next step will be elimination. The European Union has already taken steps to do just that. See EU Ministers Clinch Deal on New Pesticides Law in this week's Green Notes Newsletter.
"Through the Looking Glass" was a book by Lewis Carroll with Alice (As in Alice in Wonderland) as the main character. In the book Alice finally awakens from her irrational and nightmarish dream and promptly blames one of her cats for the whole thing.
Who will we blame when we awaken from this irrational and nightmarish attempt to please the green activists inside and outside of our industry? More importantly; who will take responsibility for the disasters that awaits us when the developed world eliminates pesticides and loses the benefits they impart? I will not! I will not have to!
"The time has come," the Walrus said, to talk of many things: Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax - Of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings."- Lewis Carroll
* Paraphrased statement by Stanley G,. Payne in the book Dictionnaire historique des fascisms et du nazisme as cited and quoted in the book Liberal Fascism.
###
Editor’s note: This article has been hit a great deal lately and so I went back and read it. Since I am a bug man and not a trained writer I find that much of the work I have done in past years could stand improvement, therefore I have reworked this article. I hope it is an improvement. RK - 3/9/11
Heisenberg’s uncertainty Theory – The more closely you study the subject the less clearly defined it becomes. May I be so bold as to entertain the thought that this certainly would apply to those who attempt to define Integrated Pest Management (IPM) or Green for the structural pest control industry? Here is the reality we are faced with; we have agreed to use these terms without agreeing on what they mean. I hear the statement often; “we all know what IPM is or; we all know what Green means”. Really? The reality is that there is “no universally accepted definition of the IPM and Green phenomena; there is no consensus as to their range, their ideological origins, or the modalities of action which characterize them.”*
Yet, the activists wield words and phrases such as, “we must reduce our chemical impact” like a cudgel to browbeat anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their views regarding IPM or Green pest control. They suggest that we are a bunch of evil fascists attempting to pollute the world and kill our children for mere profit.
My questions are always the same;
1. Exactly what chemical impact are they talking about?They aren’t in countries that are the heaviest users of pesticides. In fact, it is now reported that the life expectancy is increasing in these countries. However, the opposite is true in countries that use pesticides the least. They answer by making unfounded claims in the press, where they sound like songbirds; however, when you challenge these people face to face they sound more like croaking toads.
2. What are the statistics?
3. Where is the reduction in life expectancy?
4. Where is the massive increase in diseases?
It can be clearly shown that while they spew out unproven claims about pesticides and those who use them, the green movement has wreaked havoc on people’s lives all over the world. Children dying by the millions and tens millions suffering from a host of maladies and conditions created by the things that they promote, which could have been easily prevented except for the influence activists have on the decision makers of the world. These are facts and they are part of the public record for those who are willing to look for them. They cannot be disputed! They can be spun, they can be denied, they can be twisted and the can be ignored….but they cannot be disputed!
This brings me to some questions that I would really love an answer to:
1. Why are promoters of these misanthropic concepts given columns that regularly appear in our industries trade journals? All of a sudden these people become teachers and journalists to the structural pest control industry and de facto spokesmen for the industry.For years the green activists have promoted causes and programs that have resulted in devastation to the poorest and most desperate people of the world. And all the while these activist induced devastations have been going on these people have maintained a steady drumbeat of misinformation, condemning us with their unscientific claims about pesticides and public health. And the media inside and outside of our industry has either been silent or has been party to this campaign of Jabberwocky. What has the application industries done to defend itself from these false charges? Little or nothing! Worse yet, the pesticide manufacturing, distribution and application industries are becoming part and parcel of that package.
2. Why is it that those who have different views are not given the same opportunity to refute these activists’ views?
3. Why do I never see a regular column devoted to defending us as we are! I have said it before and I will say this again. They are not the pest control industry! Consultants and researchers are hired help and it is their job to salute and say; yes sir. We need to start telling them and not the reverse. If they don't like it we need to fire them!
How do these ideas take hold in an industry? It is caused by decent, everyday, go to work men who willingly but unknowingly take these concepts seriously. And why are they so 'willing' and 'unknowing'? Actually it is understandable. It is because there is no one from our industries that is rebutting these claims, or responding to the arbitrary demands from the activists and regulators in our own forums. And apparently, it appears that no one else is permitted to publically rebut them. As a result they have no other touch stone to go by except the propaganda of the greenies and the EPA.
Another point that I think should be obvious to the most casual observer is that we can't get “ahead of this green issue”. How can we get ahead of something that isn’t ours? It is their program and they will adjust it to offset anything we do. If we even appear to be “getting ahead” they will adjust it in such a manner that we will fall behind again. We will never get ahead of this “green” phenomenon; period! You can’t get ahead of an irrational concept that is initiated by those who wish you ill. If it isn’t your program you can’t control it; you can only defeat it!
Green is even less definable than IPM. “We didn’t get ahead of IPM and look where it got us”; I was recently told. We waste energy trying to get ahead of things we cannot get ahead of and cannot control. Furthermore, we shouldn’t be trying to get ahead; we should be working to eliminate them. The reason we have “green” as an issue now is not because we didn’t get ahead of IPM; it’s because we didn’t defeat IPM. This was the next obvious step after IPM. Their goal is to eliminate pesticides, and each time we adopt an attitude of appeasement, they will go to the next level and each level will be more extreme than the last. Make no mistake about it; we didn’t stand up to IPM then, and if we don’t defeat “green” now the next step will be elimination. The European Union has already taken steps to do just that. See EU Ministers Clinch Deal on New Pesticides Law in this week's Green Notes Newsletter.
"Through the Looking Glass" was a book by Lewis Carroll with Alice (As in Alice in Wonderland) as the main character. In the book Alice finally awakens from her irrational and nightmarish dream and promptly blames one of her cats for the whole thing.
Who will we blame when we awaken from this irrational and nightmarish attempt to please the green activists inside and outside of our industry? More importantly; who will take responsibility for the disasters that awaits us when the developed world eliminates pesticides and loses the benefits they impart? I will not! I will not have to!
"The time has come," the Walrus said, to talk of many things: Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax - Of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings."- Lewis Carroll
* Paraphrased statement by Stanley G,. Payne in the book Dictionnaire historique des fascisms et du nazisme as cited and quoted in the book Liberal Fascism.
