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As the world gets ready to celebrate the 100th birthday of environmental icon Rachel Carson this Sunday, policymakers are proposing bills to honor her legacy. Yet Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma stands largely alone in efforts to stop these measures — a position for which he deserves much credit. Coburn apparently recognizes that the conventional wisdom on Carson's legacy is wrong, as the results of following Carson's advice have been quite grim. Nonetheless, Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire and Sen. Arlen Specter, both of Pennsylvania, introduced a bill to name a post office in Pittsburgh after Carson.

Rachel Carson honor at risk in Senate May 23, 2007 WASHINGTON – Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has effectively blocked a resolution to honor environmental author Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth, saying that her warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides, congressional staffers said yesterday. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson, author of the 1962 book “Silent Spring,” for her “legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility.” Carson, who died in 1964, would have turned 100 this Sunday. Cardin has delayed the legislation, a spokeswoman...

Environmental movement's 'patron saint' was "attitude changer" -- Rachel Carson, whose book "Silent Spring" is credited with saving species of birds and kicking off the environmental movement, would have been 100 years old this year. Now, a two-act play celebrating the life and work of Carson is the highlight of this week's 174-program Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in Gatlinburg and throughout Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "A Sense of Wonder," written and performed by Kaiulani Lee, has been touring for more than 10 years - proof Carson still has influence 45 years after "Silent Spring." When the book came out in...

When the Christian Science Monitor recently declared Al Gore "the Rachel Carson of global warming," the former vice president must have bubbled over with pride. There is, it seems, no higher compliment one can bestow on an environmentalist. Next month marks what would have been Carson's 100th birthday, and festivities abound. The author of "Silent Spring" -- the 1962 book that birthed modern environmentalism and made "DDT" a dirty word -- Carson is the subject of an exhibit at the National Archives and the star of its Environmental Film Festival this year. Considered a secular saint by some, she was...

An open-minded review of what extreme environmentalists have wrought on the USA and on the world inescapably leads to the conclusion that they have caused millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in damages and losses. If you think this is incorrect or an exaggeration, let us consider the record with respect to just three issues: the snail darter, nuclear power and DDT. The Snail Darter In 1976, with the Tellico Dam on the Tennessee River 99% complete, its construction was stopped and its destruction was ordered after a tiny fish called the snail darter was discovered in that river.

Sept. 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his August 16, 2006 LifeSiteNews.com Special Report, Green Hands Dipped In Blood: The DDT Genocide, John Jalsevac exposed what may have been the worst crime of the 20th century, exceeding perhaps even the many millions of deaths caused by the Nazi’s or the horrific mass killings of Stalin or Mao Tse Tung. The current cause celebre of AIDS has caused nowhere near the perhaps 80 million deaths that have resulted so far in large part from the 30 year ban on the use of DDT to prevent malaria.Finally, recent news is that, despite...

See for example this thread first. I first saw this in Chemical & Engineering News, lo! these many years ago (maybe 1984 time frame?), and claim no credit except for remembering it. A mosquito was heard to complain, "I fear they have addled my brain!" "The cause of my sorrow is para-dicholoro- diphenyl-trichloroethane!"

Her ideology has led to more deaths than Stalin's purges, and brought misery to hundreds of millions more. But now, over 40 years after her death, her grip on the fate of countless developing nations may finally be at an end. As the founder of the modern ecological movement, the American naturalist Rachel Carson is not an obvious candidate for the pantheon of evil. Her best-selling book Silent Spring, published in 1963, is widely credited with putting the interconnectedness of nature on the political agenda, and led to international bans on the use of the pesticide DDT, which she claimed...

Rachel Carson, a driving force behind the modern environmental movement, grew up in a modest homestead in Springdale Borough near the Allegheny River. For the budding marine biologist, the river's waters were an early inspiration. Now, more than four decades after Ms. Carson's death, her presence may return to those waters. Allegheny County Council tomorrow will consider renaming the Ninth Street Bridge in her honor. If the resolution is approved, Ms. Carson would join Roberto Clemente and Andy Warhol as namesakes for the three Downtown "Sister Bridges" that cross the Allegheny. "This is long overdue," said Esther L. Barazzone, president...

