The New Holocaust Deniers
But the role of DDT in saving half a billion lives did not positively impress everyone. On the contrary, as Alexander King, the co-founder of the Club of Rome put it in his 1990 biography, “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Of course, such reasoning would carry little appeal to the American public. Much better ammunition was provided by Rachel Carson, who in her 1962 book, Silent Spring, had made an eloquent case that DDT was endangering bird populations. This was false. In fact, by eliminating their insect parasites and infection agents, DDT was helping bird numbers to grow significantly. No matter. Using Carson’s book and even more wild writing by Ehrlich (who in a 1969 Ramparts article predicted that pesticides would cause all life in the Earth’s oceans to die by 1979), a massive propaganda campaign was launched to ban DDT.
In 1971, the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency responded by holding seven months of investigative hearings on the subject, gathering testimony from 125 witnesses. At the end of this process, Judge Edmund Sweeney issued his verdict: “The uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. … DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man.” No matter. EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus (who would later go on to be a board member of the Draper Fund, a leading population control group), chose to overrule Sweeney and ban the use of DDT in the United States. Subsequently, the U.S. Agency for International Development adopted regulations preventing it from funding international projects that used DDT. Together with similar decisions enacted in Europe, this effectively banned the use of DDT in many Third World countries. By some estimates, the malaria death toll in Africa alone resulting from these restrictions has exceeded 100 million people, with 3 million additional deaths added to the toll every year.
The harm done by the EPA, itself a creation of the environmental movement, has not been limited to stopping DDT. It is no coincidence that U.S. oil production, which had been growing at a rate of 3 percent per year through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, peaked in 1971, immediately after the EPA’s creation, and has been declining ever since. In 1971, the U.S. produced 9.6 million barrels of oil per day (mpd). Today we are down to 5.6 mpd. Had we continued without environmentalist interference with our previous 3 percent per year growth in the period since — as the rest of the non-OPEC world actually did — we would today be producing 35 mpd, and the world economy would not be groaning under the extremely regressive tax represented by $100 per barrel oil prices. The environmentalist campaign against nuclear power has made its promise for plentiful, cheap electricity impossible as well.
The genocidal effect of such support for energy price-rigging should not be underestimated. Increasing the price of energy increases the price of all other products. It is one thing to pay $100 per barrel for oil in a nation like the USA which has an average income of $45,000 per year. It is quite another to pay it in a Third World country with an average income of $1500 per year. An oil price stiff enough to cause recession in the advanced sector can cause mass starvation among the world’s poor.
European greens also have much horror to account for, notably through their campaign against genetically modified crops. Hundreds of millions of people in the Third World today suffer from nutritional deficiencies resulting from their cereal-dominated diets. This can now readily be rectified by employing genetically enhanced plants, such as golden rice, which is rich in vitamin A. Other genetically modified crops offer protection against iron or other vitamin deficiency diseases, dramatically increased yields, self-fertilization, and drought or insect resistance. But as a result of political pressure from the green parties, the European Union has banned the import of crops from countries that employ such strains, thereby blackmailing many governments into forbidding their use. In consequence, millions of people are being unnecessarily blinded, crippled, starved, or killed every year.
Taken together, these campaigns to deny billions of people the means to a decent existence have racked up a death toll exceeding that achieved by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or any of the other tyrants whose crimes fill the sordid pages of human history. It is ironic that the perpetrators of this holocaust have chosen to affix the term “deniers” to those who refuse to endorse their proposal to radically expand it via a global program of mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control. In fact it is they, who call upon us to harden our hearts to “the inconvenient truth” that allegedly requires such suffering, who are the real new deniers; deniers not just of a past holocaust that rightfully commands our grief, but a present one, whose desperate victims still plead for our action.
“But as a result of political pressure from the green parties, the European Union has banned the import of crops from countries that employ such strains, thereby blackmailing many governments into forbidding their use. In consequence, millions of people are being unnecessarily blinded, crippled, starved, or killed every year.”
Pretty bold statement. You might be right. Can you point me to where the facts are that support it?
There’s nothing new in this piece. All of it has been known for years. There are hundreds of articles from dozens of publications all over the web. They include many government studies, which are spiked by the major media because they are on board for the anti-humanist agenda, but which are still available on government websites. Do the research yourself. It’s the only way to really learn.
I am not an expert – just a simple reference, website, or specific govt agency that tabulates the evidence to support the claim that millions are being harmed by NOT enjoying the benefits of genetically modified crops, is what I was looking for. (when i did a quick search, it appears the vast majority of articles refer to the harm done by genetically modified crops) Thanks.
You are really dense, aren’t you? Do a Google search. What do you want to know? Type that in to the search box on your computer. Soon, a whole list of articles will appear and you can choose among them to find out what you want to know. Maybe, however, you are just a troll. In that case, you require specific sites given to you by others so that you can then deride them for being biased or “not peer reviewed,” or lacking in some other manner. Do your own research, then you can decide for yourself which articles to believe or ignore.
Wow – you might want to dial back on the caffiene. Chill out Mike.
Somebody needs to tell Walt B. that “caffiene” [sic] enhances cognitive functions. Perhaps Walt is the one who needs a good cuppa joe!
This response is indicative of a widespread problem on conservative blogs. I rather imagine that very few posters here could actually find or have actually read the articles supporting Zubrin’s article, but we all “remember it from somewhere” and stick by our memories even if we can no longer actually find the citation. Please: don’t put down people who ask for references, provide them!
Of course it would help if the website editors would support the use of citation links. Half the time, when I do provide citations the post is deleted.
Walt, you may need to go a couple of pages in to find this information. It’s there, I can assure you. If you stick with the first couple of pages, Google will only show you the mainstream media and activist group stuff.
Also, try junkscience.com for some more information on how the green movement is damaging humanity.