###
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Is Green Another Word For Pagan?
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Wendell Krossa
I would like to thank Mr. Krossa for giving me permission to reprint this information. I will be publishing more of his work dealing with this subject in the future. I recommend following the Anne Gardiner link. RK
Anne Gardiner presents a good summary of some of the pagan mythology behind modern environmental thought. Alston Chase similarly traces something of the mythological roots of this movement in his book In A Dark Wood.
Gardiner also expresses the great battle for human minds and freedom that this environmental movement is shaping up to be. It is becoming the defining issue of our time- the environmentalist assault on human freedom. Some have suggested that it could become a totalitarianism that would outdo totalitarianisms of the past because it wants to legislate human behavior in constraining detail that other movements did not engage. And it demands a reversal of the human enterprise (and humanity itself) on a scale that few other movements envisioned.
But I am not sure that Gardiner's alternative is up to the task of countering the core mythology of environmentalism. The Christian story is also one of human sacrifice and this does little to effectively challenge the similar pagan call for human sacrifice. Competing against one form of mythology with a similar story does not really resolve anything fundamental. Also, the Christian belief system assumes a fallen humanity which is little improvement on the devaluation of humanity offered by environmental paganism.
At the root of all this mythology is the valuation or perspective on humanity that people hold. This is a critical issue - how do we view and value humanity? What is our place in the overall scheme of things?
I would argue that with consciousness we hold a unique place in nature and a privileged responsibility to humanize nature and life. With consciousness we have awareness of what truly humane reality is about and we are responsible to bring this awareness to our engagement with the rest of life. Easterbrook (A Moment on the Earth) suggests that nature has waited a long time for us and our endowments of mind and intelligence. We can now help nature out of the dead ends that it has gotten into by its blind, random, and dumb processes (e.g. predation, disease, natural disasters).
A related issue here is how we view nature. Nature is not some pristine or pure reality aside from humanity. It has rightly been called a "wicked old witch" or Dark Nature (Lyall Watson). It is violent, disease ridden, and in need of rescue. While enlightened consciousness leads us to respect the rest of life, we should not apologize for our status and responsibility toward life and the Earth; to humanize nature. In fulfilling our responsibility, we ought to feel no guilt over our engagement of nature and our use of its abundant resources.
So nature has no inherent right to supremacy over humanity. Ideologies/mythologies that place something else above free human persons have always led to the neglect and abuse of real people. Such is the history of religious and ideological movements. Whenever people place something above human persons and their rights and freedom, then they fall prey to totalitarianism. This is equally true of this pagan nature worship. One would think it would be clear to most people that a dumb, blind, and randomly driven environment cannot take precedence over conscious persons.
I would suggest that an effective answer to this environmental mythology lies in the proper valuation of humanity or human persons. Each of us will do this in our own way according to our personal worldviews. Let me just note that helpful alternatives have been offered here by people like Joseph Campbell. Few have expressed the wonder of being human as well he has in his books Myths To Live By, The Power of Myth, and An Open Life. Catholic theologian Thomas Sheehan also offers an interesting valuation of humanity in his essay From Divinity to Infinity. He suggests that humanity is the new "marker" (or stand in) for divinity. Divinity, he says, has disappeared into humanity to explore the infinity of human potential in improving life. Campbell similarly offers the perspective that each of us embodies the great Consciousness or Mind of the universe. From such insight it becomes obvious that we are not just another animal subject to nature and its ecosystems (and after all, the story of humanity is one of freedom from natural constraints and limitations). We are so much more than just the 2 percent difference with apes. Others might prefer more secular perspectives on the wonder of being human such as that offered by Julian Simon in Ultimate Resource.
On the primitiveness or paganism of this contemporary environmental mythology I was reminded of a personal experience with a tribal man in Mindanao (Davao Del Norte province, Southern Philippines). He was fishing in a rainforest river. As he stood shivering on the bank holding his fishing spear I noticed that he had placed a piece of bamboo upright in the bank of the river with an egg held in the split top. I knew the mythology behind such sacrifice but I asked him anyway why he had done that. He replied, "So the river spirit will not be angry when I take fish from the river".
Pagan, barbaric, and ignorant? Yes, it's all that. But it is even more unsettling when such primitive thought is promoted by PhDs in our universities. Bill Rees, the father of the ecological footprint concept, had us read The Re-Enchantment of the World and lectured us on Deep Ecology in grad school (Planning) at the University of British Columbia. He had PhD candidates lecture us on nature as Goddess. And he also stated that he would not only halt the human enterprise for taking from nature, but would actually reverse it. Earth can only sustain about one to two billion people, according to him.
You can't discuss science with such people. Once in the grip of a mythology as powerful as this pagan nature worship, you can only let their hysteria run its course. But when that hysteria begins to push its totalitarian solutions on the rest of us, then it is the responsibility of all of us to stand up and refuse to let such insanity undermine human freedom and progress.
Mr. Krossa lives in BC (Maple Ridge), working with the mentally disabled. Trained as an urban planner (UBC), after which he became involved in rural development in the Philippines for some 10 years. Mr. Krossa contributes to several net forums dealing with various issues including environmental. He is especially interested in the foundational ideas behind contemporary environmental ideology. His work can be viewed at www.thehumanspirit.net
Wendell Krossa
I would like to thank Mr. Krossa for giving me permission to reprint this information. I will be publishing more of his work dealing with this subject in the future. I recommend following the Anne Gardiner link. RK
Anne Gardiner presents a good summary of some of the pagan mythology behind modern environmental thought. Alston Chase similarly traces something of the mythological roots of this movement in his book In A Dark Wood.
Gardiner also expresses the great battle for human minds and freedom that this environmental movement is shaping up to be. It is becoming the defining issue of our time- the environmentalist assault on human freedom. Some have suggested that it could become a totalitarianism that would outdo totalitarianisms of the past because it wants to legislate human behavior in constraining detail that other movements did not engage. And it demands a reversal of the human enterprise (and humanity itself) on a scale that few other movements envisioned.
But I am not sure that Gardiner's alternative is up to the task of countering the core mythology of environmentalism. The Christian story is also one of human sacrifice and this does little to effectively challenge the similar pagan call for human sacrifice. Competing against one form of mythology with a similar story does not really resolve anything fundamental. Also, the Christian belief system assumes a fallen humanity which is little improvement on the devaluation of humanity offered by environmental paganism.
