The environmentalist movement has been really busy this past week. Helps when you have friends in the U.N., as well as in the White House.
First, back in February I wrote about how a decades-long ban on DDT resulted in millions of otherwise preventable malaria deaths in the Third World. A reader subsequently corrected me, explaining that the World Health Organization lifted the ban in 2006. This has, unsurprising to no one, significantly reduced the number of worldwide malaria deaths.
Well, dear reader, so much for that. The environmentalist movement has now forced the WHO’s hand to reenact the ban, as the WSJ reported this past week:
Malaria, Politics and DDT
The U.N. bows to the anti-insecticide lobby.
In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world’s poor will suffer as a result.
The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim “is to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner,” said WHO and the U.N. Environment Program in a statement on May 6. […]
WHO is not saying that DDT shouldn’t be used. But by revoking its stamp of approval, it sends a clear message to donors and afflicted countries that it prefers more politically correct interventions, even if they don’t work as well. In recent years, countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia have started or expanded DDT spraying, often with the help of outside aid groups. But these governments are also eager to remain in the U.N.’s good graces, and donors typically are less interested in funding interventions that WHO discourages.
“Sadly, WHO’s about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists,” says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. “Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don’t benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes.”
It’s no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There’s no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health. But that didn’t stop green groups like the Pesticide Action Network from urging the public to celebrate World Malaria Day last month by telling “the U.S. to protect children and families from malaria without spraying pesticides like DDT inside people’s homes.”
“We must take a position based on the science and the data,” said WHO’s malaria chief, Arata Kochi, in 2006. “One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.” Mr. Kochi was right then, even if other WHO officials are now bowing to pressure to pretend otherwise.
Disgusting, Now, it’s easy for those of us in America to mentally sweep these deaths under the rug. It’s happening way on the other side of world, after all.
Not to worry. Here’s an environmentalist tragedy that has hit home for over 30 years, and is about to hit even harder, if President Obama gets his way.
What am I referring to? An imposition of unreasonable and unsafe fuel economy standards on American cars. Fuel economy isn’t a bad thing, right? Of course not, but it depends how you achieve it. And that’s the problem: Due to the CAFÉ standards that have been around since the mid-1970’s, car companies have been manufacturing lighter, and therefore less safe, cars. The result of this has been determined to be an upwards of 50,000 preventable traffic accident deaths.
So what does President Obama want to do? Enforce stricter CAFÉ standards!
Kneale: New CAFE Menu Will Give Detroit Heart Attack
By: Dennis Kneale, CNBC Media & Technology Editor | 20 May 2009
… The White House’s new and tougher gas-mileage rules force a 42 percent increase in new cars’ miles-per-gallon, and a 30 percent rise for trucks, by 2016. All to curb gasoline usage by 1.6 percent—by the year 2020.
Will someone please tell me what the hell we’re thinking here?
This amounts to one of the most severe and sweeping enviro-reforms ever mounted by government. And look Ma—no hands in Congress had to lift a finger to vote. This is all bureaucracy, baby, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Obama said yesterday that the new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) rules would fuel Detroit on a (dubious) crusade to develop and sell greener cars. (Ahem, at a time of still-cheap gasoline.) […]
So let me point out some fatal flaws in this green decree:
It will result in Americans driving more not less. When we get better mileage, we drive more than usual, negating much of the savings, says Penn State’s Andrew N. Kleit, who has written widely on the topic.
The key to better mileage is lighter-weight cars—in which people die more often in traffic accidents. Since CAFÉ passed in 1975, smaller cars have killed almost 50,000 more people than otherwise would have died on the roads, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in 2002. CAFE kills up to 3,900 extra people each year, a study by Harvard and the Brookings Institition states. It finds that for every 100 pounds less that an auto weighs, up to 780 more people die in traffic accidents in a year.
It will add $600 to the price of a car, further worsening the Big 3’s already sizable cost disadvantage. Toyota, Honda and Hyundai already pretty much meet the stricter standards.
It will force Detroit to build wimpy li’l cars most consumers don’t want to buy. CAFÉ rules long have distorted industry production. Automakers churn out loss-leader subcompacts purely to lower the average mileage for their entire fleet, freeing them to make higher-profit SUVs. At Ford, the F-150 truck provided 120% of profits, back when it had profits.
Citing this article on Thursday, the ever-astute Rush Limbaugh notices that the 3,900 accident deaths per year is more than the overall combat deaths in Iraq—which the Leftists in the Democrat Party and the media have milked for all their worth:
Now, the liberals told us American deaths, not just combat, but American deaths since the war began March 19th of '03, 4,296, the combat deaths, 3,444. 3,900 deaths on the highways additional because of CAFE standards.
Maybe the networks will start reading off the names of those Americans killed as a result of CAFE standards at the end of their broadcasts. CAFE standards that Barack Obama ordered as a commander-in-chief would order troops into battle. His decision, the car czar in chief, has just signed the death warrants of thousands and thousands of innocent Americans.
I doubt families will get letters of condolence. …
Folks, the environmental movement is awash in the blood of countless dead. And they don’t care.
Because remember: The primary concern of the green movement not bettering the lives of human beings; it is rescuing Mother Earth from human beings.
People are expendable for the environmental movement. Period.
P.S. The Stop the ACLU blog reports that Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry are in China to discuss CO2 and man-made global warming. (Yes, they're out of the country on Memorial Day.)
Recent Comments