The Outspoken Sportsman

hosted by Bill Moore

GREEN POLICIES WILL CAUSE MORE DEATHS

Green self-fulfilling prophecies are upon us.  Unless we expose them today, we will suffer at the hands of more dangerous policies in the future, says TCS Daily.

For example, policies driven by the pursuit of a pesticide free -- or at least pesticide diminished -- future, will cause an increase in insect-borne disease.  Members of the European Parliament recently agreed to numerous measures that will make it harder to use pesticides in future, pushed by lobbying from environmental groups and Green MEPs.

For example:

  • With laughable specificity given the paucity of data of any harm from such exposure, Pesticide Action Network Europe claims children are 164 times more at risk from up to 13 organophosphate pesticides than adults.
  • However, the only people who die from pesticides are those who use them recklessly or deliberately drink them to commit suicide; the same as can be said for kitchen cleaner.
  • The principal factors involved in the alarming increase in malaria include deforestation, new agricultural practices, population increase, urbanization, poverty, civil conflict, war, and others, says Professor Paul Reiter, of the Pasteur Institute

Some MEPs and U.S. legislators are surely old enough to remember that malaria persisted in many parts of Europe and the United States until the advent of the pesticide DDT.  One of the last malarious countries in Europe was Holland: the World Health Organization (WHO) finally declared it malaria-free in 1970.  Malaria is easily spread among humans.  Outbreaks are occurring with increasing frequency and we may be neutralizing our capacity to protect ourselves, says TCS Daily.

Source: Roger Bate, "Green Policies, Rather Than a Warming Planet, Will Cause More Deaths," Economic Affairs, March 2008.

For text:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/Article.aspx?id=102907B 

For more on Environment Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=31

Original Source:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=16536