Use any search engine but google. They’ll steer your search to the information they want you to see, and little if anything more.
Seriously, here ya go:
http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/index.html
According to the World Health Organization, 537 000 to 907 000 people died from Malaria In 2010. Multiply that by the percent of cases that could be stopped by killing mosquitoes, and the number of years it has been banned. There may be some wiggle in the exact numbers, but they are non-zero, and large.
So your point is what, that no one should bother writing about this stuff ’cause you’re bored by it? Or because you think that everyone is busily searching out arguments against their firm belief that mankind is destroying their world? Neither of those ideas seems reasonable to me but then I am of Polish extraction so perhaps I lack your own mental acuity.
I do have a suggestion though. Since you seem to be unimpressed by this author’s efforts, why don’t you do better? By that I mean, why don’t you put together a detailed and completely convincing argument against the modern excesses in environmentalism? It ought to be easy to publish, either by your self or through Regenery, et al. C’mon, if you can do better then do so, whatta ya say?
There may be nothing new, but the more people bring the developing story together and point out that this evil continues today, the better.
One could also include the zone scare, which has caused death and disease by denying the poor access to affordable refrigerants and properly stored food.
Dupont Chemical’s main CFC went out of patent and became cheap as others started making it. Poor Dupont. So, they took speculative science and funded “research” to show that CFCs destroy the ozone layer in the Antarctic. They managed the scare, cheered on constantly by the environmentalists, to push for the banning of CFCs.
Dupont just happened to have, under patent, a much more expensive replacement refrigerant and they were back making a fortune again. They used the environmentalists as useful fools to achieve their goal.
So, now, 20 years later, we hear, “We bad. It wasn’t CFCs breaking down the ozone, but an interaction of solar radiation with nitrogen gas. The previous scare was based on junk science, mostly by one scientist.”
Nitrogen gas makes up 80% of the atmosphere (and is not our fault).
That’s little solace for those who have suffered and/or died in the last 20 years due to Dupont’s greediness.
This has been known for a long time. European governments ban the import of genetically modified crops. As a result, poor farmers in Africa must not produce gmo crops if they want to export to Europe. They can be taught by Americans the value of the gmo’s but their hopes for a European market for their products cannot be realized.
We must have population control, the planet cannot substain 10 Billion of those only 1 billion are smart enough to not crap where they eat or live. without some population control we will have water and land wars, destroy eco systems, plants, animals, birds & as we are doing to the ocean, we must keep population below 7 billion for a healthy planet
Just google the third world countries that banned gmo crops. You will see they did it at the same time the EU did it. We are on the verge of crippling our food production in the US as well the regulations are ridiculous. We spend more than an employee makes every year just complying with all of the bs and we only employ 16 people. Great article it reinforces my saying that environmentalism is not human friendly, we are going 100mph toward a clif and the brakes don’t work. People need to wake up soon.
Not surprised in the least to see the “DDT ban killed millions” lie pop up here when DDT was never banned and was used less often because overuse in agriculture created resistance in mosquitoes. (Who warned against the misuse? Rachel Carson.) Of course, DDT is still used today, but don’t let that stop you from smearing the environmental movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
“In 1962, Silent Spring by American biologist Rachel Carson was published. The book catalogued the environmental impacts of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in the US and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without fully understanding their effects on ecology or human health. The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Its publication was one of the signature events in the birth of the environmental movement, and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led to DDT being banned in the US in 1972. DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the Stockholm Convention, but its limited use in disease vector control continues to this day and remains controversial.”
“…banned in the US…”
“…banned for agricultural use worldwide…”
This from the reliably leftist Wikipedia.
You were saying?
Yes, DDT was banned for agricultural use, not for insect vector control. The agricultural ban helped to delay resistance. However, the author of this post seems to believe that the US agri-ban killed 100 million people. Since DDT was never banned for vector control, and is indeed still used today, such claims are obviously wrong.
What a load of crap. Millions of Africans are dead because of this nonsense.
The Stockholm Convention clearly calls for a total ban on all DDT use.
There has been a defacto ban on DDT in Africa for decades. EU has pressured African nations with export restrictions if they used DDT at all. Aid programs for years, including USAID refused to fund agriculural projects where DDT was used (since reversed by the Bush adminstration).
The whole issue is junk science. DDT should not have been an issue in the first place. The environmental movement is soaked in innocent blood over this and should at least admit they were wrong.
http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.442/healthissue_detail.asp
The Stockholm Convention contains an exception for malarial use:
http://www.pops.int/documents/convtext/convtext_en.pdf
see p. 24
“EU has pressured African nations with export restrictions if they used DDT at all. Aid programs for years, including USAID refused to fund agriculural projects where DDT was used (since reversed by the Bush adminstration).”
Yes, there are restrictions on agricultural use. Agricultural use increases insect resistance to DDT as insects get smaller doses. DDT is listed as a probable human carcinogen, so it should not be used on crops. There are no bans on DDT use for malaria, although indoor use is encouraged because it is more effective.
Are you denying that pressure from EU, UN WHO, and ASAID resulted in suspension of indoor spraying throughout much of Africa?
Even the UN and other environmental groups admit this and admit that they were wrong.
15 September 2006 – Nearly 30 years after safety concerns led to the phasing out of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, the United Nations health agency said today it will start promoting this method again to fight the global scourge that kills more than one million people every year, including around 3,000 children everyday.
“The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes,” said Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, TB and ”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=19855&Cr=malaria&Cr
“Probable Carcinogen” is what the safety people call something when “concerns” have been raised but there is no scientific evidence to support it.
Malaria on the other hand is not “probable” and the effectiveness of DDT as part of a malaria prevention program is scientifically proven.
3000 children a day. Think about those bodies piling up in your yard while you dabate DDT for the past 30 years and come up with this flimsy excuse.