Rachel Carson, a driving force behind the modern environmental movement, grew up in a modest homestead in Springdale Borough near the Allegheny River. For the budding marine biologist, the river's waters were an early inspiration. Now, more than four decades after Ms. Carson's death, her presence may return to those waters. Allegheny County Council tomorrow will consider renaming the Ninth Street Bridge in her honor. If the resolution is approved, Ms. Carson would join Roberto Clemente and Andy Warhol as namesakes for the three Downtown "Sister Bridges" that cross the Allegheny. "This is long overdue," said Esther L. Barazzone, president...

You've seen the horrific images of walls of water rushing up beaches, sweeping away everything – and everyone – in its path. You've seen the dead piled up like cordwood, wounded survivors, and persons collapsing upon hearing their entire family has vanished. Alas, you may not have seen the worst. Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the U.N. World Health Organization, warned that disease could take more lives than the waves. "The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer term suffering of the affected communities,'' he said. The main...

Senator and Mrs. John Kerry are big fans of Rachel Carson, whose disingenuous book Silent Spring launched the radical anti-pesticide movement that Terersa Heinz Kerry bankrolls rather handsomely through her family philanthropies. THK applauds "important gains" like the "banning of DDT and other harmful pesticides" as vital to ending the "devastating triple whammy" that women get from "the chemical soup" they encounter every day from birth control pills, makeup and sunblock, and "daily games of golf" on courses that are "perfectly manicured, thanks to estrogenic pesticides." "Drift is something we cannot afford when it comes to human rights," she insists....

Environmental ideology demands opposition to DDT despite the millions of malaria deaths its use could prevent. The West Nile virus deaths being reported across North America are a grim echo of a larger tragedy. Each year a million lives are taken worldwide by another mosquito-borne killer: malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance. But the real tragedy is that its horrific death toll is largely preventable. The most effective agent of mosquito control, the pesticide DDT, has been essentially discarded--discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma. The environmental crusade...

Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted. While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the...

Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures, as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted. While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the...

Who could possibly object to Earth Day, that benign occasion on which we are encouraged to throw away our pesticides, clean up our environment, and contemplate the damage we have done to Mother Earth? Niger Innis, for one. Mr. Innis is neither a shill for industry nor a raging neo-con. He is the spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, a leading African-American advocacy group, and last week he and other black activists got together to explain exactly what is wrong with Earth Day. "We must stop trying to protect our planet from every imaginable, exaggerated or imaginary risk. And...

THIS EARTH DAY springs from an environmental movement that is a patent success by at least two measures: It has endured--it is no mere fad--and it has spread. Consider the local scene. Politicians of all parties were pleased to celebrate the breaching of the Embrey Dam; the buttoned-down and the blue-jeaned alike struggle to preserve Crow's Nest natural area in Stafford County; only registered Misanthropes are indifferent to the fate of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. "Tree hugger" caricatures aside, Americans care about the physical world as they care about liberty, heritage, justice, and other high goods. Movements that spread, fortunately,...

Don't believe all you read well, except maybe this Argument for DDT use has merit but needs more facts to support claim A recent letter to the editor attempts to shatter conventional wisdom on DDT and its connection to declines in bird populations years ago. The letter writer wrote "not one study has shown that the inclusion of DDT in the diet of any birds has caused eggshell thinning." This simply is not true. The statement was written in the greater context of a point that the recent shotgun killing of four brown pelicans on the National Seashore is less...

Cracking open the facts on birds and banned pesticides "A dupe of the radical Greens!" "A disingenuous corporate stooge!" What could provoke such contradictory ad hominem attacks on your humble science correspondent? My simple observation in last week's column on the 30th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act: "It is generally acknowledged that banning DDT, which thinned bird's eggshells, brought back the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon, and the brown pelican." The controversy over the pesticide DDT and bird eggshell thinning is still going strong more than 30 years after the pesticide was banned in the United States. DDT and...

A pandemic is slaughtering millions, mostly children and pregnant women -- one child every 15 seconds; 3 million people annually; and over 100 million people since 1972 --but there are no protestors clogging the streets or media stories about this tragedy. These deaths can be laid at the doorstep of author Rachel's Carson. Her1962 bestselling book Silent Spring detailed the alleged "dangers" of the pesticide DDT, which had practically eliminated malaria. Within ten years, the environmentalist movement had convinced the powers that be to outlaw DDT. Denied the use of this cheap, safe and effective pesticide, millions of people --...