At the root of all this mythology is the valuation or perspective on humanity that people hold. This is a critical issue - how do we view and value humanity? What is our place in the overall scheme of things?
I would argue that with consciousness we hold a unique place in nature and a privileged responsibility to humanize nature and life. With consciousness we have awareness of what truly humane reality is about and we are responsible to bring this awareness to our engagement with the rest of life. Easterbrook (A Moment on the Earth) suggests that nature has waited a long time for us and our endowments of mind and intelligence. We can now help nature out of the dead ends that it has gotten into by its blind, random, and dumb processes (e.g. predation, disease, natural disasters).
A related issue here is how we view nature. Nature is not some pristine or pure reality aside from humanity. It has rightly been called a "wicked old witch" or Dark Nature (Lyall Watson). It is violent, disease ridden, and in need of rescue. While enlightened consciousness leads us to respect the rest of life, we should not apologize for our status and responsibility toward life and the Earth; to humanize nature. In fulfilling our responsibility, we ought to feel no guilt over our engagement of nature and our use of its abundant resources.
So nature has no inherent right to supremacy over humanity. Ideologies/mythologies that place something else above free human persons have always led to the neglect and abuse of real people. Such is the history of religious and ideological movements. Whenever people place something above human persons and their rights and freedom, then they fall prey to totalitarianism. This is equally true of this pagan nature worship. One would think it would be clear to most people that a dumb, blind, and randomly driven environment cannot take precedence over conscious persons.
I would suggest that an effective answer to this environmental mythology lies in the proper valuation of humanity or human persons. Each of us will do this in our own way according to our personal worldviews. Let me just note that helpful alternatives have been offered here by people like Joseph Campbell. Few have expressed the wonder of being human as well he has in his books Myths To Live By, The Power of Myth, and An Open Life. Catholic theologian Thomas Sheehan also offers an interesting valuation of humanity in his essay From Divinity to Infinity. He suggests that humanity is the new "marker" (or stand in) for divinity. Divinity, he says, has disappeared into humanity to explore the infinity of human potential in improving life. Campbell similarly offers the perspective that each of us embodies the great Consciousness or Mind of the universe. From such insight it becomes obvious that we are not just another animal subject to nature and its ecosystems (and after all, the story of humanity is one of freedom from natural constraints and limitations). We are so much more than just the 2 percent difference with apes. Others might prefer more secular perspectives on the wonder of being human such as that offered by Julian Simon in Ultimate Resource.
On the primitiveness or paganism of this contemporary environmental mythology I was reminded of a personal experience with a tribal man in Mindanao (Davao Del Norte province, Southern Philippines). He was fishing in a rainforest river. As he stood shivering on the bank holding his fishing spear I noticed that he had placed a piece of bamboo upright in the bank of the river with an egg held in the split top. I knew the mythology behind such sacrifice but I asked him anyway why he had done that. He replied, "So the river spirit will not be angry when I take fish from the river".
Pagan, barbaric, and ignorant? Yes, it's all that. But it is even more unsettling when such primitive thought is promoted by PhDs in our universities. Bill Rees, the father of the ecological footprint concept, had us read The Re-Enchantment of the World and lectured us on Deep Ecology in grad school (Planning) at the University of British Columbia. He had PhD candidates lecture us on nature as Goddess. And he also stated that he would not only halt the human enterprise for taking from nature, but would actually reverse it. Earth can only sustain about one to two billion people, according to him.
You can't discuss science with such people. Once in the grip of a mythology as powerful as this pagan nature worship, you can only let their hysteria run its course. But when that hysteria begins to push its totalitarian solutions on the rest of us, then it is the responsibility of all of us to stand up and refuse to let such insanity undermine human freedom and progress.
Mr. Krossa lives in BC (Maple Ridge), working with the mentally disabled. Trained as an urban planner (UBC), after which he became involved in rural development in the Philippines for some 10 years. Mr. Krossa contributes to several net forums dealing with various issues including environmental. He is especially interested in the foundational ideas behind contemporary environmental ideology. His work can be viewed at www.thehumanspirit.net
Human Security v. Environmental Activism
I would like to thank Mr. Driessen for giving me permission to reprint his work. I will be adding more of his articles in the future. RK
How environmental policies jeopardize human needs
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 by Paul Driessen
Expanded remarks by Paul Driessen, given in a debate at the International Affairs Symposium held at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon in April, 2008. Does the exporting of our environmental policies to the developing world positively impact human security?
Well, as Institute for Sustainable Development program manager Oli Brown recently pointed out, there are many cases where it undoubtedly does. Some policies. Under certain circumstances. Depending on how you define human security.
Unfortunately, however, there are also numerous cases where such “exports” are anything but helpful. It is those policies that trouble me – for they wreak havoc on human security. In fact, they perpetrate and perpetuate poverty, misery, disease, malnutrition and premature death far too often. Those policies need to be re-examined and discontinued.
I’ve been a strong environmentalist and conservationist my entire life – but also a harsh critic of radical environmentalism, which often fails to pay sufficient attention to people, especially in poor nations. That seeming divergence reflects my background and extensive environmental and international experience.
I’m an Eagle Scout, with degrees in geology and ecology, and environment and resource law. I helped organize the very first Earth Day on my college campus, way back in 1970. A former Sierra Club member, I also hike, camp, cross-country ski and canoe. I’ve had government and private industry jobs, and now work for CFACT, the Congress of Racial Equality and other NGOs around the world. I write regularly about climate change, energy, environmental ethics and corporate social responsibility.
I grew up ten miles from the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power. My home was also two blocks from a huge paper mill, and I saw and smelled its pollution firsthand. I joined the nascent environmental movement primarily to clean up our air and water. And we did it.
I’ve seen environmental devastation. But I’ve also seen the devastation of rampant poverty in African, Latin American and Asian communities. I’ve seen companies do horrendous things to habitats – and others do incredibly good things for people, communities and the environment. I’ve seen environmental groups accomplish tremendous good – and others pursue agendas that I can only describe as anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-people. We export those kinds of policies to poor countries at their peril, and to our shame.
As Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg has said: “We have numerous problems, but limited human and financial resources. We have to set priorities. Climate change can wait. Human health can’t.”