You really are a holocaust denier. I thought the article was over the top but is is very accurate. Defending the ban and movement against DDT at this point when even those who supported it have reversed the policy and admit to the needless deaths is just sick.
Once again, DDT was never banned. It fell into disuse because it causes environmental damage and other insecticides are just as effective. However, DDT was still used widely, especially in India. The WHO decided to once again recommend DDT for anti-malarial use because resistance had appeared in other insecticides and because DDT was less expensive and thus more cost effective than other insecticides.
There are no deaths attributable to a DDT ban because 1)DDT was never banned for use against malaria and 2) Other pesticides took DDT’s place in anti-malarial campaigns, many with better success rates than DDT because resistance to them had not yet developed.
You gotta live with yourself, not me. If this is what you need to sleep at night it is not my problem. The crap you people spread about DDT caused millions of deaths.
The evidence is overwhelming that African countries stopped using DDT because of arm twisting by Euros, US and UN all based on lobbying by environmentalists based on lousy science.
No one forced people to stop using DDT. It wasn’t used because of resistance. Other pesticides were used instead and they are just as effective against malaria–in many cases even more effective.
Yes, DDT was used in India because the mosquitoes there are not resistant to it. See:
http://whoindia.org/LinkFiles/Malaria_Country_Profile-Malaria.pdf
Reading is fundamental. You should try it sometime.
If is used today, where can I buy some in the USA to kill my bed bugs?
You can’t buy DDT in the US, but Walmart sells all the ingredients you need to make it in plumbing and spa supplies. ^_^
Anyway, once again we have an environmentalist desperately clinging to the argument that DDT wasn’t actually “banned.” The West threatened to cut off foreign aid to any African government that allowed even non-agricultural DDT use. A few African countries and India refused to give in and went without the aid, and their populations didn’t suffer the millions of deaths from malaria that occured in the countries that bowed to environmentalist pressure.
What happened to the economics of the few plants producing DDT when its use in agriculture was banned?
Nice one, Boris; try this.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/malaria/finkel-text
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature” — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.
In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. – Robert A. Heinlein
I’m past pity and contempt.
I’m past pity and contempt. These people, with their hatred of people, are guilty of mass genocides. I’m tired of the contant lawsuits and their objections to anything that lifts the quality of life for human beings. The EPA even has a program in place where they actually fund outside green groups to sue theirselves (the EPA) so they can put in place more stringent enviromental controls that would otherwise be uncalled for as an “act of compliance” to settle the lawsuit.
For example – They hate oil, but are also against natural gas which is a natural and clean energy source. Why? The only answer that makes sense is they want more people dead.
“The EPA even has a program in place where they actually fund outside green groups to sue theirselves……..”
Absolutely correct, Lolly. That’s why it’s so easy for them to sue. They don’t pay.
http://junkscience.com/2012/05/10/environmental-groups-collecting-millions-from-government-agencies-they-sue-studies-show/
A quibble: they want white, western, capitalist people dead; the rest are just collateral damage.
Exactly. It used to puzzle me that matters scientific like global warming and other environmental issues should be politicized. It finally dawned on me that the unreasoning fanatical “world is coming to an end” crowd are anti-American and anti-capitalist losers.
Thanks for the quote; it’s definitely going into my ‘excellent quotations’ file.
I think the difference between us and beavers is that we damage the environment and beavers do not. By “damage,” I mean we remove living things from the environment and replace them with dead things – trees with buildings, grasslands with roads, whole ecosystems with strip mines, etc. Dead things do not contribute to the carbon cycle or any other natural process. At best they are substrate for things like mosses to grow on or artificial cliffs for certain birds to nest on. It will take hundreds or thousands of years for “nature to reclaim” all our concrete, steel, and asphalt. I’m not sure how long it takes an embalmed human corpse to turn into compost.
On the other hand, beavers and beaver dams are bio-degradable. They may dam up a stream and create a pond by destroying a meadow. But the pond is its own ecosystem – it’s filled with life that contributes to the environment. And eventually the beavers will move away, the dam will decompose in a couple of years, and the pond will turn back into a meadow.
So there’s the difference. Beavers take a living meadow and turn it into a living pond. People take a living meadow and turn it into a dead parking lot. That, not our population, is the real problem.
I have no idea what to do about any of this. Worshiping nature and hating humanity is not the answer. I’m not sure environmentalists live in the real world – it seems more like a world they’ve constructed in their minds while the real world goes about its business in strange and unpredictable ways. They’ve done some good. I think they do best when they’re persuading people to behave in environmentally-healthy ways. They do worst when, like all leftists, they use the power of government to force people to change. Making public service announcements is great; closing factories is not.
Whatever. I don’t think government-enforced population control is necessary. Nature will control our population for us – when the time is right.
This argument seems to be that beavers substitute an eco-system for an eco-system while humans do not. This is fundamentally untrue. Not only do humans replace an eco-system bereft of humans with a rich eco-system full of humans, but they also create rich eco-systems full of roaches, pigeons, rats, cats, dogs and other animals…not to mention the parasites and bacteria we bring…and that is just in the city. In the country, we replace prairie with eco-systems full of wheat and corn.
The problem with your argument is that you have already fallen into the trap of “non-human ecosystems are natural and human-eco-systems are not”. And it is a small step to then think Natural = Good and Un-Natural = Bad. But why? Why are trout more “deserving” of a beaver pond’s shelter than the field mouse who lived there before? Why are pigeons less deserving of the shelter and food provided by a city than the deer who lived there previously?
This attempt to inflict morality on something as morally neutral as Nature will always leave you perplexed and in a quandary, because your entire premise is incoherent and so an incoherent solution is all that follows. The first step in distinguishing between radical environmentalism and conservationism is in rejecting that we preserve Nature because we must, and agreeing that we preserve Nature because we WANT to.
I’ve got two words for these neo-Luddites: “modern dentistry”. Let’s see them live without it.
