3 ms·

We don't use DDT today because of a book by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx http://www.rachelcarson.org/Silen

by rmason 6y ago

We don't use DDT today because of a book by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx Despite the environmental damage of DDT the Africans wanted to wipe out malaria first but were not able to purchase it in the quantities needed. As late as 2004 leading newspapers editorialized that eradicating malaria in Africa outweighed the environmental damage https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-needs-now-is-ddt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/magazine/what-the-world-n...

heavyset_go 6y ago
What Wikipedia has to say about this: > Carson has been targeted by some organizations opposed to the environmental movement, including Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria and the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute; these sources oppose restrictions on DDT, attribute large numbers of deaths to such restrictions, and argue that Carson was responsible for them. These arguments have been dismissed as "outrageous" by former WHO scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible." Investigative journalist Adam Sarvana and others characterize this notion as a "myth" promoted principally by Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM).
mrpopo 6y ago
> As late as 2004 leading newspapers editorialized that eradicating malaria in Africa outweighed the environmental damage This doesn't make sense. Eradicating malaria in Africa is beneficial to the human species. Environmental damage applies to all other species. I don't understand how one could "outweigh" the other. They are just two different objectives.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Environment also includes the crops, the insects that pollinate the crops, the pests which eat the crops, the predators that keep the crop-eating pests under control, the fish… We’re not (yet) beings of pure thought who can exist independent of our environment, so the damage to the environment does have to be counted before we decide if something is net-positive.
- dtech 6y ago
  of course they are related. Take a preposterous example: draining the mediterranean sea would be an environmental disaster which we wouldn't do. But if it would forever end world hunger, poverty and disease we would do it. The trade-off changes.

by rmason 6y ago

heavyset_go 6y ago

What Wikipedia has to say about this: > Carson has been targeted by some organizations opposed to the environmental movement, including Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria and the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute; these sources oppose restrictions on DDT, attribute large numbers of deaths to such restrictions, and argue that Carson was responsible for them. These arguments have been dismissed as "outrageous" by former WHO scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible." Investigative journalist Adam Sarvana and others characterize this notion as a "myth" promoted principally by Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM).

mrpopo 6y ago

> As late as 2004 leading newspapers editorialized that eradicating malaria in Africa outweighed the environmental damage This doesn't make sense. Eradicating malaria in Africa is beneficial to the human species. Environmental damage applies to all other species. I don't understand how one could "outweigh" the other. They are just two different objectives.

ben_w 6y ago
Environment also includes the crops, the insects that pollinate the crops, the pests which eat the crops, the predators that keep the crop-eating pests under control, the fish… We’re not (yet) beings of pure thought who can exist independent of our environment, so the damage to the environment does have to be counted before we decide if something is net-positive.
dtech 6y ago
of course they are related. Take a preposterous example: draining the mediterranean sea would be an environmental disaster which we wouldn't do. But if it would forever end world hunger, poverty and disease we would do it. The trade-off changes.