Economist Milton Friedman also got it right: “Poor countries,” he said, “should not do what rich countries are doing now that they are rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich.”
My grandmother offered this advice: “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.”
If policies reduce or prevent threats to vital elements of human security, we should export them. If other policies would prolong or worsen already horrid situations in developing nations, then exporting them would be counterproductive … or even unconscionable.
So we need to differentiate clearly between real risks and speculative risks … between immediate risks and those that are so far in the future that predictions are worthless. We need to focus on risks that present a clear and present danger to human life and security – threats that are substantiated, recurrent and costly, especially in terms of lives lost. We need to avoid focusing so much time, money, emotion and regulation on risks that are hypothetical … and based on false assumptions, political agendas, alarmist headlines, hysteria, Hollywood special effects or computer models.
Like Bjorn, I put global warming well down on my list of worries and priorities – and policies to prevent global warming near the bottom of what we should export to poor nations. Like literally hundreds of climate scientists, I believe the risk of catastrophic climate change is hugely exaggerated, and unsupported by scientific evidence.
So … what policies should we export?
Property rights and free enterprise – which Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto says will unleash the creative forces of millions of hard-working people … and turn trillions of dollars of “dead capital” into vibrant economies that generate prosperity, health, opportunity and security.
Drug standards and testing – to ensure that medicines are safe and effective … and we protect people from counterfeit malaria and AIDS drugs that prolong disease or even kill.
Honesty, transparency and accountability standards – for corporations, nonprofit groups, politicians and government agencies alike. In other words, truth in assertions, transparency in funding and spending, and accountability for policies and actions that result in poverty, disease and death.
Reasonable mining and drilling standards, and the best practices of responsible leaders in their industries – to help poor countries get the energy and minerals they need, while ensuring worker safety, minimizing pollution, and restoring any lands that have to be disturbed to extract the resources.
Reasonable air and water quality standards for factories and power generation facilities – to reduce pollution, while also ensuring that poor countries can generate the electricity, jobs and prosperity they need to improve people’s lives and security, and afford even better pollution controls in the future, as they become more prosperous and can pay for upgrades and better technologies. We need to apply the same environmental standards to state-operated mines, smelters, electrical power generators and factories, as we apply to privately owned and operated facilities.
Which environmental policies impair human security – and should not be exported?
#1. U.N.-style sustainable development. The UN originally said we must sustain and expand the resource base, so that people can build more prosperous, just and secure futures. Today, though, the concept is mostly used to block development, on the ground that some future generation might need the resources we want today.
Many sustainability policies delay or prevent all but small-scale development projects, and thus impair human security – even though future technologies, and thus future resource needs, cannot be predicted … any more than people living in 1950 could have envisioned today’s televisions, cell phones, jetliners and computers scans … or what resources would be needed, when, and in what quantities, to manufacture them. SD proponents rarely ask: How long must a deposit, facility or project last to be “sustainable” – 10, 50, 100 or 500 years? Which costs and tradeoffs should be emphasized, and which ones ignored?
Bad policy #2. The precautionary principle. It too is used mainly to delay or prevent development, and only rarely to protect people against real, immediate, life-or-death risks. It focuses too much attention on the alleged, and often overblown or even imaginary, risks of using a chemical or technology. It often minimizes consideration of significant risks that the chemical or technology would prevent.
Bad policy #3. Policies that promote or mandate alternative or renewable energy – especially when they are also used to delay or block fossil fuel, hydroelectric and nuclear energy development.
Wind power is expensive, land and resource intensive, and unreliable. It can add extra power to an electrical grid. But it’s totally inadequate as a primary energy source for any country, rich or poor. Just generating enough electricity to power New York City would mean covering the entire state of Connecticut with towering wind turbines, Rockefeller University professor Jesse Ausubel has calculated. And the city would still need expensive natural gas-fired generators (and thus drilling for gas), to provide electricity every time the wind stops blowing fast enough to operate the turbines.
Producing 7 billion gallons of ethanol in 2007 required corn grown on an area the size of Indiana – plus vast amounts of water, insecticides, fertilizers and petroleum. It has helped send corn and wheat prices soaring, and forced the World Food Program to ration aid, and millions more to go to bed hungry.
Ethanol puts food for hungry mouths into cars that should be fueled by oil that Congress and state legislatures have made off limits. It’s causing food shortages, deforestation and even riots over food.
Telling poor countries they must rely on wind, solar or ethanol condemns them to poverty and insecurity … and tramples on their energy and economic human rights. Such policies are unsustainable – morally, economically and ecologically … even when they’re promoted or imposed out of concern about catastrophic climate change.
Climate change has been real since time began. Twentieth century warming and cooling trends were not abnormal, air and ocean temperatures have been stable for nearly a decade … and there is no credible evidence that future warming will be driven primarily by humans – or be catastrophic.
Some computer models make such projections, via worst-case scenarios. But they are based on our still poor understanding of complex climate systems. They assume carbon dioxide is the primary cause of climate change. They fail to consider solar energy fluctuations, cosmic ray influences on cloud cover, the cooling effects of precipitation, or negative (cooling) feedbacks from high cirrus clouds.
They are notoriously unreliable, and unable to forecast events and climate shifts even one year in the future, much less 50 or 100. In fact, projections and scenarios generated by models are consistently at odds with actual observed changes and trends. Models simply are not evidence – and certainly should not be relied on as a basis for policies that would seriously disrupt our economy and human security.
The fact is, slashing CO2 emissions by 60 to 90 percent, in a quest to stabilize our planet’s unstable climate, would be a costly disaster. It would exact huge penalties on economic growth, jobs and human security – especially in poor countries. Cutting US carbon dioxide emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels would send us back in time to CO2 emission levels that America has not seen since 1905.
Some analysts claim the cost of preventing future climate disaster scenarios would be far lower than the costs they would impose on society. However, the scenarios are merely speculative, whereas the cost of “preventing” them would have to be paid today by families whose living standards and security would be impaired. In the case of the Stern Report, the authors emphasized only the lowest estimate for preventing the alleged disaster, though even that was $440 billion, and his other estimates were many times higher.
