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Walter E. Williams
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We Are the Idiots

Comment

Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in their Forbes article "Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies" (9/5/2012), wrote that her 1962 book, "Silent Spring," led to a world ban on DDT use. The DDT ban was responsible for the loss of "tens of millions of human lives — mostly children in poor, tropical countries — have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors (birds). This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century." DDT presents no harm to humans and, when used properly, poses no environmental threat. In 1970, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences wrote: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. ... In a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable." Prior to the DDT ban, malaria was on the verge of extinction in some countries.

The World Health Organization estimates that malaria infects at least 200 million people, of which more than a half-million die, each year. Most malaria victims are African children. People who support the DDT ban are complicit in the deaths of tens of millions of Africans and Southeast Asians. Philanthropist Bill Gates is raising money for millions of mosquito nets, but to keep his environmentalist credentials, the last thing that he'd advocate is DDT use. Remarkably, black congressmen share his vision.

Wackoism didn't end with Carson's death. Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist, in his 1968 best-selling book, "The Population Bomb," predicted major food shortages in the United States and that "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich saw England in more desperate straits, saying, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." On the first Earth Day, in 1970, Ehrlich warned: "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct.

Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Ehrlich continues to be a media and academic favorite.

Then there are governmental wacko teachings. In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted our oil reserves would last 10 years. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior revised the estimate, saying that American oil would last 13 years. In 1972, the Club of Rome's report "Limits to Growth" said total world oil reserves totaled 550 billion barrels. With that report in hand, then-President Jimmy Carter said, "We could use up all proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade." He added, "The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out." As for Carter's running-out-of-oil prediction, a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and private industry experts estimate that if even half of the oil bound up in the Green River formation in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado is recovered, it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves." That's an estimated 3 trillion barrels, more than what OPEC has in reserve. Fret not. Carter, like Ehrlich, is still brought before the media for his opinion.

Our continued acceptance of environmentalist manipulation, lies and fear-mongering has led Congress to establish deadly public policies in the name of saving energy — such as Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which downsize autos and cause unnecessary highway fatalities. That's on top of the stupid 1970s 55 mph laws. The next time an environmentalist warns us of a pending disaster or that we are running out of something, we ought to ask: When was the last time a prediction of yours was right? Some people are inclined to call these people idiots. That's wrong. They have been successful in their agenda. It's we who are the idiots for listening to them and allowing Congress to let them have their way.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Comments