And, for the women: “natural childbirth”.
Heinlen was a brilliant and interesting man. You know he actually travelled through Communist Russia? He also headed up a group in the US to oppose the hippie nuclear disarmament crowd – that held up the completion of “Stranger in a Strange Land”.
Several of his books were very political in nature, and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” lays out a plan to run a revolution using a resitance organization with a cell structure.
The EPA also banned alar which kept fruit ripe longer and could therefore be shipped across country to supply grocery stores at a reduced cost due to volumn.
“In fact, by eliminating their insect parasites and infection agents, DDT was helping bird numbers to grow significantly. ”
– What a nonsense! What about the birds EATING poisoned (exterminated?) insects? What about the birds eating animals which ate poisoned insects? What about ourselves eating DDT? Can one really believe that a wide-range insecticide can be harmless for humans in any dosage? It actually reminds me that the Shoah deniers often claim that the famous Cyclone B gas was only used against insects and is not harmful to humans. The truth is quite opposite: it is indeed an insecticide, but it is much more poisonous for men.
“Had we continued without environmentalist interference with our previous 3 percent per year growth in the period since — as the rest of the non-OPEC world actually did — we would today be producing 35 mpd, and the world economy would not be groaning under the extremely regressive tax represented by $100 per barrel oil prices.”
– It is just a senseless number manipulation, not much different from the cited predictions of 1960s that in 10 years the life can be exterminated by pesticides. Indeed USA did not have enough oil for this calculation!
And while killing newborns in China is terrible, the world population growth should be stopped, if we don’t have an option to immigrate to Mars. If we won’t stop it ourselves, it will just happen automatically by wars or mass starvation. The endless growth is obviously impossible, and the technology can only postpone this bitter end.
Yes, actually. If one has a basic understanding of science, it’s quite easy to believe this.
Were you aware that arsenic used to be the only medication for sleeping sickness? It was quite effective, and quite safe.
The toxin is in the dose.
BTW, you should do some research on the hormetic effect.
Why?
(I won’t ask, “What gives you the right?”, because to leftists, “I think it should be so!” is all the justification they need for their tyrannical ideas.)
We have 7 billion people on the planet, according to the latest estimates. That’s a big number. In fact, it’s a really big number.
But how big is it? I think we lose perspective sometimes. We don’t realize just how big this planet is.
So, let’s try to get a real grip on how that number compares to the size of the planet. Let’s get really leftist here for a minute, and tell everybody where they have to live.
We can fit them all into the greater Ft. Lauderdale area. Every man, woman, and child. They’d be standing shoulder to shoulder, but they’d fit.
And it leaves THE ENTIRE REST OF THE PLANET EMPTY. Empty, as in, available for food production, energy production, manufacturing, and waste disposal.
Too crowded? Yeah, that’s too crowded. Not really doable in any practical sense.
Okay, we’ll move them to Texas. Now every man, woman, and child on the planet gets 1070 square feet of their own. That’s just a bit smaller than my house. It would be considered a large apartment in most American cities. It’s plenty of room.
And it leaves THE ENTIRE REST OF THE PLANET EMPTY. Empty, as in, available for food production, energy production, manufacturing, and waste disposal.
Oh, but we’re growing? We’ll run out of room? Fine, let’s double it. Fourteen billion. More than 500 square feet per person is too crowded? Fine.
Let’s move all 14,000,000,000 people to Alaska. Now they each get 1168 square feet. It’s plenty of room.
And it leaves THE ENTIRE REST OF THE PLANET EMPTY. Empty, as in, available for food production, energy production, manufacturing, and waste disposal.
We have plenty of room and plenty of resources for our present population and a lot more.
Those who say otherwise are either ignorant or lying.
Awesome examples. Personally I live in a small town and like it that way, though of course my ‘small town’ would’ve been considered a metropolis in the Middle Ages. But once flying cars become practical, I wouldn’t mind living in a gargantuan metroplex where everybody lived in huge towers etc. If I could still get out and visit the mountains, it wouldn’t matter if all I had at home was a garden/veranda on the 90th floor.
WOW !
Thanks for publishing these numbers !
I had never thought to this.
I checked your numbers, and not only they are correct, but I get more square feet per capita in Alaska (for 14 Billions) !!!
Thank you.
An eye opener.
Yeah, there are variations in the numbers published for land area, so you can get different results depending on your source data. I just grabbed the first number that came up in the search engine.
However, the differences are trivial, and don’t affect the argument.
I also made sure to round DOWN on the square feet per person so I could not be accused of exaggerating. As if the difference between 1168 and 1169 matters, but you know how leftists are.
Also, if you arrange these crowded people above one another in these things called “Buildings” via this great new invention called the “Floor” you can increase the available space per person by a few orders of magnitude. And they all live comfortably yet still close to one another and use less energy. Of course the anti-population movement knows this makes their case look bad, so in most places they implement (zoning) laws that prevent the use of more than three of these horizontal marvels called floors. For more information about this amazing invention see The Onion’s “New Horizontal Device Prevents Falls To Basement”
Interesting examples. I never thought of it that way.
I’m wondering if it matters how the space is used. That is, if it’s “natural” space – say, people living in a forest – or “dead” space like an apartment complex. I’m wondering how many acres of asphalt, glass, and concrete there are per person on the planet. I’m wondering if the actual amount of “dead” space currently used per person isn’t much greater than your calculations suggest.
Seems like it’s not numbers, it’s lifestyle. I don’t know whether our current way of utilizing space is “sustainable” or not. You never know til you try. If it’s not, I have no idea what to do about it. Sure, it might be better if we all lived in vast treehouses and rode biodegradable flying monsters like the Big Blue Sioux did in “Avatar.” But I have no idea how to get from here to there. I don’t think the Greens and other environmentalists know, either. Trouble is, they want to use government power to force us to abandon our current lifestyle without offering anything comprehensive to replace it.