Imagine an institution like a college campus, hospital or even a city, without dependable, affordable energy. For lights, transportation, computers, heating and hospitals … water purification and sewage treatment … refrigerators to keep food and medicine from spoiling. For mines and factories that create products that improve, enrich and safeguard our lives. Without this energy, life, living standards and security as we know it would cease.
Now try to imagine life in Africa – where 95 percent of the people rarely or never have electricity. In many parts of Asia and Latin America, the deprivation is nearly as bad. Instead of switching on a light or appliance, millions of mothers and daughters spend hours every day collecting firewood and manure for cooking and heating fires. When the sun goes down, their lives shut down.
Instead of turning a faucet handle, they spend countless more hours carrying water from distant rivers and lakes … that are often contaminated by parasites and bacteria.
Instead of enjoying a modern kitchen, mothers and babies spend hours bent over primitive hearths, breathing polluted smoke from their fires.
The impacts on human health are hideous, intolerable and unnecessary.
Four million infants, children and mothers die every year from lung infections – caused by breathing the smoke, soot, bacteria and pollutants that are a constant fixture in their homes and villages.
Two million more perish every year from intestinal diseases, caused by unsafe water and spoiled food – due to a lack of electricity, refrigeration and water treatment.
And still, many environmentalists and politicians are saying climate change is the greatest threat facing poor countries – and using hysteria over climate change to forestall the construction of fossil fuel power plants. The Rainforest Action Network even attacks banks that want to finance fossil fuel and hydroelectric projects.
And former Earth Island Institute editor Gar Smith has the arrogance to say: “African villagers used to spend their days and evenings sewing clothing for their neighbors, on foot-peddle-powered sewing machines. Once they get electricity, they spend too much time watching television and listening to the radio. If there is going to be electricity, I’d like it to be decentralized, small and solar-powered.”
It would be laughable, if it weren’t so perverse and tragic. Kenya’s Akinyi Arunga is right:
“Cute, indigenous customs aren’t so charming when they make up one’s day-to-day existence. Then they mean indigenous poverty, indigenous malnutrition, indigenous disease and childhood death. I don’t wish this on my worst enemy, and I wish our so-called friends would stop imposing it on us.”
Bad policy #4. The war on biotechnology. Around the world, millions of people face starvation. 800 million are chronically undernourished. Over 200 million children suffer from Vitamin A Deficiency. Up to 500,000 of them go blind from VAD every year. Millions die.
Biotechnology could be an important tool in the battle to end malnutrition, control plant diseases and improve agriculture in poor countries. It’s not a magic bullet – there is no such thing – and it’s not appropriate for everyone. But it could play a huge role, especially in combination with hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and modern farming practices.
Whether to use biotechnology should be a decision for Third World countries and farmers to make – without lies, scare stories and pressure from outside agitators like Greenpeace and Sierra Club … and without threats of trade sanctions by countries that already have plenty to eat.
Biotechnology can fortify rice and other plants with vitamins, to reduce malnutrition, prevent blindness and save lives. Genetic engineering can also produce plants that grow better in saline and nutrient-poor soils … fight off insects and viruses … replace crops devastated by disease and drought (papaya ringspot virus, cassava mosaic virus, eg) … reduce soil erosion, by allowing farmers to use herbicide-resistant plants and no-till farming methods … dramatically reduce the need for (and exposure to) pesticides … and eliminate dangerous fungal contamination like fumonisin that causes birth defects and death.
“Our planet has 6.5 billion people,” Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug points out. “If we use only organic fertilizers and methods on existing farmland, we can only feed 4 billion. I don’t see 2-1/2 billion people volunteering to disappear. And I don’t see environmentalists demanding that we plow under millions of acres of wildlife habitat, to feed everyone with organic and traditional farming.”
An African farmer told Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis: “By planting Bt cotton on my 15 acres, I was able to build a house and give it a solar panel. I bought a TV and fridge. My wife can buy healthy food, and we can afford to send the kids to school.”
Another one said: “The old plants would be destroyed by insects, but not the new biotech plants. With the profits I get from the new Bt maize, I can grow onions, spinach and tomatoes, and sell them for extra money to buy fertilizer. We were struggling to keep hunger out of our house. Now the future looks good.”
Biotech seeds cost more. But they save farmers hundreds of dollars on pesticides, ensure that insects and diseases don’t destroy their crops, and reduce the time they have to spend in their fields. As one farmer noted: “With the old maize, I got 100 bags a year from my [40 acres]. With Bt maize I get 1,000 bags.”
That’s security – food, health and economic security. Why would we export policies that impair it?
“I appreciate ethical concerns,” says Kenyan plant biologist Florence Wambugu. “But anything that doesn’t help feed our children is unethical.”
That brings me to …
Bad policy #5. Paranoia about pesticides and DDT. Many Africans and disease specialists consider these policies to be worse than unethical. They view them as a crime against humanity.
“I’ve suffered high fevers for days, vomited until I thought I had no stomach left. It’s left me dehydrated, thirsty and weak. Sometimes I couldn’t even tell day from night,” Ugandan business woman and malaria eradication activist Fifi Kobusingye told me.
“My friend’s little child wasn’t able to walk for months because of malaria,” Fifi said. “She crawled around on the floor. Her eyes bulged out like a chameleon, her hair dried up, and her stomach was all swollen because the parasites had taken over her liver. Her family didn’t have the money to help her, and neither did the Ugandan government. All they could do is take care of her the best they could, and wait for her to die.”
Somehow, miraculously, she recovered. But Christine was one of 500 million people a year who get malaria. That’s more people than live in the entire United States, Canada and Mexico combined. The disease kills up to 2 million people a year – four times the population of Portland. Three-fourths are in sub-Saharan Africa. Ninety percent are children and pregnant women.
Malaria leaves many victims with permanent brain damage – or makes them so frail that they die of AIDS, typhus, dysentery or lung disease. It makes all its victims so weak that they can’t work, go to school, care for their families or cultivate their fields – for weeks on end. It’s a primary reason many Sub-Saharan countries are destitute, and many Africans have to survive on two dollars a day.
But in the face of this needless tragedy, Pesticide Action Network and other Green pressure groups promote policies that prevent the use of insecticides and DDT to combat this killer disease. They say families should rely on insecticide-treated bed nets and new ACT drugs.