4 Comments | Post Comment
Sir;... Out of the mouths of babes: You are the idiots... And you are an idiot of idiots; an idiot in a range of fields, no better at ethics than drama...
Sir; Tragedy is one of the most abused, used, and prostituted words in our language, but it is not what people undo, but what they do, usually against warning, and always with the vanity of hubris... People do get vain, and in their power forget that they are mere mortals, and blinded by our hope against hope... The curse of ddt that would have made our national bird extinct and more useless history to avoid thinking on was mankind doing against nature in our blindness and pride... We lived without it, and our population has always grown in spite of it... You do not count the mass starvation, war and want that would have grown out of continued use of ddt... You count the many who die from it only because modern medicine is keeping them from dying of other things...
The reason the rich so abuse science and scientists over this is simple: The denominations need the big white man's medicine to make the religion machine work, and the capitalists need to have the religion Machine to work for the capitalism machine to work... We never cared much about these people when it cam to working them to death, or piting them one against the other in bloodbath wars...It entierly suits our purpose to see them all drop dead and leave the third world to us in their wills...In the meantime, if we can steal all their resources, and work them all to death as slaves we will see that much more progress in the effort to eradicate the third world from their world...
As long as malaria is abroad in the land it will never be fit for Europeans... As long as all the dark people are struggling against malaria, The minimum required for their survival subtracts from their profitability...As in all other matter where intelligence and reason should rule and does not, profit is considered the oracle of a God... Does it matter, and should matter to us that the true purpose is to have our profit out of the lives of these people even with the consequential loss of natural environment??? This is the tragedy in progress, that out of our blindness and pride we seek to conquer that which will always be our master...
It is not out of love of these brutes we brutalize that we demand this poison... We want them to live next to malarial swamps and open sewers to maximum profit... We could care if they die if they would only be so kind as to suddenly drop dead rather than endure prolonged illness...If we cannot gain on them we may as well let the devil take them, except that our wisest know they will fall into the hands of our competition... Between them, religion and capital will continue to rob these people of their lives and culture and livelyhoods... We will help ourselves to their mineral wealth, and we will chain them to a treadmill that will hang them if they do not keep up...
The situation is simple: Your poisons of religion and capitalism need this big white men's poison to survive where no one likely should try to live or survive... It is a marginal place offering a marginal existence to all manor of life, but it is no place of bounty, and never has been... We need new lands to conquer... In fact, we need to conquer your brand of stupidity for it is a worse curse than maleria ever was...It is an old thought to live within our means, and be content with what is given us... Strange is contentment in this age... Even those who have the most are the least satisfied with it... Who can blame them when they have not yet wisdom...
Thanks....Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Tue May 21, 2013 6:05 PM
I was a wishy-washy moderate, grew up thinking the progressives were likely to improve society. My eyes opened to the serial lies when the left told us the world would end if the Amchitka nuclear tests were permitted to take place. The tests took place - think that was during the Nixon administration - and, of course, nothing happened. That was when I realized everything they advocate is based on a lie.
Comment: #2
Posted by: jm
Wed May 22, 2013 4:33 AM
Re: James A, Sweeney
Re: You do not count the mass starvation, war and want that would have grown out of continued use of ddt
I found no evidence ( and I really did a lot of searching) to support that statement. Please cite references.
Comment: #3
Posted by: David Henricks
Wed May 22, 2013 8:46 PM
Re: David Henricks;... I can barely imagine the past, let alone support the future with evidence... I do know that most of us still have measurable amounts of ddt in our bodies from the last time it was widely used, and while bed bugs have evolved a nearly total resistence to such chemicals, we have not...
Let me give you only one such example of technology turned both for an against humanity... I am thinking of the horse in this context... For the most part, horses were long supported by mankind; useful, but fragile, fast, difficult, dangerous, and uneconomical... Two things changed the horse in European history... One was the stirrup, introduced about the eighth century; and the other was the horse collar, that actually allowed horses a general utility...When oxes plowed fields they literally determined the shape of holdings as people adapted themselves to their animals ability...Without the stirrup, the horse was only moderate transport... With the stirrup, the lords became primarily enemies of the people, and at that point, wealth enough to support horses that otherwise did not support people became the key to government... The Muslim cavely broke against the footmen of the Franks, but within a very short period of time the technology of the horse with the stirrup made a feudal class in Europe to reign over and exploit what was once their equals... It was a process that was slow... If you think as some have said that in fairy tales kings are two a penny, that is about the case... Kings and lords were plentiful, and it took a long time for monarachy to grow out of Feudalism... In the mean time, these people who as a class ruled over their poorer numbers provided little defense against people like the Norse with their vibrant culture, and new tactics... It took some time for the term: "Miles" to mean lord rather than simply soldier...
It was the horse collar that gave the horse a dual purpose, and allowed its use a a true draft animal rather than as single use vehicle of social domination... Soon after its introduction European population doubled and soon doubled again... Without any consequencial changes in the economy of society, the resulting increase in population went into greater and larger wars and armies, went into the church, and more and more went into the cities and town which sprang up, and grew on the excess of population...Of the Feudal Class, nothing good or remarkable came... The church, through philosophy did very much add to our knowledge while preserving much of the past... The Burgher class of the cities gave us nearly all we have of technology, trade practice and law... Among the Feudal class there was a strong sense of social obligation still missing among the business class... In the words of Lynn White, Jr. in Medieval Technology and Social Change, who I have followed here: "The vassal class created by the military mutation of the eighth century became for generations the ruling element of European society, but through all subsequent chaos, and despite abuses, it never lost completely its sense of 'nobles oblige', even when a new and rival class of burgher revived the Roman notion of the unconditional and socially irresponsible possession of property"...
I might add that we suffer today the classical Roman and totally modern idea of property without social obligation, but in this instance, since all of humanity and nature must suffer this technology of chemical warfare against nature; is it not for humanity to decide together and democratically what we will or will not suffer???
The increased populations of Europe were very often felled in war, and not to make the kings more numerous, but to reduce their numbers to one...It is nothing I can prove, but something I know with all certainty that the greatest advance in European society came out of disease... The black plague which spread by trade made the capital of many generations into a plum for the picking, and that class most nimble and able to make the best use of it did so to conquer the world...
So can I prove what I say; that the increased population not born to people barely supported by their environment at present, and living a marginal existence on marginal land would lead to war and disease??? No!!! I can only relate the sort of behavior history has already shown us...And we live in a very dangerous world on the verge of starvation, pandemics, and already at constant war... How bad do you want it to be when the true object is to make Africa safe for whites???
Look at my Great Lakes... They are mine, a part of my life... I learned to swim in the Straits of Mackinaw... They are a sewer, and hostage to every bit of capitalist nonsense you can imagine...It used to be our people on those ships, and no more... Why are we faced with Asian Carp that will destroy all native species??? It is because no one had the sense to govern individuals in the farming of catfish... Their business sense was thought more sacred than our collective government of our lives and resources... We have invasive species; too many to list here, but all because of trade that we cannot live without while it destroys us...What does it take to pump your bilge, or replace your ballast water??? Too much I guess, and taking too much from profit... We cannot control our borders because our enemies, the irresponsible capitalist class stands on both sides of it... If money must move over it, all other things will move as well including war, and disease, poverty, and starvation...
Thanks....Sweeney
Comment: #4
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri May 24, 2013 5:32 AM
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