People first started buying cars because they thought cars were better than horses. Figuratively speaking, the enviros want to make us give up our horses – but there are no cars. So how are we supposed to get around? They have no idea. All they know is there’s something they don’t like and they want to get rid of it. And they’re gaining the power to do so. That will lead to a lot of leaping before looking unless the voting public keeps them in check.
Of course it matters how it’s used. This exercise is NOT a suggestion that we actually implement such a scheme. It’s merely a mental exercise to put the numbers in perspective.
The Mathusians like to show pictures of crowded cites to prove that the earth is “full”.
It would be silly if it were not so serious.
The voting public has nothing to do about it. The EPA operates outside of our accdepted legal boundaries. They just impose a fiat change in policy and every human and corporation in the country is bound by it.
The only way to end this monster is for congress to either de-fund it or for a president to just disolve it and be willing to take the heat for it.
Mark, thanks for posting these examples to give those overpopulation nuts some perspective.
I’ve read similar figures before and they were eye opening.
Excellent calculations. Its almost what would be needed to make solar panel energy effective. Just move everyone out of the Sun Belt.
Yes, indeed, excellent post. I’m sitting in a biology classroom right this second (Prep period); 1200 square feet, or 30 by 40, just about the size of this room.
Really crazy numbers. Even subtracting out mountains and deserts, it is positively barmy to consider this big blue marble “full” of humans. What distresses me so is the propaganda that is slipped into the water in high schools, especially considering the politics of starvation.
Thanks for the stats – I had previously seen the same with regards to Texas. Concerning the environmentalists, many are sincere and responsible persons, but I believe that the majority of the international crowd are remnants of the old communist party that has no place to go since the fall of the USSR. One of my biggest gripes re environmentalists and their lawsuits is the fact that they can hinder / impede any project they desire just by filing a lawsuit. I believe that anyone wishing to do so should have skin in the game – not some off the wall idea of what’s right for the rest of the world. Their arbitrary lawsuits have cost trillions of dollars just to the American people.
“world population growth should be stopped”
Show us how dedicated you are to YOUR cause, and leave voluntarily. As in today.
You know? The problem I generally have with the ‘there are to many people’ volk is that they never get off their asses and go someplace (generally no more than an hour away) outside of their urban hell hole to see how much spare there really is.
People like Ariel really need to get off their butts and go hang out with nature in the sticks. I’m sure the coyotes will enjoy the snack.
Not to worry and fret, Ariel. Next time we have a famine (oh, look over there right now) we will name it after you. When you are an environmental Green Believer, you can’t have it both ways in your church. You claim environmental protection as a social good and then ignore it when it is killing people off or when it is not a social good.
Cutting off energy to the cold northern states = Green good and save the air.
Cutting off energy to the northern states = we cut down more trees and burn fire wood, lose industry, jobs and means to buy food or medicine. My fireplace without a carbon scrubber is a lot more dirty than a coal plant.
Ask anyone who has been to Taos in the winter and where that hazy smoke comes from.
How many people are you willing to murder to stop population growth? From that answer we know all we need to about your soul.
The lethal dose for a 150 lbs man for DDT is 9 grams. By contrast, the lethal dose for a 150 lbs man for caffine is 5 grams. Noone has ever been injured by DDT poisoning. A brief study of DDT related cancer gave the rate as zero. Noone in the 900 man factory had cancer. One man arrived with terminal cancer when he began work, and in a few months his cancer went into remission. At the time of the study this older man refused to retire.
Birds also have substantial resistance to DDT. One flawed study liked thin shells in pelicans to DDT, flawed because the link was not demonstrated, but the thin shells were blamed on DDT, when probably (but not certainly) caused by stress induced by the study personnel flying out to the study location bo helicopter.
Well, in case you haven’t noticed: the human population is doing quite well at limiting itself for economic reasons. All of Europe, China, Japan, and the U.S. (sans immigration) are experiencing population growth-reduction, if not actual decline, due to decreasing birth rates. In fact this is going to be the cause of some major problems, since the ratio of elderly to young is growing precipitously. India is doing its best to catch up. The main population growth is occurring in countries with majority Muslim populations.
The best way to reduce a country’s population is to make it rich.
Regarding population growth – There are strong arguments that birth rates fall sharply when women have opportunities outside the home. The countries with the highest birth rates (and hence threats of over-population) are almost always those in which women have the fewest educational and occupational opportunities. There’s a strong correlation between relatively democratic governments and low birth rates. The factors leading to the “demographic transition” are complex, but the evidence for such a transition in countries around the world is so widespread that Erlich’s dire predictions have little validity. Even in Africa, though many countries there have high death rates and high birth rates — a “pre-industrial” phenomenon. Wikipedia has a pretty decent exposition of the theory of the “demographic transition.” It makes hash of Malthus & neo-Malthusians.
I don’t remember the man’s name, but he gave lectures about the safety of DDT and he would drink the stuff. He lived to about 80 years old. Just like today, the environmentals think there’s too many brown and black people. LBJ made it a condition of loaning money to India. They had quotas for sterilization and abortion. This also extended to South America. Atlantic magazine had a long article detailing this. Of course this was all because of Erlich’s Population Bomb book that had so many people all worked-up. Something is wrong with people who sit around and worry about the world’s population as if they were going to live forever. Now they are doing the same with global warming…..deny people energy. Don’t give Africans reliable electricity, but put up some solar panels.
Sorry for all the disjointed thoughts. I have a LOT to say on this subject because I used to be one of these people. I also used to work for a windfarm.
I’m one of those people where the lightbulb finally went on and I’m mad as hell about how I’ve been lied to over the years by these rotten people.
If they were really serious about reducing the population I would encourage all of them to self terminate to save the planet. It would be the start of a beautiful world WITHOUT them!
