Inconvenient Truths and Global Crises

Many of the world’s tragedies can be traced back to radical environmentalist movements, argued Competitive Enterprise Institute Fellow Iain Murray at a recent book forum. He said, “Rather…the mainstream model, the paradigm if you will, for receiving very desirable environmental ends has an inbuilt capacity for enduring disaster.”

In his new book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, Murray argues that most destructive environmentalist movements following Rachel Carson display a similar trajectory:

1. “create a populist moral fervor;”
2. “deride anyone who opposes you as evil;”
3. “get the laws passed;”
4. “enforce those laws;”
5. “and blindly refuse to acknowledge any negative consequences.”

“We will see this again and again,” he said.

Murray’s new book joins a long list of critical books, including The Deniers, Scared to Death, Appeal to Reason, Climate Confusion, and Ecofreaks. “I would encourage you to read as many of these books as possible, but if you only can read one, I would suggest Iain’s book,” said the Heritage Foundation moderator, Ben Lieberman. A Senior Fellow on Energy and Environment, Lieberman specializes in the Clean Air Act and the energy costs of environmental policy.

“[Rachel Carson] also gave an example of a woman who contracted leukemia the day after one contact with DDT. This sort of exaggeration and hyperbole I suggest in the book was the 1962 equivalent of a Michael Moore documentary,” said Murray, disparaging Carson’s poor scholarship in Silent Spring. “We should not deny [the shell-thinning effects of DDT]. It was a genuine environmental problem,” he said. “Yet from that molehill was built a mountain.”

As Murray points out, the recall of DDT protected predatory birds but has undermined African governments’ ability to combat malaria, contributing to the deaths of millions. Asserting that DDT is the most effective—and cheap—mosquito repellant under the circumstances, he said, “Most African countries that need to use DDT are highly dependent on foreign aid. And so rather than trying to persuade African nations to curtail their use of something that keeps their citizens alive, [environmentalists] lobby the donor organizations to attach conditions.” Murray added, “Similarly, the European Union has told African nations their agricultural exports might not be allowed into European markets if DDT use was ‘widespread.’”

The American DDT ban may have also sparked another environmental disaster: a Dutch Elm Disease epidemic. Murray referred to John Berlau’s book, Ecofreaks, in which a tree warden describes how he used DDT to protect American elm trees from the disease—until the substance was banned. “We saw this happen all over the country as the DDT ban took hold, followed by the EPA’s ban in 1972. The noble American elm was completely devastated. We lost something like 60% of elms as a result of the loss of DDT,” said Murray.

Murray also blames Al Gore and other “decarbonizing” lobbyists for contributing to the current world food crisis. “The U.S. corn ethanol mandate is an affront to humanitarian ideals. The grain needed to fill the 25 gallon tank of a sports utility vehicle—about 450 pounds of corn—could feed one person for a year,” said Murray. He continued,

“The corn used to produce 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2007 could have fed 216 million people for a year. Under the mandate as passed in the energy bill last year, the United States will burn even greater quantities of food as auto fuel in a world that is not fully fed right now and whose food demand will be more than double in the next 40 years.”

Accuracy in Academia reported on the inflationary effects of biofuel mandates last December.

Murray attributes 1/3 of the current food crisis to biofuel mandates. Other factors include rising energy costs and increasing demand for more sophisticated diets.

“The ‘bread line’—there is no more perfect definition of poverty than the bread line. If you cannot afford to buy bread, then you are in serious trouble,” said Murray, pointing to the decreasing ability of citizens in poorer nations to buy food. He argues that while the European Union was unlikely to repeal its ethanol mandates, there remains a “small hope” that this will occur in the United States.

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.