Africa clearly needs nets and drugs. But it also needs the weapons these activists don’t want malaria victims to use. Africa needs the entire arsenal: larvacides to kill baby mosquitoes and insecticides to kill adults, DDT to keep the flying killers out of homes, nets to keep them away from sleeping people – plus education and sanitation … and drugs, doctors and hospitals to treat people who get malaria, despite all these efforts. Only comprehensive programs like this can defeat malaria.
Why DDT? Because DDT is the strongest and longest lasting repellant in existence. Spraying just a little on the walls of traditional mud huts repels mosquitoes for six months or more. It kills any that land on the walls, and it irritates those it doesn’t kill or repel, so they leave the house without biting.
No other chemical in existence can do this. It’s like putting a bed net over an entire house, 24-7-365.
Thankfully, the U.S. Agency for International Development and World Health Organization finally changed their anti-insecticide and anti-DDT policies. But tens of millions died before they did so – and many environmentalists are still spreading scare stories to prevent or discourage their use. In my view, that is lethal, unconscionable eco-imperialism. It continues to sicken and kill millions every year.
As Fifi says: “I lost my son, two sisters and four nephews to malaria. Don’t talk to me about birds. And don’t tell me the risk of using DDT is worse than the risk of losing a million African children every year.”
It’s easy to worry about speculative risks from using DDT and other insecticides – fifty years after we used them to eradicate malaria in this country. But we need to put ourselves in the shoes of people who still worry every day about the real risk that a mosquito will send them or their baby to an early grave.
To wrap it up …
We should export policies that improve human security and save lives – based not on the ideals, perceptions and concerns that come from living in countries that now are rich … but on the realities and priorities of poor families that still face hardships and risks that many of us can barely imagine.
These are the real stakeholders – the ones who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
They want to develop … stop depending on trickles of foreign aid … become healthy and prosperous … and be able to protect and educate their children, protect their environment, and enjoy the freedoms and opportunities we often take for granted.
The best thing we can do is impart to them the wisdom, experience and policies we depended on to achieve our aspirations – by eliminating the poverty, misery, disease, pollution and childhood death that were once the hallmarks of life in the United States … back in the good old days.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and other international public policy organizations. He is the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (www.Eco-Imperialism.com) and was editor of CORE chairman Roy Innis’s book, Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle
How environmental policies jeopardize human needs
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 by Paul Driessen
Expanded remarks by Paul Driessen, given in a debate at the International Affairs Symposium held at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon in April, 2008. Does the exporting of our environmental policies to the developing world positively impact human security?
Well, as Institute for Sustainable Development program manager Oli Brown recently pointed out, there are many cases where it undoubtedly does. Some policies. Under certain circumstances. Depending on how you define human security.
Unfortunately, however, there are also numerous cases where such “exports” are anything but helpful. It is those policies that trouble me – for they wreak havoc on human security. In fact, they perpetrate and perpetuate poverty, misery, disease, malnutrition and premature death far too often. Those policies need to be re-examined and discontinued.
I’ve been a strong environmentalist and conservationist my entire life – but also a harsh critic of radical environmentalism, which often fails to pay sufficient attention to people, especially in poor nations. That seeming divergence reflects my background and extensive environmental and international experience.
I’m an Eagle Scout, with degrees in geology and ecology, and environment and resource law. I helped organize the very first Earth Day on my college campus, way back in 1970. A former Sierra Club member, I also hike, camp, cross-country ski and canoe. I’ve had government and private industry jobs, and now work for CFACT, the Congress of Racial Equality and other NGOs around the world. I write regularly about climate change, energy, environmental ethics and corporate social responsibility.
I grew up ten miles from the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectric power. My home was also two blocks from a huge paper mill, and I saw and smelled its pollution firsthand. I joined the nascent environmental movement primarily to clean up our air and water. And we did it.
I’ve seen environmental devastation. But I’ve also seen the devastation of rampant poverty in African, Latin American and Asian communities. I’ve seen companies do horrendous things to habitats – and others do incredibly good things for people, communities and the environment. I’ve seen environmental groups accomplish tremendous good – and others pursue agendas that I can only describe as anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-people. We export those kinds of policies to poor countries at their peril, and to our shame.
As Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg has said: “We have numerous problems, but limited human and financial resources. We have to set priorities. Climate change can wait. Human health can’t.”
Economist Milton Friedman also got it right: “Poor countries,” he said, “should not do what rich countries are doing now that they are rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich.”
My grandmother offered this advice: “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.”
If policies reduce or prevent threats to vital elements of human security, we should export them. If other policies would prolong or worsen already horrid situations in developing nations, then exporting them would be counterproductive … or even unconscionable.
So we need to differentiate clearly between real risks and speculative risks … between immediate risks and those that are so far in the future that predictions are worthless. We need to focus on risks that present a clear and present danger to human life and security – threats that are substantiated, recurrent and costly, especially in terms of lives lost. We need to avoid focusing so much time, money, emotion and regulation on risks that are hypothetical … and based on false assumptions, political agendas, alarmist headlines, hysteria, Hollywood special effects or computer models.
Like Bjorn, I put global warming well down on my list of worries and priorities – and policies to prevent global warming near the bottom of what we should export to poor nations. Like literally hundreds of climate scientists, I believe the risk of catastrophic climate change is hugely exaggerated, and unsupported by scientific evidence.
So … what policies should we export?
Property rights and free enterprise – which Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto says will unleash the creative forces of millions of hard-working people … and turn trillions of dollars of “dead capital” into vibrant economies that generate prosperity, health, opportunity and security.
Drug standards and testing – to ensure that medicines are safe and effective … and we protect people from counterfeit malaria and AIDS drugs that prolong disease or even kill.
Honesty, transparency and accountability standards – for corporations, nonprofit groups, politicians and government agencies alike. In other words, truth in assertions, transparency in funding and spending, and accountability for policies and actions that result in poverty, disease and death.
Reasonable mining and drilling standards, and the best practices of responsible leaders in their industries – to help poor countries get the energy and minerals they need, while ensuring worker safety, minimizing pollution, and restoring any lands that have to be disturbed to extract the resources.
Reasonable air and water quality standards for factories and power generation facilities – to reduce pollution, while also ensuring that poor countries can generate the electricity, jobs and prosperity they need to improve people’s lives and security, and afford even better pollution controls in the future, as they become more prosperous and can pay for upgrades and better technologies. We need to apply the same environmental standards to state-operated mines, smelters, electrical power generators and factories, as we apply to privately owned and operated facilities.