How silly of you! Don’t you know they’re the most important people on the planet, and without them all civilization would fall into ruin? Oh wait, that’s what they want! I stand corrected, you’re absolutely right. The only ethical thing for them to do is find a nice cliff to jump off of, preferably into the sea so they could nourish the fish and crabs and finally add something of value to the circle of life.
And the Greens keep whining that we are overpopulating the planet and keep encouraging people to have fewer kids, if any. As a result, countries in Europe and Japan have plummeting birth rates that will not be able to sustain their current populations when they retire. They then have to allow many immigrants into their country to do the jobs that they cannot do, creating many social problems that threaten the very existance of the host counrty (such as the Muslims refusing to assimilate in France or just about any other country in Europe). The unintended consequences from the Green’s political positions are always staggering, not that they would ever admit it.
Rather than import foreigners who would pollute their country and culture, the Japanese are using technology to solve their labor shortages. For example, robot nurses are on duty there, and the patients love them. They speak fluent Japanese, are always there when needed, and (best of all) don’t bring in family from abroad.
Historically, labor shortages have sparked great strides in innovation. Gutenberg’s movable type addressed the lack of literate transcribers caused by the 14th-century Black Death pandemic. For whatever reason, this obvious lesson is ignored in the West. The result is mass immigration and social chaos. We need to shut the borders, expel the foreigners that refuse to assimilate, and then turn the entrepreneurs loose. Need translators? Someone will surely invent a real-life C-3PO (fluent in 6,000,000 forms of communication). Advanced crop harvesting machines have already been invented, but they languish because it’s cheaper to import illegals — in effect, an end run around the 13th Amendment.
The problem is that industrial and housing development has been and is causing various environmental problems, but they are understated. Many of them are not all that obvious.
I’ll give an example. In the UK, because this little island is overcrowded (or at least part of it, notably the southeast, is) there is a very great concentration of housing development – made worse by the number of divorces in Britain. Many of these houses are built on river floodplains where nothing at all ever ought to have been built, precisely because they are floodplains.
The result of this is more flooding, and aquifer depletion. Why? Because concrete and asphalt are not porous. Added to the increasing tendency to have a paved parking space on one’s property instead of a front garden, this means that there is increased runoff and the storm drains can’t cope – hence the flooding, and because the water is running off instead of soaking in, hence the aquifer depletion also.
There are solutions, and not particularly expensive ones, to this problem – specially made porous asphalt and also concrete paving blocks with voids in them, neither of which affects the ability of a car to park on the surface. But because they are slightly more expensive, people will not use these alternatives unless forced to.
Re Fletcher Christian’s point, our Victorian forbears found no problem in diverting water from Wales to satisfy the growing thirst of the industrial Midlands or from the Lake District to supply the Manchester area. Unfortunately, they start to moan at the thought of a water grid to divert water from the wetter north and west of the UK to slake the drouth of its ever-groewing numbers(sorry for the Scotticism!).
What they have forgotten is the proverb, “every little helps”. I grew up in the Midland town of Coventry, and we had a rainwater tank that caught the roof runoff. I see ads for water butts so that any budding gardener can water his crops between the showers. As for the floodplains, did it never occur to the planners to do some test drilling down to the aquifers, and see what the water content of the intervening layers was? It seems to me that what they should have done is to sink such boreholes on the floodplains, insert a concrete pipe down each one, and then put successive layers of fane samd, coarse sand, and pea shingle, the las being the top layer. These would filter the floodwater so that it would top up the aquifers.
Regarding DDT and other organochlorine insecticides, there was an article in New Scientist” back in the 1980s detailing the shortsightedness of the foreign aid programs. What the restrictions of these overlooked was that they were based on data from TEMPERATE latitudes, where the ultravioledt flux is less than in the tropics. Result? Countries in the Sahel have been forced to use their own resources to buy organochlorines for locust control. In their countries the sunlight breaks up the insecticide faster than nearer the Poles, but no so fast that they can’t just lay it ahead of any advancing locust horde. By contrast, organophosphorus compounds break up rapidly, which means they have to spray it several times in a row, AND get the timing exactly right. try telling those environmentalist nutters and you might just as well be talking to a brick wall.
They won’t admit it because if they did, doing so would be cataclysmic.
How does this sound as a diagnosis: Those who do not want to admit they are wrong about environmentalism do not want to hear that they are wrong. For it stems from insecurity that they might be wrong, and those who say they are wrong, that they might be right.
This essay is a pitiful and repugnant use of the term holocaust and holocaust denier.
By writing this piece of disgusting adolescent trash, you Sir, are denying the very real horror of the real and only Holocaust.
Nope. You grabbed a few words and did not go past them. Its not far from the truth. It is a few elites in power, making grandiose determinations adn threats of world ending destruction (that never happen) without any concern for the losse of life, the results, nor the broader impacts and outcomes; to ensure they stay in power.
The decisions for their pwoer control are justified with fad and theory, not science and fact.
Words like crisis, emergency disaster, irrepairable losses do not describe the hoarding and manipulations of one elite group and their destruction over such a long period of time.
the “only” holocaust? I didn’t know the term had been trademarked. Interesting. Perhaps the Ukrainians who were decimated at the hands of the largely jewish Bolshevik leadership might beg to differ. But please, let us never forget no people have ever suffered more than the Jews. I’m planning on living in the garage of a Jewish family’s mansion and serving as their slave. Nothing less could help assuage their incomparable suffering.
Strictly speaking “Holocaust” refers to the mass burning, which as a feature of the Jewish Genocide is either unique or nearly so.
There have been plenty of Genocides, but burning on that scale is (thankfully) unusual to say the least.
I wish the greenies WOULD be more concerned about overpopulation instead of left-wing politics. Obviously there must be a point where the earth can not support any more humans and we will be swimming around in our own feces.
Since the entire world population would fit (at the density of Manhattan) in Texas, we have a long way to go before we overcrowd the world. Since people work more efficiently as our numbers increase, we will, if we have sufficient numbers, be able to colonize other planets. There need be no limit to our numbers.
Getting off this rock will assure the survival of not only our species, but all the species we transport with us. Why would you choose to risk wiping out every species of which we know? That is what you risk when you support population limitations.
Go ahead and turn a verb into a noun if you like ~ nearly every other kind of perverse determination to choose the unheard of over the fact of the matter has been going on of late — but when it comes to the verb ‘to deny,’ I do not comprehend the need to create “denier” out of whole cloth when there is a perfectly good and time-tried word available: gainsayer. If the reason you do not like gainsayer is because your colleagues have adopted the incongruous word denier — one see it cropping up everywhere of late — but please do not say things like “It _looks_ obsolete!”
Give the word an honest try: “to deny” OR to be a gainsayer. Works for me!
Verbing weirds language.
The biggest reason these people squeal so loudly about overpopulation is the elite power mongers can’t control such large numbers of people hence their manipulation of the population numbers by genocide and other means like genetically designed crops that can’t reproduce after several generations, genetically altered viruses
resistant to all anti viral medications. If we can’t control them kill them.
I will start by saying I have been an environmentalist for many years and worked for EPA and other agencies including USAID and WHO. With that, my opinion mirrors many of the comments and the article. Green is exempt from measurable outcomes, scientific review, and impact studies. If a concept or implementation meets the criteria for the Green effort belief, then it is fast tracked with no thought to its impact, implication, limitation and outcome. As the project is then heralded as a huge success for all, it is never subject to review for adjustment, correction or real evaluation
Don’t get me wrong. Many of the green ideas are good ones, however they are narrowly managed and held sacrosanct to review of whether it has met its stated outcome and what the side effects have been. In ALL cases, the outcomes and impacts are waved unless they meet the propaganda sales pitch.
For example, solar electric panels installed at health care centers throughout Africa heralded as a huge success. Never mind that it would have been cheaper to run electrical connections. Never mind that they have to choose between running one light bulb for surgery or the refrigerator with vaccines.
Consider the extension of the Clean Air Act. The changes made without scientific review, the panels were selected internally, no public opinion was considered, the cost impact was heavily manipulated, and the ‘scientific studies’ completely created from thin air but t met the goal of control. The counts of deaths that served as a basis for deaths from asthma included deaths from venereal disease and home fires. Never mind that those same figures were used to justify other dirty environment deaths for other Green efforts.
Consider the number of deaths from indoor wood fire cooking instead of cheap propane; huts with windows made from drinking bottles are more Green.
Consider the wind turbines on the Great Lake. Even with failure after failure, they still construct more.
Once something has been put on the Green path, it is exempt from critique and evaluation regardless of the cost to the environment and life. No consideration to cost, outcome, anthropological impact, social change and destruction. Anyone who says otherwise, is quickly silenced. Hence my name.
Well said.
When ever one these “greenies” tell me something is or isn’t “green” I ask them “according to whom?” They ussually give me some vague answer like “by the people who certify it!” And who is that I ask and they can never really tell me.
Just the fact that these intellectual midgets use GREEN as some kind of virtue and in the next breath are dedicated to eliminating the CO2 that makes things green, tells you everything you need to know about them. They’re completely delusional and live in a world of their own making.
EPA is advertising for someone to head up the “DEPT OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE”. It’s hard to believe such a thing could exist. It supposed to target pollution in low-income and minority neighborhoods. What do you do? Run out all the nearby factories or anything that’s “polluting”. It’s all political, trying to show they are fighting for the “downtrodden.” EPA has become insane. Nothing wrong with controlling pollution, but calling it “justice”? “Climate Justice” is the other one that means what? Some people don’t have good weather, so they are going to change it? Crazy!
What a terribly written post. Its a pity but the message of this post is completely lost when the author states “…the entire environmentalist movement consists of holocaust deniers…” when the ultimate objective seems to be to shill for resource exploitation. Resource exploitation is laudable, but don’t hide behind some actual care for people who could have been saved with judicious use of the incredibly effective agent DDT.
Brutus, did you notice some other topics other than DDT? The killing of babies, forced sterilizations, bans on genetically enhanced crops, etc….? That’s shilling for resource exploitation? No, I rather think its shilling for humanity.
Back in 1971 or 1972 when I was in junior highschool they herded us into the assembly room to watch THE POPULATION BOMB with Paul Ehlich. It described that by the end of the seventies the world would be overpopulated famine stricken wolrd with massive food shortages. Nothing of the sort happened unless I missed it. In fact the exact oposite happened. Many countries had food surplus they couldn’t sell.
“Had we continued without environmentalist interference with our previous 3 percent per year growth in the period since — as the rest of the non-OPEC world actually did — we would today be producing 35 mpd, and the world economy would not be groaning under the extremely regressive tax represented by $100 per barrel oil prices.”
Why the peak oil denialism?
Lol, because the peak oil meme has once again been destroyed by new finds of oil. In the U.S. alone, when we include shale oil, we’ve enough to last us well over 200 years at current production, but probably closer to 400.
Malthusian Luddites typically think about the future in terms of the present, and that’s why they are consistently wrong. They think in this manner not only with oil, but also food. I can’t decide if they do this intentionally to give their misanthropy a credible appearance or if the simply lack the ability to learn from their mistakes.
Thank you very much. I will continue to follow this discussion as it has been very enlightening and I have forwarded the web page with the article and comments to several of my friends and colleagues.
Why do you think Ramesh Ponnuru called it the Party Of Death?
As a climate skeptic who has been compared to a Holocaust denier for my skepticism, I find this sort of comparison incredibly unproductive. Just focus on the arguments, don’t try to concoct tortured analogies to unrelated debates.