Which environmental policies impair human security – and should not be exported?
#1. U.N.-style sustainable development. The UN originally said we must sustain and expand the resource base, so that people can build more prosperous, just and secure futures. Today, though, the concept is mostly used to block development, on the ground that some future generation might need the resources we want today.
Many sustainability policies delay or prevent all but small-scale development projects, and thus impair human security – even though future technologies, and thus future resource needs, cannot be predicted … any more than people living in 1950 could have envisioned today’s televisions, cell phones, jetliners and computers scans … or what resources would be needed, when, and in what quantities, to manufacture them. SD proponents rarely ask: How long must a deposit, facility or project last to be “sustainable” – 10, 50, 100 or 500 years? Which costs and tradeoffs should be emphasized, and which ones ignored?
Bad policy #2. The precautionary principle. It too is used mainly to delay or prevent development, and only rarely to protect people against real, immediate, life-or-death risks. It focuses too much attention on the alleged, and often overblown or even imaginary, risks of using a chemical or technology. It often minimizes consideration of significant risks that the chemical or technology would prevent.
Bad policy #3. Policies that promote or mandate alternative or renewable energy – especially when they are also used to delay or block fossil fuel, hydroelectric and nuclear energy development.
Wind power is expensive, land and resource intensive, and unreliable. It can add extra power to an electrical grid. But it’s totally inadequate as a primary energy source for any country, rich or poor. Just generating enough electricity to power New York City would mean covering the entire state of Connecticut with towering wind turbines, Rockefeller University professor Jesse Ausubel has calculated. And the city would still need expensive natural gas-fired generators (and thus drilling for gas), to provide electricity every time the wind stops blowing fast enough to operate the turbines.
Producing 7 billion gallons of ethanol in 2007 required corn grown on an area the size of Indiana – plus vast amounts of water, insecticides, fertilizers and petroleum. It has helped send corn and wheat prices soaring, and forced the World Food Program to ration aid, and millions more to go to bed hungry.
Ethanol puts food for hungry mouths into cars that should be fueled by oil that Congress and state legislatures have made off limits. It’s causing food shortages, deforestation and even riots over food.
Telling poor countries they must rely on wind, solar or ethanol condemns them to poverty and insecurity … and tramples on their energy and economic human rights. Such policies are unsustainable – morally, economically and ecologically … even when they’re promoted or imposed out of concern about catastrophic climate change.
Climate change has been real since time began. Twentieth century warming and cooling trends were not abnormal, air and ocean temperatures have been stable for nearly a decade … and there is no credible evidence that future warming will be driven primarily by humans – or be catastrophic.
Some computer models make such projections, via worst-case scenarios. But they are based on our still poor understanding of complex climate systems. They assume carbon dioxide is the primary cause of climate change. They fail to consider solar energy fluctuations, cosmic ray influences on cloud cover, the cooling effects of precipitation, or negative (cooling) feedbacks from high cirrus clouds.
They are notoriously unreliable, and unable to forecast events and climate shifts even one year in the future, much less 50 or 100. In fact, projections and scenarios generated by models are consistently at odds with actual observed changes and trends. Models simply are not evidence – and certainly should not be relied on as a basis for policies that would seriously disrupt our economy and human security.
The fact is, slashing CO2 emissions by 60 to 90 percent, in a quest to stabilize our planet’s unstable climate, would be a costly disaster. It would exact huge penalties on economic growth, jobs and human security – especially in poor countries. Cutting US carbon dioxide emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels would send us back in time to CO2 emission levels that America has not seen since 1905.
Some analysts claim the cost of preventing future climate disaster scenarios would be far lower than the costs they would impose on society. However, the scenarios are merely speculative, whereas the cost of “preventing” them would have to be paid today by families whose living standards and security would be impaired. In the case of the Stern Report, the authors emphasized only the lowest estimate for preventing the alleged disaster, though even that was $440 billion, and his other estimates were many times higher.
Imagine an institution like a college campus, hospital or even a city, without dependable, affordable energy. For lights, transportation, computers, heating and hospitals … water purification and sewage treatment … refrigerators to keep food and medicine from spoiling. For mines and factories that create products that improve, enrich and safeguard our lives. Without this energy, life, living standards and security as we know it would cease.
Now try to imagine life in Africa – where 95 percent of the people rarely or never have electricity. In many parts of Asia and Latin America, the deprivation is nearly as bad. Instead of switching on a light or appliance, millions of mothers and daughters spend hours every day collecting firewood and manure for cooking and heating fires. When the sun goes down, their lives shut down.
Instead of turning a faucet handle, they spend countless more hours carrying water from distant rivers and lakes … that are often contaminated by parasites and bacteria.
Instead of enjoying a modern kitchen, mothers and babies spend hours bent over primitive hearths, breathing polluted smoke from their fires.
The impacts on human health are hideous, intolerable and unnecessary.
Four million infants, children and mothers die every year from lung infections – caused by breathing the smoke, soot, bacteria and pollutants that are a constant fixture in their homes and villages.
Two million more perish every year from intestinal diseases, caused by unsafe water and spoiled food – due to a lack of electricity, refrigeration and water treatment.
And still, many environmentalists and politicians are saying climate change is the greatest threat facing poor countries – and using hysteria over climate change to forestall the construction of fossil fuel power plants. The Rainforest Action Network even attacks banks that want to finance fossil fuel and hydroelectric projects.
And former Earth Island Institute editor Gar Smith has the arrogance to say: “African villagers used to spend their days and evenings sewing clothing for their neighbors, on foot-peddle-powered sewing machines. Once they get electricity, they spend too much time watching television and listening to the radio. If there is going to be electricity, I’d like it to be decentralized, small and solar-powered.”
It would be laughable, if it weren’t so perverse and tragic. Kenya’s Akinyi Arunga is right:
“Cute, indigenous customs aren’t so charming when they make up one’s day-to-day existence. Then they mean indigenous poverty, indigenous malnutrition, indigenous disease and childhood death. I don’t wish this on my worst enemy, and I wish our so-called friends would stop imposing it on us.”
Bad policy #4. The war on biotechnology. Around the world, millions of people face starvation. 800 million are chronically undernourished. Over 200 million children suffer from Vitamin A Deficiency. Up to 500,000 of them go blind from VAD every year. Millions die.
Biotechnology could be an important tool in the battle to end malnutrition, control plant diseases and improve agriculture in poor countries. It’s not a magic bullet – there is no such thing – and it’s not appropriate for everyone. But it could play a huge role, especially in combination with hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and modern farming practices.
Whether to use biotechnology should be a decision for Third World countries and farmers to make – without lies, scare stories and pressure from outside agitators like Greenpeace and Sierra Club … and without threats of trade sanctions by countries that already have plenty to eat.
Biotechnology can fortify rice and other plants with vitamins, to reduce malnutrition, prevent blindness and save lives. Genetic engineering can also produce plants that grow better in saline and nutrient-poor soils … fight off insects and viruses … replace crops devastated by disease and drought (papaya ringspot virus, cassava mosaic virus, eg) … reduce soil erosion, by allowing farmers to use herbicide-resistant plants and no-till farming methods … dramatically reduce the need for (and exposure to) pesticides … and eliminate dangerous fungal contamination like fumonisin that causes birth defects and death.
“Our planet has 6.5 billion people,” Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug points out. “If we use only organic fertilizers and methods on existing farmland, we can only feed 4 billion. I don’t see 2-1/2 billion people volunteering to disappear. And I don’t see environmentalists demanding that we plow under millions of acres of wildlife habitat, to feed everyone with organic and traditional farming.”
An African farmer told Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis: “By planting Bt cotton on my 15 acres, I was able to build a house and give it a solar panel. I bought a TV and fridge. My wife can buy healthy food, and we can afford to send the kids to school.”
Another one said: “The old plants would be destroyed by insects, but not the new biotech plants. With the profits I get from the new Bt maize, I can grow onions, spinach and tomatoes, and sell them for extra money to buy fertilizer. We were struggling to keep hunger out of our house. Now the future looks good.”
Biotech seeds cost more. But they save farmers hundreds of dollars on pesticides, ensure that insects and diseases don’t destroy their crops, and reduce the time they have to spend in their fields. As one farmer noted: “With the old maize, I got 100 bags a year from my [40 acres]. With Bt maize I get 1,000 bags.”
That’s security – food, health and economic security. Why would we export policies that impair it?
“I appreciate ethical concerns,” says Kenyan plant biologist Florence Wambugu. “But anything that doesn’t help feed our children is unethical.”
That brings me to …
Bad policy #5. Paranoia about pesticides and DDT. Many Africans and disease specialists consider these policies to be worse than unethical. They view them as a crime against humanity.
“I’ve suffered high fevers for days, vomited until I thought I had no stomach left. It’s left me dehydrated, thirsty and weak. Sometimes I couldn’t even tell day from night,” Ugandan business woman and malaria eradication activist Fifi Kobusingye told me.
“My friend’s little child wasn’t able to walk for months because of malaria,” Fifi said. “She crawled around on the floor. Her eyes bulged out like a chameleon, her hair dried up, and her stomach was all swollen because the parasites had taken over her liver. Her family didn’t have the money to help her, and neither did the Ugandan government. All they could do is take care of her the best they could, and wait for her to die.”
Somehow, miraculously, she recovered. But Christine was one of 500 million people a year who get malaria. That’s more people than live in the entire United States, Canada and Mexico combined. The disease kills up to 2 million people a year – four times the population of Portland. Three-fourths are in sub-Saharan Africa. Ninety percent are children and pregnant women.
Malaria leaves many victims with permanent brain damage – or makes them so frail that they die of AIDS, typhus, dysentery or lung disease. It makes all its victims so weak that they can’t work, go to school, care for their families or cultivate their fields – for weeks on end. It’s a primary reason many Sub-Saharan countries are destitute, and many Africans have to survive on two dollars a day.
But in the face of this needless tragedy, Pesticide Action Network and other Green pressure groups promote policies that prevent the use of insecticides and DDT to combat this killer disease. They say families should rely on insecticide-treated bed nets and new ACT drugs.
Africa clearly needs nets and drugs. But it also needs the weapons these activists don’t want malaria victims to use. Africa needs the entire arsenal: larvacides to kill baby mosquitoes and insecticides to kill adults, DDT to keep the flying killers out of homes, nets to keep them away from sleeping people – plus education and sanitation … and drugs, doctors and hospitals to treat people who get malaria, despite all these efforts. Only comprehensive programs like this can defeat malaria.
Why DDT? Because DDT is the strongest and longest lasting repellant in existence. Spraying just a little on the walls of traditional mud huts repels mosquitoes for six months or more. It kills any that land on the walls, and it irritates those it doesn’t kill or repel, so they leave the house without biting.
No other chemical in existence can do this. It’s like putting a bed net over an entire house, 24-7-365.
Thankfully, the U.S. Agency for International Development and World Health Organization finally changed their anti-insecticide and anti-DDT policies. But tens of millions died before they did so – and many environmentalists are still spreading scare stories to prevent or discourage their use. In my view, that is lethal, unconscionable eco-imperialism. It continues to sicken and kill millions every year.
As Fifi says: “I lost my son, two sisters and four nephews to malaria. Don’t talk to me about birds. And don’t tell me the risk of using DDT is worse than the risk of losing a million African children every year.”
It’s easy to worry about speculative risks from using DDT and other insecticides – fifty years after we used them to eradicate malaria in this country. But we need to put ourselves in the shoes of people who still worry every day about the real risk that a mosquito will send them or their baby to an early grave.
To wrap it up …
We should export policies that improve human security and save lives – based not on the ideals, perceptions and concerns that come from living in countries that now are rich … but on the realities and priorities of poor families that still face hardships and risks that many of us can barely imagine.
These are the real stakeholders – the ones who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
They want to develop … stop depending on trickles of foreign aid … become healthy and prosperous … and be able to protect and educate their children, protect their environment, and enjoy the freedoms and opportunities we often take for granted.
The best thing we can do is impart to them the wisdom, experience and policies we depended on to achieve our aspirations – by eliminating the poverty, misery, disease, pollution and childhood death that were once the hallmarks of life in the United States … back in the good old days.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and other international public policy organizations. He is the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (www.Eco-Imperialism.com) and was editor of CORE chairman Roy Innis’s book, Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle
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