So what else do you call it when someone’s calling for the deaths of millions of innocent people?
…. because that IS what they’re calling for.
Coyote, your position would probably be correct if one was only considering the climate aspect of this issue. But, I’ve long argued that the climate issue is only one weapon in the arsenal of these misanthropists. We should not constrain ourselves from using words that accurately describe these people.
Mr. Zubrin: I heard you on Mike Rosen’s show in Denver this am and was quite impressed. During the 1980′s I was involved with a company called Radiation Technology (I am a reformed investment banker). They were producing devices for irradiating (at extremely low levels) fresh foods, such as eggs, meat, etc. Even at very low levels, the radiation killed virtually all known microbes, without any effect on the food itself. Of course, their business was destroyed by anti-nuclear hysteria. Every time I read about a death from salmonella or e-coli I think of that company and shake my head in quiet sorrow. Please keep up your good works on behalf of the human species.
I know the Watermelons game, I know man-made global warming is crock, I know it’s all about control.
but i’m sorry, I don’t want to eat genetically altered food anymore, and even though I despise government overreach, I want to have a law that forces all food made from genetically altered crops and animals to be clearly labeled as such.
A great, and important, article. Forgive me for seeing a tiny detail that is probably not correct. The article states that the U.S. Army first used DDT in Naples, 1943. I was in W.W.II, in the Mediterranean theater, and I remember being issued DDT in North Africa in the Spring of 1943 and then in Sicily in July, 1943. This was before the landings in Italy in September.
P.S. I got malaria anyway.
While I hate to get all theological,the “greenies” are neo-pagan worshipers of “Ghia”. Their ancestors tossed babies into the fire for Moloch, they perform the ”Sacrament of Abortion”. It is a fundamentally llife denying anti human movement.
Always amazing to me how little people who profess to know, know so little of the world. Come and live overseas in a third world country with me, for a while maybe you can believe seeing this with you own eyes, when people try to tell you the facts from observation people just become deniers of facts. makes me wonder if we need a real education.
For those who don’t think that the Europeans aren’t willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, I would submit the disastrous policy for not vaccinating livestock against Hoof and Mouth disease. An outbreak there killed or required the destruction of hundreds of thousands of head of livestock about a decade ago.
All one has to do is look.
Also Google the name Stuart Brand (he was one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters), his views might just surprise you.
Anyhow, here’s a link to get things started: http://www.google.com/search?q=interview+with+stuart+brand&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Golden Rice does not contain vitamin A (retinol). It contains beta-carotene. Carotenes are not vitamin A, even though the FDA allows it to be labeled as such. Retinol is only found in animal products where the animal has been pasture-grazed. In order for beta carotene to become retinol, saturated fat is required, and conversion ratios vary a great deal. Some people are very efficient, producing a unit of retinol with only 4 units of carotene. Others are far less efficient. Golden rice is a faux solution that will help no one because in order for it to be any good, people need access to animal products.
I was shocked to learn about DDT in The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About–Because They Helped Cause Them by Iain Murray. And am still digesting how to present this to others. But there is a long list of reasons why GMOs will not help humans and may in fact cause more trouble for us than they are worth.
I couldnt finish the article.
Today we have long term birth control options, things that last for months or years. We don’t have to have an abortion epidemic.
Why do people have to always name drop ancient history like Malthus and Club of Rome when you start discussing overpopulation.
Lets put things in dead simple terms. I value 2 long term goals. Preserving whats left of the ecology as I grant it a critical level of soverignty, and continuing technological development so that humans will be able to exit the planet and colonize other planets etc successfully.
Therefore, is our current civilizational model, the health a system which depends on admitted extreme overconsumption of the most available resources, make any sense in the context of the above goals?
A demand for any human’s right to unrestrained child birth now, is implicitly also demanding this for their children, add infinitum. When do we give up this delusion? At what point, author, will you demand discipline, order, and resposibility of your fellow humans?
“….When do we give up this delusion? At what point, author, will you demand discipline, order, and resposibility of your fellow humans?”
____________________
Well Steph, it seems you are not DEMANDING “responsibility”, you are demanding a return to Slavery/Serfdom. Isn’t that what you really mean by “Discipline” and “Order”
It certainly is not freedom for the individual what ever the heck you have in mind for the rest of us.
Oh, and I am old enough to have seen with my own eyes that a high tech civilization is very good for the environment. It is low tech civilizations that really trash the place.
I admire greens who don’t have any real problems in life. They are so well-disciplined and lead such ordered and simple lives, they have time to worry about what other people are doing and have time to “save the planet” from other people who aren’t as disciplined.
Greens hate cheap energy. “Having an abundant supply of cheap energy would be like giving a teenager a machine gun.” Paul Erhlich
The Sierra Club took $25 million from Chesapeake Energy to campaign against coal, but once natural gas became abundant, they are now campaigning against it. Anything,outside wind and solar and geo-thermal is evil. Of course these same people live in relative luxury and aren’t about to give up any comforts. Wonder what the heads of Sierra Club, WWF spend their 500K salaries on…..granola?
To sum up, Greens think there’s just enough of them and too many of us. I wager they are trying to find meaning in their lives. Environmentalism is just their secular religion. It fills a void, bringing meaning and purpose to their lives and gives them a sense of moral superiority. That’s why they look down their noses and show contempt for heretics.
And you will find that they only favor and support solar energy as long as it is not readily available. They push for solar farms, and then when they are ready to be built, they now oppose the transmission lines needed to distribute the solar-generated electricity for use in urban centers.
Nothing about them is ever what it appears to be. They are nothing but collectivist utopians.
Excellent article. For those that can not hear, more words and proof would make no difference. I have know all of these things for years, and the cover up and “smooth tongues” have no answer, other than we are “deniers”, but the truth prevails.